Archie and His Tennis Balls, Continued

It's hard not to compare Archie to Harry: male, black and white smooth fox terriers, sweet and loving and astonishingly stubborn. And both utterly obsessed with tennis balls. That's not particularly fair to Archie--he is very much his own personality. But the overlap between them is surprising.

I had to keep all tennis balls picked up when Harry was around because he would guard them rather fiercely. Mine! All mine! I was able to channel his energy into a great career in flyball, but that only fed his obsession with tennis balls. I have no doubt that Archie would also do well in flyball, sailing over the start/finish line shaking his head and growling with the ball in his mouth as he passed the dog coming in, just as Harry did. Mine! But I prefer to keep Archie focused on agility for now.

Even though Archie is not particularly guardy for a fox terrier, I still have to keep tennis balls picked up. Otherwise, he would either bury me in a mound of them while I was studying (he picks the balls up and drops them inches from me, letting them bounce a few times, then repeats this...endlessly) or he would chew on one constantly like a large yellow cud. That's not great for his teeth.

I can't even say "ball" around him--he starts flinging himself around the house with the same energy as if I had said "agility" or "walk". His pupils dilate, his ears come forward. He drools a little. He runs to one of the spots where I store the balls, looking back at me expectantly.

I think there are around 20 or 25 tennis balls in the house. I'm not actually sure of the total count because even though I am vigilant about looking under furniture for them when I clean and picking them up after we play, Archie somehow manages to produce 1 or 2 a week. I have absolutely no idea where he stores them. In fact, I have decided that he makes them. I think Archie has a laboratory somewhere in the house where he conducts his alchemy: turning lead into tennis balls. Retorts bubbling away, flasks of stinky, gem-colored liquids, mortars filled with ashes of newt. 

I have a dog bed in the bathroom because I gave up years ago on peeing and showering alone. Mimi sticks to me like a burr and 99 times out of 100 she will curl up in that bed long before Archie shows up to see what's going on. The other morning, I got out of the shower to find Mimi standing there glaring at Archie who was tightly curled up in the dog bed. Hmm, that's odd, I thought. It wasn't until I finished my routine and was leaving that I found out why he was in the bed--he was curled up on top of TWO tennis balls. Two. Did he lay them like eggs? Did he bring them in from his secret laboratory in anticipation of napping on them during my shower? It is a complete mystery.

Harry, The Tennis Ball, and A Toenail

Harry and I just got back from the vet. He tore one of the toenails on his right rear foot four days ago. It was the only toenail he has that grows sort of normally. He has an autoimmune disease that affects his nail beds so his toenails don't really grow at all, and I haven't clipped his nails in years. So I don't often think to check on this one sort of normal toenail when I clip the other dogs' nails. And it grew really long. So long that it got caught and tore. Caught in what, you ask? Oh, in the grass while Harry was playing fetch with a tennis ball. 

Yeah, he's a couple months shy of turning 16 years old, his eyes are cloudy and he's partially deaf. But he loves his tennis ball! These cool spring evenings we've had for the past few weeks have been perfect--the dogs can get a lot of exercise without overheating.

The toenail didn't tear completely off. I waited, hoping that it might fall off on its own but it got infected (took care of that with some Neosporin and a bandage) and it was clear that I needed to get it dealt with more decisively. And I figured, better for the vet to be the bad guy than me. 

Harry has a senior wellness package with the vet that covers a lot of basics like blood work twice a year but I got an add-on for a bit more money: unlimited visits. In theory, that means I could take him to the vet every single day and, except for meds and consumables, it would cost me nothing. When I bought it, I thought, that's ridiculous, the idea of taking Harry to the vet every day. But these weird things come up and that add-on has more than paid for itself.

The vet got out the clippers and with a quick snip the problem was taken care of. Harry is a stoic dog (most fox terriers are tough little buggers) so he didn't even make a sound. Of course it bled like crazy, toenail and head wounds do that. She bandaged him up nicely and sent us on our way.

So my crazy old dog still loves to chase down a tennis ball. And I am perfectly happy to oblige him, even if we must deal with the occasional toenail incident. In fact, I'm sure that after dinner tonight, he'll be pestering me as usual, giving me that look, that head tilt, nudging me with his nose, all to remind me that it's time to go play!

Another Ridiculous Rant

This definitely falls in the category of "white man's burden" but I just spent, no, make that wasted, over two hours trying to get my laptop back into working order. 

See, I thought that I'd get smart and install some spiffy bibliography management software to help me manage the growing set of PDFs of published papers on poultry and animal nutrition that I am accumulating. I researched the options, then went to the Apple Store in the campus bookstore yesterday to see what kind of academic discount I could get on the gold standard of such software, EndNote. Unfortunately, I was blinded by the seemingly excellent price of an older version of EndNote--about USD 50, which was in the ballpark of some of the other packages out there. I bought it. I had to fiddle around with the installation since I have a Macbook Air which is solid state with no spinning parts of any kind (like a giant flash drive), which means it has no DVD drive. But I got EndNote installed at last. I spent an hour today getting it set up with a small set of references, enough to test formatting and other functionalies.

All seemed to be going well! My advisor Dr. Ch thought it was quite impressive that I would use software to manage PDF literature files.

Then this evening I decided to get a homework assignment out of the way. I fired up MS Word (I bought the student package of Office 2011 when I got my new laptop)...and Word wouldn't start. The dreaded spinning rainbow pizza, but no Word. 

After several increasingly angry hard shutdowns, I started doing some research on the problem. 

Turns out the seductively priced version of EndNote that I bought is not compatible with MS Office 2011 (the version of the iOS that I am running has also been implicated).

Bitch, you do not mess with my MS Office functions! I blasted that fucking EndNote software into 1 and 0 oblivion.

Word is now working fine. I purchased an upgrade for the EndNote software that is two levels up from my original version--for another USD 100! Suddenly that gold standard bibliography management package is looking gold-plated in cost too. To get it functioning again, I will have to re-install the old version then install the upgrade. But those are tasks for tomorrow as my frustration level is pretty high right now.

Now some of you clever computer types might be shaking your heads and saying, lilspotteddog, lilspotteddog, why are you using that evil MS Office? And I understand, I really do. Microsoft is evil. But I am using it because of compatibility and portability. The blessed trinity of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are widely used in academia even though most of the operating systems are Apple. I would rather focus on content than fight formatting and version and extension problems with every file sharing event. On top of that, I am a power user of Excel and PowerPoint, which means I can really get a lot out of those programs quickly. And although this is a weak argument, I've been using MS Office for decades now. Wah, I don't want to learn how to use new software unless it does something that the holy trinity does not.

But I feel much better now that I've gotten this little rant off my chest. The rest of my Friday evening will go smoothly now. I'll take a break, go outside and throw tennis balls for the dogs (even Harry, although I roll the ball along the ground no more than 10 feet for him; no catching balls in the air for the old man). Then I'll get that homework assignment done. In Word. As I planned to do hours ago.

Dogs and Cats

Yes, I know, I still owe you some tall tales from France. They are fermenting in my febrile brain and need some more time (and pics from fellow travelers).

I'd thought that I would ramble for a bit about Tsingy and the dogs.

Here's a pic of Tsingy napping on my router. It is a rather warm device and she is quite the hothouse flower. She spends her mornings on the router and afternoons in the office window waiting for the sun to come around.

I have an interesting story about the dogs. Without a yard and limited by Mimi's refusal to learn a recall, I haven't done much throwing of the tennis ball. Harry's starting to get a bit too fragile to hit the stone floor at the base of the stairs in chase of a tennis ball so I stopped the ball games in the house altogether. But the other afternoon, I ran into a woman who has been taking my dog training classes (she took DOG-101 then did a full session of Rally with me). She was walking Nellie, I was walking Harry and Mimi, so of course we talked about our dogs! She told me that she was off to play ball with Nellie. I know that she doesn't let Nellie off lead in camp and that she lives in single housing like I do, so I said, oh, where are you going to do that? She said, I use the yards in the empty houses!

What a bloody brilliant idea!

When people move out (leave KSA, move to a different house, whatever), the house may sit empty for months before it is renovated and put back onto the bid list. Some of these houses have quite respectably sized back yards.

I have regular walking routes for the dogs through the neighborhoods (getting us away from the cluster housing ghetto where we live) so I knew exactly which house I would start with.

Thankfully, Harry and Mimi don't bark while playing--chasing the ball is SERIOUS WORK, as you should know--and I go at times of the day when people in the houses on either side aren't likely to be out. We begin our normal walk, then discreetly veer off the sidewalk, up the side of the house and into the back yard. I carry balls and water in a backpack so it all has the feel of an expedition.

Harry is just thrilled. He lives for his tennis ball. He doesn't get to jump up in the air and catch it anymore (he's starting to fall when he lands and I'm also worried about his knees) but he's perfectly happy snagging ground balls over and over again. And Mimi gets to run around like a normal dog! It took me almost 30 minutes to exhaust them this morning. That's a lot of ball throwing.

Summertime

It is far too hot now to take the dogs outside during the day for more than a quick pee. High temps have been pushing 110+F. To make a morning trip to the jebels, I have to get the dogs out by 5am. Harry in particular seems to be suffering from the heat, not too surprising when you realize he will be 12 in just a few weeks.

We've had a spell of very dry, windy weather the past couple of weeks. Somehow the dry heat is easier for us all to tolerate. Once the sun begins to set, temps quickly fall. By about 5:30pm, it is usually in the mid-90s and the dogs and I hit the jebels for 45 minutes or so.

Still, it is hard to make sure they get enough exercise. One of the ways I deal with this is to play ball in the house. The video below isn't fancy but I think you get the idea! The dogs love this game.

Jack Playing Ball with Dyna

Here's a silly video of Jack and Dyna playing ball in the backyard earlier this summer.

A tired dog is a good dog

Ever since I got my first smooth fox terrier (Harry Houdini), that phrase has been one of my mantras. These dogs may be small but they have incredible amounts of energy. Some people might describe them with pejorative terms such as "hyper." I prefer "high energy" or "really really active." But semantics aside, I will admit that it takes a lot of effort to get these dogs tired.

I spend at least an hour every evening trying to make my dogs tired and thus good. One of the best ways to do this is to play a very vigorous game of ball. But there's a slight catch. Isn't there always a catch?

For dogs bred to be kept in working pairs and packs, smooth fox terriers are insanely pack aggressive. I can only play with one at a time. Hey, I'm a pretty good dog trainer. I do agility and flyball with terriers. That alone should speak for itself. But I haven't had a lot of success in getting them to "honor" their pack members during play. People with more than one terrier know this as the "terrier code":

1) If I like it, it's mine.
2) If it's in my mouth, it's mine.
3) If I can take it from you, it's mine.
4) If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
5) If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
6) If I'm chewing something up, all the pieces are mine.
7) If I saw it first, it's mine.
8) If you are playing with something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine.

It is so much simpler to just pull them out one by one.

It doesn't matter if we play ball inside or out (it's really hot in north central Texas during the summer so we play in the house fairly often), the other dogs howl and scream in their crates the entire time. You'd think I was sticking them all with hot pokers or some other medieval torture device. No, it's much worse. I'm playing with a dog that isn't them. I get each dog out and throw the ball until they end up stretched out on the tile floor and refuse bring it back to me. Then it's in the crate and out comes the next one. It's a wonderful way to spend an hour with my pups.

Oh, and a tired dog is a happy dog.