Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

Revisiting canine calories

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I haven’t written about Freya’s quest to regain her girlish figure lately, mainly because she is stuck in a position that is all too familiar to many of us: the dreaded plateau. Since she is not gaining weight, and was only slightly overweight to begin with, I have tried not to worry too much about it even though I am puzzled as to why she’s not losing weight. Here are the past posts, if you didn’t get a chance to see them the first time around:

Counting canine calories
Freya’s weigh-in

She’s been keeping pretty active, but we probably haven’t been compensating enough for the rainy days (way too many of them this summer) when she didn’t get enough activity or the fact that we opted to take a break from group obedience classes for the eight-week session that just ended last Saturday.

Either that or Dan is feeding her a lot of extra treats when no one else is looking (I really don’t think this is the case, though, since there’s really been no change in the normal treat consumption and buying frequency pattern)!

The possibility of hypothyroid is always in the back of my mind, but Freya has been tested once and found normal (low-ish normal, but still normal). I’m not sure I want to spend the money for another full thyroid panel when she’s not showing any other symptoms related to hypothyroid other than the stubborn poundage.

So I am glad to see a very complete weight loss article in the September issue of Whole Dog Journal magazine. Even though the magazine hasn’t arrived yet, as a subscriber, I have access to the articles via the magazine’s website, which is a much-appreciated feature. I’ve just had time to skim the main article, and while much of it is information I’d already learned from a post at Dolittler earlier this year, there is other helpful information that is new to me.

I’d like to take a moment to plug Whole Dog Journal, if I may. It’s the only magazine for which I currently pay for a subscription. It is subscriber-supported and carries no commercial advertising. The focus is on natural dog care and positive training. I don’t consider myself 100% natural or a purely positive trainer by any means, yet I still find this magazine one of the most valuable dog resources available.

I have no connection with the magazine other than being a satisfied subscriber from the first issue to the present. Give it a try if you haven’t already.

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 19 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 207 of 274)

More to life, other than being really, really ridiculously good looking?

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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)

Are you smarter than a two-year-old?

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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)

Weekend procrastination with a very small side of accomplishment

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Weekends are made for procrastination. Or maybe that is just me. I’m definitely pushing a few things off until tomorrow that I had hoped to complete today, including two website updates (one very minor with a few additions to an event listing page, and one a little more involved with a number of photos to resize and crop) and getting some movies and photos transferred to DVDs and CDs.

The dogs didn’t get as much training as they should have today. It was a nice day and we should have taken advantage of the lack of rain, which I think is supposed to be back tomorrow. Axel should also try harder not to injure me. Very minor, mostly my stupidity and my fault, but still, ouch.

I spent some time tonight making some rally obedience practice mini-courses that will fit in the back yard and work for both AKC and UKC. Through the rally obedience Yahoo! Group that I joined recently, I found an extremely cool freeware course designer written in Microsoft Excel. It requires Excel 2002 or later. It is working fine so far on my setup with Microsoft Excel 2007 and Windows Vista Home Premium.

If the rain holds off, or avoids my sector entirely, those practice courses will be what’s on tap for tomorrow!

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 2 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 190 of 274)

Things I want to talk about

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I’m running on empty for no apparent reason, so I’m just going to make a few notes about some topics I want to talk about, before I forget about them entirely.

  • I got my invite for Google Voice last week. I did set it up, but haven’t had a chance to play around with it much, nor have I tried to set up its BlackBerry client. I’m sure at least a couple of you out there might like to hear about it!
  • I wrote a little bit about WordPress for BlackBerry when it first came out, but I should probably do a more complete review. There have been six updates since then, over the space of less than a month, so the developers really are working hard on bug fixes and enhancements.
  • As you all know, Freya is working on her rally obedience titles. When Axel goes back out with Julia this fall, he will also be working on rally obedience titles along with his AKC championship. That is, if I make sure he knows all of the Novice stations before he leaves. With about two and half months to go, we should definitely be able to do that, and get some training posts out of it, too!

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 30 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 187 of 274)