Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Search and you shall find

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I didn’t have this blog visible on search engines until about a month or two ago. Not surprisingly, many of the searches that lead here have “Rottweiler” in the phrase or question.

I was distressed to see that my blog did not in fact provide the answers to some of those questions. I know it might not help much after the fact, but these question cannot go unanswered forever.

Rottweilers watch television: Why, yes, they do. Freya and Axel were not happy when last year’s New Amsterdam was canceled. Main character John Amsterdam was immortal, and his dog breed of choice throughout his 400-year-life was the Rottweiler. His current dog was named “Thirty-Six” (a 1940s flashback shows him with his then-Rottweiler, “Twenty-Nine”). While watching the show, Freya and Axel referred to themselves as “Five” and “Six.” All right, I don’t know for sure whether they did that, but if they thought of it, they would have. In real life, “Thirty-Six” is “Missy,” an AKC Obedience Trial Champion: Nordike’s Misty Meadows Mischief owned by Barb Doering. The obedience trial championship, OTCh, is the highest obedience honor a dog can receive and it is not a trivial undertaking.

Rottweilers also like Entourage and “Arnold” and Kath and Kim and “Cujo.”

A favorite Rottweiler movie is the 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Actually, I don’t know if all Rottweilers like this movie. Our dear departed Oscar loved it, though, as did the rest of the original crew. The whole idea of using human DNA in animals is kind of creepy, but the human/beasts really held Oscar’s attention.

I bet you thought they were going to say they liked The Omen, huh? They do, but they thought that answer was too obvious. Of course they’ve seen it. What Rottweiler hasn’t?

Similar animals to Rottweilers: There is nothing like a Rottweiler. No animal that will bring you so much love and joy, along with so much frustration during their “teenager” time. No animal so devoted to their people. No animal that is so very special, in every sense of the word!

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 18 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 114 of 274)

Temperament test: one pass, one fail

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With 53 dogs entered in today’s ATTS temperament test held by the Northeastern Illinois Bouvier des Flandres Club, it was quite a long day. Eleven of the 12 dogs in our group (seven of the eight Rottweilers) passed. Unfortunately, it was my Axe who failed.

There are 10 subtests in the TT, and Axe passed nine of them easily. His downfall was the friendly stranger. Axe is not a particularly friendly dog. He’s very affectionate to his favorite people, but he just tolerates other people. He is also overly possessive of me, which is why I wasn’t handling him myself. He still wanted nothing to do with the friendly stranger and made it abundantly clear by growling at her, which failed him. Had he remained silent, he may have passed with a low score on that subtest.

I don’t like to anthropomorphize animal behavior, but since I don’t like strangers coming up to me in an overly friendly way either, and I have difficulty remaining silent under most circumstances, I think I understand what Axe was thinking.

Axe’s half-brother, half-sister and mother all passed, and Axe can try again at another test after five months have passed. Following the test, our group talked about the results and agreed that Axe would have probably fared better with the friendly stranger who did the subtest for the females. The friendly stranger who did the subtest for the males was more tentative with the Rottweilers, as compared to the other one. Hesitation or fear is something that Axe is obnoxiously quick to pick up and exploit, unfortunately even when it’s not in his best advantage. Like today.

Freya passed with good scores on all of the subtests. Freya is innately much friendlier than Axel, but there are a few people and dogs that she has taken a dislike to, for no apparent reason that I could see at the time. Fortunately, the neutral stranger and friendly stranger did not fall in this category. I knew she would be fine for the rest of the subtests, as there was nothing there that she had not been exposed to and dealt with. As soon as the certificate arrives in the mail, she will officially be Sciroco’s Freya vom Viersen CGC, TT. And yes, we’re still going to be working on that RN and beyond in rally obedience. Freya’s breeder Donna was there to see Aslan (who she co-owns) and Freya, and happily, both of them passed.

Very proud of all of the dogs in our little group! Eleven new TTs was a good day’s result. Thanks to Axel’s “grandpa” Gary for being a great handler as always.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 9 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 105 of 274)

ATTS canine temperament test

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Freya and Axel are entered in a temperament test to be given this coming Saturday by the American Temperament Test Society.

All of our dear departed Rottweilers passed this temperament test. This test evaluates a dog’s reaction as it walks with its handler through a course where they will encounter neutral, friendly and and threatening people, visual and auditory stimuli, and unusual surfaces under foot. The handler may not command the dog, or in fact talk to the dog at all, during the test as it is a test of the dog’s temperament, not its training.

You are not supposed to actually train for this test, but the dog should be socialized to the things it will encounter in the test. People, sounds and sights similar to those in the test scenarios are part of most everyone’s daily life. Hopefully, the gunshots and the weirdly-dressed stranger are not a big part of your daily life!

Many dogs fail the subtests for unusual footing: the dogs must walk over a 15-foot length of clear plastic sheeting, and the 12-foot length of an unfolded wire exercise pen. My dogs don’t have any problem with walking on plastic, as they do so every time they get into my vehicle.

Wire or metal footing is something they hadn’t had to deal with, though. Ever since hearing of a number of isolated but deadly incidents in several large cities, including Chicago, where dogs were electrocuted by stray voltage running through metal plates or grates in the sidewalk, there is no way I would have let my dogs walk on a sidewalk grate.

So they were understandably somewhat suspicious when I dragged out the exercise pen to make sure they were exposed to the wire footing at least a few times before test day. Neither one wanted to walk over it at first. It is amazing how quickly some food or a favorite toy can coax a reluctant dog to follow you across the unfamiliar surface. Once they go across a few times and realize that nothing bad happens, and in fact something good (again, that food or toy) might happen, it’s not a big deal any more.

I feel pretty good about their chances of passing. Let’s hope they do!

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 4 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 100 of 274)

Freya’s training notes (28 of 30/94 of 274)

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Due to the wet weather, Freya and I didn’t get very much training in over the last week. We did get a couple of days of nice weather. Those days fell before I had finished printing up a set of rally obedience signs, so I didn’t get a chance to set up a practice course in the back yard.

From AKC's official Rally Obedience Rules
From AKC's official Rally Obedience Rules

Each sign has a graphic and a few words to describe the exercise to perform at that station. We practiced some of the exercises in the kitchen. The exercises that can, and in fact should, be done in a small space include 270° left and right turns, 360° left and right circles, call front-left and right finishes, sit and halt, and down and halt. So we did get in some training specifically for the rally obedience exercises.

The sunny days were probably not used to best advantage in terms of training, but Freya thought they were just fine with time to play ball and wrestle with Axel.

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Here she is in heel position at my left side, wondering why I’m pointing a camera in her face instead of holding a treat or a toy for her.

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Here she is right after coming in for an almost perfectly straight front (we have issues with good fronts), wondering why a light is flashing at her instead of my hand signaling her to go around me to finish.

I think we’re ready for a good hour of training at tomorrow night’s drop-in class!

Updates: 31DBBB, Freya’s training (26 of 30/92 of 274)

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Although the results may not yet be visible to the naked eye, I am still making my way slowly through 31DBBB. I haven’t been able to keep up with the one-task-per-day pace during the week, and I’m not caught up as far as I want to be, but I am still getting a lot out of the project. You can sign up at any time, and I suggest it for anyone who wants to improve their blogging. Even if you don’t join the project, check out some of the 31DBBB posts at ProBlogger!

One change that is probably visible, even to the naked eye, is the header on the blog. Back near the beginning of April, the first task of 31DBBB was to write an “elevator pitch” for our blogs. Mine is here, and I’ve finally made some of the changes and additions outlined in that post. I hope you like the new header, which features my favorite puppy picture of the lovely Freya!

I’m currently bogged down a bit on Day 8, where I need to interlink my post with other related posts within the blog. Yes, there’s a plugin for that. But as I started to work on this task, I realized that my categories and tags needed a major overhaul in order to work properly with plugins, and for that matter, to make it easier should I end up choosing to do my related links manually. So that’s a project to complete this coming week. I hope.

Freya’s first rally obedience training session went very well. We didn’t even trip over any of the signs. Our team’s biggest problem is, as usual, me. My leash handling needs work. Rally Novice is done entirely on leash, and keeping a loose leash is very important to avoid point deductions. I also need to get accustomed to using as much body language and verbal encouragement as needed. Extra help like that is not allowed in conventional obedience competition nor in Schutzhund obedience, so most handlers will phase it out during training as early as possible.

It’s not that I don’t want to continue on to conventional obedience competition or a Schutzhund BH, but realistically, I don’t know if I ever will. So it makes the most sense at this point to get through the Rally titles using every legal command and motivator that I am able to, and then worry about phasing out the extra commands and encouragement later.