365 Days — Attempt #2
I went ahead and jumped off the cliff again. There is a group on Flickr called 365 days that I ran across over a year ago. The goal of the group is to get people to use their camera every single day, and so they created a group that has everyone who is a member take a self-portrait every day for one year — hence the name of the group. I tried this over a year ago and ended up quitting when I hit day #90. I decided after much debating that I would try again starting on January 1. I’m up to day #10 so far. Not my best photography work so far, but there are a couple of good ones in there. Follow and long and let me know what you think. I’ve posted my 365 Days — Attempt 2 set of photos here.
–Pete
Emmet Story #9: Water Isn’t As Fun When It Is Frozen
We learned early in Emmet’s life that he loved nothing more than to swim. One of our difficulties with him was if he was allowed off leash, and there was any body of water nearby, he would end up swimming in it. One year, when he was maybe a year old, we decided to walk him around the route of the Reindeer Run, which goes around Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. It had been cold that year, but there was a distinct lack of snow. Somehow, during our walk, Emmet’s leash disconnected from his collar. The moment it was loose, he took one look at us, one look at the lake, and took off for the lake. I’m sure he was convinced that he was going to get to go swimming. The end result was hilarious. He jumped onto the lake, clearly expecting it to splash in response to his flying leap, and instead, he started stumbling around the slippery ice. He looked bewildered by the fact that this water wasn’t swimmable. He darted around for a few moments trying to figure out how to swim in this lake. Finally, he gave up and with a call of his name, he obediently trotted back to us, totally disappointed that he didn’t get to go swimming.
Crazy, huh?
–Pete
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Emmet had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma in July of 2008. He died on September 27, 2008 of an unrelated condition called GDV, more commonly known as bloat. He was 10 years old. For a photo tribute of his life, click here.
Photo of the Week – The Week of December 28, 2008
I haven’t been very good at posting a photo of the week, so I’ll try to be more diligent in that regard in 2009. This week’s photo of the week is of the newest member of our animal menagerie. Her name is not 100% decided yet, but our current thinking is either Gingerbread Horse or perhaps Butterscotch.
This little mare came from the Minnesota Hooved Animal Rescue. She wasn’t abused, but the previous owner had more animals than he could take care of, so he gave her up. We believe she is around three years old. She looks to be in good shape, other than she is a little on the heavy side, which is a fairly common problem with miniature breeds.
Like many of the animals at the farm, she is going to be a group project between me, my wife, and the farm owner — our friend Steve. The vet took a look at her this week and pronounced her in good health, which is also good news. I’m sure you’ll see many, many more pictures of her in the days, weeks, and months ahead on my Flickr photostream.
To see all of the latest photos that I’ve taken, head to my Flickr photo stream by clicking here.
–Pete
Emmet Story #8: The Labrador Tail
Emmet was pretty easy dog to read in terms of how he was feeling. It was easy to tell when he was happy or excited and equally easy to tell when he was scared or in pain. How you ask? It was that thick Labrador tail of his.
His life is full of examples of this, but I’ll give you just three that come to mind. The first, is when Emmet was still in training. I would occassionaly take Emmet to Target when I was doing my shopping so we could practice our “store” skills. One day, during the Christmas season, we were walking through the Christmas section of the store and I decided to walk down the aisle that was full of Christmas tree ornaments. Just as we started to walk down the aisle, an individual that Emmet knew walked into the aisle at the other end. Emmet recognized this person immediately, and began furiously wagging his tail. Unfortunately, the aisle was very narrow, and as a result of his wild tail gyrations, ornaments began flying off the shelves around him. I’m thankful we were at the end of the aisle that was featuring acrylic and plastic ornaments instead of blown glass!
Another one that comes to mind is when Emmet was around six years old. One afternoon, I was sitting in the kitchen and he was walking towards me from the front hallway. Suddenly, he started to stagger, like his legs were too stiff to move. Then he abruptly fell over. He kept trying to get up, and kept falling over. It was a seizure. I ran over and held him. I quietly reassured him that it was going to be okay. He was conscious the whole time, and despite the fact he was in distress, he still managed to wag his tail in appreciation when I said his name and tried to comfort him.
The last is still fresh in my mind because it was the day Emmet died. By the time we got him to the vet’s office in Hutchinson, he was in major distress and major pain. We held him as the doctor examined him and during it all, we could tell that we were at the end of the road with our boy. As we held him in his last moments, with tears rolling down our cheeks, my wife and I both told him, “We love you Emmet”. We knew he heard us and we knew he understood, because he still managed to thump his big Labrador tail on the floor in reply.
–Pete
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Emmet had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma in July of 2008. He died on September 27, 2008 of an unrelated condition called GDV, more commonly known as bloat. He was 10 years old. For a photo tribute of his life, click here.
Emmet Story #7: Emmet Eats an Apple
As part of Emmet’s Service dog training, we would occassionally take him to public places to practice. One Saturday afternoon, we found ourselves at the mall. We practiced walking in and out of stores and practiced positioning skills in and among the displays, racks, and shelves in stores. Emmet loved being in public and would happily wag his tail as we practiced all of his skills.
As our time at the mall came to a close, we stopped in a store that was filled with all kinds of knick knacks. The aisles were narrow and the store was crowded. I started looking around the store with Emmet in a heel position. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the woman slightly off to my left was pushing a stroller with a small child in it and the child was happily eating an apple. I didn’t notice right away that Emmet had also noticed this little girl. He loved kids. This girl was even more interesting to him because she was eating an apple, which was one of his favorite treats. Before it even registered in my brain about what would happen next, the little girl held out her arm as if to point at Emmet and said quietly, “Hi Doggie!” Unfortunately, the hand she held out to point at Emmet with was also the hand in which she was holding the apple. Emmet assumed since she was reaching out towards him with an apple in her hand that what she meant to do was to hand him the apple. Before I could stop him, he reached out and gingerly took the apple from her hand and began chewing it hungrily.
It was at this point I panicked a bit. Emmet shouldn’t have taken the apple, but he did. It was too late to give it back to the little girl. I was mortified that he had done that before I could stop him. After quickly calculating the choices I had before me of what to do next, I decided it was best to simply quietly turn and leave the store. I almost made it out before the little girl decided to react. Just as I was walking out of the store I heard the girl shout at the top of her lungs, “Mommy! That dog stole my apple!” I disappeared around the corner just as I heard her mom say, “What dog honey?”
Whew! Just missed getting caught being stupid. I guess the right thing to have done would have been to apologize to the little girl — but in hindsight, she did hold out her apple……
–Pete
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Emmet had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma in July of 2008. He died on September 27, 2008 of an unrelated condition called GDV, more commonly known as bloat. He was 10 years old. For a photo tribute of his life, click here.
links for 2008-12-11
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A web page devoted to a Piper Warrior II, tail number N4337V. Why do I care? This is the airplane that I took my check ride in to get my Private Pilot's License. It is nice to see that it has been repainted since then, but I always thought this aircraft was a sweet ride and it was one of my favorites to fly.
links for 2008-12-08
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A link to the search page for the Apple Support Knowledgebase.
links for 2008-12-07
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Good example of using dialog boxes within an AppleScript
links for 2008-12-06
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A nice little freeware GUI app that lets you trigger the periodic cleanup scripts in Mac OS X.
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An application for view and editing the contents of plist files.
links for 2008-12-04
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A nice article that details a methodical approach for solving problems with Mac OS X or any other software.
Emmet Story #6: Never Give Up!
One Saturday afternoon I was standing in my kitchen making lunch. I had decided to go simple that day and was cutting up slices of cheese to make cheese Quesadillas. As usual, the dogs were watching what I was doing intently, hoping that there would be some tragic accident that would cause cheese to go flying off the counter and into their waiting mouths. Emmet was ESPECIALLY interested, as cheese is one of his favorite treats. During his training, we had used small cut-up pieces of treats as rewards for doing behaviors that we wanted.
One thing about training dogs is that sometimes when you have a reward that they really want, they will start offering behaviors in the hopes that you will give them the reward. Although I wasn’t training Emmet at the time, he REALLY wanted that cheese, so he began offering behaviors. His favorite to behavior to offer was to retrieve things. As I was slicing the cheese, he disappeared for a moment and then eagerly came back into the kitchen with a shoe in his mouth. He excitedly handed me the shoe while he wagged his tail furiously and waited for his treat.
As I mentioned, I wasn’t really looking to reward him at that point because I wasn’t training him, so I just praised him for bringing me the shoe and went back to making lunch. Emmet new instantly that I wasn’t going to hand him any cheese, so he disappeared again. A moment later appeared again with another shoe, which he excitedly handed me. Just like before, I took it, praised him for getting it, and continued making lunch. This went on for several minutes. He would disappear for a minute and come running back with some object. He brought me three pairs of shoes, a bucket, a bunch of clean rags, and several other things. His persistence finally paid off when he went all the way to our master bathroom and found a laundry basket. Even though it was partially full of laundry, he dragged it out of the bathroom, through our bedroom, down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he proudly presented it to me. What could I do? After all that effort I relented and gave him a piece of cheese. Wouldn’t you?
–Pete
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Emmet had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma in July of 2008. He died on September 27, 2008 of an unrelated condition called GDV, more commonly known as bloat. He was 10 years old. For a photo tribute of his life, click here.
links for 2008-11-11
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How to disable RFC1323 Window Scaling on the TCP/IP network stack of Mac OS X.
Emmet Story #5: The World is your Swimming Pool
Emmet loved water. He would try to swim in anything that looked like it might be swimable. Out at the farm, we used to water our animals using large stock tanks that held 100 gallons of water. For some reason, Emmet got it in his head that this was large enough for him to swim in, so we would regularly find him with his entire body in the stock tank, splashing around with glee.
Periodically in the summer, we would dump out the water and scrub them out and then refill them. Being 100 gallons, it would take quite a while to refill them when using just a garden hose. One afternoon after I had scrubbed them out and dropped the hose in to refill it, I had gotten distracted and walked away for a few minutes to check on something else. When I got back, Emmet was no where to be seen. Fearing that he had wandered off somewhere, I called his name and immediately saw his head pop up from the stock tank. It seems that he was laying in the bottom of it, waiting for it to refill. Crazy dog!
–Pete
—
Emmet had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma in July of 2008. He died on September 27, 2008 of an unrelated condition called GDV, more commonly known as bloat. He was 10 years old. For a photo tribute of his life, click here.