Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

I’ve told you before about my love for the mobile versions of internet radio services Slacker and Pandora. Due to music licensing restrictions, neither service can play music on demand, and each service picks songs for your user-created custom stations in a slightly different way. The song choices I get on both services are usually right on the money. But recently I got a couple of unexpected results.

My main custom station on Slacker is built mostly around ’70s-’80s classic rock: Styx, Journey, Foreigner, Scorpions, Rush… you get the idea. I’ve had that station for a while, so I’ve done enough favoriting, banning and skipping to give it a good idea of what I like. Imagine my horror when my morning commute was marred by the sound of my least favorite REO Speedwagon song ever. REO Speedwagon is not one of the artists I selected for my station, and even if I had, the song “Take It On The Run” would have been banned straightaway.

Let me digress. Back in high school and college, I was definitely a fan of REO. Stuff like “157 Riverside Avenue,” “Roll With the Changes,” “Riding the Storm Out”… that stuff. I was quite eagerly awaiting the release of Hi Infidelity. It was one of the biggest disappointments of my young life. Song after song of unmanly whining. Ewwww. Just ewwww. In my mind, even to this day, the worst offender was “Take It On The Run.”

I may have been too stunned to click the button to ban the song. I don’t really remember, so there is a chance I will have to repeat the sad experience at least one more time.

It didn’t take much digging to find out why Slacker thought I might enjoy the song. Seems that there is a double live album from the “Arch Allies” tour that Styx and REO Speedwagon did together in 2000. Who knew!

Pandora’s surprise for me was a bit more pleasant, given that it wasn’t from Hi Infidelity. It even sort of played into my obsession with imaginary bands. I would have never expected any of my Pandora stations to serve me up a song by Hannah Montana [warning: link auto plays music/video]. Nor would I have expected to love the song, “If We Were a Movie,” [warning: link auto plays music] but I do!

This one wasn’t that hard to track down either. The station I was listening to was built around Liz Phair, and this song actually has a similar style to one of the songs on her self-titled album. You know, the second one where she went all power-pop instead of singing about blow jobs. Wait, she still sang about blow jobs. Anyway. The choice did make sense.

Much better surprise from Pandora than from Slacker, but I still love both services.

Dr. Patty Khuly at Dolittler had a great post today about calorie counting for fat dogs. The following excerpt is something that really hit home, related to the lovely Freya and the handsome Axel:

The first sticking point? It always comes down to measuring everything the dog eats and does. The kids might have fed X. I didn’t know the treats counted. (Seriously?) My mother-in-law sneaks her food under the table.

While we of course know that treats count, we haven’t been monitoring the types and amounts of treats, as well as food used in training sessions, as closely as we should. I am sure that as I start keeping track, I will be surprised and somewhat dismayed, much as I was when I’ve kept a food diary for myself and realized how much mindless snacking happens during a typical workday.

As you may recall, Freya has some weight to lose and Axel has some weight to gain.

In the month since he’s been home, Axel’s put on several pounds. Once we got a good handle on the amount of energy he expends when spending part of the day in a kennel run and part as a house dog, as compared to being a full-time house dog, it was pretty easy to recalculate the amount of food he needs when living with his handler, and the smaller amount of food he needs when living at home with us.

I must admit that I have not been as diligent as I should have been about getting enough additional exercise for Freya (and myself). I just found a nearby source for the low fat formulation of California Natural Lamb and Rice, which is one of the only foods that Freya can eat due to her mild IBS. I was quite relieved to find that she likes it, and that she can eat it with no tummy troubles, so that will be a help in reducing her calories and still letting her eat enough to feel full.

I mentioned in my earlier post that Freya’s vet calculated her calorie requirements. At the time I did not ask for the details (math is not my strong point and I do trust our vets), but I can now double-check using the information in today’s Dolittler post:

Base calories/day (resting energy requirement) = 30 x (your dog’s weight in kg) + 70
* Weight loss needed, neutered/spayed = 1 x base calories
* Weight loss needed, intact = 1.1x base calories

Freya: [(30 x 42 kg) + 70] x 1 = 1330 calories
California Natural Lamb and Rice = 430 calories per cup
1330 / 430 = 3.09 cups per day (if no treats or extras were fed)

She gets 2 to 2.5 cups per day, plus treats, so that should be fine, which agrees with our vet’s calculations. That is, unless the treats I’m using turn out to be more caloric than I thought. I’ll need to track down the information on that, which was another suggestion from the Dolittler post. It is very true that caloric information for treats is not always on the package, but often easy enough to find on the manufacturer’s websites, so it is time for me to do some research and maybe switch some treat choices. I often use “people food” for training treats, usually hot dogs or frozen meatballs, so it will be easy enough to switch to the low fat versions of those items as well.

I’ll stop at the vet on the way home from training on Saturday and get a current weight for Freya, and see how we are doing so far.

(PS: This is also the Day 7 assignment for 31DBBB. Yes, I’m a bit behind, but still working through this excellent series!)

Even though I’m not a big fan of online contests in general, I am always happy to vote for the children, pets and creations of my actual friends and family members if you ask via email, even mass email. I’ll even post your request to one of my blogs and/or social networks if appropriate.

Same goes for friendly acquaintances and their voting requests. And I might even vote at your request if I don’t know you, but you post it to a forum, mailing list or social network where we share a common interest or mutual friends. Or if your Tweet is cute and clever enough.

That is, if you post a polite request or two or maybe even three. NOT if you post every freaking day with multiple thread bumps, or if you email me and I have no clue who you are. If you do that, I will go out of my way not only to NOT vote for your child/pet/artwork/photo, I will vote for one of your competitors. If multiple votes from the same IP address are permitted, every single computer in my house and in my unfortunately rather small office will vote against you (that is still a total of approximately 25 computers).

That is all.

Despite my appreciation for sea turtles, I somehow managed to miss hearing about the start of this year’s Great Turtle Race on April 16. This is Day 6 of the race, following 11 leatherback turtles from their feeding grounds in Canada to their breeding grounds around the Caribbean.

Leatherbacks are one of the three sea turtle species considered native to Hawaii, thus my interest (the other two species are the green and hawksbill). If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you have seen my posts about Lanikea “Turtle” Beach. Check out my turtle vacation photos if you haven’t already.

Still more than half the race to go (although some turtles are closing in fast), so I’m glad I didn’t miss it entirely!

It has been nasty and rainy in a most un-springlike way all day. The Rottweilers have endured a second straight day of being cooped up indoors due to that nasty weather, and they are literally bouncing off the furniture. The grace and form of my 110-lb. dog as he takes a flying leap off the couch would be impressive if he were destroying someone else’s living room.

I am working on moving some of the domains I am responsible for into shiny new homes, and also working on a slight repositioning and redesign of this blog. If I seem to disappear off the face of the ‘net at any time, don’t be too alarmed. I promise I’ll be back someday!

As predicted, it’s been raining all day today. The Rottweiler wrecking crew has been extremely annoying due to a lack of exercise and entertainment due to the rain. They have finally fallen asleep due to boredom. I was very pleased to find a website from a local training facility showing sample Rally Obedience courses. Not only are they free to download, they are also set up for a small room, meaning that I will be able to use them almost as-is in the backyard for practice. Couldn’t use them today, of course, thanks to the ongoing rain!

On the other hand, a rainy day provided a perfect opportunity to catch up on “31 Days to Build a Better Blog.” I got kind of stuck on the Day 4 task of analyzing a top blog in my niche. I was not quite sure how best to search for “top personal blogs concentrating on pets and technology.” I did my best, though, and have come to the conclusion that if I want to be more popular within my niche, the following things must happen:

• I have to have funnier or cuter dogs
• I have to become an actual expert about either dogs or technology
• When I go off-topic, I have to write about sex or relationships, or else use the F-word more

Our upcoming adventures in competition should provide some moments that are funny as all get-out to everyone but me, and like the time I tripped over my dog in the obedience ring, they will even be funny to me in a month (or two or three). I will probably never become an actual expert, but every day I add to the list of dog training techniques that have unexpected results, and things that can go wrong with technology. That’s gotta be worth something. But I’m never going to write about sex and relationships. Ever.

Day 5′s task was to email new blog readers. I haven’t had a new commenter in a few days, and I reply to almost every comment on the blog as a matter of course. But I will definitely put this into practice as soon as a new reader or first-time commenter shows up. I will also try to be a bit more active in commenting on other blogs. I know I’ve been somewhat lax in that regard, even with blogs I read daily.

I’ve also read through many of the Day 6 tips and tutorials from some well-known and successful bloggers. Whether or not you are not doing 31DBBB, that post and the links within are well worth reading. Even if you believe you’re at the top of your blogging game, I think you will come away with something to think about from at least a few of the articles referenced.

Saturday is normally obedience class day for the lovely Freya, and on a nice sunny day like today, we would have been able to work outdoors as well. Unfortunately, we had to skip class because I had an appointment at the bank to review my IRA account. That account had a less than stellar performance year in 2008. I am sure that is a familiar story to many people. Now that I am on the far side of 50, I guess I should at least check in on my retirement accounts more frequently than I have been. Retirement is still far enough in the future that I’m not really stressing. Yet. My bank guy is nice and seems knowledgeable, but I would have preferred to be in dog class!

We did try to take advantage of the nice weather and do some homework. Armed with the AKC Rally Regulations and a separate list of Rally Obedience exercises, Freya and I spent time working on some of the Novice exercises. Since I had no idea how to lay out a practice course, we mostly worked on the fronts and finishes, and heeling with the different turns.

I know there are books and websites with samples of Rally courses, so I will have to look for some. We are supposed to get a few days of rain (rain has already started tonight) so we won’t be able to practice outside. We might go on Tuesday night to a make-up class for the class we missed today, and we’re definitely going to drop-in obedience on Wednesday night.