dogs – Page 5

[Bloganuary] New Tricks

This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024.¹ Today’s prompt is:

If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?

The strangers who we keep inviting into our house do not want to steal your toys and do not need to be “seen off”.

A champagne-coloured French Bulldog looks up from behind a fence, in a hallway. — “Somebody’s at the door! I’d better bark to see them off!”

Lately, we’ve had a lot of strangers in the house: builders, plumbers, and electricians, all working on some significant building works.

And even though she’s got to be starting to recognise the same old folks coming and going, day-in and day-out, our little pup still goes completely mental every time the builders turn up, each morning.

Composite photo showing (a) a white house clad in scaffolding and (b) a workman looking up at a large square hole that's been cut in the ceiling of a bedroom. — It’s been… a little stressful and chaotic for us all, here. Every few days a new hole appears in the house, and a new set of curious buried problems emerges (*why does this pipe go here? who thought it was good idea to wire these sockets like that?*).

I get it. They come and go but don’t smell like they live here. They make a lot of noise and dust. But seriously, dog: these people aren’t going to bring us any harm². Just chill out already!

Today we’re having one of the biggest bits of work done: the removal of the ceiling in the main hallway and the installation of a new staircase. So the dog’s spending the day… elsewhere! We’ve sent her off to play with her little doggy friends at our dogsitter’s house. It’s probably for the best.

Footnotes

¹ Also, this is now my second-longest daily-streak of blogging ever. C-c-c-combo continues!

² Some days they don’t come through the front door at all, but up the scaffolding and in through the roof: she knows they’re here from the banging sounds but not from which direction they’ll approach, and she’ll sometimes gather all of her toys into a pile and guard them… y’know, in case they’ve come here to steal all her most-valuable well-chewed playthings.

[Bloganuary] Puppy Love

This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:

Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?

I’m going to let this young lady answer that for me:

I’m not even much of a “dog person”, but you can’t deny how much a dog can show adoration.

I could think of countless examples of feeling loved. As a child. As a parent. As a friend. As a lover.¹ But picking up your dog from the dogsitter after you’ve been away for a few days somehow distils the feeling down to its most-basic.

Dan kneels in the grassy verge of a recently-ploughed field in late-afternoon summer sunshine, a long red dog's lead hanging around his shoulders. By his side, a champagne French Bulldog looks with anticipation up at him (or possibly at his closed fist). — Sometimes the look of affection instead reflects their love of the treat they anticipate you might have in your hand, but still.

Footnotes

¹ I feel like I’m about to break into a Meredith Brooks song.

[Bloganuary] Paws to Hear my Scents-ible Idea

This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:

Come up with a crazy business idea.

Smell-based social networking for dogs.

Hear me out…

I’ve tried to explain to our occasionally-anxious dog that, for example, the dog-and-human shaped blobs at the far end of the field includes a canine with whom she’s friendly and playful. She can’t tell who they are because her long-distance vision’s not as good as mine¹, and we’re too far away for her to be able to smell her friend.

If this were a human meetup and I wasn’t sure who I’d be meeting, I’d look it up online, read the attendees’ names and see their photos, and be reassured. That’s exactly what I do if I’m feeling nervous about a speaking engagement: I look up the other speakers who’ll be there, so I know I can introduce myself to people before or after me. Or if I’m attending a work meet-up with new people: I find their intranet profiles and find out who my new-to-me colleagues are.

Wouldn’t it be great if I could “show” my dog who she was going to meet, in smell-form.

I imagine a USB-C accessory you can attach to your computer or phone which can analyse and produce dogs’ unique scents, storing and transmitting their unique fingerprint in a digital form. Your subscription to the service would cover the rental of the accessory plus refills of the requisite chemicals, and a profile for your pooch on the Web-based service.

Now, you could “show” your dog who you were going to go and meet, by smell. Just look up the profile of the playmate you’re off to see, hold the device to your pupper’s nose, and let them get a whiff of their furry buddy even before you get there. Dogs do pretty well at pattern-matching, and it won’t take them long to learn that your magical device is a predictor of where they’re headed to, and it’ll be an effective anxiety-reducer.

A laptop keyboard with a black man's hand and a cream-coloured dog's paw resting on it, seen from above. (Almost-matching) sleeves can be seen on the limbs of both. — Seeking investors for a genuinely terrible crazy business idea. Photo courtesy SHVETS production.

The only question is what to call my social-network-for-dogs. Facebutt? Pupper? HoundsReunited???

Footnotes

¹ Plus: I get contextual clues like seeing which car the creature and its owner got out of.

Dan Q found GC54E29 WAG 16 – Elvendon Valley

This checkin to GC54E29 WAG 16 - Elvendon Valley reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

The poor little geopup’s only got tiny legs, and the 8km we’ve walked so-far has got her pretty tired-out, so this’ll be the last cache of the series before we go and find ourselves some lunch and go home. It’s been a very enjoyable series so far, and I fully intend to return to complete it (and perhaps find some of those earlier caches that I failed to spot).

For this final cache of the morning (well, afternoon: barely!), I found the likely spot straightaway and picked up something that looked out of place. Nope, no sign of the cache though; that’s strange. It took a few seconds to realise that yes, the cache was hidden behind the thing I’d picked up… it was just also covered with leaf little and detritus. Soon had it retrieved in the end, though.

A huge number of butterflies flocked in the field to our right: it was quite impressive. I’ve snapped a picture showing just one, so that I can later look up what kind of butterfly it is!

Dan Q found GC54E1W WAG 15 – Action!

This checkin to GC54E1W WAG 15 - Action! reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Sometimes the geo-sense “just works”. This was one of those moments. I was approaching the area and checking the distance. Then I walked straight to a likely location. Then I picked up the cache. Done and done.

Dan Q found GC72TZ5 WAG 14 – Wander through Wroxhills

This checkin to GC72TZ5 WAG 14 - Wander through Wroxhills reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Turning South and crossing our own path, the sun came out at last and we were bathed in glorious warm light. Between that, and the familiarity of the trail we passed, the geopup and I completely forgot for a moment that we were out to look for this next cache and overshot it: we had to turn back to get to the coordinates and find the cache. TFTC!

Dan Q found GC54DR7 WAG 9 – Sausages & Bacon!

This checkin to GC54DR7 WAG 9 - Sausages & Bacon! reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Worra lorra porkers! The geopup is a huge fan of sausages but I don’t think she understood that the cornucopia she was looking at across the field was the same thing, just a few years off being ripe. Great cache container too. TFTC, and let’s chuck an FP in because this series as a whole has definitely earned another one in my mind by now…

Dan Q found GC54DTF WAG 10 – Track-able

This checkin to GC54DTF WAG 10 - Track-able reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

The geopup and I tried a couple of likely hiding places before we found this one. A nice-sized container and well-suited to its hiding place, here, TFTC!

Dan Q couldn’t find OK00F7 Pig City Vista

This checkin to OK00F7 Pig City Vista reflects an opencache.uk log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Came by this location while doing the nearby WAG series. Was delighted to see that an OpenCache was on the route too so the geopup and I dedicated the time to a decent search. We think we found what was once the hiding place, but the cache itself was sadly nowhere to be seen.

Dan Q couldn’t find GC54DW0 WAG 11 – Panorama

This checkin to GC54DW0 WAG 11 - Panorama reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Between nearby GC7QC7R, which acts as a spur to this series, and OK00F7, which sits on (and predates) this series, I was feeling confident of a find here… but after an extended search the geopup and I had to admit defeat. To be honest, she was willing to give up and press on immediately, having seen a muddy puddle up ahead that she wanted to play about it, and her persistent lead-pulling in that direction might have reduced both my patience and the efficacy of my search! But we found a few things that might match the hint and didn’t see success, soo… 🤷‍♂️

Dan Q found GC7QC7R Lothal

This checkin to GC7QC7R Lothal reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

As a quick diversion from the nearby WAG series, the geopup and I meandered out this way to find this cache. Once I was in the vicinity of the cache something stood out to me as unusual, so we went to pick it up… it turned out to be a chunk of wraught iron, but finding it soon pointed me in the direction of the cache. TFTC.

Dan Q found GC610PB WAG 12 – Wroxhills Wood

This checkin to GC610PB WAG 12 - Wroxhills Wood reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A quick and easy find: we walked straight to where the coordinates said and there it was. My phone, having been rebooted during the last leg, was now behaving much better at narrowing down a satellite fix!

These woods are really quite amazingly beautiful and serene. It’s quiet and calm here, and both the geopup and I really appreciate the excuse to have come here.

Next, it’s time for a quick diversion from the series to find nearby GC7QC7R!

Dan Q found GC54DXQ WAG 13 – Oh deer!

This checkin to GC54DXQ WAG 13 - Oh deer! reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Took several attempts to find the correct hiding place and the poor geopup – who didn’t like the tight-knit undergrowth here except when it suited her (when she wanted to chase after a pheasant!) – eventually had to be tied to a tree while I pressed-on without her to get the cache in hand. Phew! TFTC.

Dan Q couldn’t find GC78WN6 WAG 8 – Battle Farm

This checkin to GC78WN6 WAG 8 - Battle Farm reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

This was the moment when I found myself wishing that my dedicated GPSr unit was with me and working, as my phone’s GPS fix started jumping all over the place. The geopup and I made a few valiant attempts to search in the obvious places, criss-crossing our way through some quite fierce brambles as we did so, but without success. Eventually, we had to move on and chalk this one up as a DNF. I’ve no reason to believe it’s not out there somewhere, but it’ll be a job for somebody whose satellite navigation kit is playing ball.

Dan Q found GC54DF1 WAG 7 – Fuming!

This checkin to GC54DF1 WAG 7 - Fuming! reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

The geopup made herself useful for this cache, running straight to the cache location. (I suspect that some prior canine visitor may have left their mark somewhere very near to the cache, and she was more interested in smelling that than she was at helping me find the container, but I can dream of a dog who’s a useful geocaching assistant, can’t I?) TFTC.