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Dogs…

I’ve pretty much always been lucky with dogs. Regrettably they have sometimes not been lucky to have me. I had to become a full adult to understand that training a dog is a matter of teaching them, not breaking them.

Sometimes you’ll see harsh training, and while that terrorizes the dog into submission it also breaks the dogs spirit and you never get to see the actual personality of the dog develop.

As an adult, the last 3 dogs I’ve had, I trained gently and let their personality develop. I find dogs that have personality far more rewarding than those who do not.

Jesse is no different. He’s smart, he does want to please but is easily bored or distracted. So right now we’re concentrating on the basics. No chomping on hands, arms, feet, or clothing. It’s not biting per se, he’s just mouthy and forgets that when he clamps down he can hurt ya.

He’s been remarkably surprised when after a few warnings I bare my teeth and try to chomp him back. Obviously that’s behavior he’s never seen from a human before and he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. I’ve chomped his ear lightly so now he knows I have teeth and am serious when I say NO. He’s only been here 6 days, and is making progress.

Walks are really good unless he sees a rabbit. Then all hell breaks loose. Again, nothing I haven’t dealt with before, and he’s getting much better about responding to commands though there’s still a way to go on that front.

He’s a generally happy pup, and as he’s to getting comfortable he’s also showing me more of who he is.

He is sweet, he’s a trickster, he seems to like a good joke, (even if I don’t seem to get it). He’s strong and fast, he also really seems to want to be all cuddly but then gets distracted with the mouth clamping a bit too hard on my hand, ending the cuddle session. Sunny and Etta both went through a similar phase, (Etta’s I remember all too well and have a scar or two to show for it!)

Right now he’s like a two year old child with boundless energy and even when he’s obviously tired, he fights going to sleep until gravity wins. It’s funny to watch. He’ll be sitting then his eyes start to close, then his behind slides out from under him and he catches himself on the way down.

I don’t think he likes me laughing at him when he does this, but it’s damn cute.

Took him to the vet yesterday because he was upchucking and it sounded like kennel cough. Turns out that’s not the problem, his stomach is a bit upset by the antibiotic he’s on for the next 8 days. That was a vet bill that I wasn’t expecting, but he’s gained a couple of pounds since he came to live with me. So that was good news if only that he’s been able to eat healthy and our twice daily long walks are doing him as much good as they’re doing me.

Multiple “Zoomies” in the back yard are apparently helping him too.

He is a lot of work. I hope at the end of this I’ll have a good trusting and trustworthy dog.

He’s a little defensive of his spaces, it’s going to take some time to teach him what is a problem and what isn’t anything to worry about.

At the moment, I’m having to get up to check on everything he decides to bark about. So he knows I’m interested and from my reaction he’s learning what is normal. Eventually, I’ll be able to tell from his voice if he’s saying “hello” or if the message is, “Dad! There’s something out here you need to deal with NOW!”

He’s talking to the lady next door instead of a full on bark. He says hello to her with a brief woof and then carries on the conversation with a series of low woofs, whines, and tail wags.

This is progress.

He’s taken to responding to my throwing one of his toys off the deck into the back yard by retrieving the toy as part of play and enjoying the stairmaster aspect of running up & down the back stairs. This is expected behavior, what is surprising is that when he’s tired he’ll bring the toy half way up the stairs, look me in the eye and drop it. Then he’ll come up the stairs and lay down. He watches as I go down the stairs to get the toy and seems to enjoy seeing me retrieving.

It’s hard to believe it’s only been a week tomorrow. At the same time I know that I’m looking at a minimum of at least 11 more weeks before he gets the routines and I fully understand what occupies him and satisfies his needs.

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World Meet Jesse, Jesse Meet World.

I mentioned in the last post that we were expecting a new resident.

Here he is. He had no name, no history, and nobody to love. The shelter said he was retriever / husky mix.

That should probably be amended to husky / retriever mix, because he’s a lot more like a husky personality.

He talks, he becomes fixated on things, (sometimes things he really should let go). Trying to dissuade him from digging right now is a major impossibility.

I made the mistake of letting him watch me pull the gopher stakes out of the ground. the small 2 inch diameter holes were all expanded to 12 inch holes in seconds. They were deep enough for him to put his whole head in.

I suppose he was trying to help, but didn’t realize the gopher stakes were to keep gophers out of the yard, not to cover up gopher holes. I’ll admit, his solution was elegant. Dig the little bastards out of the ground and eat them. Thankfully, he didn’t find anything or that would have been a serious mess for day 3.

I decided to call him Jesse after seeing just how fast and agile he is. Jesse Owens, or Jesse James your choice…

The shelter said he was a year old… Uh wrong! he’s still teething. Add that to the husky determination and you get a bit of a buzz saw.

I’ve thus far been able to mostly keep ahead of it, but It’s a challenge to say the least. Vigilance must be 100%. Take your eyes off him for a hot minute and he lives up to his name regarding speed, and you’ll never know what he has in his mouth. think 2 year old human on speed.

On the plus side, I’ve radically increased my activity and surprisingly my BP is down.

More as anything of interest develops.

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Okay I like the look of the new MacOS

It’s almost intangible, meaning it’s tough to describe with words. But the overall effect is visually, the information on the screen “feels” lighter and more open.

Even on my 10 year old 20″ Samsung display the icons and text are crip and clear. On the Retina display of my laptop itself, things “pop” and the OS appears to be as fast as the previous version. Upgrades always worry me because there comes a time when the OS begins to exceed the hardware capability of the computer. In this case, it looks like the improvements haven’t created any noticeable lags or issues.

That may change as I get further under the covers of the system. I know there will be something I use regularly that will be odd or slow, but I haven’t stumbled upon it yet.

The unwritten law of computers is that the problem will not rear it’s ugly head until you’re in a time crunch.

For reference, I’m running on a late 2019 MacBook Pro 13″. While I am interested in the new M1 apple chip Macs, I’m probably going to stick with Intel for at least a couple more generations of the M series. I don’t have the cash necessary to go buying a new Mac every year. The current machine is a replacement for my 6 or 7 year old MacBook Air (It may be older than 7, I honestly don’t remember.)

For me, that’s the beauty of my Mac. They typically have long lives and provide me with great service over their life spans.

Hmm, I just noticed something very neat. it’s a detail, but a nice one.

My Mac changes the background screen image every hour. I’ve had that setting on, on Mac or Windows systems for years. The transparency and tint of the menu bar changes automatically to ensure best readability of the menu based on the background image.

Unlike Windows 10 where the menu bar at the bottom of the screen changes based on the theme (sometimes with unexpected results), this seems to be based on something other than an arbitrary color pallet selection.

I’m just getting to play with the OS this morning. We had a scheduled power interruption last night and by 10:45 PM I’d shut down all the electronics at their surge bars. It was probably un-necessary but I didn’t want to risk my rotating drives getting partial power then power loss, then partial power, then powering up again.

This morning it was like Christmas with me running round flipping on surge protectors and waiting with anticipation as everything came on. Then finally powering up the Mac to make sure all the drives were happy.

It was only after I’d powered the Mac up, that I remembered I had a new OS too.

The Mac startup “Chime” is back. I was like, “Oh, Hello!”

Neat thing was that all the stuff I needed to get done was normal and the OS wasn’t bugging me about all the new features. I finished what I needed to do and when I paused for a bit there was a nice polite notice asking me if I’d like to review the new stuff.

“Good Minion!” My computer is my minion and there’s nothing worse than a minion that gets in the way while you’re trying to accomplish something.

Apple Mail is completely redesigned. It’s going to take some time to get used to that. It’s not bad, just different and when I opened it, the change was a bit jarring. That’s not a criticism, just an observation that the look is very different. I think everything I’m used to is still there just moved around and I’ll have to take some time to find the new locations.

I’m off to find other new features and then to clean the house a bit.

We have a new arrival due later today. There was a young dog we heard about at a shelter. Went down to meet him yesterday and he’s moving in today. He’s probably not going to be feeling all that well when he gets here but over the next few days I’m sure he’ll be entertaining and entertained. Have no idea what his name is, I guess he’ll tell me in due time.

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24 Hour Fitness and I have divorced

Just got the final dissolution papers (in Email) today.

Eh, we had a good run. After pondering the question and visiting a couple of open gyms I decided that without the magic of the big giant eye off the 405 I just wasn’t that into them anymore.

The mega gym that I’d spent so many hours in was “home” and all the other gyms in the 24 hour chain paled by comparison. The local gyms in the chain are simply not that impressive and the clientele is less so.

There was a reason that I liked the more expensive gym, and that reason was that cost limited the clients to people that had some respect for others and typically left the place pretty clean.

The local gyms I visited were, shall we say… shitholes. That is of course when they were open. One actually made me glad I needed to wear a mask, if only I’d had some bleach to spray inside the mask, when I went in.

Should I need the services of a gym, I’ll find one. Until that time, I’ll work around the house and take walks. At least those things, I can do without a mask and without wondering what kind of fungus or other disease I’m being exposed to.

Another tie to my California Life cut. It’s been interesting to discover the threads that bind me to this place and more so how few there are left.

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It’s a weird time of year…

Last week it was in the 40s. Then suddenly the temp dropped a lot. It’s 26°F right now. I’ve cleared the decks and drive way as best I could. I cleared them yesterday and then it started sleeting which froze to the driveway and cleared decks.

So there’s this thin pebbled surface of ice under the light dusting of beadlike snow. Once you clear the beads you can’t go further. The best you can hope for is strong sunlight and maybe the temp getting to 35°F in hopes that the stuff melts otherwise it will become a super slick surface.

The apple tree hadn’t finished ripening the apples yet and now I fear they’re frozen. I suppose apple sauce is in my future.

There’s a couple of humming birds still in residence and I’m in a quandary about refilling the feeder or taking it down for the season. The humming birds are also giving me a look about the feeder being frozen. Sorry guys… not much I can do about it right now. If I refill it, It will probably freeze again.

Later in the week, it’s supposed to be nearly 50°F and the long range forecast suggests that it will be that way until Thanksgiving.

This transition time is always interesting to navigate.