Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

National Pet Fire Safety Day

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Today is the third annual National Pet Fire Safety Day. I am embarrassed to admit that even though I am a firefighter’s wife and our dogs, cats, and bird are all important parts of our family, this is the first year I was aware of this observation.

According to data from the National Fire Prevention Association, almost 1,000 house fires annually are accidentally started by pets (I would certainly hope that beloved house pets aren’t starting fires on purpose rather than by accident). I’m a big believer in crates, kennels, and gates to help keep pets out of the kitchen and away from other possible danger sources when no one is home to monitor what they are doing, but I can totally understand how these accidents happen. We have been very lucky in that most of our pets have not been counter surfers. But among the many “Heidi stories” that we laugh at now, but were not quite as funny then, is the time she turned on the oven, then barked to alert us that something might be on fire. Fortunately, we were home at the time, nothing did catch on fire, and the oven was on for less than 15 minutes total.

In addition to the obvious tips about stove knobs, candles, and other open flames, one of the things mentioned in the article is something I would have never thought of in a million years: a glass water bowl on a wooden deck, magnifying the sun’s rays and possibly starting a fire.

Another important topic is planning for your pets’ safe escape or rescue in case of a house fire by having collars and leashes easily accessible to you or rescuers, and a window cling to show the number of pets in your home.

I was hoping to end this with a cute video of Freya or Axel demonstrating “stop, drop, and roll” for you all, but we’re still working on “roll.” Who knew they wouldn’t want to roll on cue?

(NaBloPoMo | July ’10: 15 of 31)

Life goes on

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Two of our dearly departed dogs have been at the back of my mind all week. They were full siblings from two different litters, and two dates this week are significant.

Yesterday, March 18, would have been Heidi’s “sweet 16.” For the most part, it is unusual for a Rottweiler to get very far into the ‘teen years, but we lost Heidi slightly before her time at age nine years, nine months. She was my “heart” dog and even though she has been gone for over six years now, I still think of her often, especially when training my others. My husband had many dogs throughout his life, but Heidi was my very first dog. She was my “experimental” dog and I probably made my worst training missteps with her. She bounced back from it all, and we finally found her calling as a therapy dog well into her middle years. She was extremely people-friendly, almost to a fault. Or at least I thought it was a fault because she even liked jagoffs that I hated. But it made her the perfect candidate for therapy work. Her career was not long, but we both enjoyed visiting mentally and physically challenged young adults at some of Little City’s group homes. It was perhaps the most rewarding thing I have ever done, with or without a dog.

And Tuesday was the fourth anniversary of the sad day that Oscar went to join his siblings at the Rainbow Bridge. Through our tears, we said that it was because he didn’t want to miss Heidi’s birthday there, and smiled at the thought of the “twins” being together again. We always called them the “twins” even though they were not twins at all. They were full siblings, one from a planned litter and one from an “oops” litter from the same parents. Oscar was the very last one of our original four-member Rottweiler wrecking crew to leave us at age eleven years, five months. He was a big dog, at the top end of the standard for male Rottweilers, so I never felt really comfortable doing much training and competing with him. He always felt that his job was just to watch over me. The others always wanted to be doing something, even when they got a bit older. Oscar was happy just to hang out with me.

I miss them both to this day, and always will.

(NaBloPoMo | March ’10: 19 of 31)

My special angel

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Six years ago, a special angel dog got her wings. Heidi was almost 10 years old, and that is about the average lifespan for a Rottweiler. Still, her passing was unexpected, and it shook my faith hard that she was taken from us on the day of Christmas Eve. I don’t know if I’ve ever really gotten over that.

Heidi, we still love and miss you, and think of you often, not just on Christmas Eve.

Freya: time to get some working titles (12 of 30/78 of 274)

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A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d like to set some training goals and try to earn some titles with Freya. We just completed an eight-week intermediate/advanced obedience class yesterday, and we’ll begin another eight-week session right away. The obedience club that we used to train at, and that we are still members of, is having a Rally Obedience trial in nine weeks. This is the trial date we’ll be shooting for, and I’ll have to make the final decision as to whether we are ready or not over Memorial Day weekend.

I did participate in a few conventional Obedience trials with my dear departed Heidi. We failed miserably, except in the sense of providing comic relief for any spectators who happened to see us. Rally Obedience is similar to conventional Obedience in that the same or similar exercises are performed. In conventional Obedience, the handler can give commands with or without an accompanying hand signal to the dog only once, and cannot give verbal or other encouragement. In Rally Obedience, multiple commands, praise and other verbal encouragement, and extra hand signals or clapping are allowed as long as you do not physically guide or correct the dog. Heidi was Queen of the Double/Triple/Quadruple Command and we might have done okay if Rally Obedience had been around back then.

The Novice level of conventional Obedience has some exercises that are performed off-leash while the Novice level of Rally Obedience is done all on-leash. Freya has an unfortunate tendency to be the “fun police” if any other dogs in the immediate vicinity are getting loud or hyper or for some breeds, just breathing. We have made a good deal of progress on that particular training issue during the last class, but I will still feel much better about life in general if Freya is totally on-leash in her first competition situation.

That’s the background on our plans so far. We’ll also be doing an ATTS Temperament Test early next month. That is a certification, not a working title, so there’s not much preparation involved.

I’ll be keeping Freya’s training diary either here or at one of my other online places, and I hope you don’t mind following along with our story, hopefully to have a happy ending in June!

Giving up (3 of 31/38 of 274)

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Shortly after our original Rottweiler Heidi came to live with us in 1994, I made a very basic web page for her with a few photos, a couple of cute stories and a list of links about Rottweilers. Sometime over the next year or so, I was searching for more links to add to the page when I stumbled across Mindspring’s website. At that time, Mindspring was a regional ISP based in Atlanta. Their website included a page featuring their “Chief Executive Rottweiler” Henri, a three-legged Rottweiler belonging to an employee.

Of course I thought that was wonderful. I added the link to Heidi’s page, and had Heidi write to Henri, complimenting him on his business acumen and hoping that she, too, could one day achieve success in a technology career. I was shocked to receive a reply a couple of days later from Mindspring CEO Charles Brewer (or an assistant, I’ll never know for sure) with some kind words to Heidi about her page and the good resources she provided with her links. I wrote back on Heidi’s behalf and said that if Mindspring ever expanded to our area, we would use them as our ISP.

In 1997, they did come to Chicago, and I kept Heidi’s promise. Mindspring had excellent customer service and technical support. There were some growing pains, but things were always taken care of in a friendly and professional manner. We upgraded to DSL in 2000. When Earthlink bought out Mindspring, things were still fine for quite a while.

Somewhere along the line, Charles Brewer left to pursue other projects. Garry Betty passed away from cancer. Things started changing for the worse around that time. Support and customer service were outsourced. The service itself had pretty good uptime, but whenever I did have to contact support for any reason, it was simply hell to deal with the lower level outsourced technicians and their canned scripts and fake American names.

The last outage was the last straw. It lasted a little longer than usual, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem clearly lay outside my network, but the lower level tech put me through the entire script regardless. I could have dealt with that if he had actually escalated the call to the phone company to check the physical lines as he said he was going to do.

When I called back the next morning to check on the status, per tech’s instructions, the new tech said that he would put a trouble ticket in to the phone company. Ummm. It was done last night? No, apparently not.

This was still not the breaking point, as the phone company did more than their part and actually showed up shortly after I’d left for work and took care of their part of things.

The breaking point was the tech who called for me at work. He got off to a great start by asking one of my male co-workers if he was me. This particular co-worker does not sound like Barry White, but neither does he sound like a girl. Then, wonder tech continues by asking me to check on my service. I point out that he has called me at work, and the troubled DSL is at home. He repeats his request verbatim. I point out his error again, a little louder. He repeats his request again. I resort to profanity, ask for a supervisor, and am denied. I tell the tech I will check on the DSL when I get home and hang up.

Fortunately all was well. But that was the last straw, and after a dozen years, I have finally given up. The Mindspring I subscribed to is long gone. Heidi’s gone, Henri’s gone, and customer service is gone and way more dead than either of those beautiful dogs. And now I am gone. I made the call to cancel my account earlier tonight. The… again, outsourced… customer service rep noted that I had been a customer since 1997. Yeah. Had been. Not happy. Leaving.

I truly mourn the loss of the days that a company could still have a cutesy page with a “Chief Executive Rottweiler” and a CEO that took the time to see that a silly letter from a dog was answered. And a person could call for customer support and be able to talk to a person in their own country who could communicate effectively in their language.