Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Since my own output of quality prose is somewhat sparse at the moment, and the makeover of my blogroll and links list and page has come to a grinding halt, please allow me to introduce (or re-introduce) you to a few loved links!

The Denora has been on hiatus for a few months, and I missed her! But now she’s back in fine form, with a spiffy new design and new location as well. Go visit, you will enjoy!

Joanna at Ruffly Speaking just got a new puppy, so you could visit for adorable puppy photos alone. Even more valuable, though, is her great commentary on puppy socialization as “Friday” becomes part of their family. UPDATE: Now with a new location and great new layout at http://blacksheepcardigans.com/

I’ve written here before about Jim Nelson’s and René Agredano’s Tripawds resource site for three-legged dogs. They have made many updates and additions to the site following a donation drive this past spring, and just this past weekend, hosted a get-together in Longmont, Colorado for three-legged dogs and their “pawrents.” Sounds like it was quite a success! As always, applause to Jim and René for all of their work in providing this resource, and much love from angel Jake, my own dearly-missed tripawd.

I have many loved links, and I hope that by highlighting a few of them, I didn’t give anyone the idea that my other links are not loved as well. Go visit them all, well, as soon as I get the blogroll organized again anyway!

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 17 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 205 of 274)

Somehow I managed to miss the start of the new season of Mad Men tonight. This in itself is not too tragic. The three shows I follow, including Mad Men, are all Comcast On Demand shows, so I can watch missed shows any time I want. I may complain about Comcast service now and then, but I have nothing but good words to say about the convenience that is On Demand.

The hard part is going to be avoiding spoilers for a day or two until I get a chance to watch. Easy enough to avoid places where I know for sure there will be show discussions going on. I can just click past Television Without Pity until I’m caught up. At work, I’m actually pretty safe as well. We’re all pretty good about not spoiling each other and waiting a reasonable amount of time for people to catch up on missed episodes. It’s more fun when everyone who watches a show can weigh in anyway.

No, what I’m afraid of is stumbling over incidental off-topic conversations in forums (just saying “sorry, OT” does not make it okay when it comes to my shows, yeah, selfish of me, but that’s from the heart) and blog entries from people I didn’t even know were fans.

So if I click past you so fast you feel like you’re in a wind tunnel, it’s nothing personal. I’ll be back once I catch up on that first episode of the new season!

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 16 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 204 of 274)

I’m pretty tired tonight and really don’t have anything interesting to write about. I didn’t even record audio or video of me attempting to play my guitar for the first time in ages. This is purely for your safety; see, I do care about you, my readers! For those who are morbidly curious, okay, fine, I’ll try it when I can actually get through a whole song.

I know the lack of a topic doesn’t usually stop me from writing, and in general, I’m totally with this Copyblogger post about writing something, anything, anyway. But tonight I’m going to go offline and watch old CSI: NY, Sons of Anarchy, and Cold Case until I fall asleep. Good night!

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 15 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 203 of 274)

The question comes up often, maybe too often, in blog and forum memes: what super power would you want to have? When I’m not in the mood to play along with the invisible flying healing walking through walls program, I have said that I want the super power of being able to make music.

For those of you who were born with the gift of music, you might not appreciate that it does seem like a super power to me. Music has the power to inspire us, to reduce stress, and to enhance physical performance in workouts and competition. Even if you don’t believe there is sufficient scientific evidence (and truly, I don’t think there is), there is certainly no shortage of anecdotal evidence that music does indeed have powers.

The reason I am thinking about this should be somewhat obvious. 2009 has been a year of many losses to the entertainment world, and yesterday’s passing of Les Paul, musician and innovator, is a huge loss indeed.

I’m not old enough to have known much of Les Paul’s music, but I’m certainly familiar with the guitar that bears his name. I worked above a music store for a short time during high school, and I got to actually touch and attempt to play some very expensive guitars. Really, who didn’t secretly want to be a rock star (yeah, I know it’s more of a guy thing, but it’s definitely not exclusive to males). And part of that was the Fender Strat… or the Gibson Les Paul.

In reading some of the many tributes and articles for Les Paul, in general and music publications alike, one thing really struck me about his accomplishments. The awards and honors he had received over his long life included awards for music, inventing and broadcasting. How amazing to make a mark and a contribution in three different disciplines like that.

I love music. I have no gift for it. In spite of that, I have a solid body electric guitar that I can’t really play. It’s not a Les Paul or any flavor of Gibson, but that’s ok. Tomorrow no one will be home to hear me play it badly, so play it I will.

RIP Les Paul. Thank you for your creations that gave to so many the super power of music.

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 14 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 202 of 274)

Thanks to Di for this update. Mary Wild’s arraignment was scheduled for yesterday, August 12. According to the Jefferson County public court records, Ms. Wild waived formal arraignment and criminal setting scheduled for September 15.

Contact information for the Jefferson County prosecutor’s office is still available at Kinship Circle. Help make sure that this crime is punished with the maximum penalty allowable.

Links to earlier posts on this topic (some contain links to news stories if you are just now hearing about this):
Killer heat: don’t let it get you and yours
Update: show dog heat stroke deaths
Update: more on show dog heat stroke deaths

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 13 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 201 of 274)

Yesterday I mentioned that most dogs have a rather large number of nicknames. My dogs are no exception, and Axel probably has more than his share. Sorry to the poor dog that has only one or two names because Axel has taken so many! One of those came from his budding show career: Zoolander.

His return home after a few months on the show circuit happened to coincide with a showing of Zoolander on cable. I like Ben Stiller, and I have always enjoyed this satire that makes fun of modeling and fashion. And really, what are dog conformation shows? Okay, fine, I guess they are more like beauty pageants. But the thought of Axel as Ben Stiller’s “really, really ridiculously good looking” but slightly dim male model Derek Zoolander character just makes me smile. For the record, though, I don’t think Axel is dim. But he is ridiculously good looking.

If you are not familiar with the movie, Derek Zoolander does have a problem. He is not an ambi-turner: he can’t turn left. This is hugely funny to me as it applies to Axel Zoolander, because in conformation showing, all you do is turn left. Watch the next time a dog show is on Animal Planet or something. The dogs are gaited counterclockwise around the ring, and if you watch when the dogs go down and back individually, the dog usually turns to the left to come back.

This gets even better when practicing Rally Obedience. Derek Zoolander compensated for his inability to turn left by making 270° right turns. Imagine my delight that 270° right is one of the stations for Rally Novice. By now, Axel Zoolander is probably getting a little tired of hearing my stupid jokes about ambi-turning.

Fortunately, even though he has to put up with my lame jokes, Axel is in fact getting very good at ambi-turning, with some very nice work on all of the required turns, including the 270° right and left and 360° right and left turns. I think he knows there’s more to life than just being really, really, really good looking!

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 12 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 200 of 274)

This article on dog intelligence has been floating around for a couple of days now. According to Freya and Axel, the part where Professor Stanley Coren and team put the Rottweiler in ninth place on their list of the ten most intelligent breeds, has got to be totally wrong, since Rottweilers are obviously the smartest dogs on the planet and maybe in the universe. I happen to agree with them, but we are admittedly somewhat biased.

I’m not exactly shocked at too many of the findings. The fact that most dogs can understand as much language and math as a two-year-old human child is not surprising at all. Ask most dog owners how many nicknames their dogs have and respond to, and how many toys and people the dog can identify by name. Add to that the commands that even barely-trained dogs know, like sit and down, and that’s already a lot of words out of the 165 to 250 words, signs and signals that most dogs are supposedly able to understand.

This amused me, though: “A survey of more than 200 dog obedience judges in the US and Canada has also helped to reveal the most intelligent breeds.” It’s a good thing that an expanded version of the article linked does go on to mention that there is a difference between intelligence and trainability. My dogs are very intelligent, but I can’t say they’ve been particularly easy to train. Not for me, anyway. Maybe I’m the one that is not smarter than a two-year-old!

This statement, though, is something I’ve seen so many times:
“[Dogs] can also deliberately deceive, which is something that young children only start developing later in their life.”

When our first two Rottweilers, Heidi and Oscar, would be given treats at the same time, Oscar would usually finish his first. If it was a large treat, like a rawhide bone or a large biscuit, he’d finish well before Heidi. One day, he was watching Heidi still enjoying her treat. He got up and ran to the back door and barked a couple of times. We, and Heidi, of course assumed that Oscar wanted a potty break, so we all got up and headed to the door. Oscar ran back around to where Heidi had left her treat and grabbed it. And that was all he wanted. He was able to fool Heidi on several other occasions with this trick, but eventually she did catch on.

And this is probably more misdirection than deception, but every one of our dogs, past and present, has used the trick of parading some item back and forth and making it seem super happy fun to try and get a more coveted toy away from one of the others. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Intelligence, instinct, deception, whatever. It’s still fun to watch.

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 11 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 199 of 274)