Camry and I like to play a game in the graveyard – it’s called “Squirrel!”:
- roses
- rocks
- plants
- garbage bags
- leftover chicken wing
- donut pieces (?)
- sidewalk
- rotting thing
- dead, rotting thing
Yes, all sniffed by Camry within the past few days. I envy her her sense of smell – I think mine is pretty weak, even for human standards. I’ve never been able to smell a lot of things that people seem to find odorous – like that chemical they put in natural gas. But dog-smelling is an order of magnitude above even normal humans. Sometimes, especially when it’s hot and she doesn’t want to walk too fast, she traces these wandering paths of scent on the sidewalk, absorbed, nose to the ground. Another dog? A cat? Invisible path to enlightnment?
Only she knows.
As requested – more pictures of the dog. And a couple from China. Just because.
Click on each for a larger version.
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- Camry Outside
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- By the couch
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- Tower in Pudong – Shanghai
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- Jin Mao Tower
Things I think the dog might be thinking:
“She’s looking at the computer again?”
“Walk? Walk? Walk? Please? Walk?”
“Just dry food? Don’t you love me?”
“I hope she gets more Bahktin books; that one about Rabelais was very interesting.” (I can’t help but think she’s pondering something very deep as she’s lying there so patiently waiting for me to stop staring at the computer.)
What the dog is doing now:
Sleeping, and obviously dreaming about chasing squirrels, as her legs are moving and she’s sleep-barking.
Camry
The past two days have been 90+ degrees and high humidity, and high ozone. In fact, we’ve got “ozone action days” today and tomorrow, which means I shouldn’t mow my yard (darn!). Yesterday M was here, and we took Camry to a nearby lake, and walked around a bit. She got so warm, even with a stop for water halfway through. So, I made sure today that our morning walk was early enough that she didn’t get overwarm, and the afternoon one (just finished) was quite short. She seemed to alternate between “Walk!” (yippee!) and “Hot!” (pant, pant).
Camry also did okay with M. being here. In other words, she only barked at him two or three times when he startled her. It seemed that she forgot he was in the house, and then when he suddenly appeared, she was surprised into “protect my human” mode. I kept hugging him to reassure her that he was OK. It’s as good as an excuse for hugging as any!
As I was walking Camry past Martha’s Vinyard (grocery/wine shop) and Nantucket Bakery (yes, owned by the same people!), I ran into a woman who had noticed me walking Camry earlier in the week. It turns out she also has a red merle Aussie. A few days later, I ran into her with the aforementioned dog, and the two sniffed behinds, and Camry proceeded to hide behind me after some promising overtures. At least there was no barking!
Sam also told me that the neighborhood also views a local cemetery (the old one of the town) as an informal dog park; in other words, the notices reading “no dogs allowed” are routinely ignored. So Camry and I went up there this morning and walkied around. Some statistics from my perambulations:
Earliest birth date seen: 1793
Latest death date: 1997 (not the same person as above, obviously)
Squirrels: 2
Camry: 0
I suspect that if one toted up Camry’s lifetime stats for that last one, the squirrels would be in the thousands, and Camry still at zero. I don’t know who would be more surprised if she actually caught one – the squirrel or Camry.
Current activity of dog: On side, asleep on my living room rug.
I think I’m making progress – today, when I got down on the floor to give Camry some petting on her level, she literally crawled onto/into my lap. Needless to say, this is not your typical lap dog–but she got plenty of petting, just the same.
I’m learning more and more about the behaviours of herding dogs. Yesterday, as I was walking, I noted that Camry would walk much faster and more confidently when we were on a sidewalk compared to when we were in a more open field. And when we were in a field, she’d head for trees. At first I thought that her vision wasn’t maybe that great – that she wasn’t comfortable unless she could see boundaries or a goal. Then today I realized that this was more intelligent herding behavior. Sidewalks weren’t telling her where to go — they were telling her where I was most likely headed. And if she knew where I was going, she could feel comfortable enough to get out ahead of me and herd me from before me. However, in an open field, my options were much less predictable, so she stayed close. A tree (or other landmark) was a goal, and she (rightly) assumed that I was going somewhere, and wasn’t interested in wandering aimlessly.
This morning, we were both interested in getting home as soon as possible, as it was raining. Therefore, the walk was a bit short – so this evening when we walked a lot more, she was really excited. In fact, when I turned back home to drop off the poop back on my porch, I could almost hear her “already done? No! More walk!”. So when I turned back to the sidewalk and said “OK, let’s go!” she actually did a flying 180 leap of excitement. That was nice to see.
Well, I’m a dog-sitter now. I’ve just spent a little over a day and a half with Camry, my colleague K’s dog. He’s in Ireland, doing scholarly stuff (I’m assuming) and couldn’t take Cam with him, much to his dismay. He’s rather attached – as is she!
I’ve never had a dog in my life before for more than a few hours here or there, so this is somewhat of an adventure. I’ll be chronicling the next three weeks here, mostly to keep K up to date.
Some intro basics: she’s an Australian shepherd, with reddish-brown markings and blue eyes. She’s very well trained and considerate; for an Aussie, she’s really calm. That said, she’s quite vigilant about keeping track of me. She’s normally a country-ish dog who gets lots of walks in the woods, but as I live in the city, she’s got a lot more sidewalks and roads here. I’ve noticed that as we’re walking, she very much understands how these work, however. As we approach any intersection, she always drops back to heel on my left side, and makes sure that I know that she’s close by as we’re approaching a place where cars might be. She’s really good at differentiating between intersections that she knows are busy (can hear the cars, I’m assuming) and ones that are really quiet. At first I thought this might be self-preservation, etc., but now I’m more inclined to believe that it’s a herding technique – she’s making sure *I* know that the upcoming intersection needs caution.
Did I mention that she’s really smart, too? She already knows that me putting on socks (rather than just sandals) means I’m going to put on tennis shoes, which means A WALK. So when I get socks out and start putting them on, she starts a low-pitched excited whine and happy circles.
Oh, and K’s doorbell, I think, sounds exactly like a ding on a game show I was watching. Whenever it “ding”ed, Cam would jump up, bark, go to the door, and then give me a look like “Why aren’t you doing something about this? Didn’t you just hear that?”
Like I said, smart dog.
Well, we’re in Chicago! We left GR at about 7:00 this morning, and got to Chicago at 6:45. Time travel!
The only snag so far – my shiny new camera won’t turn on. It worked last night, but not this morning. The battery might have drained? I don’t know – but it is truly annoying. I do have the camcorder, so I’ll be using that – but I really wanted the opportunity to take a whole load of still photos, too.
Other than that – the giant plane is here, we’re at the gate, and I’m looking foward to just being able ot sit and work/sew/read for a good long time.
More updates when I get to Shanghai!
OK – This May is going to be very strange, and I thought I’d do my best to keep this blog up, if only for Mom, Dad, and M. Hi, by the way.
What makes it strange? Well, on Friday I’m going to China for 10 days, and then after a week back home, I’m off to Croatia for a week. Both are tangentially work related – I’m going with 7 students to perform Shakespeare (them, not me. I’m just the dramaturg) in Shanghai. I’m going to Croatia for a conference on my area of research – so much different purposes.
Tonight – I’m packing, cleaning, (I have several colleagues coming in pre-Kalamazoo tomorrow), and watching the DVR’d American Idol results show. This way, I can fast forward through all the time-wastinig stuff that they do.
I’m just realizing that I meant to learn a lot more Chinese. I don’t think a plane ride (even a 14 hour one) will do much to improve that.
On that note – what will I do with those 14 hours on the plane?
- Read – I’ve got Jane Eyre (for the independent study I’m guiding this summer), a brief history of the Russian Orthodox Church (for the Croatia paper), and The Forsyte Saga (for fun).
- Sew – provided the TSA lets me keep my needle and scissors.
- Code – I’ve got a 7 hour battery life on my comptuer, and a backlog of manuscript pages that need to be put into XML for an editing project.
- Sleep – If I’m lucky; I don’t sleep on planes very well. Actually, it’s the sleeping in public thing. Very hard for me to do.
- Write – That Croatia paper is mostly vague notions right now.
- Randomly stare out of the window, at the in-flight entertainment, at the little map on the monitor – This can take up a surprisingly large chunk of the flight, or it least it did on my various European trips.
I guess we’ll see. I just hope that the person in front of me decides to NOT recline the seat for the whole flight and that there isn’t an annoying child behind me.
