Vise Grip Vices

SUMMARY: Saving dogs from choking. Maybe.

I put vise grips on rawhides and bully sticks and other larger chews to keep dogs from choking on the last pieces. [I swear that I have explained this, with photos, multiple times, but it doesn't seem to be in my blog anywhere. And only a couple of quick mentions in Facebook that I can find. So--now here is a post!]

[On FB: Jan 22, 2016, 8:57 AM: Ellen Levy Finch commented on her own post.

Large bully sticks (long and thick) with a vise grip firmly clamped in the middle is the best bet so far.]

[my FB post Jan 23, 2016, 9:18 AM:   Don't you hate it when the dog gets down to the last 3 or 4 inches of a bully or rawhide or whatever and gnaws it until it's softish and then starts to swallow and gags it back up, repeat? Used to worry me. Then I discovered vise grips. (Doesn't this sound like an infomercial?) I believe that Sarah George Johnson (or Holly Newman?) came up with this idea. [[Correction from comment below-- Mike Scannell's idea! (attn: Cheri Scannell )]]  (All of whom are long-time agility friends.)

Three benefits--two to me: Dogs no longer hork on the last bit and also it usually takes them a long time to work on the last bit left in the grip (assuming that you fastened it tightly enough); one benefit to the dogs: They use it as another handle while chewing! Tika and Boost demonstrated back in 2012.]

After it has been chewed on for a while

[On FB Jan 23, 2016, 9:15 PM: Ellen Levy Finch replied to Cheri Scannell's comment.

I wouldn't use clamps that, if the dog gets the bully stick out, would clamp down on the dog's tongue. That's why I like the vise grips. Even if the last bit comes out, they won't close on dog.]

[On FB Jan 23, 2016, 9:18 PM: Ellen Levy Finch commented on her own post.
I like the vise grips because (a) if the dog does get any part of the bully out, they won't clamp down on the dog's tongue, (b) they're not too heavyweight, (c) the dog can't chew them up (the vise grips), and (d), if you tighten them enough, the dog isn't going to get a big chunk of bully at the end--you just have to really get the screw so tight that you can barely close it using a lot of strength. ]

[FB May 2, 2017, 9:19 AM : Ellen Levy Finch commented on Peggy Clark's post.

What has always entertained me is that the dogs then use the vise grip as a second handle on the chew! Here's Tika, for example. 

]

[FB May 24, 2019, 5:41 PM : Ellen Levy Finch commented on Leslie May's photo.

Yep, that's why my dogs get "clampy things" on their chews. Hope he feels all better.]

[from FB May 24, 2019, 5:52 PM   Ellen Levy Finch replied to her own comment.: I thought I had done a Taj MuttHall post on this--but it must've been on Facebook, I guess. I use small vise grips and the dogs have, all of them, used them as a handy handle to help get some good chewin' in! It doesn't solve them somehow chewing off a huge chunk, but it does prevent swallowing the last big chunk.

Boost photo (taken May 25 '12):  

 

[FB Jan 11, 2020, 11:10 AM : Ellen Levy Finch commented on Ellen Clary's post.

This is why I clamp most chew treats with a vise grip in the middle.  
Glad she's fine.]

[Email w/sis Aug 30, 2020 -- 

From her to me:

    Can you send me a photo of the “clamp on a bully stick” thing.. so I can see where on the stick you clamp it, and why you clamp it? Dog just eats around whatever we clamp on it...

From me to her: Here are images: 

    Yes, they do chew around it— my goal is to avoid them trying to swallow the whole last 3-5” piece when I’m not using the vice grips. My pups have always chewed down from each end to the clamp, and then there’s a small bit left in the clamp that I can just toss or give to them depending on my mood.…and if that’s the only photo that I have of Chip with his clamped bully, I will be sad indeed.

Meanwhile--what if someone [ahem, TIKA!] leaves one out on the lawn and Human Mom can't find it?
Read https://dogblog.finchester.org/2020/12/vise-grips-past-imperfect-and-future-to.html

Vise grips past imperfect and future-to-present feeling tense

SUMMARY: Finding what was lost, but perhaps a little late.

I put vise grips on rawhides and bully sticks and other larger chews to keep dogs from choking on the last pieces. (Read https://dogblog.finchester.org/2020/12/vise-grip-vices.html .)

Tika always used to take hers out to the lawn next to the deck, and a couple of times I couldn't find the grips afterwards. And then I never did find all of them.

Because the grips sometimes go walkabout for a little while anyway-- I had more than just a couple.

I started out with 7 [vise grips] that I bought specifically for this. I'm now down to 2 functional, another very rusty that I finally found in the grass... and who knows where the others ended up. 

[From FB Dec 13, 2015, 4:23 PM: The mystery object--any idea?

With Ellen C's Knee for scale. We (mostly she) had been digging by hand.

Here's the story: I thought that Luke likely buried a vise grip that held a large rawhide. Haven't found it by poking around. (He had it in the living room, then went outside, then back in, etc a few times, then he suddenly no longer had it.)  

Thus it came that I invited Ellen Clary to bring her metal detector and help me look for it. For some reason she thought that would be a great idea. So there we were, scanning the yard (found a nail! And a teensy round washer!) and discovering that there's metal EVERYWHERE (sprinkler heads, dogwalks, fencing, pipes, etc.) in the areas that I think are likely burying areas.  

So she scanned around in the center of the yard (which has been greatly enhanced by additional canine development work). Got a strong beep. Dug down a little. The beep changed location a little. Dug off the the side a little. Beep changed location. Dug off to the side a little. 

I joked that, the way it was going, we'd have a hole 5 feet across and 3 feet deep in the middle of my once and future lawn.

Anyway--with Ellen doing almost all the digging while I yelled encouragement such as "I see another dog poop over in the corner; going to go scoop that up," we ended up with a hole verging on 5 feet across and 3 feet deep. Well, perhaps 3 feet across and a foot deep.  

And we found the edge of a Thing, and the ground around/under it fell away in places as if there had been empty space, or something else around it that had decayed away. Seemed to be chunks of rocks and concrete under and around it. Metal, rusting, large circular--

It's hard clay, so not the easiest stuff to dig, and I truly didn't WANT a hole 5 feet wide in my yard at this time, so we closed it up and left it as an exercise for a warmer and sunnier day.

We speculated that it might be a very large metal pail or basin or firepit (although didn't see signs of ashes as far as we went) and not sure how deep it is or otherwise shaped, since we just have the edge. Anyone have any ideas? (This land was farmland before the house was built in 1970, but the house's previous, original owner had done quite a bit of digging and installing stuff, also.)

While we were at it, I also took the detector and used it around the lawn areas where Tika used to lie, looking for grips that she might have lost in the lawn. Nuthin'. Anyway, never did find any vise grips that day.
]

[FB comments on my post of JtmeandnSuapnsrnonusyo re23l, dlu2gm01dc6  ·Ellen Levy Finch

Ellen Clary

 even came down with her metal detector to help me look, but we were thwarted by the fact that there is metal *everywhere* in my yard. So, yeh, someday maybe they'll reappear!

[UPDATE ON  Facebook,Jun 8, 2016, 9:16 PM -- 

Well, surprise, surprise! Found today: This was one of the the things I was hoping to find with Ellen Clary's metal detector, which she came to visit with. Except that this was about 5 feet beyond the area where I had expected Tika to have been lying, way back when, and therefore where I ran the detector.

Vise grip is at bottom of photo below crook of stick. 
For Tika's losses, I ran the metal detector from the vicinity of Chip and closer to the house.

I'd been looking for this for a long time. Suddenly it emerged, nestled among roots of grass.

I'm guessing that this one isn't salvageable even with a little WD-40.

UPDATE on FB Mar 26, 2020, 5:19 PM!
Hey,

Ellen Clary

: Found another one. In exactly the same place that the others have gradually been reappearing. It is so odd that we couldn’t find them with the metal detector. They might’ve been buried under grass roots at the time. And of course every time they come through with the blower week after week after week it’s blowing away some of the soil on top.

[FB: My response to a comment on my post asking what it was: Rusty old vise grips that Tika left on the lawn and I didn't pick up right away and then couldn't find.]

Preserving Land, Wildlife, Waterways, Endemic Plants and Flowers--and Sanity--

SUMMARY: Open space around me

Backfill: In response to a friend's blog post showing many lovely old barns in her area (Michigan) while musing on Christmas music and years past.

[NOTE: I'll clean up links & things later. sorrrrrrry....]

We lose rural landscape or any available open space so quickly here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  We are so lucky that a lot of open space has been preserved, by Open Space Districts (funded via donations and voted-on taxes, including the MidPeninsula Regional Open Space District (fondly called MidPen  https://www.openspace.org/), the East Bay Regional Parks district...) , the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority (relatively new compared to the other two https://www.openspaceauthority.org/), city parks, county parks (where I live: Santa Clara County Parks (ParkHere.org)), and organizations like hte Committee for Green Foothills  (recently rebranded Green Foothills https://www.greenfoothills.org/), all of whom work towards purchasing lands like these that could be converted to public spaces for hiking, biking, picnicking, wildlife preservation, and so on.  

When we moved here in the '60, barely any of it existed as public lands.

All those organizations, and more, fought for years and recently have been fairly successful at staving off or forever preventing major development in the historically rural Coyote Valley between south San Jose and Morgan Hill to preserve wildlife corridors at the very least (https://www.google.com/maps/search/coyote+valley/@37.1631954,-121.77322,27776m/data=!3m1!1e3).

I don't expect you to follow the links--they're just data--but yet there are so many times that I drive south or east out of the area and see malls or housing developments going up where there used to be lovely old buildings like those in your photos. Which remind me of my grandparents' old old used-to-be-red barn.  

My grandparents' barn/farm (early 1950s photos)

This is not in California. Looking past the farmhouse at the barn
This is also part of why my grandparents started going to Florida every year during the winter.
When I was a kid , the barn wasn't looking nearly this sturdy.
It was eventually taken down some time after the farm was sold.

From higher up in the farm (I think it was 20ish acres): Red barn (actually storage) to the left, white farmhouse center, brown chicken coop (actually storage) to the right. 
The property ended at the road and at th big tree visible between the barn and farmhouse.

Barns in preserved parkland around here

Old barn, still usable, being preserved, at Martial Cottle County Park  near my house
(CA state and Santa Clara County park cooperative). 
The hills in front are privately owned ranchland still,
but behind that might be the massive Henry Coe State Park.

Old barns being repurposed at the massive Henry Coe State Park, 
over 87,000 acres of rough terrain east and southeast of us.

 

Old barn in what is now Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve in the eastern hills, after purchase but before open to the public (2014). Not sure whether this barn stayed.

Family's old farmhouse in the same park. This was the first weekend that the park was officially open to the public. We asked about whether it was going to stay, and I *think* that the answer was yes but as you can see considerable work would need to be done. (Such as the door that opens 3 feet in the air.)

 

At Rancho San Antonio County  Park, in the west foothills, very popular hiking area,
barn still being used at the time. (2008)

Barn at Pichetti Ranch Open Space Preserve in the southwest hills (was a winery--still is, to a certain extent, also used for educational purposes) (2016).

Barn at Santa Teresa County Park (2004), just south of here and where I used to hike a lot,
still being used at the time.

Not sure whether this is the same barn, but I think so (the old Norred barn when this was privately owned and you could board and rent horses here) (2009).

Old barn along the Coyote Creek Trail somewhere (southeast valley).
Note the deer. (2012)  I don't know whether it's still preserved or had to come down. 
I need to be able to get out hiking again....

Ecology: Its Price (Again)

SUMMARY: From spewing sewage and garbage to fouled water to colored toilet paper and Bald Eagles to speeches to composting and cleanup and dog agility.

Earlier posts in a similar vein:

• Ecology: Its Price (July 2019), but today's covers a lot more ground.

• A few other posts on composting & dog poo & other such stuff

Backfill: My response on a Facebook thread discussing Glass Beach up north from here, near Fort Bragg, where there's almost no glass left of the once profuse garbage dump remnants because people have taken it, and one person's astonishment that people would have dumped their trash into the ocean: 

"so sad.  'It’s ok, let’s pollute the ocean.' It just blows my mind that people in an my day Would think that way." 

I don't know her or her background at all, but I'm grateful that it sparked my brain's sh**load of material on that topic.

Disclaimer: Wrote this on the fly in a comment, haven't edited much at all except adding some links, so sorry for haphazard wandering. No theme statement. No outline. No editing for readability. Just--dumping my truckload of environmental stuff into your ocean.

Yes, sadly, welcome to the 20th century. And--still onward into the 21st. 🙁 Dumping stopped at the Ft. Bragg Glass Beach(es) in the late '60s as I understand it and they started cleaning up dump leftovers (not sure what exactly that entailed). But people's junk STILL has to go somewhere.

Down here in Silicon Valley, the valley and surrounding hills are filled with active "landfills" and also lovely cleaned up, grassy, elevated parks and hills that are former landfills within my lifetime. But residents have spread out enough that trying to find somewhere to dump the trash of the 2 million people in this county is dire--we'll run out of current space eventually, despite all the effort at recycling.

The East River in NYC was still receiving dumped waste and sewer waste into the '90s. Now it's actually swimmable a good portion of the time. The Hudson River (I lived within walking distance of it for several years), which flows to the sea around Liberty Enlightening The World, was notoriously bad and although much has been done to improve it, the residue lingers.

The rivers that caught fire in the late '60s from all the pollution-- much better now.

But the first earth day was only in 1970. Most people didn't think about all of these things much. I did an award-winning speech in a local competition for students early that decade on the topic of "ecology: its price". (I think my focus was more on "ecology: the price of ignoring it!" Also: "ecology" was the term then; not so much "environment".) That was when I thought that I'd never see a live bald eagle here in the mainland U.S. because they'd all be gone because of DDT (Rachel Carson's Silent Spring only came out in the '60s). Now they're nesting in school yards and parks near populations of millions.

That was when I started convincing family and friends not to buy colored TP [that's a fun link! Check it out for the photos anyway] because of the toxic dyes being dumped into waterways (I mean, who'd want white when you could have bright blue to match your decor? -- nowadays, I don't think I ever see colored TP anywhere). That's when we started collecting cans and bottles to take to the very small very local recycling center at the nearby college where we'd have to crush the cans and break the glass before tossing them into the huge separate dumpsters--one for aluminum, one for tin cans & such, one for green glass, one for clear glass, etc.-- to be taken to recycling places. So we went out and bought our own different-colored plastic bins to put our compostables in. (The last of mine just died--have used them only for garden chores since the garbage companies started providing their own containers.)

1994: In the background, our black trash cans. Behind them are a green and a yellow bin (can't see the blue one) that I believe are those that the garbage company eventually provided us, not the ones we bought.

(Plastics weren't A Thing back then--we've really gone backwards since then with plastic use and we're in trouble again if we can't get that under control, and people don't think about how plastics are so much worse than cans and bottles! You undoubtedly are aware of that yourself. It scares me. And it scares me how much it limits my purchases of anything--food or anything else--if I try to avoid plastic) .

When local municipalities started requiring you to put your recyclables into separate containers from the trash for trash collection--so amazing to see that happen!--around here in the late '80s after the passage of AB939 required California municipalities to have a plan to reduce landfill waste (and I know all of this because of my work as a Master Composter--in fact, the MC training program existed because of it and I was in the 2nd-ever class)-- I remember a good friend ranting about how disgusting it was that she had to maintain more than one container for garbage in her yard and that she had to keep the metal and glass garbage out of her kitchen trash or she'd have to handle it all covered with garbage and she was furious for a long time, despite all the data I spewed at her about landfills and all that. (Another example of people who don't care about something or have a strong opinion not being swayed by data.)  [CAN YOU BELIEVE almost that entire paragraph was one sentence?! This is why I should edit my brain dumps.]

Nowadays, around here anyway, you cannot use just any container for trash. They'll collect trash ONLY from the bins that the garbage company provides and ONLY from the recycling bins ditto.  Now we don't have to separate our recyclables into several separate containers--it all goes into one big one for sorting later. So now I use my old wonderful eternally lasting black plastic ones (previous photo) for other stuff.

My containers from the trash collectors:
my neat and tidy giant recycling bin and tiny trash can, and the neighbor's overflowing ones
(garbage company doesn't like that, but they collect 'em anyway)
Does show progress that the recycling bin is so much larger than the landfill bin

Some local cities sort the trash even *after* it has been collected (<- video, kind of cool; I've been on a tour, but note that the huge quantities that they discuss are ONLY for the small city of Sunnyvale pop. 153,000, vs. the total population of the county pop. 1.9 million).

For years, we held agility competitions in the  huge softball fields adjacent to
the old landfill hill that the preceding video shows at about a minute in.

All of this to say-- "pollute" wasn't a big word until well into the 2nd half of the 20th century. People didn't think like that. I don't know how much of that you lived through, but that was the way the world worked for millennia. 🙂 (I haven't lived for millennia, in case you wondered.) And many  people are still thinking like that in many areas (who cheered when Trump backed us out of the Paris Accord?).

Forgetting Life's Basic Skills

SUMMARY: What has COVID done to us?

From Facebook thread Dec 10, 2020.

A sports-photographer friend commented that, after some time off because of COVID, "I've forgotten how to take a photo of a moving object!"

This rang a bell. I said: 

I'd say that your challenge is more easily corrected than me getting into my car and feeling like I've forgotten how to drive (so many buttons and levers and things! other large moving objects all around me! plus sunglasses!). I've put hardly any miles on my car since early January (first, surgery, then covid). Hardly a day used to go by, in a different alternate universe, when I wasn't getting into the car and going somewhere--work, store, friend's house, out to dinner, mysterious activities that shall remain unidentified to protect the innocent--

Thanks, COVID universe, for helping us to forget basic skills like carring and cameraing.

Tuesday T-Shirt Tales: Adventure Boot Camp

T-shirt tales? Because every t-shirt tells a story, don't it.
And I have so very many of them. Shirts. And stories. ---- Whaaaaat??

All T-Shirt Tales

SUMMARY: A 2007 foray into all-around exercise.

Way way back I spent 3 mornings a week for a few weeks doing "Boot Camp". Specifically for women, in this case, although the "drill sergeant" was male. Trying to improve my strength, flexibility, stamina, and super-hero eligibility. 

Along with the big moolahs for the registration fee, we got a "free" t-shirt to wear every session (and of course that we got to keep--advertising and all that). A nice quality shirt, actually.

I did improve during that time, but couldn't afford to keep going, although it was fun while it lasted.  I already blogged about how I got started, what it was like, and what our Los Gatos Trail hike looked like. If you want to revisit ancient days. Only the one post with photos.

• Sept 26 Signing up
• Oct 1 Training Me and the Dogs - mostly the dogs, but a couple sentences about Boot Camp
• Oct 5 First week boot camp report
• Oct 9 Boot Camp Progress
• Oct 10 Boot Camp Hike
• Oct 12 Boot Camp vs Dogs
• Oct 15 Boot Camp Results
• Finally some photos! Of the boot camp hike

Feelin' my best!
Jeez, I look so much younger!

Adding photos to old posts

SUMMARY: Because I tripped over this old post where I said that I would add them. So I spent a bunch of this afternoon adding them. Because I can.

Backfill: Photos for post from November 2018.

Just added photos (after a delay of only 2 years) to this post about Technology. You're welcome.

Old Timey Memories--Rotary Phones

SUMMARY: ...and calling home while traveling... Jeez you're old!

Backfill: From Facebook discussion on sister's page, Nov 24, 2020. She asked: "You know you're getting older if you remember:(Answer below.)" 
Another friend said, "Rotary phones!" I of course had things to say--

Credit: Diamondmagna, CC BY-SA 3.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons

When I was traveling for work in the '80s, my company had a special service where are you could call long distance from any phone anywhere in the country billed to our company, instead of having to use your own credit card with whatever phone service served the phone you were using (AT&T or such). You could call home or call my company simply by dialing our service's phone number, dialing in the special access code, and then dialing the number you wanted. 

• My company’s phone number was 408-980-9898 (yes, I just looked it up on an old business card). 
• The special phone number was probably something like 800-999-8000. 
• And the access code was, I don’t know, eight digits, And I’m imagining it was something like 77788899.

That access code might have been only my mind recalling the torture of getting most of the way through the special phone number, then the access code, and then the phone number I was trying to reach, including area code, and then misdialing a digit — On a rotary phone. Yikes. I'd get so frustrated. Or else I'd do it successfully and then the phone of the person I was calling was busy, so I'd have to do it alllll overrrrr agaaaaaain later.

If you're my age, you know how long it took to dial those numbers. If you're much younger--- Check out this video; start at about 4:43 (showing why 0, 9, 8 for example, and the numbers as a whole, were so time consuming) .....   

Wellll... not a rotary phone because it has a blank (nonmoving) dial.
But replace it with a numbered dial and that's what even older rotary phones looked like.
P.S. I own this phone. Two of them, in fact.

Top triptych photo credit: Me--from London, Disneyland, and Lawrence Berkeley Labs.

Cooking -- From Someone Who Doesn't Want To Cook

SUMMARY: Pushed into performing a kitchen-food-choppy thang.

On Facebook on Saturday (2 days ago), I posted this:

I am trying to get back to cooking some of my own meals.  Today, inspired by Bev Serafica’s Photo of a lunch served to her by her friend while she’s convalescing,  I made a cheese and veggie omelette. It has been a long long time. 

 

... a long time since I’ve done much That involves pots, pans, slicing, dicing, mixing.... After my divorce, it was just me for a long time, and I no longer could get excited about cooking for just one person and then eating it and then it was gone. So I cooked less and less often. Still used to make big pots of spaghetti, or chili, or stew, but less and less often. And then I got a renter roommate who was crazy in the kitchen, and so I mostly avoided it. Stoopid, My house, right? But there you go—I realized how much easier it was to use frozen meals or buy sandwiches or Tacos or pizza or Chinese food or whatever. and not have to wash pots and pans and not have to spend half an hour or longer preparing.

So: I’m trying.

In response to my observation that, basically, I don't like the prep and cleanup, and I used to do big pots of things that would provide many meals but basically I don't like the prep and cleanup--so very many of my friends provided--yes--helpful tips on prep and cooking and making big pots of things that would last for many meals.  Yes, there were a lot of good tips that I might make use of at some point.  But really I just don't want to cook. Microwaved meals are So. Much. Easier.

But all of that group participation propelled me into pulling out all the frozen chicken that's been in there a while (some from April when I thought maybe I'd do some BBQing but didn't; some from June when I thought Chip just might have a digestive or intestinal upset or the like so I bought a ton of chicken for him. Used only a very little of it).  And grabbed the assorted veggies that I bought last week with the hope that maybe this time I'd feel like cooking and actually use them instead of eventually tossing their little corpses.

And made my favorite crock pot chicken dish. Good for many meals.  

So, enjoy-- My photo & caption journal of this experience.

Tuesday T-Shirt Tales: Briar's Patch Iditarod Team

T-shirt tales? Because every t-shirt tells a story, don't it.
And I have so very many of them. Shirts. And stories. ---- Whaaaaat??

All T-Shirt Tales

SUMMARY: Revisiting a friend's story

SORRY--I posted this and then took it down again because I had a lot more to add.  Now it's back. 

A woman I met through agility decided to run the Iditarod one year (years after ceasing dog agility). She did. She completed the whole thing, and did not come in last. An impressive effort.  I already wrote about it in this prior post, "Goals and the Iditarod", back in 2008.

The picture is her and her team, practicing around the rim of Crater Lake.

Good t-shirts are always worth getting out and doing things in, sooooo--

The shirt apparently enjoyed hiking with the Merle Girls.
Gathering for a hike with the local Sierra Singles group of the Sierra Club. Oct 2008.

The inspirational shirt makes it to the top of our local Coyote Peak
with the Merle Girls. August, 2009. 

The shirt helps with my note-taking at our photo club's macro workshop.
August 2012.

The lovely shirt appears again, at the old Douglas Memorial Bridge 

across the Klamath River near Oregon. 
This old bridge washed away in a massive flood in 1964
after the heaviest rain ever recorded in the area.
They kept the approach to the bridge and the original bears to remember it by.
May 2018.

The new Douglas Memorial Bridge is about half a mile upriver, with newer, fancier, goldier 
California Golden Bears. 

 

That same morning, in my hotel in Eureka (CA), I found myself in a selfie mood.

Who says Zoom work meetings can't be fun?
The Iditarod shirt makes another appearance. June 2020.

BONUS FUN FACT: The shirt looks like a slightly different color in every photo. It's really a lovely rich forest green. I gave up trying to get a photo of what it "really" looks like, because it varies by camera and ambient light. The joys of photography. 


>>  Visit the Wordless Wednesday site; lots of blogs. << >>  Visit Cee's Photo Challenge blog; lots of blogs. <<

Zorro Takes His Own Weight

SUMMARY: Well--Human Mom still has to read the display.

From Facebook on 10/31/20

To weigh any of my dogs--35 pounds to 60--I have always first weighed myself, then stood on the scales holding the dog. In the last half dozen years, my back has disagreed with that strategy. So they mostly go unweighed. And how can a dog survive without knowing his own weight?!

It occurred to me a year or so ago [doh!] that dogs should be perfectly capable of weighing themselves. And that I know how to train dogs. And so I should teach them to do it. All I needed was: internal motivation. I found it a bit at a time over a year or more.

I had trouble getting them to put all 4 feet onto the scales. It was plenty large enough, so I decided that the problem was that it wasn’t high enough for them to consider it to be really “up”. So I started Chip and Zorro getting onto a small stool for the clearer elevation change, And if they could stand on that tiny surface, they should be able to stand on almost anything. I did not pursue this doggedly (heh). But Zorro loved it (treats) and after a while would pop right up with all 4 feet given half a chance even if I didn’t ask him to. Video from February this year, our first day of stool work: 

So I switched back to the scales. Which is much wider than the tiny stool. But it is also a little slippery. 

I signed up for Circus class in Sept./Oct. this year, and I used that as motivation to focus on getting him to “take your weight“ (all 4 feet on without luring or assistance). Then I needed him to get on straight (facing the display) and not touch the buttons to change the display, and stand or sit completely and calmly still so I could get a measurement. This week, finally!  Reliable enough to actually take his weight. I am a very happy Human Mom.