Penny's sense of smell and the petrol leak

Reading Noah's post from a while ago about the day his car burst into flames - thank God no-one was hurt - I thought I might mention again the Great Petrol Leak saga that played out with Penny and me as main characters, over about five months.

Penny just wouldn't get into the car. I posted about it after I found what the problem was. At the time I consulted all sorts of people more experienced with dogs than I am, in order to solve the mystery. I came up with two conclusions: either she hated the 'ping' of the overhead monitors on the Tollway, or she was unhappy with the long trips we were taking regularly to K9 Kompany and Melbourne Canine Freestyle.

So, I tried: calmly putting her in the car, on lead; handing over treats every time the electronic 'ping' sounded; giving her an enormous biscuit when she was in the car; praising her for calm behaviour in the car.

And the eventual solution to the mystery, as I said in that post, was that the car had a petrol leak. I have to mention that I did take the car a couple of times to the mechanic because of the petrol smell, but he couldn't find the problem - until the day the leak became so massive that the RACV guy wanted to call the Fire Brigade to siphon out all the petrol and hose the area down!

Penny gets into the car happily now.

And it's a win-win for her, because she still gets the enormous biscuit each time we go on a long trip. I don't have the strength to resist the big puppy-eyed begging look.

when a dog loses his best mate

Scruffy and Harvey were best mates. Scruffy hadn't spent one day away from Harvey's company and would pine if Harvey left the house even for a trip to the vet.

But Harvey was older, and Harvey had a heart condition...and last Wednesday Harvey's life came to an end.

So Scruffy goes everywhere with his human right now, to help him deal with his bereavement. And today he visited us for the morning.

I took Penny out into the street, because she isn't always welcoming of newcomers to the house. We 'met by accident' out there and passed and re-passed each other a couple of times, with praise for quiet behavior. And then we came inside.

Scruffy was timid at first and wouldn't leave his human, but then he loosened up and explored a bit; eventually he even went outside on his own.

Penny begged him to play, with puppy play-bows and woofs, but he's not up to that yet. Maybe next time.



The third little dog in the video is Bonnie, our regular visitor. She's old, too, and nowadays just wanders, deaf and mostly blind, from place to place, thinking her own doggie thoughts.

the sad death of the pompeiian dog

Penny had a quiet day at home today while her humans visited the Melbourne Museum to learn about A Day in Pompeii.

I hadn't reckoned with the impact this exhibition would have on me, not realising how the tragedy in Pompeii in the year 79 AD would echo the terrible bushfires here in February. The sight of the body casts of the poor dead people was upsetting; the dead body of the dog who had been left chained up to suffocate in the rain of ash and pumice was also awful.

I thought of what chaos it must have been, for the people to forget to take the dog with them. It must have been a terrible time. I guess one consolation is that most people did escape and, if the ownership of pets was high, most of the dogs probably escaped with their humans.

why is a dog a dog and not a hound?

When I was browsing the archives of A Word a Day, one of my favorite language sites, one that sends me an interesting mail each day, I came across this snippet from 2004:

Our seven-year-old daughter Ananya has developed an interest in etymology. Often she'll interrupt her play in the backyard and peek in my downstairs study to ask about whatever word comes to her mind. Some time back she barged in with, "So how did the word dog came about?" I explained to her that the word dog came from Middle English dogge which came from Old English docga. Satisfied, she went back to her play.

I had completely forgotten about it when a few days later I overheard her talking to her grandmother on the phone, "Amma, we got a dogga." I was puzzled and later asked why she said dogga instead of dog. She patiently explained, "You know, Amma is old. That's why I used Old English with her."

That got me to wondering about all the things we call our canine friends: Dog - well, I'll accept the explanation above, for that one. But what about the word hound?

But I guess this is not a subject for this blog, which after all is supposed to be about Penny, and she doesn't care what we call her, as long as we call her for dinner. (Couldn't resist that terrible joke.)

I'll save my thoughts about these doggy words for my other blog, Words All Around.

helpful video clip of training a great dane in canine freestyle

I've just come across a Youtube clip by Honey the Great Dane showing how she learned some moves for her dance routine. It was fascinating to see the development of the routines from beginning to polished result. I was particularly interested in how Honey learned to go 'around' a cane. I'm inspired to try harder with Penny!

free canine training equipment from the roadside

As I've posted before, I love examining stuff on the roadside rubbish collections. Recently I noticed this great yellow pole, one of the poles I used in my canine freestyle training in yesterday's post. It's the bottom part of a lamp.

Here it is with my increasing collection of useful poles.

training for cane work in canine freestyle

Sue, at Melbourne Canine Freestyle, has been teaching Penny and me the early stages of working with canes in canine freestyle.
We started with Penny going 'around' a pole.

We moved to making a figure of eight around the pole and around me.

Next Penny wove around me and around the two poles. I confused her a few times with my poor hand signals, but she's used to the fact that in canine freestyle she's smarter than I am, so she coped.



After a while I tried putting my hands on the tops of the poles, because if I were to work with canes I'd be holding them.



Here's a clip of Richard Curtis using an umbrella instead of a cane in a routine.