Today in Pictures

We went to the beach today, it was a little hazy but pretty warm and mostly sunny. We splashed around in the water alot. Nande got run out, Grady got run out, Sully got run out. They are all sleeping well now.

A Blue Break

No comments, just a pretty picture I wanted to share.

Nande Charges into the Sun Again

We had a wonderful trip out to the beach this afternoon. Nande got a chance to run and run and run some more. And I got a chance to take about 150 photos of her and the boys playing in the water, which was cold as hell!

A great time and now Nande is wiped out cold on her bed.

Dinky is Unimpressed by the Yard Sale

Dinky (who's real name is now Chico but he had no name when I first met him and I started calling him Dinky) enjoyed his special place on the couch outside at the yard sale all weekend. Not because he's so well behaved (which he was) but because his owners don't really trust him inside on the carpets without direct supervision.

But he is an adorable little pit. With a huge mouth.

A Smart Bowl for Dogs

If you've got a dog then you know how quickly they wolf down their chow. Eating too fast can lead to gas, poor digestion and other, more serious, health problems.

So a couple came up with the doggie bowl for greedy eaters which is basically a bowl with plastic protrusions that make it harder for the dog to slurp up all of the food so quickly.

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest ideas and I think I will want to pick one of these up for my speed-chowing hound.

And it reminds me that I've got a couple of inventions that I need to start driving again.

Anyone out there want to become an investor?

Why Thank You, Strange Lady

We had an all family outing the dog park on Friday afternoon. A good chance to get Nande a good long run, some socialization and for everyone to spend a little quality time together without the confining walls (and mess) of the house.

We usually do a couple of loops around the perimeter to give Nande a chance to get her major ya-yas out. Its about a half mile and I make sure she runs at least two or three times that by hucking rocks for her to chase.

The boys have a good time inside the fenced in area, Grady likes to use the chuck-it like a shovel and throw scoops of wood chips and dirt. Sully just like to motor around and chase the little dogs. Occasionally, a bigger dog will deck one of the boys but they generally don't seem to care too much. And the dog owners are almost ashamed of their dog's behaviour. But we do our best to let them know that it happens, they are tough little boys and are used to big dogs with our big girl.

Anyway, one of the aspects of the park that's nice is that its a chance to chat with other dog owners, usually about dog stuff but occasionally about other things. One lady and I got to talking about kids and what a handful teenage boys were and how different her second boy is from her first. The first is 21 now and the second is, I think, 16. She said the first boy was incapable of deception and lying but she's just not quite so sure about the second boy.

I explained my perspective as being a younger brother and having to deal with the "tender mercies" of a bigger brother. Little brothers have to be tougher, smarter and, to some degree, wilier and more deceptive than the bigger brother. My brother and I are separated by three years and he's just a larger guy than I would ever be. So I had to toughen up and figure out other ways to win when we fought, either physically or verbally.

I remember playing tackle football with him and his friends as a kid and being one of the better tacklers because I went balls out after them. I didn't care about getting kicked in the face, I didn't care about getting dirty or banged up, I cared about showing them that I was every bit as tough and as good at the game as they were.

I am who I am because of my relationship to my brother as much as any other aspect of my childhood. Both good and bad.

Anyway, this lady and I were chatting and she asked how old my boys were and remarked that it might be a good thing that we started so early with our children. I asked her what she meant and she said, "Well, you can't be that old, maybe 28?" and I smiled and said, "Actually, I just turned 38 a couple of months ago".

I know I'm young at heart but its nice to know that I still look pretty young on the outside as well.

I'll have to write more about the effect of growing up in my brother's shadow sometime. Its something I think about quite often. Usually it ends up being in the negative sense but sometimes it has its positive aspects as well.

Thanks for the compliment, strange lady. I hope your younger son proves you wrong and "flies right".

I Loves Tick Season

Apparently every season is tick season here. I caught three ticks trying to find a good place to settle in and drink my hound's blood. And then I found three more that had already found a nice place to feed. Two had already begun to feed and were swelling up, they squished rather satisfyingly. And the last was a wee tick buried in her thick neck fur, it didn't want to let go and I, as always, had to be careful not to squish its body to inject whatever nasty toxins were inside it into my dog.

But it came off and got squished like the others.

And now, of course, I have phantom tick-itis, where it feels like there are ticks crawling on your skin all the time. In fact, I just went and checked my back in the mirror just to make sure.

I hate ticks, hate, hate, hate them.

Owning a Dog and Being a Dog Owner are Two Very Different Things

Among all the other craziness that is the 4th of July in Watsonville, there was an unexpected and rather sad event. The neighbors who moved in to Ike the Asshole's house own a couple of dogs. Note, they aren't dog owners, they own a couple of dogs.

I'd already been aggravated by how little care they give these two dogs, one, an aging German Shepherd and the other a young Rottie.

These two dogs spend all day and all night everyday in a caged pen in the backyard. They do not get walks, they do not get socialized with other animals or people and they bark all day and all night at anything and everything that comes near the house.

They are for nothing but protection and that makes me sad since they seem like pretty nice dogs, if a touch noisy.

The neighbors are also in the process of moving out because the owner of the house is trying to sell the place out from under them. I understand they've got other stuff on their minds but that doesn't excuse them leaving the dogs outside under last night's long, loud and flashy fireworks display. And the owners weren't even home to try to care for their dogs. The old Shepherd got so badly freaked out that he broke out of the pen, dug a hole under the fence (in rock hard dirt, mind you) and then tried to get into our house.

While I felt awful for the old boy, I'd never met him, had no idea what he would be like in my house and had to keep him outside even though he was seriously not having a good night.

It just upsets me that these people show so little care for their animals that they pen them up all day and then abandon them during what I consider one of the most difficult nights of the year to be a dog in this town. I have some pretty serious disdain for them at this point.

It is one thing to own a dog and it is another thing entirely to be a dog owner. Nande is a member of our family and is treated as such. Their dogs are nothing more than four legged alarms for them and that just pisses me off to no end.

Also, I almost forgot. Earlier in the evening, just after dark, a guy in his car drove past the neighbors who'd been lighting off fireworks for a little bit. He circled back just after they'd lit three fountains and, in an angry jerky moment, drove over the fireworks, breaking them apart and presenting a pretty dangerous instant for everyone. I was kind of shocked that he was such an absolute prick and pretty much everyone hoped his car would catch fire. But no luck and he drove away and left a bunch of annoyed people in his wake.

[Update: I spoke with the neighbor this morning and got a bit more of the backstory to what's going on. The two big dogs are actually his kid's dogs that they no longer wanted or couldn't keep. And, since they are moving to a smaller place, the big dogs can't go with them so they are looking for new homes for them both. Pretty sad really. And I guess it is unfair to label my neighbors as the non-dog people, its more the kids that got dogs they couldn't care for and then foisted them off on their parents, which is lame.]

Welcome to Hell Week (Again)

This is one of the hardest weeks of the entire year to own a dog and live where I live, one of the few places in the county that fireworks are legal to own and light on private property but not the ones that explode or shoot into the air, those are illegal for private use everywhere. This is the week that fireworks are shot off with increasing frequency until the climax on Wednesday when the 4th goes off.

And Nande spends all night, every night this week freaking out. Panting heavily, hiding in the bathtub and generally just being really, really unhappy. But she's gotten better in controlling her insane barking and now she just pants and waits for daylight.

I feel awful for her and have grown to really hate the damned fireworks even if there's still a part of me that loves them.

The pain in the ass part is that the explosions will continue well into next weekend.

What is Pure Joy?

Pure joy is when your dog gets to see you for the first time after being boarded for a little over a week.

Pure joy is cute in a 40-50 dog, maybe. It can be downright dangerous with a 90 pound hound like Nande!

But it is impossible to not love her enthusiasm and wide, wide smile.

But yeesh does she need a good brushing (with one already done!). I think we'll be going for a bike ride tomorrow, that ought to be nice and fun.

Just a Quickie Before Bed

My laptop broke last night and stayed broken most of the day, so bad that I had become resigned to dropping $500 to replace the motherboard so I could replace the video card that's soldered to it.

The signal to the display had gone all haywire and zapping PRAM, resetting the PMU, none of it helped (by the way, thanks Apple for trying to charge me $49 to do just those two basic ass key sequences, way to try and capitalize on a down computer). So I backed up my hard drive and started to get it prepped to get sent off for repairs.

And, just when I'd brought my spare laptop, the wisened old Pismo aka the kitchen computer aka Grady's Thomas the Tank Engine viewing machine, up to the office to stand in for the much faster Aluminum. But I thought I'd reboot the Aluminum another time or two to see if it fixed itself yet. And, lo and behold, it has fixed itself. For now.

I have no illusions that my laptop is going to need some major and expensive work sometime in the next couple of months. But it works for now and we're going with it.

I also took Nande out for a great, great ride/run this afternoon. We met up with John and Brady and hit the lower flanks of Nisene Marks but this time we rode all the way out to the far trailhead which was a damned ass long ways up some goodly hills. By the time we topped out, I was nearly tapped out. But there's not much better to recharge your batteries than turning around and descending the hill you've just grunted your way to the top of. And its made more fun by the addition of your hound and your hound's pal and your pal.

I'd also like to note, for the record, that the record now stands at John - 1, Erik - 0. That's a good thing because he's now beating me in biffage. On one part of the descent, he got his front wheel tangled in some roots and went arse over heels, as it were. I was right behind and got a great view, I wish I'd built the camera mount for my bike because it would have been good video.

Anyway, he was actually pretty well protected by his sweatshirt and pants and only suffered one good rashie on his elbow, the initial point of contact.

By the time we'd gotten back to the cars, I was pretty well fried. So tired but really happy with the fantastic ride we'd just racked up. The dogs had had a great time running and playing in the river, we'd gotten in some excellent, fast singletrack and good hill work too.

And Nande and I got a nice bath when we got home, for we were ten kinds of filthy from the trees, dirt, water and dust.

Next time I'll take the GPS to map and measure it. And, hopefully, I'll have put together the camera mount.

Seven Ticks in One Walk

You know how a good headline pretty much tells the entire story and everything else is just details?

Well, this is a blog post that pretty much is summed up by its headline.

And now for the details. Nande and I went down for a walk this morning, before the sun baked off the fog cover and it got hot hot like it has been the last few days. Seriously, we've had scorchers lately.

It was after the kids were all in school and well before lunch so there was very little foot traffic and that means I was able to let Nande off leash so I could really run her a bit. The only problem is that the grasses are very tall right now and no other dogs or people run through to help break paths a bit.

Nande loves to run and loves games and one of her favorite game includes chasing thrown rocks. I can run her up and down the slough pretty easily. But there was danger lurking in the tall grass in the form of little nasty blood suckers. On one romp down and back, I noticed a spot on her thigh, I looked closer and it was crawling so I quickly grabbed it and squished it between two rocks. I saw another tick and killed it. And then another and another. Four ticks jumped aboard her on one run down and back.

Once dispatched we kept running some more, I made sure to check her carefully for more ticks but didn't find any.

When we were done the walk and run, we headed up to the house. After we'd been home for a good twenty minutes, I felt something on my back, scratched it and found a tick which died very quickly (pliers work very well but use a paper towel to prevent splatter). At this point, I had had more than enough of the ticks so I stripped down, checked the outside of my clothes and then the inside. And found another tick inside my shirt.

That's six ticks now. But the headline says seven ticks. The last one showed up an hour or two later, Nande showed it to me on her side and it got squished and flushed like the others.

Seven damned ticks in one walk, that was about seven more than I ever want to see again. I hate ticks because they suck!

Nothing Like a Monday Ride

I hate to add more rain to the parade of the east coasters who happen to read this blog on occasion but Nande and I got back from a beautiful little bike ride along the lower flanks of Nisene Marks. My buddy's wife was off with his big hound dog so it was just me, Nande and my buddy who's still recovering from ankle surgery.

We've been having these gorgeous days with nice warm sun and it was perfect in the woods. There were places where the earth was still damp and wet from the night's fog and other places where we could just soak in the sun for a few moments.

The trailhead is a little sketchy as we park in private lot and drop in near some private houses. But we're respectful, quick and keep the dogs close so it hasn't been a problem yet.

But once you're in, the trail descends quickly and it feels really land-speederish like in Star Wars. The galloping hound at my heels doesn't really work for the imagery but it's alright. It is a ton of fun to burn hills with Nande sprinting alongside. And she was built for trail riding. Have I said that before? She is. She's tall and has long legs which let her float over the trail at good speed.

Unlike her usual companion, a stout black lab who I've caused to tumble off the trail because he insists on trying to run about three inches off my front wheel. And that works very poorly in tight single track.

Anyway, not too far in there's a car that got there a number of years ago. It is on its roof and the forest is swiftly dismantling it and turning it back into its elemental states. Kind of neat and a great object to sit and snap photos of for hours on end. The fact that its right near a cool little cliff above a four or five foot deep pool to toss sticks in for the dogs is just bonus.

This trail isn't especially long but you can ride multiple loops to just keep adding miles to your ride. The trail also leads into Nisene so you have to be careful of walkers and folks on horseback. We ran into one lady on horseback today who wanted to make sure Nande wasn't going to freak out around her horse. I truly didn't know what she'd do but she was, more or less, respectful. And we were able to cruise on to where we could either take another good fun descent that we'd have to pedal back up out of or we could turn around and head back.

We opted to heading back and retraced our path back towards the trucks. We didn't run into the horse again, which was nice, but we also didn't have enough time to stop and play in the water for too long. Unlike this video I took from a previous trip.

A really nice way to enjoy a beautiful Monday. Especially since my job training this morning was so quick. I'll write a short post about that later.

The Long Lick Hello

Dogs are dogs and they really exist by a different set of norms. For instance, my dog thinks cat poo is better than caviar and will actively seek it out to eat it.

No, I do not let my dog lick in the face. I don't buy that crap about dog's mouths being cleaner than mine. I don't eat poop. And I don't lick my own butt. So far as you know.

Many times, when we go to the dog park, Nande will arouse the attention of an amorous male hound. Sometimes its a big ol' Shepherd who can run with her and try and get her attention. Sometimes its the beautiful golden retriever puppy that wags his whole body when his tail gets happy. And sometimes the horn dogs happen to be some of the wee folk of the dog park, the lap dogs, the toys and the Napoleon complex mutts (you know, the ones that charge all over the place yapping loudly like they are in charge?).

It was this last that we got on our most recent sojourn to the park. A very cute and eager little black chihuahuanamed Duke. He is probably the smallest serial molester in the world. Once we showed up, he did nothing except try to figure out how to get his nose back up Nande's backside. That and trying not to get crushed by the other big dogs.

And Nande doesn't even seem to notice that there's a dog standing on his hind legs at her butt so it can lick at her private parts that aren't so private apparently. She gets so focused on the ball or stick we're playing with that she literally tunes out the rest of the world. Unless they piss her off and then she snaps around at them with instant Mr. Hyde ferocity. Which works for all of ten seconds and then the snouter is back again.

Is there any polite way to ask someone to stop their dog from sexually molesting your dog? I mean, without them looking at you like you're completely insane and probably a bit of a jerk? Or do I even need a polite way?

Or should I just leave it to Nande to shoo them off when they become bothersome? Anyway you slice it, the image of the little dog, with his tail going a mile a minute, on his back legs is gonna stick with you. And no, I don't have nor would I post, a picture of said canine molestation.

Life With a Dog

I grew up with dogs and then went through a fairly long period of not having them in the house for various reasons. Travel being one, the other main reason is that it is much, much harder to find a place to live if you have a dog. It is unfair and stupid but there is it.

Anyway, one aspect of life with a dog, especially a large dog, is the unexpected surprise of sitting on the toilet and getting dog drool from her drinking from the toilet pretty much all over your butt.

That's part of life with a dog. And I now have to dislike fireworks. Especially the kind that go BOOOOOOM!