food and toys

I'm not hungry--I just finished my dinner--but I have this craving for something really rich. Like, for instance, pound cake, vanilla pudding, hot fudge sauce, and a couple of maraschino cherries. Or apple crisp with creme anglaise.

(There must be a dog in the yard--the Ts are barking great big Intruder Alert barks.)

I found this great new dog training site: http://levels.nybble.net. I've been on the e-mail list for quite a while. It was put together by Sue Ailsby, who created the Training Levels concept, which is a program of sensible dog training organized into a series of levels that build on each other. You can go as far as you want, up through all 7 levels for a super-dog, or just 2 or 3 for a nice companion dog. It's clicker-based, which I also like. I'm not a champion clicker-trainer, but I like the concept of encouraging the dog to learn and think for itself, and of the human and dog working as partners rather than adversaries. I like it much better than the leash-pop method, though it can seem slower.

At any rate, this new site is set up to help you track your progress. You enter a profile of your dog, and then you can enter training sessions, tests, muse about your progress in a journal, pull up a "scoreboard" that lets you see easily where you and your dog are, what you've accomplished and what you still have to do. It's really really nice. It's in beta at the moment, and I imagine that in the future you'll be able to post a picture of your dog with the profile, interact with other registered members, and lots of other stuff.

For someone working alone like me, it's a wonderful tool, but I can imagine that it would be an equally good tool for someone teaching an obedience class. It would be a good way of assigning homework, and, given that a lot of people drop out of obedience class after 2 or 3 sessions even after they've paid $75 or more, it might actually foster retention through sort of friendly competition, as students could see the progress of their classmates. The scoreboard would also be a positive reinforcement for students as they pass the tests involved in completing a level and see the column being filled in with green.

The Ts need to complete two more tests to finish Level 2: go out 2 feet and go around a pole, and go to mat from 5 feet out. Go to mat is one of those things I don't think I'll ever use--in the advanced levels, the dog goes to the mat from 10 feet out and lies quietly for 30 minutes. In other words, it's a way to get your dog out from under your feet while you're doing something else. My variation on that is to tell them to "settle," which means, unsurprisingly, settle down somewhere--on the couch, in your crate, I dont care, just stop being wild and silly. It also seems to double the down-stay, so I don't quite see the point.

On the other hand--one does want to finish the level!

You'd think the go around a pole would be even less useful, but in fact, it's a precursor to both go-outs and directionals--you point and tell the dog to go that-a-way--which is used in obedience and agility, but can also be used for things like "the shoes I want you to bring me are over that-a-way." And teaching the go around the pole is also a good shaping exercise for both you and the dog--i.e., you set your pole or cone or toilet bowl plunger on the floor and "shape" the dog to go around it by giving a click and treat for each approximate, successive movement in that direction. For example, looking at it, taking a step toward it, turning the head toward it. Eventually the dog will have figured out that the behavior you want is for him to go out and go around the pole. Weird, mom, but okay, just keep handing out the treats. And darn if I know what verbal cue to attach to it, but I guess I can deal with that when the time comes.

I'm not exactly not knitting--I've got a sweater underway with a chunky weight (size 10 needles) wool/alpaca yarn from Knit Piks that I'm working on when I take the Ts out. But yes, it does leave me with--what--5 unfinished pairs of socks? There's not quite enough to photograph yet, but when there is I'll post a photo.

fun with doggies

Yesterday a friend from my distant past suddenly appeared in my office doorway just as I was getting ready to go home. She cried. I cried. Then I thought--what am I going to do?? I can't let her into the house! So we arranged it that I left her in the puppy pen, then brought the Ts out. My fearless defenders barely noticed there was anyone there. *sigh* Timber did come over to bash her knees with his jolly ball, and Taenzer mostly ignored her while she did her thing with the ball. I did manage to get both of them to hold still (at different times) so she could pet them, but then they were off again. At least it's a good way to introduce people to them. We talked for a couple of hours, and Taenzer went top speed the whole time, which impressed my friend. We traded blog addresses--hers is about how she got her black belt in Tae Kwon Do: http://taekwondomom.blogspot.com/

Today another friend brought in one of her dogs for me to puppy-sit while she went to a meeting. He's a little smooth-haired terrier mix--well, not little little; I imagine he weighs 30 pounds or so. At any rate, she left a treatbag of dried beef lung. So I would read a little of my friend's blogg, then when Simon started to get restless, I'd break up a chunk of beef lung into tiny pieces and start working with him.

He's VERY smart. I was really sorry I didn't have a clicker with me; I bet he'd catch on to clicker training in nothing flat. He knows how to sit, so we started with "cookie zen"--"you must give up the cookie to get the cookie." In other words, nibbling, nosing, or pawing won't get the treat, but sitting quietly will. It's an exercise in self-control (he learns that being calm and restrained will get him what he wants), trust (he learns to trust that if he sits quietly and waits, I'll give him what he wants), and good manners (nobody likes a pushy, grabby dog!). Took him about 3 reps to figure it out. He did continue to do some nosing over the course of the hour, but gave up quicker and quicker. If you did four reps, he'd stop nosing on the 2nd. I don't know how many sets we did, but it wouldn't take long for him to completely get the idea and start using it as part of his everyday behavior.

I also started working on down with him. I let my hand, with cookie, dangle just above the floor. He had to lower from the elbows a bit to nose my hand, and I treated for that a couple of times. Then his elbows started hitting the floor, and by the end of the hour, he was following my hand down into a nice Sphynx down and holding it about 5 or 6 seconds. Of course at this point I didn't name it, but I feel like he got a good head start on learning the hand signal for down and a vague idea of the "stay" concept.

Since I didn't have a clicker, I was using a verbal marker ("Yes!"), which isn't as accurate, but he's very bright. You could teach that guy all kinds of things if you had the inclination. He was anxious at first about his mom going away, but got distracted by the beef lung, so I think we both wound up having a good time. I do enjoy seeing the lightbulb go on!

When she came to claim him, I told his mom that he'd better not have any dinner tonight since we'd used up all of the beef lung!

Oh! Annie ate an entire can of Fancy Feast last night and another over the course of today. I'm cautiously hoping, with fingers crossed, that we're out of the woods, at least for now.

Question of the Day

Why is it that I can more or less keep my head when I meet a new, larger-size dog and remember to try to copy dog manners, with a non-frontal approach, no direct eye-contact, some blinking, maybe a yawn, letting the dog make the approach--but when somebody comes in with a little dog I completely lose my head and just grab? Geez, louise. Someone came into the office with an adorable little poodle/schnauzer cross, and I took her and held her on my lap. Poor little thing obviously hasn't been out much--she's a year and a half old and was shaking like a leaf. At least I didn't stick my face right into hers like someone else did, but man, I didn't even think of trying any calming signals with her. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Um, for those of you who may have had trouble opening the pictures in last night's post, you might try hitting "refresh" several times. I don't know what the deal is. Everything looks fine on this computer, but I had trouble with the site from my work computer (showing pictures to folks at work), and several people told me they couldn't get the pics to load--but hitting "refresh" does seem to help; you can get most of them to load.

I subscribe to Review A Day from Powells (the famous gigantic Portland OR bookstore), and the review today was very good. It was a review of The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, by Ali A. Allawi; the review is by Fuoad Ajami and appeared in The New Republic. You can find it at http://www.powells.com/review I'm not sure I want to read the entire book, but the review is an intelligent, articulate summary of both the book and the historical and political background that has brought Iraq to the state it finds itself in. I found the review itself very informative, not to mention sad.

The Bayerische sock is coming along. I'm a lot more relaxed about it now that I have the stitch pattern set and can see what I'm doing, and it's fun. I'm not really far enough along for any of the goodnesses to show, but maybe once I reach the 16th and last row of Chart D (when the other 3 charts will have been repeated twice) I'll have enough to photograph. (Or not. I just discovered a stitch I dropped FIVE ROWS AGO. Can I fix it? After the monumental battle I just had with this Dell piece of junk computer, I don't think I can face it tonight.)

My shoulder is still waking me up. I'm taking MSM (anti-inflammatory) during the day and aspirin before bed at night, but about 2:30 my shoulder wakes me up. I do some trigger point massage and sometimes massage the neck muscles just under the skull, and after about 5 or 10 minutes it lets up enough for me to go back to sleep, and it's fine until 2:30 the next morning. I see that the guy who wrote the original Trigger Point Therapy book now has one specifically for frozen shoulder--not exactly separated shoulder, but I bet a lot of the trigger points are the same. I think I'm going to have to get it; Amazon has a bunch of used copies.

It rained pretty hard last night and today. I was out looking at the grass in the puppy pen. It's not complete coverage, but I think it's about the best I can do this year. I think I'll have it mowed--and tell them to set the deck HIGH so their blades don't get caught in that netting--then put out the tunnels and maybe get the Ts back out there last next week--just about on schedule, actually. If I have it mowed, I'll be cutting back daffodil leaves, but nothing bloomed this year, despite my having gone around on my hands and knees last spring with a buck of bulb fertilizer and a tablespoon and carefully annointing each bulb with a tablespoon of bulb fertilizer. I think the pounding of puppy paws may be too much for them.

Two hundred daffodils down the drain. Oh well. They were Stella's--the fall I planted the first hundred, I still had her, and on one sunny afternoon she lay out in the grass while I planted bulbs, and stopped from time to time to rest and sit beside her. I originally envisioned that space thick with naturalized daffodils in the spring, but that was before it was fenced. Stella and I did a lot of walking the last two or three years of her life. I ordered the other 100 the spring of the year she died. I didn't really have the heart to plant them, and they didn't get into the ground until about February, if I remember correctly. Taenzer, then about 4 months old, "helped." "Taenzer, put that bulb down! Taenzer, stay out of the fertilizer. Taenzer, come back with my trowel! Taenzer!"

Observations on Ts playing ball

It's official: I put down grass seed and straw mats. The Ts are out of the puppy pen now until the end of April--unless I have to reseed, when it will be a little longer. Cross your fingers for us--this poor little patch of ground gets some heavy use, as well as being shaded at various times of the day, and it's HARD to keep grass growing in it. If I had the money, I'd take down the maple at the corner of the garage, the green ash by the backdoor, and the scraggly but tall lilac bush at the end of the driveway--they're the main culprits, at least as far as shade goes. The maple and the evil honeysuckle trees back there have roots popping out of the ground, so the poor grass is also fighting tree roots. It's a hard life.

At any rate, I'll have to keep the Ts busy for the next 6 weeks. Walking seems like the obvious choice, except I'm so tired all the time. One thing I can do is throw a tennis ball in the house--if I sit in the right spot on the couch, I can throw through the living room, through the kitchen, and into the back hall (small house). So they chase it, and also they get rewarded with a ball pitched directly to them for doing things--sit, down, speak, touch with nose, touch with paw, turn a touch-lamp on and off, touch sticky notes with their noses, sit up, spin, twirl. Useless kinds of things, mostly, but I like them to use their brains a little.

Taenzer, I notice, gets the ball a lot, not only because she's Head Dog, but also because she watches *me*. She watches where I'm looking, what my hands are doing, my posture--so she can guess where I'm about to throw. Timber gets so fixated on the ball that he doesn't realize I'm getting ready to throw it until it's in the air, and by that time Taenzer's already beat him to the landing point.

I think I'll put a big piece of plastic lattice across the front porch steps and try working them out on the front porch--basic stuff, sit, down, stay, heel, freestyle stuff for Taenzer. There's more going on out front, so it'll be a good first step in distraction proofing.

I've got to get a picture of Taenzer sitting up. She's SO adorable. Since she's longer-backed and narrower than Timber, who has a wide bottom and sits up like a squirrel, she has to kind of work at keeping her balance, get her back feet positioned exactly right, and hold her front feet in close to her chest--it's SO cute. Timber sits up like a squirrel, completely steady, front legs dangling down--he could sit like that all day, I guess, and when he's excited will often do it spontaneously to get his collar put on.

I hope this grass and netting thing works. Ack. Well, if it doesn't, I'll have a mess to clean up.

Small Victories

Last night Timber let me comb him.

Simple statement, but small miracle. I think because when he came into rescue his coat was all full of burrs, mats, feces (he had diarrhea), fleas, and all kinds of awful things, he had to be bathed and combed and bathed and brushed and bathed and clipped and bathed, and the upshot is that he really has kind of a grooming phobia. For a long time whenever he would see me pick up any grooming implement, his ears would flatten down and disappear into his ruff and he would go hide in his crate.

We've been working on desensitization, with short sessions and lots of extra-yummy rewards, and I've been teaching him "lie flat"--i.e., lie on his side. Last night he was on the bed, and I picked up the comb I keep on the "bedtable" (a piece of plywood on top of Taenzer's crate). It has very long, thickish teeth widely spaced. I scooted over near him and very very carefully started combing his thigh. Just a little bit, like 3 teeth of the comb, then move up a quarter of an inch and comb that. Of course, spring is coming and he's shedding like mad, so even with that delicate kind of combing I was getting quite a bit of undercoat. I got most of that thigh done, and here's the best part:

He was relaxed. He was so relaxed he laid flat on his side with his head down. He wasn't craning, waiting to see when I'd pull out his hair.

As I say, small victories. I still have a lot of dog to go, but maybe we're getting to the point where it's not only not a trauma, it's even kind of pleasurable.

On the knitting front, I stuffed the Transitions sweater into a cabinet. I suppose if I'm not going to finish it I should unravel it and rewind it. I just didn't feel like looking at it. And I got the toe of my sock done, decided it was too short, and ripped back to put in another two rows. Usually I do a toe with 3 sets of *decrease 2 st either side one round, knit the next round even*. After those 6 roundsd, I start decreasing 4 st every round, for a very round toe. For some reason I need at least one more set of every-other-row decreases on this sock. I should finish it tonight.