Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Random follow-ups (16 of 30/82 of 274)

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Tonight I’m not up to leading, so I’m just going to follow up on a few things I’ve posted about this month.

  • The Honolulu Heart Program at Kuakini Medical Center, which is home to the longevity study that my dad is part of, has received additional funding. My mom tells me that she and my dad both went in last week for follow-up interviews. Out of the more than 5,800 middle-aged men who started in the study in 1965, about 800 are still alive today. The youngest is 89 and the oldest is 106. No word yet as to whether my dad has that longevity gene, or whether I inherited it from him.
  • Tripawds, the wonderful support site for canine cancer patients and accident victims who have or need amputations, is one-third of the way to their server upgrade fundraising goal!
  • Is it just me who is irritated by the media sources who are reporting that First Dog Bo Obama is on his fourth home? They count the breeder as #1, first owner as #2, trainer as #3, and White House as #4. Sorry. WRONG. You don’t count the breeder, and you don’t count trainers or handlers as homes either. Bo is on his SECOND home.
  • I was very happy to get the news that K9 University has started drop-in Obedience/Rally Obedience classes on Wednesday evenings. That should help greatly with our quest to get Freya’s Rally Obedience titles.

Dog-friendly rides (15 of 30/81 of 274)

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Last week at the New York Auto Show, Honda showed its Dog Friendly version of the Element. Press release and photos can be seen here:

New York 2009: Dog Friendly Honda Element Concept

Although my Rottweiler wrecking crew would surely make short work of the soft fabric crate and the cushioned pet bed, I still think it’s cool that Honda would run with a concept like this, and with features that really will be useful to many dog owners.

I seem to remember this being done before, though, but I can’t find any online references to a dog-friendly minivan done several years ago by one of the American carmakers (I want to say it was a Chevy Astro, but I’m not 100% sure on that). I didn’t save the paper article and apparently I didn’t blog about it, nor post to any forums either!

When I got my first Rottweiler Heidi, I still had a 1986 Honda Civic CRX. That would be the 2-seater hatchback. It was a good thing we had only one Rottweiler for a while. I was a bad dog owner and let her ride in the passenger seat, usually unrestrained. Fortunately she was one of those dogs that would fall asleep in the car almost immediately. I learned to fully recline the passenger seat before letting her in the car and surprisingly enough, we were both happy and comfortable and never got hurt.

That car was replaced by a Honda Civic coupe, and my husband replaced a Thunderbird with the ultimate dog-friendly vehicle, a Chevy Suburban. Shortly after Civic #2 was replaced by a Dodge Caravan minivan, he traded in the Suburban for the light truck he really wanted and ever since then, the dogs have had a Caravan as their main transportation. The newest one was just picked up in March. The middle row of seats immediately got folded into the floor, and probably won’t emerge until it’s time to sell or trade.

The Caravan was not my first choice vehicle, but it’s been a good one for us. I’d be all over the Dog Friendly Honda if it were an Odyssey though!

TiVo (14 of 30/80 of 274)

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It might come as a surprise to know that we haven’t made the move to HD TV here yet. Our television sets generally die at that inopportune moment when new technology is either too expensive or too rare to consider purchasing. Our current television is still working fine, and was purchased when HD TV was still way overpriced. We may not make the move to HD TV until this set breaks.

So I haven’t had a need to upgrade our TiVo to the HD version. In fact, I really haven’t thought about our TiVo much at all, except to program in our season passes. We have had a TiVo since the Philips Series 1 versions. The lifetime subscription cost only $199 back then, and when we bought a Series 2, they were still offering a one-time subscription transfer at no cost. Since lifetime means the lifetime of the equipment, not the owner, yes, we did pretty much luck out.

But I am not here to brag that I haven’t paid for TiVo service in almost ten years. I’m here to say how silly I feel that I hadn’t looked into, and am not making use of, many of the capabilities of my older TiVo system.

After the hell that was attempting to connect a PS/2 game console to our wireless network, I have never attempted to connect anything else that wasn’t a plain old laptop or desktop computer. That includes the TiVo, and apparently a whole bunch of capabilities such as movie downloads, photo and web video viewing, mobile access, and scheduling from the web will be available to me upon connecting the TiVo to the home network.

So I’ll be shopping around for a network adapter, and getting TiVo on our network this weekend, just out of curiosity if nothing else. Scheduling recordings from the web will be worth it, at least!

Worst dog handler in the world (13 of 30/79 of 274)

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EDIT: In addition to being the worst dog handler in the world, I am apparently also still clueless on properly auto-scheduling my posts. Working on it!

It’s been raining all day, and it’s cold and dreary out. The yard isn’t providing a very inviting place to practice obedience with Freya, so I decided to read up on the rules and prepare myself for our stated goal of Freya’s Rally Obedience titles.

It sounds simple enough on paper. All of the exercises are things that Freya already knows from going to group classes for most of her life. She will be handicapped by having the worst dog handler in the world (me) on the other end of the leash.

I really enjoy working with the dogs. I am also not very good at it. I’m not too bad at reading a dog, but my timing for rewards and corrections is not very good. My reaction time is mediocre in general: I wasn’t any good at drag racing either. I almost tripped over my own dog at a big Rottweiler specialty. It was definitely my fault. Judge said “forward” and dog went forward, but I almost went left. I have not been in an obedience ring since then. Oh, yes… I was on a trial field, which isn’t technically a ring. Same dog, similar disastrous results. Her fault that time for getting up from the long down.

So I am trying to visualize a perfect performance. They say it helps. When it stops raining, I will get back to reality and visualize (and by that, I mean stumble through) our actual performance. I only hope Freya doesn’t love the sound of laughter from outside the ring the way that Heidi did, or we truly are doomed!

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!