K through CAT5

Saturday we started Puppy Kindergarten at Petsmart with Albert the pet trainer (he has hair growing on his nose). Gretchen really likes him, so I guess that's all that really matters. There was one other puppy in the class. She's a lab name Roxy that needs a little more exercise before coming to class. Roxy seems to be doing well with house breaking, but otherwise her owners were clueless. They couldn't figure out how to get her to stop chewing and not be so rambunctious.

"Did you try walking the dog?" was my question.

"That's a pain." was the response.

More of a pain then having her chew everything? Whatever. Not my dog. Our biggest concern, and in the end benefit, was how Gretchen would behave with the other puppies. She gets along fine with bigger/older dogs, but the energetic younger ones seem to freak her out quite a bit. Roxy apparently plays all day with the neighbors puppy (really? I couldn't tell. Don't get me wrong. Roxy is very cute.), so she wasn't shy. Gretchen was reluctant and spent a lot of time in our laps or running away from Roxy when she wanted to play. She was fine with everyone there, but Roxy freaked her out. Near the end of the class, all that changed. Not only did Gretchen figure out the whole play with other puppies thing, but she got the domination part down pretty well too. Unfortunately just as Gretchen was getting into it, the class was ending. Luckily Gretchen and Roxy found each other afterwords in the store and continued their play.

Yeah. So, we're spending $119 for our puppy to learn to play with other puppies. I'm not saying the class is a waste. Even though most of what Albert had for us the first class we already knew, I guess that's to be expected.

Though he did put us onto one thing. Jen's been thinking about it for a while. Albert just pushed her to it. It's called a clicker. It's scientifically proven to make me feel stupid. It's just a little device that makes a clicking noise when you push the button. You're supposed to click it before you give them a treat for doing something good. Eventually they associate the click with doing something good and you won't need the treats. I think it's the same as giving praise (saying good dog and petting them on the head), but apparently this is better (for lazy people?). Now we have them and click them like happy little puppy training idiots. I'm sure I'll have nightmares one day of these things clicking all around me.

After kindergarten it was home to do chores. Jen's mother is here, so they hit the flower gardens while I mulched the leaves in the yard. It's the greatest thing. I don't know why we didn't do this growing up. You just drive the tractor around the yard and mulch up the leaves into yard food. It's simple, requires way less effort then raking and hauling and you don't have to dispose of anything. Granted we may not have had mulching blades growing up, but the blades we had still chopped things into little pieces. Raking sucks.

After the mulching I cleaned the pellet stove. I took apart more then I needed for just a weeks worth of burning, but it was good to get in it and see what it's all about. It's not very complicated, at least not the burning part, but will require weekly maintenance to keep it operating efficiently. Besides the first few hiccups, it's been working nicely. We've even almost got the temperature differential figured out between it and the thermostat being downstairs and us living upstairs. Though that will probably be a moving target as the temps drop and fluctuate outside and the various insulation faults take effect between the downstairs and up. The reality of me having to feed this thing everyday is also starting to set in. So far I've only been putting in a bag of pellets every other day (at most). As it gets colder, I'm sure that will increase. Filling it isn't a difficult thing to do, but it's different then a regular furnace where you set it and forget it. I'm certainly glad we didn't go the wood stove route. That would have sucked.

After the pellet stove, I moved onto a long lost forgotten home project - the Home Network. I have some new weekly meetings with India that I'll be doing from home. The meetings are online and will require bandwidth more reliable then wireless. We have the cabled network in the office, but to have the meeting and watch Gretchen I need the cabled network in the kitchen. Though honestly I'm not sure how it will work. It's not like I can stop the meeting if she pees or anything.

- b