Photo Phriday: Poncho

The weather this year seems to be encouraging the burdock to an unreasonable degree.

Or someone spilled some of this stuff here.

Cole could use a poncho. Unlike the other ES's coats, his is highly absorbent. Nickname: Sponge Dog Square Pants.

Dog Power

Soon after Mr. Ziegler bought the Harmony property*, Isaac Wilson, a Quaker, engaged in the manufacture of salt near the creek in the village. The business was principally conducted by David and Webster Wilson, sons of "Quaker" Wilson. They also had a similar manufactory on Yellow Creek in Lancaster Township. The well was bored by means of ox-power, and for drills, poles fastened together were used, the lower pole being pointed with iron. The well was about four hundred and fifty feet deep. For pumping, dogs were pressed into service in a "dog power." Six or eight dogs were kept. Sometimes they chased each other in the "power," then the machinery would move rapidly for a few minutes. The dogs were fed large quantities of mush. The business was not very profitable, as only about four barrels of salt per day could be produced. Salt being $1.75 per barrel, and, as hundreds of bushels of coal were consumed daily, this cost taken with the expense of a man and a boy and several dogs, left but a small margin for profits.

History of Butler County, Pennsylvania
1883, Chicago, Waterman, Watkins & Co.

______

* ca 1872

Sioux City, IA: Still Vicious

Devoted wolf cubs will recall the clown car called Sioux City Council that kept reappearing on this blog and all over teh interwebz last summer to disgorge more hilarity just when you thought it had to be empty.

Ordinarily, a third-rate town's fourth-rate politicians and their Solonesque approach to public safety via canine racial profiling doesn't bear a special look here. Too damn many of 'em. But here, Alannis, here is some irony.

After pibble-hating councilman and cynological sage Aaron Rochester's untrained, unfenced, unsupervised, let us safely say asshole of a Labrador, bit an innocent passerby, Mr. Rochester continued to insist that the breed ban ordinance that he authored was Jesus' own animal control law.

The dog was impounded under the "one strike and you're dead" ordinance that was also thoughtfully penned by the august member of council who speculated that his own resident biter was "protecting the children." Oh woe, it seemed that Jake Manyteeth was about to be hoisted by his own(er's) petard.

But wait! What light from yonder window breaks? Jake's life is spared by a deus ex machina that is totally a surprise to his devoted master guy who sold the dog to another guy while he was impounded on death row.

Yes, Aaron Rochester claims he "sold" his death-row biting dog to someone named Lew Weinberg on July 31. On August 2, the yeller thumb-slasher was stolen from animal control during a Sunday night break-in. Rochester somehow failed to mention ("Oh, by the way...") the dog's in absentia change of master at a city council meeting on August 3. Cuz that's just how he rolls.

Over the past year, the Googles has sent me occasional updates on this devoted Iowa public servant, slayer of porch sofas* and nemesis of Girls Gone Wild buses that are clearly obscene and illegal -- a man never too busy to make light of his own starring role in multiple crimes against persons and property by, say, judging a "Jake look-alike contest" to see which Labrador most resembled that biting dog he used to own but doesn't anymore and he doesn't know anything about it, no sir.

If anyone had the brass balls to bring a nice buckskin pibble and sit it down in front of Rochester, it is not recorded.

There were also news briefs indicating that Sioux City was on the verge of repealing its obviously bogus breed ban in deference to the advice of all experts and their own legal counsel, and revising its overall vicious dog ordinance to ensure that politicians could always weasel their way out of the consequences of their negligent dog ownership things would be more fair to good dogs.

Well don't get your hopes up.

Pit bulls will remain banned in Sioux City after a 3-2 vote Monday by the City Council, but the panel gave first-round approval to some changes in the vicious-animal law.
...

Radig and Rochester argued the ban, in place since 2008 when Rochester first proposed it, was working. Hobart had voted for the ban but has since said he no longer favored it. Padgett and Fitch previously had indicated they did not like breed bans.

"I'm not going to change what the previous council did," Fitch, who took office Jan. 2, said after the meeting, "I think if we made the change those owners would get confused on what they are supposed to do."

In refusing to lift the pit bull ban, the council also did not toughen the irresponsible-pet-owner provision, as proposed by City Attorney Andrew Mai. Council members said they believed the current law could be enforced.

...

Under the proposed new law, pet owners could reclaim their pets from Animal Control during an appeals process.

Looks like the councilman got his way.

Now it will be dead-easy to disappear a genuinely vicious dog while "appealing" -- no bolt cutters required, no pesky exposure to felony burglary charges.

The new guy on the council pussied out like a little bitch thoughtfully supported the wise judgment of his predecessors so that they could avoid confusing the little people by not, you know, confiscating and killing their pets.

Counsel's advice to council was ignored, 'cuz what does the city attorney know about the law anyway?

And all the "pit bulls" who never bit anyone are still vicious.

_________
* Mebbe if Rochester had a comfy couch on his front porch, the damn dog would have stayed put instead of charging down the steps and across the lawn to attempt four-fanged pollexectomy.

Much mischief can be prevented with a suitably comfy couch.

46 Hours

Blue track is PC's, recorded on Saturday night. Red track is mine. East pointing black arrow designates the start, three-pointed star the end (barn). The blue blob is a dead-end where PC got bunged up in deadfall. You can see that we successfully bypassed this false lead, but had difficulties near it. (Dog was closer to being spot-on than I was -- the track reflects the route I managed to find through the obstruction.) The long slight divergence as we return west reflects poor GPS reception because it had fallen to the underside of my butt pack, and the abrupt "return" to putting it back where it belonged.

At SAR dog training on Saturday, Perfesser Chaos employed the full powers of his well-honed husbandly listening skills, and thereby screwed up the opportunity to provide Rosie with an aged training trail in a time-efficient way.

I was, of course, charmingly understanding* about this, and sweetly informed him that he would be laying a trail for her when we got home, to be run on Sunday morning. About a fourteen-hour aged trail -- nice scent challenge. He had some things he wanted to reconnoiter out in our woods, so off he went, whistling merrily without a complaint, as soon as we got back.

He laid a roughly oval-ish trail about a kilometer long, starting in the lush meadow next to our spring, going northeast through the steep woods on the near side of the buttcrack, crossing the stream near our neighbor's property line, angling back SSE, then taking a turn onto our overgrown right-of-way and returning west through our south pasture, ending at our barn.

By the time he got back from mass on Sunday†, conditions outside closely resembled the steam room at the Y. I suggested that I would prefer to run the trail in the early evening, when sun might let up on converting the woods and fields into a giant bamboo steamer.

As the shadows lengthened, a fire call.

Then dinner.

Then another fire call.

Oh screw it.

We ran it tonight, in a rainstorm. Forty-six hours old -- by far the oldest training trail we've ever attempted. I secured a scent article by stuffing a clean rag into one of his hiking boots (last worn on Sunday afternoon) and leaving it for half an hour, handling it only with a baggie. Rose and I started the trail when he called me from his exit, ten minutes away, and were well-underway when he got home and radioed that he'd slipped into the barn.

Now, keep in mind that I had a rough idea of how the trail ran. I carried his GPS, which included his track, in case I needed it. And the trail is marked. This was not a blinded trailing task, and as such did not simulate real work the way that a proofing or testing task would. It was on our own property, so almost guaranteed uncontaminated by more recent cross-trails of anyone except me -- and those only near the start and end points.

I did not need to consult the GPS. I could not see most of the flagging markers until I was right on top of them (he'd used a dark color that didn't show up well in the heavy foliage and poor light.) I had some misconceptions about the exact route that he took. I watched the dog, and did conventional man-tracking, finding frequent corroborating footprints and vegetation damage.

Although an angry broody turkey hen was flying at her as I scented her from the rag by the spring, about 50 feet from the trail, she ignored the assault and immediately went to work, bypassing the first tempting travel route and hooking a hard right turn onto the correct path.

She trailed with a high head. Normally Rosie has a moderately deep nose (by non-hound standards); on this very old trail, she never dipped her nose to the ground. She was working the vegetation at all times, and casting widely, making lots of loops. I usually use a 30' long-line to slow Rosie down and remind her that we are working as a team. I quickly removed it. She worked slowly and deliberately, despite the wide casting and looping. Where ground-level vegetation was heavy, she stayed very much to the trail; where it was sparse and there was bare ground, she had great difficulty. She frequently returned and demanded the scent article -- she normally almost never does that.

Where PC had left long streamers of flagging, these supplementary scent articles of a sort were clearly creating scent pools; she would become more animated near them, circle, frequently stand up on her hind legs to nose the flagging. She ordinarily does not respond to markers on fresher trails -- some dogs do, creating a challenge for marking those kinds of training trails, but Rosie has never paid them much mind. Even more interesting, she was "climbing trees" in the vicinity of the markers, catching scent on the bark at about 3' above the ground.

There were a lot of recent deer trails crossing, and these she ignored. She acknowledged scent from our neighbors' house when we passed about 200' from it, but was not distracted at that distance.

At the barn, where the ancient trail became fresh, she leapt into the air on the downwind side before circling back to the lower-level door and scratching to be let in, then searching the barn until she found PC in one of the back stalls.

She was rather pleased with herself.

As am I.

Now, what has been proven?

Well, in a very high-humidity, heavily-vegetated, contamination-free environment, Rosie can strike a 46-hour-old trail and provide a direction of travel. With some handler assistance provided via mantracking, she can complete the trail. These things are possible.

She "reads" differently on a trail of this age, and although she keeps focused and works hard, she is much more handler-dependent and less cocksure than on a fresher trail.

I am more willing to give a two-day-old trail the old college try than I would have been previously.

One possible SAR use of this ability is for the instance when we discover a revised LKP (Last Known Point) in the course of a long search. A field team that finds the missing hiker's sleeping pad in a thicket in the middle of the woods, and follows proper procedures for preserving the clue, can help a trailing team resolve the search before all the scent and sign in the area is destroyed by a hundred sets of firefighters' boots and half a dozen ATVs.

What has not been proven?

I wouldn't in a million years represent that Rosie could reliably strike a 46-hour-old trail or consistently complete one. In dry or frigid conditions. In the absence of vegetation. And most especially, with any significant contamination by other humans' more recent trails.

The task wasn't blinded, so my possible contribution to helping her through the tricky parts based on my knowledge of the tasks' parameters has not been controlled. It is possible to very subtly "push" a trailing dog while being quite sure that you are not doing so. These are bright, perceptive animals, and they will find the right answer by whatever means is available.

This is one task that I would have loved to record on video.

________

*Closed italics provided for the marital sarcasm-impaired.

† We never run a training trail without the tracklayer at the end of it, so his presence was non-optional.

Photo Phriday: Aerial Invader

Our neighbor swears that the first hundred feet of airspace is ours.

We are regularly invaded in the summer by this commercial endeavor



Scenic, sure, but it frightens the livestock, and the dogs hate it. They all leap to their feet, barking emphatically, when they hear the whuumph of the burner in the distance.



Rosie has developed a three-dimensional case of Mailman Syndrome.

She and Pip chase through the hayfield barking, snarling, and leaping into the air.

And the balloon runs away every single time. Success!



Next time, she will surely jump high enough to catch the trespasser.

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USA Board of Dog Searchin' Freedom

How did Steven Colbert find out how SAR dog handlers get "certified?" And then employ such a clever metaphor with ophthalmologists and cats to subtly reveal it?

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
USA Board of Ophthalmological Freedom
www.colbertnation.com
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I'm sorry Jay. That cat told me he was certified.