The Storm As Seen on FaceBook

SUMMARY:

Seeing everyone's input as the storm wears on certainly gives one a better perspective than simply checking the news. Here's how it progressed among my friends.

HANDY TIP: For the big picture, read through the main WHITE status boxes. For more interesting details, view the indented BLUE responses to the main status posts.










































(Detail of Amy's post--Amy is on the east coast--)



(one of Gina's photos:)




(For some lyrics referenced in preceding post, go here.)








NOTE: All preceding snapshots taken around 8:00pm tuesday evening (hence notes about "12 hours ago", etc. refer to this time). Following post captured around midnight (hence 2 hours ago = 10:00).

Fun Rain Facts and Sorry Kate Elliott's Books

SUMMARY: An interesting first storm of the season, plus fun facts to know and share!

Fun fact: The Taj MuttHall-owned portions of San Jose got 3.5" of water in the last 24 hours! When the whole entire last rain year it got 11.5"!

Fun fact: 3.5" of rain in 24 hours can add the long-forgotten water jump obstacle feature to one's local agility field!

Fun fact: If you give a border collie a rawhide bone because you can't do agility so you want to keep her occupied for a while, she will spend 3 minutes out in the rain burying it somewhere in the yard!

Fun fact: And then come inside and look at you in a bored and reproachful way!

Fun fact: Tika can look bored and reproachful, too!

Fun fact: If you like sleeping with the windows open, and a big rainstorm is coming, and you leave them open only an inch or so because what could happen, there's a screen in the window to keep the rain out, right?, then you can learn some fun facts about the permeability of window screens! (Photo post-closing of window, showing permeable window screens.)

Fun fact: Curtains hanging 6" from windows in such situations get sopping sopping wet!

Fun fact: Because Taj MuttHall Human Mom is not as quick-witted as Team Small Dog Person Member when disaster strikes, TMH never gets photos of things like large pools of water on windowsills and nice oak bookcases! Which are now nice oak bookcases with wet spots! The camera never comes out until the worst of the disaster is already cleaned up! So too bad for you blog readers who wanted to see actual puddles of water on furniture!  Go look at TSD to see cupcake batter on the floor instead!


Fun fact: Wallpaper, being attached with water-soluble paste, can easily be separated from the wall simply by becoming moist! 

Fun fact: To absorb some of that annoying permeating water, you can leave one's down comforter on a chair with its back to the window even as much as 18" away!

Fun fact: Books, particularly those made of paper, tend to absorb water, but only if you leave them under an open window!

Even covers of books! (Sorry, books of Kate Elliott.)

Fun fact: Sometimes you can get giant air bubbles behind wallpaper! Especially if it somehow becomes moistened and thereby detached from the wall!

Fun related fact: You can unobtrusively remove air bubbles from wallpaper by pricking with a pin!

Fun related fact: Vinyl wallpaper, especially when made of actual vinyl, holds water!

Fun very related fact: If you prick a giant air bubble in vinyl wallpaper that has recently been somewhere in the vicinity of an open window and a large rainstorm, be prepared for the fact that all the air inside the bubble is actually water and will ooze all over the place for half an hour!

Fun fact: When it rains a lot, the street gutters fill with water! And it doesn't get charged to your water bill!

Fun fact: Grocery shopping in the rain is not so much keen fun! For anyone!

Favorite Dog Lyrics Redux: The Happy Suburban Wanderer

SUMMARY: From K-TMEH, only the finest in hijacked lyrics.

As I listen to the growing roar of the wind presaging a tremendous incoming storm, my thoughts meander back to one fine August day a couple of months back on which, as I perambulated for my 2-mile morning constitutional with the Merle Girls, I reconstructed an old favorite song to be apropos to my life (yes, and sang it aloud as I went):

THE HAPPY SUBURBAN WANDERER
(Semiapologies to Friedrich-Wilhelm Möller)

I love to go a-wandering
among the sidewalk cracks
And as I go, I love to sing;
my dogs don't sing, alack!
Valderi, valdera, valderi, valdera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,
Valderi, valdera, my dogs don't sing, alack!

I love to wander by the streets
that carry cars along.
So joyously they call to me,
"Come join my busy throng."
Valderi, etc.

I wave my hand to all I meet,
the children wave to me.
The house finch calls so loud and sweet,
from every street-side tree.
Valderi, etc.

High overhead the jet planes wing
To distant lands unknown
And just like me, their engines sing
As o'er the world we roam.
Valderi, etc.

Oh, may I go a-wandering
Until the day I die!
Oh may I always laugh and sing
My doggies at my side!
Valderi, etc.


(Do you know this song? Have you been out camping & hiking enough? Here are the original lyrics and music, oh, and check out this video, sung where it should be, in the gorgeous high mountains! Or, OK, the muppets disaster version. )

Ex Pertinacia Victoria (We Can Only Hope)

SUMMARY: (Translation: From persistence comes success.) Well, can't say I'm not persistent.

Remington:

• Attempts at USDAA Masters Standard Qs: 41. Earned: 1 (we had been retraining contacts when he succumbed to cancer)
• Attempts at NADAC Elite Gamblers with no Qs: 23. 
• After that: Earned 10 of the next 25 to complete his NATCH.
  

Jake:

• Attempts at Gamblers Qs after moving up to Masters: 10 with no Qs.
• Then earned 4 of the next 8.
• Attempts for the 5th Q after those 4: 10 with no Qs.
• After that: Earned the 5th Q to complete his ADCH. Earned another 7 in Performance.
• Out of first 17 NADAC Elite gamblers attempts: one Q.
• Eventually: Earned 29 Elite Gamblers Qs before retirement.
  

Tika:

• Attempts at a clean Jumpers run in USDAA Novice before her first Q: 12.
• Attempts at a clean Masters Jumpers run before her first Q: 13.
• Out of her first 42 Jumpers runs in NADAC, CPE, and USDAA combined: 3 Qs.
  
• Eventually: Just earned her 25th Masters Jumpers Q to complete her ADCH-Silver.
  

Boost:

• Attempts at Masters Jumpers Qs: 34. Earned: 0. And counting.
• Attempts at Masters Snooker Super-Qs: 32. Earned: 0 super-Qs, 4 plain Qs. And counting.
• After that: Hope springs eternal--
  

Why Can't We All Just Get Along--

SUMMARY: Like elephant and dog?

Prepare to dab your eyes:

Joke

SUMMARY: Stop me if you've heard this one before... oh, wait... you can't! Ha!

Have you heard about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac who stayed up all night wondering whether there really is a dog?

Sacrifices

SUMMARY: Who would you save, and at what risk?

Many years ago--many many many years ago--I was in maybe 8th or 9th grade--I liked to hang out at the planetarium at the local Junior College. The people there were fun to be around, the planetarium gear always fascinated, and I loved sitting back in the chairs as the Cove Blue faded and the sky darkened and a few meteors shot by overhead. Spent quite a bit of time down there with all the regular planetarium crew.

The Boss, however, was seldom seen. I didn't know him well at all. He was much older than everyone else there, and definitely more Grown Up. Here's what I don't remember about this particular evening: How on earth we got onto this subject.

Here's what I do remember: I said that, if my dog were drowning and a human who was a complete stranger was drowning at the same time, I was pretty sure that I'd save the dog because she meant so much more to me. I couldn't be completely positive, but I was pretty sure. And the end of the conversation was that he told me to never show my face in his planetarium again until I had straightened out my priorities in terms of whether a human's life or a dog's life was more important.

For some reason this came to mind tonight, as I listened to the news tell of a house fire last night, in which the mother and child escaped safely but separately, but the father went back into the house after he had been outside safely. They don't know why; the speculation is that he didn't know that his daughter had gotten out onto the roof and had been rescued. He never came out again.

I started thinking, what if I were safely out of the house, and realized that my dogs were still in there. What would I do? I know--I KNOW--that it is extreme folly and incredibly dangerous to return to a burning house. Firefighters with all the proper equipment avoid doing it if they can possibly do so. And yet, my dogs are so important to me that it would be agony to think of them being trapped in the house and unable to get out. I would live with the guilt of not saving them and the pain of their absence probably for the rest of my life. I think I can imagine what the man must have been feeling.

This led back down the circle of: If my dogs are so important to me that I might actually think about risking my life to save them, are they also so important to me that, if one of them were drowning at the same time as a human who was a perfect stranger was drowning, I would first rescue my dog?

I don't think that most people understand that relationship. Even people who have dogs, or have had dogs, but haven't become a team with them, felt like part of their family, can quite understand. One gentleman I recently met, who is a former dog owner, expressed surprise when I said that an agility friend's dog had just died and I had sent a sympathy note. "You'd send someone a sympathy card because their *dog* died?" he asked. Not in disgust at all, just pure amazement in that it was something it would never have occurred to him to do, nor understood why it might be important enough to do.

I've worked so closely with my dogs, lived so closely with them, developed a teamwork and understanding so far beyond what I ever had with my family's dog or even with my first dog of my own, with whom I was very close and whose death devastated me. Competition and training agility and tricks and everything else has built this relationship; we've learned how each other thinks and reacts and what we like and dislike and what motivates us and how to communicate, and I've learned how to appreciate what my dogs do and how. (Some people say their kids make them laugh every day; my dogs make me smile or laugh sometimes many times a day.)

Sure, they're just dogs. They're not human. They're not like having a significant other, or children of one's own. They're a different species. We anthropomorphize them, but I know that they think and act differently from humans and have different motivations and needs.

And still: Would I go into a burning building to save my dog's life? Would I rescue my drowning dog before a drowning stranger?

How about you?

Thank Goodness For--

SUMMARY: --many diverse things--

• Nieces who go to Colorado and bring me back entertaining magnets like this one!  (Thanks, Elizabeth and Katie.)
  
• Agility friends who are stealth blog readers who have bought a new camera so we have arranged for me to get her barely used Canon 40D! Tomorrow! Yay! (Thanks, Cheryl.)
  
• Pet Club store near me, which doesn't take credit cards, but when I am horrified that they charge $33 a bag for my dogfood, I just have to walk into PetSmart and see the same bag for $54 to be grateful for the discount.
• Fanatical agility friends who have brought Sylvia Trkman to Silicon Valley in December so we can do her seminars! (Thanks, Ashley.)
  
• Disneyland-o-phile sisters who arrange trips to Disneyland so I can just go along for the ride! Yay! Just a month away! (Hence the push now to get the camera--) (Thanks, Linda.)
  
• Dogs who let me sleep in in the morning! Even to 9:00! What good girls! (Thanks, Tika and Boost.)
  
• Mild California autumn days,  not too hot, not too cold, everything still in bloom, grass growing-- (Thanks --uh-- whoever's responsible.)
  
• Expert Apple friends who not only arrange for me to borrow a cable that Apple didn't think to send with their new equipment, but also drive out of their way to deliver it! (Thanks, Steph.)
  

Silly Rabbit, Tricks are for Dog Kids

SUMMARY: In which we start pursuing tricks real serious-like (or is that Sirius-like?).

I signed up for 2 days of auditing a Sylvia Trkman tricks seminar in December. I started thinking about how pathetic my dogs' tricks repertoire is, especially after having Remington who was quite the trick dog in his time. (Nowadays, especially with internet videos showing how to train your dogs to do all kinds of things, his tricks would be mostly considered pretty basic.)

So for the last 3 days I've been working on improving some tricks and adding some new ones. There must be something to karmic communication, because my parents showed up today with the book "Dog Tricks - 40 fun activities for you and your dog" for me. It's always fun to get a new tricks book to see what variations on a theme they might have, or new ideas I haven't tried before.

So--let's run down the list of tricks as introduced in this particular book.

Trick	Remington (the late great)	Tika	Boost
Sit	yes--could do a long obedience sit-stay	yes--start-line stay is a little iffy	yes--good start-line stay
Stay	for my dogs, "Sit" and "Down" automatically incorporate "stay until released"
Down	Yep, always a little slow	Yep, getting slower	Yep, very fast usually
Come	Well...	kinda...	usually...
Drop it	pretty good	erm, not really	iffy
Fetch something you throw	Never liked it much	Getting better on command.	Pretty dang good.
Shake hands	Yes	Yes, also shakes left hand on request	Yes
Speak	Yes	No	Yes
Take a bow	Yes	sometimes "stretch" on command	sometimes "stretch" on command
Kissyface	No, but tried. Not really a licking dog.	No	No, but hmm she licks a lot, could be taught.
Jump for joy	No	Does it on her own; maybe could teach it.	No
Roll over	Yes	Yes, fairly well	Yes, fairly well
Jump over your legs	never tried	Hmmm--could do this	ditto
Get your leash	No	No--worked on it for a while and quit	Yes
Beg/sit pretty	Yes	just learning	just learning--getting it
Fetch a specific item	Not really	Worked on it some	Will look for some specific items: Dish, leash, lattice, tennis ball--
Leave it	Decent	Never worked on it	Ditto
High five	Yes	Yes	just learning
Spin	"left" or "right" on command	ditto	ditto
Wave	Yes	just learning	No
Dance	Reasonably good	No	No
Carry [something]	not a chance	not really	Not bad with frisbee
Figure 8 around legs	Yes	Yes	just starting
Jump up (on a chair etc)	Yes	yes	yes
go to your bed (and stay there)	Yes	Yes	OK with direction
Put away your toys	No	just started	One at a time with encouragement
balance biscuit on nose/catch	Yes	Decent	just started
Act shy (hide face)	Yes	No	No
Find the keys	No	No	No
Close the door	No	No	No
Crawl	Forward and backward	Just started	No
Follow a scent trail (drag treat along floor)	Took some tracking classes to follow my scent trail	No	No
Pull cord to turn on light/fan	No	No	No
Achoo	No	No	No
Run through a tunnel	Duhhh!	Duhhh!	Duhhh!
Jump through a tire	Duhhh!	Duhhh!	Duhhh!
Touch a nose target	Yes	Yes	Yes
Run down a ramp and touch a nose target	Pretty much	Pretty much	Pretty much
weave poles	Duh!	Duh!	Duh!
jump over hurdles	Duh!	Duh!	Duh!
jump onto a table, lie down, and stay until released	Yes	Yes	In theory--

OK, how cool is it that they include a chapter on agility obstacles in the book? Looks like there are a few basic ones in there that I could work on. But here are some others that we do:

Trick	Remington (the late great)	Tika	Boost
Find a treat (hidden)	Yes	Yes	Yes
cha-cha line	No	just started	ditto
Back up	Yes	Yes	No
Bang!	Yes	Yes	Just started but already she's added her own flavor to it.
Get in the box (like a cardboard box)	No	Pretty much	Pretty much
Lie on one side	Yes	Yes	No
balance biscuit while sitting pretty or walking	Yes	No	No
Say your prayers	Yes	No	No
Hang ten (paws on your arm)	Yes	No	No
Where's your nose?	Yes	No	No
Limp	Yes	Just started	No

And probably more that I'm not thinking of at the moment.

Sooo--I want to fill out my table with more yesses, and add more interesting, more up-to-date tricks. Like, I love the one where the dog blows bubbles in a bowl of water. I actually started that once with these gals and they were doing great and I forgot about it again. Agility, you know.

Or standing on two legs--one SIDE's legs! That's got videos online, too.

Or balancing on my big yoga ball--started with both of them and abandoned. That takes a lot of work. But would be very good for their muscles.

So--onward, like I don't have enough to work on with cleaning up boost's rear crosses or serpentines or bar knocking, or tika popping out of the weaves when they run into a wall, or like that.

Topsy Turvy

SUMMARY: ˙ʇɐɥʇ ǝʞıl ʇsnɾ ǝɹɐ sʎɐp ǝɯos