Author: Elaine

Commiseration

Image

Folly, the black cat, seems to be commiserating with Brody, who had stifle surgery on Thursday. (There is also a Jack Russell Terrier named Jamie in this photo, almost blocked by the elizabethan collar.) Brody and Folly belong to a friend of ours, who is still shell-shocked by the news, after surgery, that Brody would have to be kept on a leash for twelve to sixteen weeks. The vet had neglected to mention that aspect in the pre-surgical briefing. Yesterday, Jack and I took down the portable fence panels that partitioned our dog run, and used them to build a small pen in our friend’s back yard so Brody would have a place outside where could be put for brief periods.

do re Mia

Mia seems to be making herself at home: by sleeping on our furniture, while sorting through our wastepaper baskets, and by retrieving items that I would have thought would be out of reach of a small, elderly Dalmation. She may be eleven, but she is still agile. Fortunately, at one point I was trained by much larger Dobermans, who were even more agile, and I imagine I will pick up the knack of dog proofing the house again.

I lost track of her last night, and had a panicky few moments before I thought to call downstairs on the intercom to discover, that yes, she was down there with Jack. I would say she is bonding with us fairly well, though I suspect from Mia’s point of view, she is making sure that the human residents are firmly under her little paw.

Lody continues to be very accepting of her. Last night, the two dogs looked like they were even thinking about playing with each other but decided not to rush into anything. There are quite a few dog toys strewn around the exercise room right now: toys that Lody had ignored for months but is now getting out of the toy basket to see if she can mix things up a bit.

Comments on comments

Camera: Paula asked me about my camera: I took the photo Small Rapids with my Kodak EasyShare DX7590. It has an optical 10x lens, and I am very fond of it. It works quite well with my operating system of choice: Ubuntu Linux.
Crazy Glue: I still get the occasional comment on I Hate Crazy Glue. Other people seem to hate it too, probably because they find my post while desperately searching for a way to get the stuff off their fingers.
Comment Spam: I noticed, in the ten minutes that it took to upgrade my weblog to WordPress 2.0.1, one spam comment was attached while I was upgrading. (When upgrading WordPress, it is advised that you turn off all your plugins, and I use the plugin Spam Karma to prevent spam comments.) Fortunately Spam Karma worked after the upgrade, but I thought it was a sad commentary that I received spam comment in a ten minute window.

More Mia

Right now, I am doing a little Mia training. The first time a small Dalmatian crawls her front half into your lap as you sit at the computer and looks at you with her soulful eyes is rather cute. By the third time the cute starts wearing off, especially if the dog’s nails need trimming. So I am reprising a clicker training method I used when Lody would do the same thing. I have a stash of hot dog jerky by my keyboard, and when I observe that Mia is lieing on the floor beside me, I click her and then give her a piece of hot dog jerky. The real trick is using one’s peripheral vision to observe whether the dog is down, since even glancing rewards the dog, and I don’t want to reward her unless she is lieing down.