The Difference between Men and Boys

is the resolution of their toys.

Fourteen miles in on a twenty-one mile hike

I've seen them before.  I ought to know what they are.  I do not.  Please enlighten me in the comments.

The hills were alive with Swallowtail Butterflies.

Dock diving demo at the new Leerburg storefront

Across the road a hen heading back to her nest

A Fetching Time At Batting Practice

She did this for 45 minutes on Thursday and even though she was a melting mess after all that time, I still had to be the one to call it off.

Girls Just Wanna Hunt

Sparta just wants to go about Darwin's work.

She discovered a fresh den under a brush pile.  It appeared to be occupied but I had to pull her out and go to the pay job.

Noise Desensitizing

He'd rather be the one doing the killing but, all in all, Stoic could care less about firearms.

Sparta has developed a reactivity to sudden loud noises that, if I can not eliminate, I would like to reduce.

A local 4-H group had an air rifle competition this last weekend.  There were a lot of snaps and pops from the air rifles and some shotgun blasts from a trap shoot a few hundred yards away.  She's not cured.  It will take a lot of ongoing work.  By the end of the three hours, however, she was resting under a picnic table not thirty yards from where trap was being shot.

Aim to the left and a little low,
'cause those old iron sights shoot high and to the right."

Opening Day 2016

I've developed an Opening Day tradition over the years.

I head down to a ballfield, it matters little what kind of team it hosts: college, Major League, little league, Moose Lodge.

I head down and just walk around: respect the game and respect the values it instills and the traditions it teaches.

This year we went to Target Field in Minneapolis.  It was a quiet Sunday morning and beyond a few employees doing work somewhere in the concourse and one guy picking up some tickets at a kiosk, we had the place to ourselves.

You've got to hold your mouth just right.

On the shoulders of legends.

It's alright Sparta, we all get a little anxious in the presence of Lucy.

A game of catch.

Dude, there's ice in this bowl!

"It's going, going, going?  Gone!"

Small Dog's Got the Watch

And I've been Blaming the Kids

About ten minutes after running the swifter over the floor, the terrier wants to come in looking like this.

How the Hell did she even pick up that much litter?

Neither of us enjoyed the process of brushing off the dirt before she came in and nuzzled her way under the covers on my bed for her mid-morning nap.

Palm Sunday Walk

This will be the first Easter Sunday that I have not worked in something like five years.  In those years I developed the tradition of putting bunny ears on one of the dogs and walking through downtown Minneapolis and use it as a way to talk bring some joy to the folks lingering downtown on a Sunday morning: mostly the homeless.

So this year we headed out on Palm Sunday as an alternative.  We headed down the Mississippi River for a change of pace.  Other than a few dog walkers and joggers, we had the trails to ourselves.

This was Sparta's second year with the ears and she did great.  A few reminders in the first mile that if she shook them off she would be put on a sit/stay while they were put back on and she walked with them perfectly.

We did about ten miles.  It was kindof an awesome morning.  We'll do the same later in the week when we drop in for a therapy dog visit.

Bulbs emerging from the ground.

Sunday Stroll

Merwyn: protector of the Seward neighborhood's land and water.

American Swedish Institute

Purity Bakery Building, now used for work spaces and storage.

The Minnehaha Bunny: a large bronze on the south side of Minnehaha Creek.

As humans and our dogs have conquered the whole globe, we've had to adapt to many different environments and ways of living.  Consequently humans and our dogs are the two species with the greatest amount of intra-species genetic diversity.

It was a good day.

Grace Adopts a Terrier

It was my original intention to rehab Stoic and then try to find him an appropriate home, but my daughter intervened.  Her brothers have had the experience of being raised, in part, by Maybelle "the Nanny dog."

After Gracie was born, they were slow to give up "their" dog.  To this day she sleeps in their room even if she needs help jumping into the bed of whoever is sleeping in the bottom bunk.  So Gracie has lived with dogs but never really had a dog.

She chooses Stoic, and he's pretty chill with that.

Fortunate for me she will still let me take him on some therapy dog gigs when the time arrives.

Fortunate for us all, she wants to help when we go out hunting rats or other vermin.

My Sparta and the She-Child's Stoic

Bed

I woke up this morning to my house mate complaining that there was "a b*#ch" sleeping in her bed.

I corrected her, "No, there is a hot b*#ch sleeping in your bed."

Sunday Track

Sunday was a great day to lay and run a track.  There was a thin layer of snow on the ground and with temps in the upper 30's, it was wonderful vest weather.

This was only the second track we've run since early November.  If you watch the video below you'll see how tightly that wet snow holds scent.  It was a man track only (no blood or other scent).  Aged about 3 1/2 hours.

I also hope that it shows Sparta slowing down as she matures a little bit.  It could just be that she was tired.  I've worked her hard over the weekend, going out on numerous scouting trips in the heavy snow.  If I walk one mile, she goes three, and the snow is up to her chin.

This track  also contains the first back track I've given Sparta to figure out.  It is also a good idea that I see how she behaves in such a situation.  Thinking about last year's blood tracking, some of our mistakes (or most) were based upon Sap error more than canine error.

The app used for the map to the right, Dog Tracks, is a good help but it does not replace a thorough job marking your trail.  We ran a tighter track than the picture lets on.  The map you get is only as good as your GPS signal and I think the tree cover throws it off a bit.

Watching videos of someone else's dog track might be as interesting as Uncle Melvin's slide presentation of his Jamaican vacation.  But I think these illustrate how well scent stays put in the snow.

The videos below show different legs of the track but in each one she's moving from footstep to footstep in a slower and more deliberate manner than I would expect.

She acted like we'd never crossed a road before.

I was pretty pleased how she worked through her first "backtrack."

The last corner,

Just Good Medicine

Sparta and a new friend.

Our regular therapy dog gig is on an adolescent "crisis and stabilization" unit at the University of Minnesota Medical Center.  Kids come in who need some behavioral health intervention but do not require a locked psychiatric unit.

Kids come in suffering from depression, anxiety, family conflict, or any other number of personal or social crises.  The purpose of the unit is to make sure everyone is healthy enough to go home while making sure the family has a plan and the resources to start to address the underlying problems on an on-going basis.

Interjecting some joy into the day, well, that is just good medicine.

The staff also experience their own kind of traumas.  Most of them have spent years listening to stories and reports that most of us try to avoid hearing, or try to pretend to not happen every day.

When the local news reports a suicide or a mentally ill person attacks some innocent, there is a fair chance the staff person played a game of Uno or Mario Kart with the person at some time in their career.  Maybe they knew them twenty-years ago, maybe it was last month. Regardless, there is still the pain of loss and a temptation to futility.

When they're successful, you rarely hear a fifteen year update about how well things went afterward.

Five times a week, however, they put down the paper, listen to reports of abuse, bullying, loneliness, mental illness and go out and spend time trying to help kids, adults, and families "make today suck a little less and learn the skills to do the same tomorrow."

So therapy dog visits are for the patients but not just for the patients.  Sometimes interjecting a little joy in the day is the difference in "making it suck a little less" for the staff as well.

 

Driving Home

Kurgo upgrades a harness

After trying a number of harness my favorite for heavy tracking use also happens to be the cheapest: Kurgo's True Fit Smart Dog harness.

Fancier harnesses with any material other than nylon webbing look  great but begin to fray after just a few hours of use in the brush blood tracking takes us into.  Until such time as I feel flush enough to buy a nice leather harness, it is hard to see why we would need anything other than the simple Kurgo.

Stoic will start spending more time doing some blood track training so I went to Amazon to pick up a second copy of the harness so that I could have one fitted for each terrier.  I thought I was ordering a clone to my first harness but thanks to my own inattentiveness, I got something better: the Kurgo True-Fit Enhanced Strength harness.

The only thing I did not care for on the original harness was the plastic clasps.  They are practical and hold up well but I preferred the metal nesting buckles I had seen on other Kurgo harnesses.  Imagine my surprise when the new harness arrived, made with those metal nesting buckles as well as additional stitching along the back strap.

Both harnesses exceed expectations at less than $20.  Measure (your dog) twice, buy once.

OMG!

Happy 2016

Balancing popcorn while waiting for the New Year to begin.

Cutting Bait on Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve I try to take a walk into downtown Minneapolis.  We see the sites.  We try to make some homeless guys smile.

The wind was strong.  The dogs were acting special. I was overtired.  I needed a toilet.  Most of all it wasn't fun, and the dogs could tell.  I'd planned eight to twelve miles, but after four, we cut bait and went home.  We didn't spend time with any homeless guys.  We just exchanged a few words with passing joggers from the gentrified apartments nearby.

One of the most valuable lessons I've learned about training dogs: when to stop and call it a day.  When it is no longer a game, you're not doing anyone any good.  It is time to get a cinnamon roll and coffee, and set back for the car.  Go home. Drink a beer.  Write a blog post.

I did snap a few shots in front of the future home of the Minnesota Vikings and on our way home we came across another instance of "things (presumably) abandoned by a homeless guy."

Can you tell I was trying to eat a roll?

"Show me 'disinterested.'"

"Look at me."

"Think deep thoughts"

"Let me see 'furtive.'"

Apparently abandoned: bike, books, and a few clothes.

Beam Work

I was going through my phone deleting pictures and videos when I came across this gem.

I do a lot of things to try to keep walking fun and engaging, both for myself and the dogs.  Some times we stop and talk to homeless men.  Other times we stop and do tricks in the park.  Still other times we do a little balance beam work.

This trick requires Sparta to jump up on to concrete barriers and then walk along them.  Some things to point out:

• I only order her up there when there is no traffic on the same side of the road as we are walking and I order her down before any traffic appears.
• I only do this when she is wearing a harness I can clip into.  That way if I need to grab her quickly or if she falls in the direction of traffic I do not have to worry about an injury to her neck.
• We only attempt this after having mastered the commands "up," and "off," and have experienced walking on concrete beams in unoccupied work sites apart from any distractions.

Let's Go (man) Tracking

I started Sparta's training on man-tracks.  It was fairly easy to transition her to follow blood trails this past fall.  If it did create some a problem, she had a more generalized sense of tracking than a dog who was only trained to track wounded game.  If the hunter was mistaken on the location of the hit or the course of the trail, she'd follow the closest trail available and not necessarily look for the wounded deer.

It could have been why we had trouble staying on the wounded deer, but it is a problem I think we are overcoming.

While the bow season continues until year's end, we haven't had a tracking call since the week before Thanksgiving.  I needed to get out of the house.  She needed to get out of the house.  So I laid a short (~160 yard) man track with two turns and let it age thirty minutes.  I didn't know how well she'd do so I kept her on a shorter leash.  I thought I might need to keep her on a tight track.  My concern was unfounded.

She never had this kind of energy in tracking before.  I will have to see if get her to work a little slower if we try to pass a tracking test, that and she will have to re-learn how to indicate she has found an object.

She learned that she gets a great reward at the end of a track, (a piece of deer hide/meat/bone).  It wasn't particularly practical to have her show me an indication when we were tracking dying deer.

Note the yellow flags at each turn.