Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

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.

Freya’s weigh-in (25 of 30/91 of 274)

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As promised, today we stopped at the vet after obedience class for a weigh-in for Freya. I was quite relieved to learn that she had in fact lost weight during the six weeks since her annual check-up. Not quite so happy that it was just two pounds when she should have lost somewhere between 4-6 pounds, but at least she didn’t gain weight!

Seriously, this just underscores what I mentioned in Thursday’s post. In addition to switching to the low-fat formulation of her current food and monitoring calorie count of her regular meals, I really need to also be more careful about monitoring her treats.

I found quite a bit of helpful information at the Assocation for Pet Obesity Prevention website, including a list of calorie counts for many popular pet treats. Unfortunately, calorie counts for some of Freya’s favorite Wellness treats aren’t included, nor are they given on the Wellness website. I’ll try emailing them for the information, though.

I haven’t done well at increasing exercise, so that will be a greater priority as well. Masha left a good training suggestion in the last post’s comments: using a toy instead of treats as a motivator. I’m going to test it out in our next training session. I’ve had a few dogs who just got way too amped up with a toy as a reward, but it’s definitely worth a try.

Musical surprises (24 of 30/90 of 274)

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I’ve told you before about my love for the mobile versions of internet radio services Slacker and Pandora. Due to music licensing restrictions, neither service can play music on demand, and each service picks songs for your user-created custom stations in a slightly different way. The song choices I get on both services are usually right on the money. But recently I got a couple of unexpected results.

My main custom station on Slacker is built mostly around ’70s-’80s classic rock: Styx, Journey, Foreigner, Scorpions, Rush… you get the idea. I’ve had that station for a while, so I’ve done enough favoriting, banning and skipping to give it a good idea of what I like. Imagine my horror when my morning commute was marred by the sound of my least favorite REO Speedwagon song ever. REO Speedwagon is not one of the artists I selected for my station, and even if I had, the song “Take It On The Run” would have been banned straightaway.

Let me digress. Back in high school and college, I was definitely a fan of REO. Stuff like “157 Riverside Avenue,” “Roll With the Changes,” “Riding the Storm Out”… that stuff. I was quite eagerly awaiting the release of Hi Infidelity. It was one of the biggest disappointments of my young life. Song after song of unmanly whining. Ewwww. Just ewwww. In my mind, even to this day, the worst offender was “Take It On The Run.”

I may have been too stunned to click the button to ban the song. I don’t really remember, so there is a chance I will have to repeat the sad experience at least one more time.

It didn’t take much digging to find out why Slacker thought I might enjoy the song. Seems that there is a double live album from the “Arch Allies” tour that Styx and REO Speedwagon did together in 2000. Who knew!

Pandora’s surprise for me was a bit more pleasant, given that it wasn’t from Hi Infidelity. It even sort of played into my obsession with imaginary bands. I would have never expected any of my Pandora stations to serve me up a song by Hannah Montana [warning: link auto plays music/video]. Nor would I have expected to love the song, “If We Were a Movie,” [warning: link auto plays music] but I do!

This one wasn’t that hard to track down either. The station I was listening to was built around Liz Phair, and this song actually has a similar style to one of the songs on her self-titled album. You know, the second one where she went all power-pop instead of singing about blow jobs. Wait, she still sang about blow jobs. Anyway. The choice did make sense.

Much better surprise from Pandora than from Slacker, but I still love both services.

Counting canine calories (23 of 30/89 of 274)

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Dr. Patty Khuly at Dolittler had a great post today about calorie counting for fat dogs. The following excerpt is something that really hit home, related to the lovely Freya and the handsome Axel:

The first sticking point? It always comes down to measuring everything the dog eats and does. The kids might have fed X. I didn’t know the treats counted. (Seriously?) My mother-in-law sneaks her food under the table.

While we of course know that treats count, we haven’t been monitoring the types and amounts of treats, as well as food used in training sessions, as closely as we should. I am sure that as I start keeping track, I will be surprised and somewhat dismayed, much as I was when I’ve kept a food diary for myself and realized how much mindless snacking happens during a typical workday.

As you may recall, Freya has some weight to lose and Axel has some weight to gain.

In the month since he’s been home, Axel’s put on several pounds. Once we got a good handle on the amount of energy he expends when spending part of the day in a kennel run and part as a house dog, as compared to being a full-time house dog, it was pretty easy to recalculate the amount of food he needs when living with his handler, and the smaller amount of food he needs when living at home with us.

I must admit that I have not been as diligent as I should have been about getting enough additional exercise for Freya (and myself). I just found a nearby source for the low fat formulation of California Natural Lamb and Rice, which is one of the only foods that Freya can eat due to her mild IBS. I was quite relieved to find that she likes it, and that she can eat it with no tummy troubles, so that will be a help in reducing her calories and still letting her eat enough to feel full.

I mentioned in my earlier post that Freya’s vet calculated her calorie requirements. At the time I did not ask for the details (math is not my strong point and I do trust our vets), but I can now double-check using the information in today’s Dolittler post:

Base calories/day (resting energy requirement) = 30 x (your dog’s weight in kg) + 70
* Weight loss needed, neutered/spayed = 1 x base calories
* Weight loss needed, intact = 1.1x base calories

Freya: [(30 x 42 kg) + 70] x 1 = 1330 calories
California Natural Lamb and Rice = 430 calories per cup
1330 / 430 = 3.09 cups per day (if no treats or extras were fed)

She gets 2 to 2.5 cups per day, plus treats, so that should be fine, which agrees with our vet’s calculations. That is, unless the treats I’m using turn out to be more caloric than I thought. I’ll need to track down the information on that, which was another suggestion from the Dolittler post. It is very true that caloric information for treats is not always on the package, but often easy enough to find on the manufacturer’s websites, so it is time for me to do some research and maybe switch some treat choices. I often use “people food” for training treats, usually hot dogs or frozen meatballs, so it will be easy enough to switch to the low fat versions of those items as well.

I’ll stop at the vet on the way home from training on Saturday and get a current weight for Freya, and see how we are doing so far.

(PS: This is also the Day 7 assignment for 31DBBB. Yes, I’m a bit behind, but still working through this excellent series!)

Vote early and often (22 of 30/88 of 274)

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Even though I’m not a big fan of online contests in general, I am always happy to vote for the children, pets and creations of my actual friends and family members if you ask via email, even mass email. I’ll even post your request to one of my blogs and/or social networks if appropriate.

Same goes for friendly acquaintances and their voting requests. And I might even vote at your request if I don’t know you, but you post it to a forum, mailing list or social network where we share a common interest or mutual friends. Or if your Tweet is cute and clever enough.

That is, if you post a polite request or two or maybe even three. NOT if you post every freaking day with multiple thread bumps, or if you email me and I have no clue who you are. If you do that, I will go out of my way not only to NOT vote for your child/pet/artwork/photo, I will vote for one of your competitors. If multiple votes from the same IP address are permitted, every single computer in my house and in my unfortunately rather small office will vote against you (that is still a total of approximately 25 computers).

That is all.