I haven’t posted photos of Ripley and Lucy for a while. Lots of reasons, none of them good ones. So here is Ripley in all her majesty. From this position, she can direct low growls and death rays at the squirrels that dare to come into her yard.
A voice-enabled, waterproof, GPS-enabled cell phone from Pets Mobility tracks your dog’s location. It’s also a two-way cell phone, with an auto-answer feature that puts your voice on speakerphone. You can talk to your pup and he can respond with a bark. The doggy phone has a “call home” button so if anyone finds him, they can use the phone to contact you.
I’m not sure I see the value of talking to my dog, but the rest of it makes sense.
“The Doggie-Poop-Catcher is a palm sized portable poop-catcher with a collapsible frame structure which opens up any plastic grocery bag in a second ( patented ). Then, it catches dog feces before the feces falls onto the ground. How do we do it? We take advantage of the dog’s behavior or their body languages prior to defecation, which is recommended as an exemplary method to clean up after the dog.”
Sorry, no can do. Harvesting the load after the fact is one thing… catching a steaming pile before it hits the ground (even in a plastic bag) is too much for smays.
I emailed a story about how to avoid getting bitten by a dog to my blogging vet pal, Dr. T. Everett Mobley, thinking it might be fodder for his blog (it wasn’t). Here is a portion of his reply:
“I have had a few very severe wounds, as well as many minor ones. Fortunately, most dogs in my situation simply want me to go away, so they bite and let go (pretty soon, anyway). The part about not jerking back is absolutely true. However, one’s first experience probably won’t allow you to avoid that reflex. Unfortunately, I am now able to stand still (while yelling at the top of my lungs) until the dog lets go. The crushing is much more painful and damaging than the punctures. Adding a tearing component is certainly undesirable. Afterwards, I sometimes have to lie down before I fall down.”
Our two Golden Retrievers love the snow. Lucy, the younger dog, cannot contain her excitement .
Dr. Everett Mobley blogs at Your Pet’s Best Friend. He started in September and his posts just get more and more interesting and informative.
Now look at your dog. Notice the parts that look wolf-like and the parts that don’t. What kind of a wolf percentage do you have? Chances are that the lower your wolf-score, the more built-in problems your pet has.
You never know who’s going to be a good blogger. By “good” I mean someone who posts frequently and writes in an open and personal voice. I confess that I find it very gratifying to play even a tiny role in helping someone get started blogging. YPBF is a must-read for anyone with a pet.
I created a little video this afternoon, primarily to get some experience with Apple’s iMovie (on the MacBook). I’ve been using Pinnacle’s Studio 9 (Windows) for a few years and like it a lot. And I’m comfortable with it. And I can’t say the same for iMovie (Mac) so this really wasn’t a fair comparison.
Having said all of that, I find that I can do more with Studio 9. There are probably features in iMovie that I haven’t discovered yet. But my sense is that iMovie is great for making a little DVD of the Easter Egg Hunt or some after-work fetch with your pups (below), but if you want to do much more than a title, some transitions and a music bed… you’ll want something a little more feature-rich. Which I find Studio 9 to be.
But like I said, I’m just groping around here. The video runs 14 minutes and the file is a hefty 21 meg. I optimized for very small screen (about the size of the image to the right). If you expand this to full screen it will look like shit. Keep it small for best results.
We live on a three-acre, mostly wooded, lot. And I challenge you to walk 50 yards without stepping in a pile of Golden Retreiver poop. As he so often does, Dave offers fresh insight on this endless and thankless task. A couple of my favorites:
You shouldn’t use kitchen utensils to pick up canis crap. My neighbor uses a large soup spoon, and I just can’t endorse that. Nothing I would ever put into my mouth will be used to pick up fecal matter, because I’m fairly aloof, and often deep in thought. What if I got confused? The tool you use says a lot about your personality. A scoop indicates a straight-forward person who attacks a job quickly and efficiently. A dustpan-type tool is a sign of creativity, the user approaching the job with a flair for the dramatic. In my case, I use this thing that resembles a piece of earth-moving equipment. It indicates power, control, and a penchant toward genius.
The embargo has been lifted on this year’s Golden Retreiver Holiday Card. Barb has mailed to her list but I’ll got right up to New Year’s Eve and still miss some folks. This year’s theme is Mardi Gras. I don’t think this has anything to do with Katrina…Barb just likes the masks.
If you can imagine the patience required to shoot this photograph, you begin to understand how it has been possible for Barb to live with me for 28 years.
I paid about $500 for Barb’s Treo 600 a couple of years ago when they first came out. The Treo 650 is now the smartest of the “smart phones” and the 600 has dropped to about $300. Whatever value you choose to assign, it’s still the most expensive thing eaten by one of our pups.