Cobalt: Another Update & More Photos

We think we've figured out why Cobalt has been waking us up so often to go out during the night -- four or five times, and most of the time she just licks at the snow. We should have figured it out sooner, but it's because we hadn't been using the humidifier this week. Last night she made it all the way to 5:30 am, for the first time.

Three nights ago we got a surprise -- we were sound asleep, when suddenly there was a bark from L's side of the bed. Which is odd, 'cause Cobalt's crate is on the opposite side of the room! I'm hoping it's just that I hadn't latched it properly, 'cause we're in trouble if she's learned how to open the crate! She has figured out that it has something to do with those metal bits that flip up, and she's flip them, but she can't (yet) slide them to get the door open.

Yesterday was a bit frantic. Our dog walker phoned about 2pm to tell me that he'd fallen in the storm and lost his clients' house keys, so he couldn't get in to let Cobalt out. I ended up bolting home from work (I brought my laptop to work from home), too late to save Cobalt's crate-cushion. Ah well.

Grendel still finds Cobalt a little too pushy




She loves tug o' war, of course


The Tongue o' Doom. She'll slurp anyone and anything into submission

Read more!

Cobalt: Portraits

I've gotten tired of having to go down to "Small" on wide Flickr photos to get them to fit on this page, so I've tweaked the template a bit. Let me know if it doesn't work for you.

I'm now about four days behind in posting Cobalt photos, so I'm going to try to catch up. For today, some portraits:

She can be rowdy


But she's usually pretty dignified


And, of course, extremely cute


It's hard, but it is possible to tire her out

Read more!

Cobalt: Weekend Update

Remember the old Warner Bros. Foghorn Leghorn cartoons? Leghorn would tease the dog until he ran out at full speed until he reached the end of his rope. As the line went taught, his feet would fly out from under him, and he'd land flat on his back.

Cobalt managed that this morning, though without the giant chicken. She also recovered far faster than the dog ever did. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera going!

Things have been settling into a routine for us, though Cobalt keeps defying the routine -- at least, the bit between midnight and 6am. We're trying to get her on an overnight schedule, based on the times she was whining to go out, but apparently she's changing that...

Puppy preschool started on Sunday. Nothing too exciting the first day -- mostly introductions and expositions. We've got homework, though, to train her on "Watch me": getting her to look at one of us and not look away. Unfortunately, she's very easily distracted. We'll keep working on it.

Cobalt's deciding that she likes snow. She'll wander around and stick her muzzle into it up over her eyes to sniff around, though that always ends with sneezes. She'll even tunnel in up to her shoulders at times -- lots of sneezes from that.

We've got a bunch more photos to sort through and put up -- I hope to get those in place over th next couple of days. Read more!

Cobalt: Last Photos With Mattie

Here are a few selections from the last set of photos with Mattie:

Cobalt's usually very quiet, but she got quite vocal with Mattie as they played.


Not to mention bouncy.


At one point, she grabbed Mattie's tail and got dragged around the yard.


Mattie's ears are just ridiculous when she's running around.

Read more!

Cobalt: Off Leash

We've been getting mixed advice on leash-free parks. One trainer said, up front, "keep out" -- he'd seen too many dogs attacked and injured by, or infected with parasites from, dogs not properly trained or cared for by their owners that they met in leash-free areas.

About a month ago, my mother took Mattie to her local leash-free, which had a "small dog" and a "big dog" area. Some idiot was running his greyhounds in the small dog area (because they were "too gentle" for the big dog section), and the greyhounds took Mattie for a rabbit and went for her. My mother, who's in her late 60s, couldn't catch up with them, and the greyhound owner wouldn't do anything.

My mother avoids off-leashes now if there are any other dogs around. Her previous dog, Bogie, was completely neurotic about all other dogs after being attacked in an off-leash, as well.

But yesterday I had Cobalt down at Moss Park, where three other people had their dogs off-leash, and she loved it. I kept her on her springy-leash thing, so she couldn't run free, but she had a grand time bouncing at the other dogs, who either ignored her or snuffled friendly-like. It's certainly a great way for her to burn off energy!

I suppose the best bet would be an off-leash area where you knew everyone and their dogs, but that's not really doable in downtown Toronto. Read more!

Cobalt: Cobalt & Mattie In The Snow

More photos from Sunday. There's one more set after this one, but taking care of Cobalt after work takes up a lot of prime photo-prepping time.

Mattie doesn't usually get this animated.


Mattie looks like a seal. Where are her legs?


The two of them burned off a lot of energy.


Normally, the shepherd's supposed to corner the sheep.
Cobalt hasn't got up to that page in the manual, I guess.

Read more!

Cobalt: Cobalt Photos

And here are some photos of Cobalt herself:

Of course, she loves to run


But running can be exhausting!


She can zonk right out in the most inconvenient places


But it doesn't take much to perk her up again.

Read more!

Cobalt: Mattie Photos

I am exhausted. Cobalt had us up at 11:30, 2:00, 2:30, 3:30, 5:30, and 6:15 last night. We need to get her on a schedule. She's taken to whining to go out to pee, then once she's back in her crate (on the third floor with us) whining to go out again for another go.

But before all that, I got the first of the Cobalt & Mattie photos up on Flickr. These ones are from their first, indoor romp.

Cobalt & Mattie


Still not quite sure what to make of the new creature


Being an Aussie, Cobalt doesn't know what a tail is


Cobalt tries to herd Mattie


BFF

Read more!

Cobalt: Mattie

This Sunday, we were having family over to meet the new pup. My mother was coming up from London to see the COC production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and was going to come by for dinner after, where we'd be joined by my siblings.

On Saturday, though, she called and said her dogsitter had cancelled out on her, and could we watch Mattie, her Coton De Tulear, while she was at the opera?

Mattie

We figured this would be a great opportunity to socialize Cobalt with another dog her size -- and if they didn't get along, we could always put Mattie in the pen. for the duration.

Well, they got along. As soon as Mattie was in the door, the two of them were racing around the living room at top speed. Mattie looks like a little sheep, and Cobalt was keen on herding her. It was a good half-hour before they calmed down at all.

After my mother left, we took the two outside, and they were even more hyper than they had been in the living room -- round and round the yard, chasing each other non-stop. In all they had three outside sessions like that, and were exhausted by the time my mother got back. We shot about 500 photos (burst mode is very useful when photographing hyper puppies!), and we'll have some choice ones posted soon!

Cobalt, of course, was a total hit with the family. Read more!

Cobalt: Wham!

Last night, just after 11pm, I took Cobalt out into the yard, but it didn't quite go as planned. The snow on the top step had started to pack down from us going in and out so much, and it gave way under my foot. Next thing I knew, I was in the air and coming down on my back on the stairs. Ouch. Fortunately, Cobalt, whom I was carrying, landed on top of me rather than vice-versa.

All of which means, I won't be running around the yard with her for a couple of days... Read more!

Cobalt: Rubber Velcro Monkey Dog In Action!

Up...


Up...


And over!


The landing was a little rough, but she bounces.

Read more!

Cobalt: Shawl dog, too

Last night on the way to the vet, Cobalt was very squirmy, climbing up my chest and nuzzling into my neck all the way. Cute, but a little awkward.

Driving from the vet to PetSmart, though, she got downright silly. She squirmed up over my shoulder and around my neck like a shawl, and fell asleep.

I wish we'd had a camera with us. Except Lori was driving, so it wouldn't've been a good idea for her to have been taking pictures... Read more!

Cobalt: Rubber Velcro Monkey Dog

Cobalt is a rubber dog: when she's in her pen and one of us walks into the room (even though she's being supervised by the other) she starts bouncing. A lot. And high. L was already thinking of putting her in agility training (those steeplechase things like the Superdogs do), and she's certainly got the springiness for it.

Cobalt is a velcro dog. Her puppy claws were nice and sharp, and when she latches onto you it can be very hard to detach her. We had her at the vet yesterday (everything was good!) and the vet trimmer her nails, but that hasn't reduced her velcrosity that much.

Cobalt is also a monkey dog. When we left for work yesterday, she hadn't used the yard, so we left her in her pen, which has a 2' high fence. When I got home at lunch, she was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, all patient and happy. I thought at first she'd managed to jump out, but after I took up her food dishes after feeding her and turned to put them back in the cupboard, I turned back to find her with her elbows over the top of the fence and her feet on the middle cross-bar. She jumps up into the corner of the pen and latches on, making good use of her rubber and velcro properties, and apparently yesterday she managed to combine them all to get out.

The good news is that the only damage to anything that she did was the total destruction of one kitty fluff ball toy. Everything else was fine, and there were no accidents. So she's a very well behaved rubber velcro monkey dog.

Unfortunately, she still doesn't like using the yard. She's learned how to climb the back porch stairs, and within minutes of putting her down out back, she's up the stairs and standing at the door, looking in expectantly. Usually with Mouse the Cat inside, looking out, very curious.

(Mouse isn't the only curious one: two nights ago when I had her out at 4:00 am a large, round raccoon climbed up onto the top of one of our fence-posts and perched there, watching us, until we went in.)

Our first puppy preschool class is tomorrow after work. I hope they can give us some advice on yard training! Read more!

Cobalt: Progress!

Yesterday was Cobalt's first day with us away at work. We've started to work out a bit of a toilet schedule for her -- her favourite times seem to be about 10 am and 2 am. Which is a little awkward.

Our plan, for the moment, is to feed her and take her out to the back yard in the morning, then leave her in her pen with a potty-pad until I return at lunch. This takes care of the 10 am -- it's not ideal, since we want to get her away from using the pads, but it's better than her messing her crate.

I fed her at lunch and took her out again (no results), but this time put her in her crate until we got back from work. We figured that'd be safe given her schedule-to-date.

Taking her out after work and after dinner didn't produce any breakthroughs on the potty front, but she has made progress in one area: she's figured out the back porch stairs! After work, L headed back to the house and Cobalt followed. She managed to get up about three steps before getting confused and falling back down again. But by the third time out that evening, she was taking the stairs without trouble -- and this morning, she signaled that she wanted to go in by running up the stairs and waiting by the door, without us leading her.

After dinner -- and her first successful run up the stairs -- we sat her on the bed and settled in to watch TV. Unfortunately, we haven't yet figured out how to tell the difference between exploratory sniffing and sniffing around for a good toilet spot. So the duvet cover ended up in the wash. She's fast!

But we have made progress -- her 1am and after-breakfast visits to the yard produced results, and earned her extensive hot dog rewards. So we're getting there.

Today, the big event is the trip to the vet. This should be interesting. Read more!

Cobalt: Day 2

We're now through our first full day with Cobalt. She's incredibly affectionate and energetic, as you'd expect! We took her on two walks down to the local park, which she really enjoyed (she loves to chase), but it's so cold out that within 10 or 15 minutes we have to carry her home because she's shivering.

Fortunately, we have a 50-foot-long living room/dining room combo in our house, so we can run her there as well. Unfortunately, it still has bits of our old waterbed against the wall, which makes it a little hard to maneuver through while trying not to step on a dog who likes to follow you with her chin on your ankle.

We've also had her with us on the bed Saturday night & Sunday as we watched CSI & Mythbusters. She's very happy to flop out with us, though Grendel, who usually curls up at my feet, isn't too happy about her coming over to sniff him from time to time. But he was back on the bed after she went into her crate.

We're trying to crate- and pen-train her, which is being a little trying. She's got a piercing voice when she's not the centre of attention. But with both of us working 9-to-5, we have to get her used to being alone.

The current plan is for me to head home every day at lunch to feed her and take her out. I'm hoping that won't eat up too much of my office time, 'cause it doesn't help if I have to stay late to make up the time. My current plan is to work on the client-oriented projects from 9-12 and 1-5 (home for the pup from 12-1), then take my work laptop home at night and work on my big programming projects there -- the ones that are constantly getting interrupted by client projects at the office.

The biggest problem right now is toilet training. Her schedule's a little irregular right now: anywhere from 1½ hours to 8½ hours after eating (that last being 2:30 this morning!). For the moment, our plan is to take her out after breakfast and, if she doesn't do anything, leave her in her pen with her potty-pad (which she uses properly, thanks to Stoverly's paper training) until I'm back for lunch.

We've only had one accident so far, when she was crated while we ran out to get her toys & a pillow. Fortunately, the jacuzzi tub is deep enough that she can't get out while I'm cleaning her. Unfortunately, it has one sloped side that generally causes her to slide belly-down into the mess I've just washed off her...

Today, we make appointments with the vet (we'll be using Bay Dog Hospital, since we already use Bay Cat Hospital for Grendel & Mouse, and the puppy training (we'll be trying PetSmart for that). Read more!

Cobalt: The Poor Mouse!

Cobalt's taken a liking to one of the cats' toys, the poor thing.

By the way, I've replaced the original pictures on Flickr with colour-corrected ones, and added four new ones. Read more!

Cobalt: Pictures

It looks like we're naming the new girl "Cobalt", as her colouring is called "blue merle". It's actually grey with black spots, but it's called "blue", so I figure we can call her "Cobalt".

Here are some photos of her from our visit to Stoverly, where she picked L out:

Read more!

Pets: The New Girl

L's wanted a dog for a long time. She misses Tigger, her old cat of 22 years who would curl up with her when she slept. Mouse is a great cat, but she's not a cuddly one, and Grendel always curls up at my feet.

L gets very specific ideas about what she wants, and in this case, what she wanted was a miniature Australian Shepherd. She did a bunch of research and found Stoverly Aussies in Midland. We went up to meet with them and their dogs, and L loved the dogs.

We didn't adopt any puppies then -- there were none ready for adoption -- but a week ago L found that Stoverly had posted pictures of two new litters up for adoption. One pup in particular, Quiver, caught L's eye: he had very distinctive markings, and was a very small pup (which suited us).

After getting in touch with Stoverly, we decided not to go with Quiver. Stoverly wanted to keep him on a co-own for breeding purposes, which would have been very awkward with the two-hour drive between Toronto and Midland. Still, L was also taken with a couple of the other pups, Usher (a male) and Cheerio (a female), so we arranged to visit Stoverly on Saturday.

After driving through a nasty white-out in Barrie, we arrived at Stoverly and met all the pups, who were racing all 'round the house. After we'd been there a while, one of the other females, Jolly, curled up on L's lap and fell asleep, and that clinched it -- we ended up taking Jolly home.

We got back to Toronto and stopped at PetSmart to pick up a crate, a pen, some toys, and so on -- and had a great deal of trouble getting out of the store because people kept stopping to ask about her.

Once home, we got things set up and put her food down in her pen, but she was too excited to eat. We took her outside, but since she hadn't eaten, she didn't need to go -- and it was cold!

Eventually we retired to the bedroom to catch up on our CSI episodes, with the new girl -- we're not going to go with "Jolly", but we have to come up with a name of our own -- curled up on L and snoozing through them all. After the shows, she went into her crate with a minimum of fuss and sleep through 'til I got up at 7am.

Next up: photos, and day 2. Read more!

Stuff: Back!

I know I said, back when I accepted the Algorithmics job, that details would follow. Well, the main detail is that I've been too busy to blog about it! However, we've just had a big event that merits reviving this thing, so that'll follow in the next post. Read more!

Photography: Visitor

I just got another great bike run in (a 62km tour of Etobicoke), but I'm not going to bother putting a map of that together (at least, not just yet). Instead, here are some photos of a visitor to our front yard.

Monarch butterflies pass through southern Ontario every year. Point Pelee, the southernmost tip of mainland Ontario (only Pelee Island is further south in Canada) is famous for the migrating Monarchs, who cross Lake Erie from Sandusky, to Pelee Island, then to Point Pelee and on up.

This one got quite comfy in our front yard, hanging out on the cedars and letting me get quite close with the camera.

It even took some time to pose for me, showing off its famous bright orange wings.

There are Monarchs all over Toronto these days. I saw a dozen of them on the lakeshore leg of my bike run. Too bad they're so hard to photograph on the wing. Read more!

Stuff: Best Week in Ages

This has been the best week in ages.

Monday: I got to take a friend out cycling. I love biking around Toronto, but unfortunately Lori's not an experienced enough cyclist to keep up with me, so most of the time I ride solo. Monday, though, I managed to drag a friend across 23 km of Toronto trails.

Wednesday: More cycling. I completed my first ever century: a 100 km tour of Toronto (105km to be exact).


I didn't take any photos, but there were times I wished I had had the camera. Among the sights:

• A feral cat eating by the side of the path
  
• A woodchuck doing likewise, down a way from the cat
  
• A man hand-feeding a red-headed woodpecker
  
• Two girls hand-feeding a squirrel
  

I didn't consider 'til now how all of these involved animals eating...

Thursday: In spite of being a little (well, very) stiff after my big tour, I accepted a job at Algorithmics! I am no longer unemployed!

I start on September 5th at one of the Top 100 Employers in Canada.

What's the word? Oh, right: Woot! Read more!

Photography: Crowning Apollo

Most of the photographs I take are spur-of-the-moment things, but sometimes an idea comes to me that actually requires some planning ahead of time.

One day, when walking across University Ave in Toronto, I noticed that the tip of the shadow of the Airman's Memorial (better known as "Gumby Goes to Heaven") was just reaching the end of the boulevard that divides the street. When meant that if I were to stand just short of that, I could get this funky backlit shot:

Further down University is another memorial, the South African War Memorial. Looking at it one day as I passed on my way to work, it struck me that if I did a shot like my backlit Gumby shot, I could have Nike (the victory figure at the top) crowning the Sun. So I set out to plan this one. Obviously, I'd have to be there at just the right time -- when University Ave pointed right at the Sun. I brought my camera to work and headed over at lunch.

Unfortunately, I discovered that it won't work at this time of year. The Sun's too high in the sky at lunch, so I have to stand almost right under the status, and everything's too foreshortened to get the effect. I'd have to wait to December to get that shot.

That didn't mean I couldn't get something, though. I brought the camera to work again and tried some shots on my way in. Because the Sun's in the east, I had to stand on the west side of University, behind Campbell House. That didn't quite work, because the shadow fell behind a fence, so the closest I could get to lining things up was this:

Not what I was after, but I like the effect. I especially like the reddish halo showing in the clouds, the result of the sunlight refracted in the water vapour. That didn't show up until I touched up the colour levels.

Since I couldn't line things up in a morning shoot, the only option was an evening one. Most of the time, though, I left work too early to get anything -- the Sun would be too close to (or even behind) the buildings south-west of the memorial. One day, though, I happened to not only be leaving late, but I had the camera along (and the tripod, even!), and I found that the tip of the shadow was just reaching the sidewalk on the east side of University.

It was tricky to shoot, though. With no cloud or haze, the sun was too bright to look at through the viewfinder. I had to set up the shot low, with the sun out of frame, then angle the camera up and hope I got things lined up right. The first few shots were 'way off:

The block in the lower right is one corner of the famous Canada Life Building, known for the weather beacon on top of its tower.

Fortunately, with digital, I could tell immediately if I missed, so it didn't take too long, and eventually I got the effect I wanted:

(BTW, there's some subtle detail that tends to get lost in these reduced images -- it's worth following the link and seeing the image in "Large" size)

I'll still be going back in December to try out my original idea, though! Read more!

Photography: Trilliums

In addition to GPS-based geocaching, we do letterboxing, a much older version of the same sort of game. Back in May we found a series of letterboxes called the Narnia series (each box had a stamp based on the four Pevensie children and a clue leading to a final, fifth box), with all of the boxes hidden in provincial conservation areas north of Toronto. On stop was the Triffin Conservation Area, which had more trilliums than I'd ever seen at one time before.

I'm used to seeing trilliums in patches that are maybe five meters across, but here, they stretched as far as you could see. Mostly the traditional white ones:

Though a few of those were a little more dramatic than the average:

There were also a lot of the rarer pink trilliums:

And the occasional, very dramatic, red ones:

It was a couple of shots of these that I used for the stereo trilliums image in the last post. Read more!

Photography: Stereography

On one of our geocaching trips (of which I'll be posting more photos shortly), we took lots of plant photos. By chance, there were two plants that we ended up photographing from almost, but not quite, identical positions -- just off enough that they could be used to make stereographic pairs.

To get the 3D effect, scroll this page until the image is at a comfortable eye level, fix your attention on the white bar in the middle, and then relax your eyes and let the left and right images drift apart until you can see three copies of the image. The middle copy will consist of the two halves overlapping, giving a 3D effect.

Read more!