I never thought it would come to this

I’m training my dog with a medieval torture device.

Oh, the animal cruelty!

I just found a coupla websites that argued that the prong or “pinch” collar is safer and more humane than your standard choke, but that’s not why I made the switch. She wasn’t responding to corrections with the choke chain. Look, she weighs 45 pounds and she has a tough neck. She didn’t understand why I was tugging on her necklace and so she was confused about what she was supposed to be doing. When the trainer put the prong collar on her, there was a noticeable difference. So, there you have it.

I took her for a walk along the boardwalk at a bayside park yesterday, and confess that I left the prong collar at home. I don’t want people judging me! Of course, they were probably judging me anyway, since I have to jerk on the chain harder with the choke chain.

Can’t get enough of my dog?

Me either.

She’s still my favorite model, although once again I was looking the wrong way when the best photo opportunity of the day presented itself.

I had her on a 20-foot lead, which allows her to do whatever she wants as long as she’s within 20 feet of me — it’s part of her training. We’re supposed to come up with a command to tell her it’s “free time,” and originally I was going to use “Take a break,” but that morphed into “Shake and Bake.” (Talladega Nights, anyone?) Yes, that means when I say, “Isis, Shake and Bake,” she’s going to know she can move freely about a 40-foot circle.

Today, at least I had my camera with me and turned on, and I was even looking through the viewfinder, which is what caused me to miss the Nikon Moment. I was shooting a beautiful panorama of mountains and river … oh, didn’t I mention we were on a river bank? … when I heard a splash and looked down to see the leash out in the water, attached to a completely submerged Isis. She must have walked (trotted, more likely) straight into the river, not knowing that the water would be over her head. My panic that she was going to get away from me and drown must have been brief, because I managed to get this shot:

Click on the picture to view more photos than you ever needed to see of my dog frolicking on the river bank. Go through them really quick, and it’s like watching a movie!

As you can see, she decided not to submerge herself again. We did find a salmon carcass, which was a perfect time to introduce the command, “Leave it.”

Interesting. I wasn’t sure what she was barking at when she was splashing around, but looking at the pictures, I think it must have been her reflection!

Back to school

I’m enrolled in two classes. One is called “Taking Great Pictures” and it’s at the community college. It was my idea, but it’s officially for work. It’s only five sessions, and I tell you, it was worth my employer’s money for the first class alone. Oh the importance of shutter speed.

The other is an obedience class for Isis. And here’s the ugly truth about me. I don’t like having to work at stuff. If I’m not a natural at something, I’m not the sort who enjoys working at it until I get good.

In this case, I’m doing fine at executing the choreography of holding the lead in my right hand, with my thumb through the loop and my fingers wrapped around it, my left hand loosely around the lead as I walk. To teach Isis to sit when I stop walking, I’m supposed to slide my right hand down the lead to the collar, put my left hand on her “loins,” apply gentle pressure as I stop walking and say “Sit.” No problem, and actually, she gets the sit thing.

It’s walking alongside me on my left that she’s having trouble with. And all the jerking of the chain just confuses her. She wants to walk ahead and sniff the ground, which is perfectly OK with me, except I can’t do this sit command unless she’s right next to me (or “left” next to me, I guess).

Who cares, right? I have my advanced degree; it doesn’t matter if my dog fails obedience school, does it? Except our manual tells us that this is the time to correct any mistakes. “Your performance should be perfect,” it tells me. For real? After a few weeks, my 5-month-old puppy is expected to be perfect?

To fit in some more practice before Saturday’s class, I took her along with me today as I drove around my coverage area, looking for stuff to take pictures of. Unfortunately, the best thing I saw all day happened while I had her on the leash and my camera was in its bag in the locked car.

Two adult bald eagles, with white heads clearly visible, flew right overhead. In flight, one bumped into the other. Then they landed in some trees. I got my camera and shot one of them as it flew away, but I don’t know how to expose to make the head look white and the sky look blue.

Yeah, that’s right, the sky was blue. I guess I should take a PhotoShop class next.

Isis is still my favorite subject though.

Here’s one I took by mistake, when I had the camera bouncing on my left hip as I walked the dog.

Home heat home

While reading an article advising people to stock up in preparation for a possible flu pandemic, I thought, “Ooh, wouldn’t that be nice, to be hunkered down at home with Rob and Isis, bottles of Gatorade and boxes of Kleenex.”

It would help ensure my house doesn’t burn down anyway. I came home yesterday and heard a funny noise, like the fan was on in the bathroom. I opened the door to the guest bath, but the sound wasn’t coming from there. I wondered whether Rob could be in the shower in the master bath, even though his car wasn’t out front.

I opened the door to the bedroom and the noise got louder. The hairdryer had fallen, turned itself on and boy, was the room warm. I used to hang the hairdryer from a toothbrush holder embedded in the wall, but that holder was among some of the tiles I’ve removed. I’d started hanging the dryer in one of those towel rings (which I would remove if it weren’t in the middle of some perfectly innocuous white tile), but evidently, this is not a secure location. The hairdryer fell at some point between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. (that’s right, I work a long day) and was just blowing like mad there on the floor. Can’t wait to see the electric bill.

Yes, I know, I should be unplugging it when not in use. There’s a tag on the cord that says something to that effect. Duly noted.

The Cover Up

For some reason I thought it would be easy to remove the rest of the golden (orange) tiles from my bathroom wall. Not the case.

I just needed to get the 25 or so border tiles off, but the tiles are quite hard and the wall is quite soft, so you can imagine that as often as not, I managed to drive my chisel into the wall, rather than pull the tile off it.

Then the tiles would seduce me, by allowing one to come off easily, intact, with minimal damage to the wall. Only to tear off huge hunks of wall next time.

During the earlier phase, I spackled the holes on the wall, even though they’d eventually be covered with tile, because I didn’t want Rob to see how bad it really looked.

It was touch and go today, with missing chunks and exposed plaster that would rattle and release dust with every clang of my hammer. I used the remainder of two containers of spackle and some mortar to fill it in. It still looks awful, but I’m less ashamed.

I asked Rob if he thought we should knock out the walls between the bathrooms and just have one big bathroom, because I’ve already started.