Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Another dog and owner in the big lake

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Last week, Jess Craigie jumped into Lake Michigan to rescue her dog Moxie, who had gone off the pier while chasing seagulls.

Today, a woman jumped into Belmont Harbor to rescue her dog, who had gone into the water while chasing a duck. Woman and dog were not named in the article.

I really hope this is not a trend. Lake Michigan is still extremely cold at this time of year and hypothermia is a real danger. These stories won’t be cute little human interest pieces any longer once they result in serious injury or death of any of the involved parties, or what to me would be even worse, injury or death to a police officer, firefighter or emergency medical personnel who was involved in rescuing someone from an incident probably of their own making.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 11 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 107 of 274)

Love and hate for Twitter links

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I really enjoy finding new blogs, forums and other online resources on Twitter.

One thing that I have really come to hate is the accounts that position themselves as subject matter experts, but are really there just to push their get-(me)-rich-online-quick pyramid scheme. Five tweets that link to possibly relevant resources written by other people, then their scam tweet. Repeat throughout the day. Maybe the whole day if they are automated enough.

That’s annoying enough, but how about the quality, or lack of same, of the actual links? Those possibly relevant resource links are obviously generated by some kind of automatic search. Irrelevant links are just an annoyance, but how about the ones that are just plain wrong? It’s obvious that the tweeter is not monitoring the links in any way.

Example: subject is dogs. Some of the links are stories about sports teams with “dog” nicknames. Annoying, yet harmless. One of the links is to the website of a trainer who has been charged with dog abuse (final outcome still being determined to my knowledge). Annoying and possibly very harmful.

I don’t follow this type of account for long, but I still wonder about what damage they are doing, and I doubt any response I’ve made was enough to counter any bad link.

There are other subject matter experts who do screen their links, and provide valuable and interesting information in addition to promoting their own business. Those I keep following.

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 10 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 106 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)

Where did Friday go?

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I’m not quite sure where Friday went, but somehow I find myself here with only a few minutes left before midnight. One wouldn’t think that getting the minivan set up to dog transporter mode from people transporter mode, and putting a bunch of digital photo printouts into extremely cheap frames would eat up the whole evening!

The canine temperament test starts at 7:30 a.m., which means I will have to be on the road no later than 6:30 a.m. So this will be really short. I’ll be back tomorrow after the test to tell you all about it!

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 8 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 104 of 274)

My dogs love me. But for sure they don’t like…

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Eric Zorn. Or Jon Katz.

Let me backtrack. On Tuesday, Jess Craigie jumped into Lake Michigan to rescue her 2-year-old mixed breed dog, Moxie, who had gone off the pier chasing seagulls at North Avenue beach in Chicago. Both were rescued by the everyday heroes of the Chicago Police Department and Chicago Fire Department, and everyone is going to be fine.

Arguably, Moxie should not have been off-leash, which basically is what started the entire chain of events. And it would certainly be a much different story if Ms. Craigie or a CPD or CFD rescuer had been injured or killed in the process.

Since everyone is alive and well, though, what exactly is the point in an entire column about why our dogs don’t love us? And worse yet, using Jon Katz as the “expert” to “prove” this? A Good Dog is right up, or should that be down, there with Marley and Me as a dog story that brought me to tears, but not for the usual reasons. More like tears of frustration about these dogs’ lives.

My dogs love me. And your dogs (probably) love you. Yes, they are opportunistic little bastards. The way they scheme and scam makes me smile, because it shows me how they think and solve problems. But I am still absolutely sure they love me and my husband. Whether or not we have food or toys or any other thing that dogs supposedly want on us, they still shower us with love (and since they are Rottweilers, vast quantities of spit).

I have never been a fan of Eric Zorn, and his blog post did nothing to change that. Not that he, or maybe any of you, would care.

But my dogs still love me!

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 7 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 103 of 274)