Smart doggie

I wonder if this is how an engineer who inherits a new project feels.  One of my favorite blogs, thedailyWTF, writes about all the fun software designers have learning about the, shall we say, creative old work done on projects that they inherit, and I feel a little like this is similar, but rather than having to try to understand hash tables and database structure, I have to learn the mapping from commands to behavior.  For instance, "come here" apparently means "come and sit down," and since he got the hang of walking on a loose leash after only a few blocks, he must have known it before.  I almost wonder if we'll walk a crowd of French students and something they say will uncover an easter egg.  Perhaps he can break dance and I just don't know what the command is!

Jacques and Stairs

Jacques is a pretty quiet dog, only making a little noise when we leave him unattended, and he hasn't barked at much of anything or been cowered by other dogs, but it appears we've found his arch-nemesis.  Stairs.

On the way down to the ground level the first time we took him out he had absolutely no intention of going down the stairs. He comes when called.  He responds to a gentle tug on the leash.  He even puts all four feet on the ground when we chastise him for begging.  But there was no way he was coming up or down the stairs on his own.  He got down two stairs, and then turned right back around, walked back up, and lay down at the top when we tried to coax him down.

We carried him, but training is in order, since this is not a long-term solution.

Taking him home

This is a little out of order, but if you read the last post, you gathered that we took Jacques home.  Last night we went to his foster mom's house, put our new collar on him, signed a few papers and sat for a few photos, and then took him for a brief walk around the neighborhood where we picked him up.

Jacques has a different concept of what a walk looks like than I do though--his previous owners never taught him to heel, which means that he spent the entire walk at the end of his leash, doing his best to run beyond it.  I really do sympathize with his excitement at all the new smells all around, but this is a habit we'll need to break soon, because its not safe for him to be out of control around cars.  Eli gave me some good advice with vegetarian treat recipes, and if somebody has tips or experience with teaching a dog to heel, that would be awesome.

Once we finished walking, we stopped got in the car, and Mita did her best to keep him in her lap, but again, he was pretty excited by all the action outside the car, so this was a bit of a battle.  This means that travel will have to be in a carrier crate, since it's just not safe for him to be climbing on me or getting into my field of view when we're driving.

Morning, sunrise, Jacques

I'm sitting out on my balcony again this morning, and I've traded my cup of coffee for a dog.  We were concerned about him on the balcony, since he might be able to jump over the edge, but he's wary of the edge anyway, so I don't think we have to be scared.  I'm not about to leave him here unattended, but he's happy to sit next to me and take in the world, looking up at me every so often.  He likes it when I scratch the back of his neck, and I think he likes watching the traffic go by on the freeway. If I imagine hard enough, I can see him gazing at the horizon as it turns shades of orange and pink.

Jacques, the dog

As you might gather from the blog's name and from the title of this post, Jacques is a dog.  He is a 2 year old Poodle-Cockerspaniel mix, and somehow he ended up with the people of SNIPSA, where he was loved by a foster mom named Ginger, and will soon be adopted by Mita and myself.

He's well behaved, though seems to have a little trouble sitting still.  He is, as Ginger said, "a bolter," something that perhaps lead to him being without a home.  We've bought a wire kennel to keep him in when we cannot supervise him around our apartment, and the verdict is still out on whether he'll be allowed on the balcony, but since we don't know how high he can jump, but do know that its a 3 story fall, we're leaning towards no.

Food is going to be a little bit hard with him, since Mita and I are strict vegetarians, and will keep him the same.  Its not so much that food itself is hard, since there's plenty of commercial vegetarian dog food to be found, its the treats that are trouble.  Most doggie treats are made on the assumption (correct, I'd imagine) that dogs go crazy for tasty meaty goodness, which comes most expediently from meat.  I'm sure we'll find something good though, I'll spend some quality time in petsco tomorrow.

The packaging of the kennel was interesting--it was a fold-flat wire contraption, and the setup was pretty self explanatory, which was good, since the directions were inside the kennel.  There was no way to get to the sheet of instructions without having already done steps 1 through 3.  Never the less, I read them, learning that I had set it up properly.