Puppy Class

Miki (and us!) had a very good time at the final puppy class on Tuesday night. There was a bit of training, but mostly it was contest, fun, and games.

I took some time at the beginning of the class to walk around and get some “portraits” of our classmates. Maverick is the gray-and-black dog — he’s huge, and is just learning how to play well with others. His owner has the biggest treat bag (the size of a grocery shopping bag) we’ve ever seen, and its easy to see why. Gracie is the golden retriever; a very pretty dog, and very attached to her family. Sadie is the black poodle — beautiful and bubbly, always happy.

'Tis a fine class of pooches!

The first event was “recall” — meaning that someone holds your dog (and pretends to be a tree — Bree’s challenge for us humans) while you walk away some distance. Then you call your dog, and the goal is to have the dog run to you. Apparently this is a challenge for some puppies, but not for any in our class — no matter how far apart Bree put us, all of our puppies ran straight to us. Bree declared Miki the winner because “…he has such a cute butt”. Now that’s a good example of female logic!

Last week Bree (our instructor) challenged all of us to train our dogs to do a “trick” of our choice; demonstrating our trick was the next event. I spent hours over the preceding weekend in an attempt to do just that, but I failed miserably. The closest we got to a trick was to train him to reliably lay down, sit up, and spin either left or right, all on a gesture (and the promise of a bit of hot dog!). But that didn’t count. On the theory that he might accidentally retrieve something for us, we tossed out a toy for him — which he promptly pounced on, but just laid down to gnaw on it. Oh, well, so much for Miki’s trick! Some of the other dogs did some very credible tricks — I was most most impressed with Gracie (the golden retriever), who would roll over and do high fives with the little girl who trained her. They were terminally cute together…

The final event — and by far the puppies' favorite — was “play time"! We just let them go, two by two, to have a rough-and-tumble good time. And a great time was had by all!

Now I have to get back to work, so without further ado here are all the photos of the class…

Dogs versus Cats

Living in a household with three dogs and nine cats, I can attest to the accuracy of the following (h/t Tom B.):

THE DOG’S DIARY:

7 am- Oh boy! A walk! My favorite!

8 am- Oh boy! Dog food! My favorite!

9 am- Oh boy! The kids! My favorite!

Noon- Oh boy! The yard! My favorite!

2 PM- Oh boy! A car ride! My favorite!

3 PM- Oh boy! The kids! My favorite!

4 PM- Oh boy! Playing ball! My favorite!

6 PM- Oh boy! Welcome home Mom! My favorite!

7 PM- Oh boy! Welcome home Dad! My favorite!

8 PM- Oh boy! Dog food! My favorite!

9 PM- Oh boy! Tummy rubs on the couch! My favorite!

11 PM- Oh boy! Sleeping in my people’s bed! My favorite!

THE CAT’S DIARY:

Day 183 of my captivity…

My captors continued to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects.

They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while I am forced to eat dry cereal.

The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of escape, and the mild satisfaction I get from clawing the Furniture.

Tomorrow I may eat another house plant.

Today my attempt to kill my captors by weaving string around their feet while they were walking almost succeeded.

Maybe I should try this at the top of the stairs.

In an attempt to disgust and repulse these vile oppressors, I once again induced myself to vomit on their favorite chair - must try this on their bed.

Decapitated a mouse and brought them the headless body in an attempt to make them aware of what I am capable of, and to try to strike fear into their hearts.

They only cooed and condescended about what a good little kitty cat I was.

This is not working according to plan.

There was some sort of gathering of their accomplices. I was placed in solitary confinement throughout the event.

However, I could hear the noise and smell the food. More important, I overheard that my confinement was due to my powers of inducing something called “allergies."

Must learn what this is and how to use it to my advantage.

I am convinced the other captives are flunkies and maybe snitches.

The dog is routinely released and seems more than happy to return. He is obviously a half-wit.

The bird, on the other hand, has got to be an informant. He speaks with them regularly, and I am certain he reports my every move.

Due to his current placement in the metal room, his safety is assured.

But I can wait.

It’s only a matter of time…

Agility Report

And they did great! Here’s Debbie’s report:

We did have a wonderful weekend-I think the Mo really enjoyed some “mom alone” time. The courses on Friday were fun and fast. The JWW’s was a haul ass and run-Mo reallllly likes those. And the Standard was really fun, came in 9 or ten seconds under course time. Saturday-would have had the jumpers BUT mom failed to give a discrimination maneuver to him and he took the wrong jump. I felt so bad because he checked back with me and I didn’t tell him any different-my mistake-good dog! Then on the Standard he got a case of the WHAHOOS! The nose went down in the weave poles and then he was all over the place. HE did the table again, the teeter and the Aframe-too bad you don’t get extra credit for that!

Sunday’s jumpers he knocked a bar when I was doing a rear cross but I think I had him in the right position but he gathered incorrectly and just nicked it enough to bring it down. Then the Standard course was a little jerky on my part (all I could think of was this would be the last ExecA Standard & his title if we got it). I got to the table and put Mo on a sit and then realized the Judge wasn’t counting and I thought OHCRAPDOWN-told Mo to down left out the OH Crap part. Such a good boy you could hear the wind when he downed. We soooo fixed the table problem we used to have. And I slipped at the next to last jump and my signal went awry but he powered over it and finished clean with a little time under to spare.

The courses on Monday were fun and we just whooped them! Our first time in ExecB in both JWW’s and Standard and our first double queue-it just doesn’t get any better-I was so happy with the Mo.

So on his last two legs in ExecA Stand he took a second each time and we were one of two ExecA dogs to finish the coarse clean. Friday I think there were 25 ExecA 20inch dogs running against us and then down to 20 for his last leg. I got 7 perfect weave poles out of eight and lots of focus and one very happy tired brown dog! Who got lots of treats......

The bottom line: qualified in 5 of 8 runs, placed (second) in 2 runs, got his Excellent A title, and on his very first day as Excellent B in both jumpers and standard…he double Q’d (qualified on both jumpers and standard)!

Debbie is pretty tired, but Mo’i looks like he’s ready to rumble some more. Watch out, border collies — the Mo Man is on your tail!

Note: this was posted over Debbie’s protest — but I thought it was just too good a brag to hide from the public!

Filaree

At right you see the enemy of dog owners in the chaparral. This stuff goes by several common names, including “red-stemmed filaree” and “stork’s beak”. The botanical name is Erodium cicutarium, and it’s a member of the geranium family. It is an invader, not a native plant.

And it is evil. Pure, unadulterated evil. Those *$%&(@#$ seeds screw themselves into our dog’s coats, and then (if we fail to immediately find and remove them) sometimes manage to work their little pointed heads into the dog’s skin. One site describes the seeds this way:

Each “storks bill” actually is five seeds, each with the long tail tapering out to the end of the “bill”. These tails are tightly bound and make the central, elongated “bill”. At maturity, what becomes the corkscrew peels off the long “bill” and starts to curl, remaining attached to the seed. The familiar corkscrews then twist into the soil as they go through day-night cycles of wetting and drying, each time the spiral forces the sharp seed deeper into the soil. Eventually the seed breaks off, leaving hundreds of cork screws in any square meter.

Ouch! Our dogs have webbed feed, and those webs are particularly vulnerable. Debbie is so frustrated by these seeds that she’d be happy to use chemicals, radiation, or even fire to reduce our yard to bare dirt — just to avoid these seeds.

But bare dirt is a really bad idea in the chaparral, as the resulting erosion would create serious problems for us.

I managed to do a bit of research on Erodium cicutarium this weekend, and I think we may be able to help our problem a bit through the miracle of chemistry. I’ve order some MCPA and 2,4-D herbicides (the recommended brews), and we will be doing some experimentation this summer. I’m hopeful that one or the other of these chemicals will take out the Erodium cicutarium, but allow some native in its stead.

The most interesting web sites I found are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here — but there were lots more. Obviously we are not the only people who hate this noxious, evil weed…

Pioneering Pine

While mowing the stretch of hillside above our stand of Italian Stone Pines (Pinus pinea), I came across three small seedlings that certainly appear to be one or two year old Italian Stone Pines.

It’s a bit of a mystery how the seedlings could be where they are, though — I suspect an animal was involved. Pine seeds are, of course, in pine cones — and unless pine cones are embued with magical powers, they don’t normally roll uphill. So I’m guessing a bird or a rodent moved those seeds uphill 20 or 30 feet.

These Italian Stone Pines do remarkably well in the chaparral zone — they don’t need good soil (and that’s a good thing around here!) and they don’t need much water as they have a wonderfully deep tap root. When we first bought our place seven years ago, we also had about six large Monterey pines — all of which died just two or three into the drought years. The Italian Stone Pines never even looked peaked…

Anyway, it’s nice to see them propagating…maybe I’ll end up with an Italian Stone Pine forest!

Monkey Flowers

The “Bush Monkey Flower” or “Sticky Monkey Flower” (Diplacus aurantiacus) is a common native that is in full bloom right now in our area. It is especially beautiful this year; I’ve no idea why that is so. The color varies from an even paler orange than these in my yard to a very deep reddish-orange. According to several web sites I read, the plant gets its common name from the resemblence of the flowers to a grinning monkey’s head. Riiiiight. I suspect some botanist was smoking loco-weed when he came up with that one! The leaves really are sticky, though. The stands that are near our pine trees have their leaves covered with pine pollen…

There are a dozen or so stands of Monkey Flower in the cleared part of our yard (about 3.5 acres), every last one of them in a rocky area with partial shade. And indeed the literature avers that this is exactly the situation they like. The rest of our property (another 6+ acres) is covered in chaparral growth that is for the most part taller than the Monkey Flowers, so it’s hard to say how many more we have. However, on a walk along a trail I’ve cut that’s perhaps 1000 feet long, there are 8 stands of them — all around rocky formations, and all under the 4 to 6 foot high chaparral “canopy”. You could infer several hundred stands from that, much more common than it is in my cleared yard — which makes sense, given that it doesn’t like full sun…

Anyway, here are some photos of the stands in our yard:

Miki and Rocks

With just a little bit of encouragement, Miki will now zoom right up the steepest of rocks in our yard. He seems to have very little trouble getting up even the nearly-vertical sides of some of them, happily scrabbling until a paw randomly finds a grip, then he zooms up a foot or so and does it again. Eventually he gets to the top of just about any rock. In the far-right photo, that’s exactly what he just did.

But once at the pinnacle of a boulder, he’s not quite so sure what to do next. If the rock is less than about five feet high, eventually he’ll screw up his courage and leap. If it’s taller, he’ll sit there and wait for me to come rescue him.

That’s what’s happening in the left-hand photo — and I’ve enlarged his expression in the center photo. Doesn’t he look like he’s saying “Yo! Human! Get over here and get me down!"?

He really, really doesn’t like scrambling down the side of a steep rock. His claws are useless in that direction, though his pads would cling quite well — he just doesn’t seem to understand that…

Miki was home alone with Dad and Lea this weekend, as Debbie was up in Pomona at an agility meet (where Mo’i got FIVE Qs! And he’s now in Excellent B for both jumpers and standard! And he DOUBLE Q’d on Monday!). In between weed-whacking battles, we had some training sessions, both with Miki and with Lea.

Today we had some especially good sessions, from the dogs' perspective…because we had HOT DOGS! I’m convinced there’s nothing on this planet that a dog likes better than hot dogs. Both Miki and Lea are usually gentle food takers (that is, they refrain from chomping off your fingers when you’re giving them a morsel). But with hot dogs…they both basically lose their little minds. They can scarcely contain themselves while waiting for their treat — and when they go to grab it, if your finger happens to be between their jaws, well…that’s really just your tough luck is what they say. Getting the hot dog definitely has priority over leaving dad’s fingers intact. The moment I click the clicker and say “Yes! Good dog!", they’re trembling with hot dog anticipation. If I wait too long (say, more than 10 picoseconds) after clicking before stuffing a hot dog segment into their maw, they lose their ability to sit still. They just gotta have that hot dog! Now! Lea, after about 10 minutes of training exercises, just goes on strike — she refuses to do any exercises and just chases the hand with the hot dog treats!

But those very high-value treats did help focus them on their lessons, in the sense that they would do anything (if they could just figure out what it was!) to get that treat. I had more success with both of them today than I have in any prior training session…

Cats and Hummers

Maka Lea (our most recently-acquired feline, with a neurological problem but otherwise a very nice cat) is watching hummingbirds — albeit a little differently than usual…

We have several hummingbird feeders hanging in our north-facing windows, and they are especially busing in the early mornings and evenings of summer. Our cats all love to sit and watch the hummingbirds. They’ve long since learned that they can’t get to the hummingbirds ('cause of course they’d just love to catch one!), but they never seem to tire of just watching them. Maka Lea, however, is contemplating the shadows of the hummingbirds, cast on our hallway wall by the early morning sunlight slanting in the window…