Category Archive

I’ve taken to calling her kitten. I was messing around with obscuring the flash. This shot had the flash obscured by an opaque object. I liked the look on her face, but the lighting was too low and led to noise in the capture. So I hit it with the sepia and film grain. The pictures are rather large, so I’m hiding them below the jump.

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While browsing my various photo albums (all of them digital) for a proper head shot of myself, I was struck by my complete absence. I make appearances so rarely, it’s like I don’t exist in the photo history of my life. I’m always the cameraman. Really, I have so few pictures of myself throughout my entire life, I am basically a ghost. There was a period of time in the late 90’s when I had long hair. I don’t have a single picture of that (this post reminded me of that time). But I do have pictures of my babies. I found this while hunting.

Willow gets nervous when Donna leaves.  She watches her like a hawk through the window until she disappears from sight.  Today I decided to take a picture of this, which meant opening the screen as well as the window.  However, Willow started getting a little too “jumpy” and I had to tug her away from the window before she tried to learn how to fly.

The berries on the ground are mulberries.  We have several trees in our yard, so they are falling everywhere right now.  Daedalus is addicted to them, the little blighter.  It’s a constant tug-of-war when we’re outside.

Thanks to TwitPic, I can post these pics directly to twitter from my cell phone. Good times.

I just noticed that on the first page of Google Image results for the query cutest dog ever is none other than the Daedalpuppy (reposted below).  The first picture on that list is pretty cruel.  :P  I think Daedal has those other dogs beat.

We went to a Pittsburgh Pirates game tonight. They got their asses handed to them by the Phillies. It was so sad. Donna’s brother and his wife were visiting and their husky has separation anxiety. In the 7th inning, we got a call from our neighbor that an old woman came around complaining and saying she was going to call the cops. Our dogs are normally pretty quiet, but the husky was in a new situation and away from her owners, so poor thing was going nuts.

Got a pic of the parrot mascot at the game. Proof that I occasionally watch sports.

It’s been a while since I posted a picture of the dogs, so here’s Daedalus being curious about a sound outside.

This kid in Australia recently debunked the myth that goldfish only have 3-second memories. He did so by conditioning them to come to a beacon by associating it with food. He also trained them to follow short mazes using multiple beacons. These memories last for about a week, or indefinitely if used regularly. One of his goals was to show that it is cruel to put them in small aquariums/bowls. On a side note, it’s also cruel to put them in a small bowl with no air filter. They need at least one square foot of water surface per inch of goldfish (and multiple goldfish increase this proportionally). If you do less, you’re basically suffocating them slowly.

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Willow in her natural environment. She has taken to eating all the snow she can find. Right now it’s melting, and there is an ice path leading along the side of my apartment that is covered in water. (Water on top, ice on bottom.) No picture of that, though. This is her on Valentine’s Day.

It is about 11 degrees Fahrenheit (-11.7 Celsius) with a wind chill of -1 (-18.3) degrees here in Pittsburgh at the moment. As such, the dogs should get sweaters, right? Well, Willow doesn’t really need it. She loves the cold, but she’s cute in it anyway.

Daedalus loves getting up on the window sill, the better to sniff at his treat jar. He can also look out of our third story window to see what there is to be seen. And bark at it.

It has been snowing here all day, so I’m in a wintry mood. I’ve taken a few pictures over the past couple weeks with my new camera. I particularly like this picture of Willow in the mirror with a snowy tree visible in the window.

A couple weeks ago at Frick Park, one of the trails iced over completely. Walking on it was pretty hazardous and I was slipping a lot, but there were joggers running by who didn’t seem to have a problem. Maybe I have bad snow shoes. Daedal didn’t seem to have a problem with it, either.

Willow loved the ice road more than Daedalus. You can probably see that she is a filthy mess in this picture. There was an area where the ground wasn’t frozen and it was insanely muddy. If she likes anything better than a hole in ice where she can lie in the water, it’s a hole in ice where she can lie in mud.

And here is Willow at Schenley Park last Wednesday. She looks kinda wolf-like to me. Like she is about to chase down a ball and hamstring it.

The article I mentioned the other day concerning a computer program that confirms dogs communicate has drawn attention from Language Log [first here, more here]. The first was more of a rant from Geoff Pullum that left me feeling like he’s just not much of a dog person (or at the very least, has a healthy skepticism of animal communication claims).  Actually I think he is more angry with the way the media covers this sort of research, but I should stop now before putting too many uninformed words in his mouth.  Mark Liberman goes much more in depth and actually picks apart the paper by Molnar, Kaplan, Roy, Pachet, Pongracz, Doka and Miklosi (the Hungarian scientists mentioned in my previous post).

For anyone interested in machine learning and/or animal communication, I think the Liberman post is worth reading. A few highlights are as follows:

• no tests were done to see if the computer was significantly more accurate than humans
• computer accuracy overall was 43% while human accuracy was 40%
• the article is less about communication than it is about the physiological state used to produce the barks: that is, if a dog is emotionally stimulated, body in a lunging position, his bark will naturally differ from a resting dog

The first two points are important in that the pop science articles reporting the study misrepresented the impact of the research — not very surprising. The third point is more interesting to me, though I have never done anything with animal communication aside from learn about it briefly in a introductory linguistics class.  I had heard about gorillas who could communicate with sign language, and assumed the results were provocative but not controversial. It was fascinating to learn that whether gorillas are doing anything more than memorizing a set of signs that lead to rewards is still debated.

I saw a video via StumbleUpon the other day where a chimp and a human are shown a screen with numbers that are flashed quickly then converted to blank squares. The task is to touch the squares in descending order. The chimps can do it amazingly fast and humans screw it up big time. I attribute this to the idea that animals are “present” or “in the moment,” while humans tend to have a lot going on in their heads that distracts them from the real world. The chimp reacts to the present world, and the humans get bungled up by trying to sort the spatial configuration of the screen as they see it.  They are slowed down by converting the scene into a mental representation, rather than just seeing what is in front of them.  But I’m just theorizing…  I hope someone with more experience with cognitive science can enlighten this off-the-cuff opinion.

Returning to Mark Liberman’s comments about the physiological condition of the dog, I have to partially disagree.  First of all, I definitely agree that the dog’s physical position allows the proper bark to be made.  For Daedalus to produce his beagle howl, his body must be rigid and his head extended upwards.  I have tried to move his body to prevent this bark (because it’s loud as hell on a quiet street at 12am) and have managed to distort it.  However, it is still clearly recognizable as this particular type of bark.  I don’t really see, though, why the territorial instinct of warning other animals away from his territory (wolf heritage) would demand the body rigid, head-back position.  I think the bark demands that position in order to be made, much as our mouth must be in different configurations to make different sounds (ignoring trained exceptions like ventriloquism).  That’s not to say the “fight” body position and the “fight” bark are not interrelated.  After all, a human must be holding a sword and facing massive opposition to yell:

This is SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Being in close proximity to two dogs for many hours per day over the past two years, I have come to recognize different barks that my dogs make as meaning different things.

Willow, my Australian Shepherd, has a bark that is very strained, urgent, fast, and loud that she uses to say she is in kill mode.  She uses this bark on things like cats and people or dogs that come onto our property at night.  She has another bark that says, “Pick up the damn ball I just dropped at your feet and play!”  This particular bark makes me want to smack her, but of course, I don’t.  Its insolence is simultaneously annoying and endearing.

My beagle Daedalus has a wider array of barks.  The best is the beagle howl.  This isn’t like a howling wolf, but more of a trumpeting ARRROOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  It is crazy loud and at first it was annoying, but now it just cracks me up.  He has a much more annoying bark he uses to say “Willow has a treat and I want it!”  This bark is loud, quick, and incessant.  He also uses this bark to alert us to the presence of animals.  When we visited my mother over Christmas, he would bark at her ferrets this way.  He wouldn’t attack them outright, since that isn’t really his nature, but he would get very close and bark and bark and bark and bark.  This is beagle breeding kicking in, since they are bred to track game and alert the hunters to its location.

So a new study reveals what most dog owners probably already took for granted.  There really is a dog language that other dogs understand and use to communicate with each other.  Using a neural network, Hungarian researchers were able to detect key features in barks that indicated the situation that caused them.  Accuracy of the software was different based on the situation.  But that the system was able to abstract similarities between the barks was pretty good evidence that there are common barking patterns for different activities.  My hope is that this research will encourage further studies that may be more accurate.  Perhaps being more accurate just isn’t possible, but that would also be interesting to know.

I see a valuable commercial interest here:  create a collar attachment that monitors the dog and whenever it barks, it speaks aloud — in English — the sentiment the dog is expressing.

WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
“Aggression… Aggression… Aggression…”

I took the dogs to a different dog park than usual today. Schenley Park is within walking distance of our apartment, and then it was relatively easy to find a stretch of grass far enough away from the road that I could feel safe letting Willow off leash to play ball. Daedalus and her both explored the woods a little bit, Daedalus still on his leash. I just can’t trust him to come when called if he gets on a scent. Their coloring was perfect for the partially snow-covered leaves.

While at my mom’s house in Greenville, South Carolina, I played a little frisbee with Willow (my australian shepherd) in the back yard.  I took some video where I was throwing the frisbee, then switched over to my mom throwing it.  However, insanely, when my mom started throwing I put the cap on and failed to notice for like 10 minutes!!  Thereby losing all the good footage and left with only my crappy warmup footage.  I was so pissed at myself.  Bad noob cameraman!

The soundtrack is Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 by Edvard Grieg and is in the public domain.

Daedalus (my lemon beagle) does this thing where he will extend his neck and begin doing some sort of weird coughing, where it sounds like he is either choking or trying to hack up mucus. Usually the episode ends with him opening his mouth wide while not breathing and then producing a loud hack or snort. We have taken him to the vet for this and the vet said he looked healthy but put Daedal on a round of antibiotics since he thought maybe it was kennel cough. Unfortunately, it appears our vet doesn’t know much about hunting dogs.

While at the dog park yesterday, Donna and I ran across a guy with two beagles. One of them began doing the exact same thing Daedalus does, which used to cause us much alarm. He said it was normal for beagles and that his vet called it reverse coughing. I researched it online for a bit and found that it’s actually called reverse sneezing and that many dogs experience it. The cause of the condition is unknown, but various theories state it is the result of an allergy to some scent picked up in puppyhood, an attempt to remove mucus, or some other nasal/pharyngeal problem. It is also called inspiratory paroxysmal respiration.

I think I fall on the side of the mucus cause. Daedalus does seem to hack up something which he then swallows (sorry if this grosses you out). This isn’t any different than humans who as children are usually taught to spit that out when they are sick. Also, we began giving Daedalus Benadryl after the visit to the vet in case it was an allergy thing. He reverse sneezes very irregularly, so it was hard to tell if it was working. Then, while on Benadryl, he did it twice in a 24-hour stretch. At that point, I pretty much gave up on it being an allergy-related thing, though he does seem to have some allergies (eye-discharge is reduced on Benadryl). I’m not ready to make a decision either way, though, since there are many free variables. The extra mucus could be produced by allergies anyway, it would seem.

In any case, the good news is that if your dog does this, it is perfectly normal — especially for beagles and other hunting dogs, but it’s not limited to hunting dogs or any particular breed. Small dogs seem to do it more often, but not by much. Even better news is that there does not appear to be any lasting harm to the dog — the dog is normal before and after the episode. Just some bizarre dog thing.

While helping my mother with some pictures, I found a stash of old pictures of Daedalus from when he was a puppy. These were his “toddler” days. He was just insanely cute, wasn’t he? Nellie is the Italian Greyhound and belongs to my middle sister.

It snowed yesterday enough to cover the ground, but freezing rain turned to rain overnight and it was all gone by morning. It’s back to flurrying today and there was one stretch that was particularly beautiful as the snow was whipped around by the wind. It could have been a blizzard if it lasted for more than 10 minutes.

That picture came out better than I expected, actually. I’ve had difficulty in the past getting snow to show up on film and be anything more than a gray fuzz in the air. I used flash with the “action shot” setting on my camera. Speaking of cameras, I need a new one. This one is going on four years old. And I guess film is the wrong word there since this is a digital camera, so what I would call it? Showing up on silicon?

The dog park over winter has no operating water fountains, so we either have to bring in water or find it.  Willow prefers to find it.  Granted, she was really hot (and thirsty) after our first round of frisbee.  School is just about over (minus one final) so I’ve been working from home for the past couple days.  The result is that my dog obsession is peaking again.

To my dog Daedalus, comfort is being close to Master. He often forsakes comfortable beds for our laps. He crawled up on the chair today while I was on the computer and plopped down.

Because resting his head on a laptop is more comfortable than his plush doggy bed. This position got annoying for me very quickly, so I moved him to the other chair and made him a little bed.

The snow continues here.  Today it was covering the road.  When I took Daedalus and Willow out in the morning, they both weren’t having any of it.  Daedal balked at the door and Willow was stepping gingerly and obvious wondering what had gone wrong with the world.  They finally got used to it, though the poor boy was shivering his butt off after a short while.  Willow was more in her element.  We’re gonna have to get him paw gloves.

Here is the scene out my office window.  They are currently building the new Computer Science Complex here.  One of the buildings is the Gates Center.  You can actually see shots from the live webcam 24/7, though the show is quite boring after about 4:30pm or so these days.  What’s amazing to me is that people are out there working right now.  In South Carolina, construction work ended as soon as the sky darkened and rain fell.  If snow fell, it would be like the end of the world had come.  I don’t think this makes them any faster, though.  Another bizarre difference between construction crews here and there is that there are no hispanic people here.  This is a very bad thing as it also means there’s crap for Mexican food.  You could find good Mexican every time you turned around in SC.

The first (somewhat) serious snow came today. Well, not particularly serious, but compared to South Carolina where I’ve spent most of the last 22 or so winters, it would’ve shut down schools for two days at least. Daedalus acted a little prissy. He didn’t want to get his paws cold I guess. He got used to it quickly and went exploring. Willow had no problem with it. She loves the cold. The wind was gusting and that was more than the Bug could handle. I wish I could’ve taken a picture of his face. Normally getting him to come in is a hassle, but a quick “let’s go” and he was running for the door.

Donna just had me dig up a pic of our Christmas tree 2 years ago, so I figured why not post it. I think it was beautiful. That was the Christmas we got Daedalus.  Be sure to scroll down to see the little boy.

I took the dogs to Frick Park this morning, something I hope to repeat as often as possible during the winter break. By the time we get home from work/school, it’s almost completely dark outside and we’re still a few weeks from the winter solstice. So the poor little devils don’t get to go to their favorite park during the week otherwise. I hear you asking, “How do you know it’s their favorite, crazy?” Well, they don’t whimper when they get close to other parks.

The Watering Hole

The Bug

The Bee

And yeah there’s no good reason here for it to be all old-timey except that I was bored. We didn’t actually go to the dog park area since there was a big puddle in there (and no dogs), so we stayed out in the public area. It’s technically illegal to have dogs off leash there, but it’s not enforced at this park. Dog people have taken it over. During the day, it’s extremely empty too, so that’s good. We were on our way out and I thought I was hot stuff because I had avoided letting Willow get wet and muddy. However, she managed to find a random puddle on a level area on a hillside. It’s freezing outside and the puddle is completely covered in ice. That didn’t stop her from cracking the ice, laying down in it and drinking to her heart’s content. Blerg.

I’ve seen Santa dogs and elf dogs. Frosty the Snowman dogs and Rudolf dogs. But this is a new one to me.

Look at that cute little dirty nose. Went to the dog park.  Daedal was being good today, but Willow was being possessive with her frisbee and attacking any dog that got too close. Multiple dominations were required and it was hard to keep my cool, which doesn’t help. On the way out, we were throwing the frisbee and someone released their dog to go “play” with her. So the pit bull charges Willow down as she’s bringing back the frisbee and she snaps at it and they get into a scuffle. For one thing, damn pit bulls. For another, why does she insist on picking on dogs so much scarier? One of the dogs she was getting snappy with was a great dane three or four times her size. She’s a fierce little devil.

Australian shepherds are supposed to be good protectors. She’s so scrawny, it’s hard to believe she could be. Contrary to the name, Australian shepherds didn’t originate in Australia. They were bred from several different breeds in the western United States in the 1800’s. Originally, one of their ancestors probably came from Spain where Basque farmers used them with their livestock. During the landrushes of the 1800’s, many breeds were mixed in the American West. Dogs of UK and Spanish descent are believed to have contributed the most to the breed that came to be known as Australian Shepherds. The name seems to have come more from the fact that herding dogs were bred for specific landscapes in Australia and that practice was applied to this emerging breed. So Australian Shepherds are to Australia as Continental Breakfasts are to Europe.

I’m no expert here, so if I’m wrong, hopefully someone with more knowledge will fill in the gaps and/or correct bad info. As I understand it, there is a good deal of controversy.

Daedalus got his new winter coat. He just loves it. (He wouldn’t move from the spot where we placed him.)

Donna wasn’t feeling well today so I took the dogs to the dog park solo — a very rare act for me.  Despite some initial social anxiety, it didn’t go badly.  Autumn is really starting to kick in, though it hasn’t peaked yet.  There are still plenty of green leaves on trees.

So a lot of websites are posting their kids in their Spiderman outfits or an array of really cool pumpkins or just changing their logos.  Me?  I stick to dogs.  This lady brings a mastiff around school all the time and today she had him dressed up as a flying monkey from the Wizard of Oz.  She was dressed up herself as the Wicked Witch of the West.  Not a bad outfit on a monster of a dog (who is actually quite sweet).

Oh and vote for the frickin coolest pumpkin of all time:

I came across this dog costume on the Green Man. I think Daedalus would look hilarious in it. Last Christmas, we dressed him as Daedal the red-nosed reindog. Just need to find some stuffed animals and someone who knows how to sew…

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According to a report by Discovery Channel News on a new study, the personality of the dog shapes the human-dog relationship far more than the person’s personality. It turns out that the key to a good human-dog relationship is that the dog be generally agreeable and open to new things. Maybe this is why I love Daedalus so much. He’s always up for any adventure and will let you do anything to him (though he may squirbble a bit if he doesn’t like it).  My nephew Dillon used to pull on his ears and skin when he was a bit younger (Dillon is just over a year old, fyi) and Daedalus tolerated it perfectly.  He’s such a good dog.

As I mentioned before, I spent last weekend with my wife’s family in Dover, Pennsylvania (which is right outside of York).  We had a cookout and went to the fair.  Rather than posting a horde of pictures, I made this little montage.  The highlight of the fair was seeing an American buffalo calf being fed (row 2, column 4).  The thing was incredibly rambunctious — the farmer clearly had a hard time keeping it settled for the dozens of hyper kids to come up and pet.   There were also some alpacas, sheep, goats, and — of course — pigs.

This weekend we visited Donna’s family in York, Pennsylvania.  Mainly it was a chance to see family and friends and we also went to the York Interstate Fair.  Pictures from that will be posted when I get a chance, but here is a video I took of Willow from my phone.

Daedalus (DAY-dul-us) /dedləs/ .

Daedal. Daedalbug. Daedalmonkey. Bug. The Bug. Buddy. Little Buddy. Devil. Devilboy. Daisy. Daedalbop. Daisybop. My boy. Sweet boy. Little bastard. Devildog. Doodlebug. Devilbug. Doodalus. Dadalus. Daed. Trouble. Bop. mmm-Daedal. Doodle. Little doodle.

Donna and I went to Settlers Cabin Park today just west of Pittsburgh with my friend Eric and his fiancee Julie. The dogs came along and we cooked out and had a nice little picnic. After going on the teepee trail, I came across a woolly bear caterpillar. I’ve always found these caterpillars really interesting, because they look so freaky. People raise them, since they turn into Isabella tiger moths, which are a pretty-ish speckled beige.

After returning home, the dogs were wiped out, which is exactly what we were hoping for.

Daedalus is a sucker for some good sunbathing and stick-chewing. When he should be doing his business, he likes to plop down on some warm grass, grab a stick, and then proceed to gnaw it down until he almost chokes to death on it and I have to rescue him. Once he had a stick jammed between his teeth at the back of his throat and I had to reach in and break the stick in his mouth. This harrowing escape from death behind him, he proceeded to try to grab the shreds of the stick I had just shattered in his mouth and chew some more.

The cute little blighter.

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Whenever we make up our bed and put all the decorative pillows on it, Willow loves it. After a night of visitors, we came into our bedroom to find Willow passed out beneath a minor avalanche.

This picture was taken with my new cell phone on the highest quality level (1600×1200). The image was too large to send to myself via email so I bought a 1 GB micro SD card off of newegg for about $12. It’s a great way to get around spending extra on picture/video messaging. It won’t be saving me anything, though, since my phone plan includes more free messages than I’m likely to ever use.

Daedalus never rolls in the mud, but he will occasionally roll on something stinky. This mess, however, was not his fault. Curious and dopey, he stood by watching a black lab dance in a giant puddle.

This shot was taken with my new 2.0 megapixel camera phone. Not the best picture in the world, but vastly better than my previous phone, as you can see here.

Ok, I feel the need to plug a Facebook app. First of all, most apps suck. They chew up space on your profile and are largely useless because for them to be any good you need like a dozen friends using them, which never happens. There are a few exceptions, like Books, which is cool on its own (though I wish adding new books were a little easier). However, one app that really impressed me is Dogbook. Dogbook lets you create profiles for your dogs. Your dogs can have their own friends (other dogs and people) and pictures added from your profile. Also, you can search for dogs in your area, so if you were ever wondering who owned that dog you met in the dog park, now you can (assuming they use Dogbook too). This is especially useful since people hardly ever exchange names at a dog park and you only know them by the names of their dogs.

And surprisingly, a large number of people seem to use it.

I mean, aren’t they just crazy cute? Unfortunately they are also crazy. Willow has been dividing her time between dropping balls at my feet, pestering Daedalus (which makes him squirbble like mad), and trying to dig under our couch.  Balls keep rolling under there, so when she’s bored, regardless of whether there’s actually a ball there, she tries to claw her way under the couch.

Willow frets so when Donna is not around.