Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Freya’s Midweek Mischief

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Last Saturday, Sue kindly offered to share her Wednesday evening private lesson time with anyone in the group obedience class who wanted to do Rally Obedience. Since I got home from work just early enough to make the drive in time, Freya and I took her up on the offer.

There were just three of us with a total of four dogs, so it was a good opportunity to run through a couple of typical novice-level courses and get critiques from each other and our instructor.

Freya wasn’t working particularly well. She was very distracted and I just could not get her to focus until the hour was almost over. I think part of the problem was that we should have taken more time to warm up, both at home before leaving and before joining the group. It was still a worthwhile evening, though. We can really use all of the practice time available before the next trial, and the more of it that is away from home, the better.

Unfortunately I forgot to bring my video camera, and we are all at the point where it will help us to be able to see our own performances and note things that need correcting, as well as being told what to watch for. I’ve now added a “bring video camera” reminder to all of the training dates on my calendar.

As usual, Freya is having a post-training nap. Axel is wide awake and looking for trouble. I’d better go and find him some!

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 21 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 243 of 274)

Typekit and “real” fonts on the web

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I heard that Typekit is now sending out invitations, so I signed up for a trial account. I’m behind the curve as usual, and I’m still not sure when I’m going to get to really test it out, but I’m very interested in the concept.

As you already know if you saw my recent post on the Sun-Times buyout, my work background is in the graphic arts, specifically pre-press production, and originally typography. I have also had a web page, website, and/or blog online since 1995 and on one of my own domains since 1999. So you can see I’ve been gritting my teeth about not having more say over typography on the web for a very long time.

Typekit is a service that hosts a library of web-licensed high-quality fonts. Theoretically, it should allow your pages to display using the typography you intended. I am looking forward to seeing if this is the reality as well.

While HTML5 and CSS3 offer better type handling features than past versions, there is still the issue of older browsers and older operating systems. Boing Boing’s recent redesign looked fine to anyone using a current browser on Windows Vista or Mac OS X, but not so good to those using older versions of browsers, or older operating systems such as Windows XP which are still in very wide use.

I’m still hopeful and interested in Typekit and other solutions to getting real typography on the web, including Font Squirrel’s free @font-face kits. I use paid-for fonts more often than free fonts, largely due to quality issues, but I am not against free when that free is also of good quality and more important, not stolen. So I do want to check it out.

I hope to have some time to play with fonts after Axel leaves on his road trip and before it’s time to start preparing for vacation. You’ll hear from me again about the joy of fonts then!

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09:20 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 242 of 274)

Miscellaneous catch-up

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Just catching up on a number of things that happened while I wasn’t paying attention:

Dog handler Mary Wild’s case has been continued again, this time until November 24, 2009. The wheels of justice certainly turn slowly. While I know this is true of many criminal and civil cases, not just cases involving animal cruelty, it just doesn’t seem right that it will be winter before this case involving dogs dying from heat stroke due to Ms. Wild’s neglectful actions will be heard.

Nail polish killer Lora Hunt pleaded not guilty to reckless homicide and is free on $100,000 bail. Trial is scheduled for December 7. There are links to news stories from the arraignment on October 8 on the Black Nail Brigade website.

I was looking forward to a late fall return of Southland only to find that NBC has cancelled it. WTF, NBC? Cancelling Medium (thank you, CBS, for picking it up), Life and now Southland? And you give me Mercy and Trauma? Dear Lord.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 19 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 241 of 274)

Overthinking the Stop and Down

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It turns out I was overthinking the Stop and Down. I reread the exercise description:

While moving with the dog in heel position, the handler commands and/or signals the dog to down as the handler comes to a stop next to the dog. Once the dog is completely down, the handler moves forward, commanding the dog to move forward from down position. (from the AKC Rally Regulations)

Then I read some past posts about the exercise on the Rally-obed Yahoo! Group.

One main point is that the dog cannot sit before the down, so the timing of the “down” command is pretty important. It has to come just before the handler actually stops, since most obedience trained dogs will automatically sit when the handler stops. Axel doesn’t really have an automatic sit at the moment, since he’s been shown mostly in conformation and has been taught to stand and hopefully stack handsomely when stopping. For the purposes of this exercise, it sort of helps that he doesn’t sit automatically

He does know down in motion (my delusions about one day returning to Schutzhund have actually been quite useful for Rally), so it became a matter of timing the “down” command and timing a smooth stop on my part. Going straight back into heeling from the down wasn’t a problem either so I think we’re good on this exercise.

I have to make sure Axel is still bilingual and practice with English commands this week. I usually train and trial using German commands. Yes, again partly due to the Schutzhund delusions. But my original reason for switching to German commands for training is because it’s so nice to have both casual and strict commands. So if I tell a dog “down” in the house, I don’t really care if he takes a little while to get comfortable or if he lies down next to me or in the other room, or if he gets up and lies down again somewhere else. “Platz” on the other hand means drop like a rock on my command and don’t move at all till I tell you to.

Just a week to go, I’m going to miss my big obnoxious puppy!

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 18 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 240 of 274)

Saturday Freya: last class of the session

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Today was the last class of Freya’s current group obedience class session. Much of the class was devoted to our final exams, where we each ran through a series of exercises similar to a Novice obedience routine, and received an oral critique from our instructor afterwards. The best-performing Intermediate dog and the best-performing Advanced dog each get small trophies.

Today the best-performing Advanced dog was Freya! It was nice to have the star student at the other end of the leash. I’m more accustomed to my canine teammates being class clown or junior gang banger, although they all come around eventually.

Freya always spends a good part of the afternoon napping after we return home from class. Thinking apparently wears her out.

I took the opportunity to work with Axel on the AKC Rally Novice exercises he hasn’t learned yet. The Call Front-1, 2, 3 Steps Backward actually went very well. He caught on right away to what he was supposed to do. Stop and Down didn’t go quite as easily, so I stopped before he… make that I… really screwed something up and we’ll work on that tomorrow.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 17 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 239 of 274)