Breaking the Law

Some guys do have it coming to them...

No, not me.

We had a little excitement in the neighborhood today with a bunch of cops apparently staking out a house just down the street.  I went to take Tessa to the park like I do every day around 4ish.

A couple of police cars were blocking off the side street the borders our neighborhood park, along with a white SUV.  I was working with Tessa off-leash and paying more attention to her than anything or I might have noticed that the SUV was an unmarked car and there were a few more black & whites down the block.

As I approach the intersection a cop comes over to ask me where I'm going and I explain I was taking Tessa to the park.  She was behaving very well and I don't think the officer even noticed she was off-leash, which is big no-no.  He didn't realize that behind the houses along our street there was a small park and it took me a moment to point out the entrance to the park.  Since the commotion was down the side street some, he had no problem with me taking her into the park, "as long as I come out the same entrance".

That sealed it for me he didn't know about the park because there are only three entrances and all of them are on the Southern portion of the park while all the "fun" was outside of the park's North side.

Evidently somebody called the police with a tip that a fugitive was in our neighborhood and there was a standoff.  Eventually they got a hold of the guy five hours later and a K9 unit was sent in. The dog injured a woman at the house (non-life threatening.....WTF does that really mean?) and they caught their man.

The weirdest part of the story is this guy's name,  Ija Flappingeagle, and his mug shot.  The news hasn't reported if he was high at the time of his booking, but it is pretty common to see idiot grins at the Sheriff's Office.

Human Training

Tessa has had me as her human for a few years now and she finally has me broken in.  She has her routine and is pretty good about keeping me to it.

In the morning when I am awake she jumps halfway on the bed so I can pet her.  She gets several false starts when she thinks I'm getting up.  She'll rise from her bed on the floor beside my bed, stick her nose over the bed and give a good sniff.  Often she'll do that thing where she puffs out some air to get things moving for a good sniff.  If that doesn't get me moving, she twirl around and lay back down for a quick nap, often with a loud "hrrumpf".

All these things wake me up in the morning, but I'm learned to ignore most anything she does except those times she gets a cold nose or a well-placed lick in.

Once I'm deemed "awake" and she gets here hello in, we get up out of bed and stagger into the kitchen where I make sure she has feed and water.  I might putter around a bit, but if I don't give her some extra petting in right off the bat she'll usually wander back into the bedroom and either go to sleep in her bed, or if my wife is still in bed, she'll jump up and lay down there.  She generally will not jump up if I'm in bed, unless I just got home from being out and she didn't get enough attention when I returned.

Once my morning ablutions are finished, she wants to go to the park.  In the summer I'll take her in the morning, but the other seasons I prefer to take her in the afternoon.  Tessa thinks that she is a working dog and being part black lab, she's partially right.  Her "job" is to fetch the ball.  In the winter I'll swap the ball out for a cloth training dummy.  Tessa usually gets to walk to and from the park off-leash, as long as she behaves and doesn't walk too far ahead.  She is great about not crossing the streets until she is told to.  At the park she gets to stay as long as she likes, usually only about 10 minutes.  When we get home she gets a treat if she behaved well, which is most every day.  It doesn't matter what she gets as a treat, as long as she gets one.  Sometimes she gets a bit of rawhide, or she might get a biscuit.  Tessa generally will not accept treats unless she has earned it.  Well, technically that isn't true.  When we go to the pet store and they offer her a treat she will take it, but she won't eat it.  She'll either dump it on the floor right then and there or she'll take it outside and then dump it.

Most of the rest of the day is spent sleeping, annoying the cats, running outside to crap in the backyard, or just trying to get some more petting in.  She's allowed to eat all day, but meal times are roughly 9 AM and 7 PM.  She snacks on her food all day, bringing in a mouthful at a time and dumping it on the floor far away from her bowl to eat a single piece of kibble at a time.  I don't get it and I've given up trying to change her behavior.  If she ignores one of her dump piles I'll tap my foot next to it.  She'll come over an clean it up pretty quickly.

She has a second bed in the living room, next to the loveseat.  She spends most of her day there and tries to stay up as long as we do, but sometimes she just decides it is time for bed and wanders off to her "real" bed in the bedroom.  If I'm staying up and my wife goes to bed early, Tessa goes with her in the bedroom and my wife's cat comes to spend time by me.

When I do go to bed, Tessa has to say goodnight.  She'll jump up so her front paws are one me and she'll just lay into me and let me pet her for as long as I like.  When I'm done she just gets down.  Sometimes I'll let her jump on the bed so I can be lazy and pet her more easily with both hands, but the second I stop petting her, she jumps down.  She does the normal turn or two before laying down and quickly drifts off to sleep.  If she has little doggie nightmares (about once a week) I'll wake her up by petting her and telling her it's ok.  She calms down quickly and goes back to a calm sleep.

Tessa has me trained well.

Washing the dog

For those of you who may be unaware, dogs tend to get dirty and stinky.  Even when they look clean, they can often smell horrible.  For an animal that is all about smells, I cannot understand why they tolerate getting so funky.

My dog Tessa is no exception.  Fortunately for me, she has a very thin coat which doesn't seem to get ripe so quickly.  My problem is that even though she's a Black Lab mix, she doesn't like the water very much.  Once I was able to coax her into the local stream and she had a great time.  On a daily basis though, if it is much more than a heavy dew on the grass she'll pass.

Getting her to take a bath was near impossible.  At first we took her to one of those dog wash businesses.  There seems to be quite a few of them, but the one I liked was DO It Yourself Doggie Detailing. I liked the high was basins they had with an anchor point to clip your dog's collar to.  Tessa was a bolter and even with two of us there I was afraid she'd jump off the high tub and crash on the floor.  She tried to do just that a couple of times.

The easiest was to get her washed was to have someone else do it.  I know, brilliant.  I'm too cheap to drop her off for a wash & wax with a pedi and mani.  I don't pamper my wife that way, why the hell would I do it for my dog? Of course, if Carolyn wanted a full "work-up" I might be so inclined, but back to the dog.  I used to travel a lot for work.  On longer trips I'd bring my wife.  Also we went on a few vacations or quasi-vacations every year.  When that happened instead of taking Tessa to a friend or family member's house we'd drop her off at Boise Kennels.  I'm a big fan of this place and Tessa is too.  This kennel has been in business since 1939.  Unlike a lot of the kennels here in town, this place is about taking care of your dog, not pampering it.  We have doggie daycares here in Boise that treat your dog better than some daycares probably treat your kids.  Tessa doesn't need to have her own TV set and I don't need to be able to watch her 24/7 on a webcam.  She stays in an appropriate sized cage while she is there and taken out 5 times a day to stretch her legs and do her business.  Once a day she gets played with for 15'.  If she was up for it, she'd get to go swimming every day also.  This setup really isn't far from what happens at home.  She prefers to keep in her small space and go out once a day for about 10 minutes of play.  When we go to our park she decides when it is time to come home. Tessa loves Boise Kennels, she doesn't even look back to say goodbye when we take her.

Back on topic: when she stays for 4 days they wash her and trim her paws.

This last year we haven't gone out of town as much so I've taken to washing Tessa at home.  She doesn't like it, but she behaves much better.  I can coax her into the bathroom, but she won't go into the tub voluntarily.  No amount of cajoling or ordering works.  I have to pick her up and plop her in. She doesn't whine or bolt, but if she is a bit of a sly escape artist.  She'll wait a couple seconds if you have your guard down and then get out.  As long as I keep myself on the edge of the tub and praise her constantly we both can make it through.

When getting ready to go through another washing ordeal, I tried looking around for dog shampoo.  Everything seemed to be either crap, expensive, or just expensive crap.  I even found a John Paul Mitchell brand of dog shampoo.  Now I'm not a big designer-brand-name kind of guy, but this sounded awfully familiar.  A quick internet search tells me that I'm thinking of Paul Mitchel shampoo.  Heck, when I do a search I get both shampoos, but the Mitchell isn't on the dog stuff and the John isn't on the human stuff. Guess that is Google for you.

You just know there is some high-end pet shampoo out there that rivals high-end human shampoo.

I had made some dog shampoo in the past.  I cannot remember all of the ingredients, but I did have to go buy Aloe Vera gel.  It was ok, but not really worth the hassle.  Since I was already surfing the web, I did a search for homemade dog shampoo and I found a great, and easy, recipe:

1 Part Antibiotic Hand Soap  to 1 Part White Vinegar

A wet, but happy (and clean) Tessa

Quick, easy, and made with readily available materials. What the hell, worth a shot.  I would have expected it to smell more than it did, but it was easy to use.  It foamed up well and rinsed off very easy.  The best part is that afterwards Tessa did not have that wet-dog smell.  That in itself made this a winner.

Well, the dog got clean, but now I have a helluva mess to clean up in the bathroom.  Oh well, the shower was way overdue for an overhaul anyway.

Some unexpected exercise

It snows in Boise. That's a fact, but in reality it usually doesn't snow very much here at the edge of the high desert. Most of our snow gets caught up in the mountains and held there for months until late spring/early summer (or even late summer in some places) when it melts and we get to play in the river (if you're in to that kind of thing).

This last week or so it has been snowing....a lot. It's been snowing a lot at night and melting off during the day, but around Xmas time we had a cold spell where it didn't melt....and sometime didn't stop snowing. Yesterday it snowed all day long..about 5 inches.

I ended up having to shovel the walk 3 times yesterday. Tessa loves running around the front of the house while I'm shoveling. I was tossing her a retriever dummy for a while, but she was damaging the dummy (should have gotten a canvas one instead of plastic) and I was out there to shoevl, not play with/train the dog.

Update

Carolyn and I have been quite busy the last couple of months with Origins and GenCon. That stuff I generally post on my other blog.

Something else that has happened to us is that we got a dog. Her name is Tessa and she is a graduate of the IDAPI program. She came into the office with me for a couple of weeks as she was intended to be an office dog also, but that isn't working out. The whole idea of an office dog is nice, but not professional enough.

Anyway, I'll post more about her later. For right now, here are some pics to enjoy: