There is a new game Pyper and his human slaves enjoy playing indoors. Recall the "tag" game as discussed before. Consider what happens if the human chasees manage to get away. Imagine Pyper figuratively scratching his head to look for them. Imagine no more: this now happens regularly. All we have to do now is run around the place a bit, then hide behind our rear deck door's curtains. When the dog catches up with our previous location, he does not see us, and of course we don't make a sound, so Pyper can't seem to find us. So he keeps moving around, checking out our previous hiding spots. Eventually we take pity and make a sound. Then Pyper runs over, and eventually figures out where we are. Strange thing - we protrude well beyond the natural contours of the curtain, and of course our feet are plainly visible. Yet he does not seem to notice us until we give ourselves away. Only after a few weeks of this new game has he started to include the behind-the-curtain regions in his patrol route.
Since we are on the subject of hiding... Pyper has started to learn a different sort of hide & seek game. In this game (suggested by a forgotten web site), a small smelly snack is placed in front of the dog. He is told to smell it, but is prevented from chomping on the goods. Then, while he is in a sit/stay, the item is hidden somewhere out of his sight. The task is simply to find the goodie. Pyper still has trouble with a sit/stay, so the hiding placement phase of the game is a bit problematic ("sit!" - "no, sit!" - "shucks, let's try again"). But once it works, it is remarkable. Pyper has a great nose, and good stamina for looking for the snack. We can stick dog biscuits into shoes, between staircase banisters, into dark out-of-the-way corners. He usually finds them within a minute. If the hidden item is nice and smelly (not like a stale old biscuit), then his search time falls to mere seconds. And he has a good memory too - when he has trouble, he systematically checks over all the places that recently harbored the hidden yummies.
There's a new game for face-to-face collie enjoyment. It has no name, and Juimiin refuses to play any game with no name, but that does not stop me. Take a collie. The longer nose the better. Get the dog relaxed so he just sits there, staring lovingly at you. Then, quickly, touch noses and immediately withdraw. A sudden nose touch appears to trigger an reflexive tongue response in the canine, with a tongue rim velocity bordering on the speed of sound. So the game is obviously a match between the speed contest of man versus dog. Can we touch dog nose, and get away in time to avoid the tonguelashing? (Of course, occasionally letting the dog succeed is not all that bad.)
During the recent winter snow storm, a roof panel in our house had leaked for a few days. There was a 50cm snow blanket squeezing water into the house. This water showed up as a stream of drippage in our kitchen. Pyper was probably the first to notice the sound. (He listens to kids playing outside our house, and occasionally barks at them or perhaps with them.) A few hours later, with buckets on the floor catching the waterfall, Pyper studied the newly exposed bottom side of the kitchen roof. After all this background information, perhaps the punchline will sound anticlimactic. Pyper was so focused on looking up at the ceiling that he did not notice that water was still dripping. The dog actually just stood there as drops fell onto his big face! Tears nearly rolled down my face laughing at him.
A scary medical episode occurred one afternoon. In an act of imprudent anachronism, we have not converted the front door's "hinged door banger" mode of visitor alarm to a more modern "electronic door chime". So visitors bang; residents use keys. In both cases, Pyper usually has enough warning to get up and start tail-wagging by the time any people come through the door. One evening, one of Juimiin's sisters came by in the visitor role. As usual, Pyper was sleeping inside, cuddled right up against the front door. (That afternoon, I too was napping near that door.) Suizen was apparently in a hurry, for she ripped open the outer storm door and banged the door banger like it has never been banged before. Both Pyper and I awoke in shock, but he way more so. I think that the suddenness and the explosive volume of the noise shocked him, for it evoked what resembled an epileptic seizure! For about thirty seconds, Pyper could not walk. He sort of sat on his side, with two limbs sticking out strangely - it also looked as if his legs were injured. We held him, and coaxed him back to normalcy with petting, calling his name, trying to calm him down.
I spent the next hour reading about seizures in dogs. It seems that epilepsy is not at all uncommon in modern breeds, but is not the only explanation for seizure-like behavior. Similar symptoms can come about from some problems in blood chemistry (related to liver shunts), and apparently also from some parasites. Compared to all the information I saw, what Pyper went through was very mild (both in duration and intensity). I was still concerned, but I have not planned to involve a vet with this unless it happens again. In the mean time, we'll have to find some way of reducing the probability of such super-surprising door banging.
I have been looking for all sorts of silly ways of confirming to myself that Pyper is a good dog for me. I have come across two surprising new examples. The first involves a comparison to a small gargoyle statue. This statue (picture forthcoming) sports three clumsy looking dragons piggybacking each other. I have made up a little story to try to explain why each dragon should look the way it does; telling it though usually amuses me more than my audience. I'm quite fond of this silly statue. Anyway, there is an uncanny resemblance between the top gargoyle and Pyper! Both have ears that stick out. When I make a meow noise (or any other small noise that Pyper finds unexpected), Pyper's head roll (a twist around the front-back axis) matches that of the gargoyle. It must be a sign!
The second sign was more mundane. Whenever Pyper rolls onto his back to get a belly scratch and he gets back up, he sneezes a few times. The belly rubs must be great since he shows off his tummy this way several times a day. When he sneezes, he makes a short, sharp "huchoo" sound. Next, look at my UNIX userid: fche. Ever since I have used it, starting in 1988, silly people have tried to pronounce it. One popular version is something like "fuh-chee". Now say both this and the sneeze noise, out loud. Repeat them a few times. Notice how much they are alike! It must be a sign!
Since the winter storm, it has been hard to let Pyper go onto the fields of Greenwood Park to let him run off his energy. Instead, his morning/evening walks have turned mostly into sidewalk trips around the nearby blocks. During these walks, Pyper takes advantage of his long retractable leash, and routinely runs into other people's yards for a few seconds at a time. Pyper has not stopped his amazing urinary dispensing. Worse, he has developed a real taste for decorating teeny little trees or bushes with his yellow kidney soup. These poor decorative plants are like a meme infection over this neighbourhood - ugly yet pervasive, cute yet pathetic. Their redeeming quality is that they attract Pyper like a lollipop does a tongue. Pyper, with greatest enthusiasm, takes special care to water his many favorite plants, all smaller than himself. Maybe he has a psychological complex toward these little bushes; or maybe he is expressing agreement with my assessment of this garden decoration phenomenon.
Pyper has become quite a regular visitor to Cygnus now. Once each week is roughly his average appearance rate. He has even mastered enjoyment of the elevator experience. After a delightful day at the office with Pyper, I drove over to a nearby big pet store to get him a reward for being so good. He needed a few more things to chew on anyway. This store, in an unusual policy, welcomes leashed pets within its walls. There are always dogs and cats around, and it just looks like a happy place for animals and their manservants. Pyper has never been to one of these places. He was overwhelmed by the place: halls of animals, mucho chow, racks of snacks. He could barely hold in his excitement. At the end, in one less-busy corner, he unfortunately decided that he would no longer hold it in. Up flew a leg. You may guess the rest. I wasn't even properly equipped for this eventuality, so clean-up best-effort was not quite enough. But we got away unchastized.
After another visit to Windsor, we came back with some gift loot: a nice new rolled-up carpet my parents picked for our living room. Indeed, the color match was perfect, it lay flat on the ground, it did not eat small children, and basically the it did what it was told. But, like of a good tragedy, this heroic floor protector developed a fatal flaw. Recall my earlier description of dog fur. Well, dog fur and rug fur have a magical mutual attraction. It is sadly asymmetric: the carpet sticks to the dog a lot less than vice versa. Simply put, the rug was always full of dog fur, despite good-faith efforts to keep it clean. Indeed, two shifts of heroes brushed the carpet more thoroughly than the dog, but even this did not help. When the background color of the carpet was rendered effectively unknowable by the crusted-on collie hair (a feat accomplished in a mere fortnight), it became clear that the battle had been lost. Either the carpet or the dog had to go. After a difficult few seconds of deciding which, we rolled the gift carpet right back up and stowed it in our basement. We never told my parents. Oops.