Category: Sparky (Page 1 of 11)

Beagles 101

I tried doing my dog breed research before getting Sparky, but all the information was so vague.  This article from a beagle rescue in Oregon, gets the breed.  Dog writers really need an editor, but they make good points.

Beagles need guidance as they are extremely smart.

Everything Sparky does is deliberate.  He makes no mistakes.  Sparky won’t try to do a thing, I just turn my back, and he’s done it.

Trash, food, candy dishes..nothing is sacred to a beagle. They are NOT the type of dog you can be watching TV with while eating a pizza and expect to get up to answer the phone and returning to anything other than an empty pizza box..if that!

Sparky is a trash hound.  He pays no attention to the garbage can, unless he can get to it.  Then, when I’m not looking, he takes what he wants.  Three times, Sparky has stolen a loaf of bread because I put grocery bags on the floor.  He ignores it until I take some canned food downstairs.  Sparky also stole a bag of marshmallows. 

Some are bolters and dashers, others are wanderers. It’s not that they are running away from you or your home..it’s just that they are running “to” something that caught their noses.

Sparky has gotten out of the house five times.  He is so charming and polite that he lulls me into complacency.  He’s never bolts out of the door.  I watch a TV show, then notice that Sparky is gone because I left a door open somewhere.

Beagles simply cannot be trusted to be off-leash, or to consistently obey their owners when they are outside.

Sparky’s brush anchor makes him think he can’t run away.  He gets stuck often enough that he doesn’t try to wander off.  When given a command, Sparky doesn’t obey.  He either agrees or doesn’t.

It may seem at times that they forgot everything you taught them. Not true. They just make decisions on their own sometimes.

Beagles are not programmed to please their people…they are more like party animals who manipulate you into thinking they want to please you.

Sparky is bullshitting me all the time.

Beagles are house dogs; not “outside” dogs. They are very social and people-oriented. They are very pack oriented and consider YOU their pack so naturally, they are not happy in the yard by themselves.

This doesn’t seem like it’s true, because Sparky loves sniffing around in the yard and woods, but I think it is.  I put up a dog-run cable for Sparky.  He can roam a 100 feet, even into the woods a bit, and 10 feet on either side.  If I put him on the cable and go in the house, he sits in the yard looking at the patio door. 

Sparky is a cute puzzle.

Turns out Sparky can do this.  With his wiggly spine, I didn’t think he could sit up on his butt.

Sparky shit on his friend, Mr. Moose, but the strength of their friendship has allowed them to move passed their differences.

That’s nice, but I wasn’t going to touch a shitty moose and I sure as hell didn’t want Sparky dragging it around my house.  Mr. Moose was washed in the laundry sink, and thrown in the dryer with a load of t-shirts.

Here’s the weird thing.  Sparky recognized Mr. Moose in the bottom of the laundry basket.  I brought up two baskets of laundry to sort as I watched Youtube.  Sparky has no interest in laundry, other than getting to sit on the couch with me.

Mr. Moose was washed with laundry detergent, so smelled like everything else in the basket.  Sparky’s situational awareness is greater than I expected.  His tail shows his eagerness to be back with his old mate.

I moved the basket to the couch to get a photo of Mr. Moose without Sparky’s head in the way.  Even that was a near thing as Sparky ignored all propriety and jumped up on the furniture to supervise the rescue of Moose.

The grey corduroy object, indicated by the red arrow, is Mr. Moose.

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The last time we went into woods at the South Park trail, was the second time that Sparky was noticed by yellow jackets.  Both times, a yellow jacket landed on his back, Sparky got frantic, I noticed his distress and slapped the yellow jacket off.

I don’t think that he was stung.  Both times, the yellow jacket was trying to figure out if there was a dog underneath all of the seal fur. 

Sparky no longer wants to go in the woods, and he’s gotten worse.  Now, he’s reluctant to go for a walk up the hill.  I’m trying cognitive therapy on him.  Exposing him to the area, without going into the woods.  Or entering the woods somewhere else.

Since I have been chronicling Sparky’s journey, this seemed like a data point that couldn’t be excluded.

Sparky pooped on Mr. Moose.  Decorum compels me to mask the evidence.  It was a walk on a dark night, so maybe I’m making too much of this, but that’s my main job, so I speculate.

It’s not uncommon to have a falling-out with someone who was once a cherished friend.  I had a dear friend who had a vastly different political perspective.  We had a disagreeable exchange on social media, and that was it.  Sparky hasn’t expressed an interest in politics, but he would naturally have an affinity for Biden biting babies. 

Mr. Moose has always been in the Bull Moose Party, supporting the formerly Republican, Theodore Roosevelt.  TR has been dead for a hundred years and Biden isn’t running, but Sparky and Mr. Moose don’t keep up on current events.

Whatever the reason, Mr. Moose is out of the rotation until he gets washed.

Sparky took a dump on the floor in the middle of the night, but I can’t be mad at him.  I might be turning into a crazy person.

I am a deep sleeper, but wake for unfamiliar noises.  At 5 am, I heard something, and it wasn’t Sparky’s tap dancing on the hardwood floor as he goes for a stroll.  It was enough to warrant a sweep of the house, but that didn’t last long.

In the solarium, Sparky had taken a dump in the middle of the room.  It was so ludicrous, I was tempted to take a picture.  It was right in the middle of the room, and larger than his head.  One, let’s call it a segment, looked like an Arturo Fuente Magnum.

Last night, Sparky was uncomfortable.  If I lay on the couch to watch TV, he likes to flop over so I can rub his belly.  He didn’t want that.  Any flopping or belly rubbing was unappreciated.  Sparky even went to bed early, which is unusual.  As is our routine, I took him out before I went to bed.  It would usually be a quick trip, but we walked down to the bridge.  Sparky wasn’t talkative on our walk, and almost reserved.  I was a little concerned.

Something had him stopped up.  Maybe it was the change in routine from camping over the weekend or eating too much of whatever he found in the garbage bag.  Sparky is an old guy.  I’m an old guy.  I’d have had a cup of coffee to set me to right.  He has limited options.

Sparky did the only thing he could, so I cleaned up his deposit, and went back to bed. 

At about 8 am, Sparky came out to face his impending doom.  He knows what he did.  You can see the shame on his face in the photo.  I might be crazy for empathizing, and pretending like it never happened.

After taking the photo and talking for a little while, we went out for a walk.  Somehow, the little tube managed to poop again, but that was small potatoes.  It may have been a performative poop to convince me that a ground hog or hobo had creeped into my house to take a dump.  Fine, we’ll go with that.

Sparky was crying a little bit after I had to lecture him and put him in jail for getting into the trash.

I’m a bad parent.  No, not parent.  Dog owner doesn’t feel right either.  I’m not trying to instill good habits or protect him from the world.  He’s an adult with agency.  If Sparky wanted to smoke, I wouldn’t buy him cigarettes and he’d have to do it outside, but otherwise, it’s his decision.  It’s like when Hickman stays with me.  I want him to be comfortable and I enjoy his company, but he can make his own decisions.

After camping, the trash bag from the camper was accessible to Sparky.  I heard some rustling in the other room, but he is always doing something wacky, so none of my business.  Eventually, I found that he’d chewed through the bag and lapped up a bunch of barbecue sauce. 

When I would take my students to Cedar Point for Physics Day, there were two primary rules.

1.  Don’t do anything that reflects negatively on North Royalton High School.
2.  Don’t be late meeting up at the end of the day.

One year, Jess and I were in the back of the park, near Rip-Cord.  Three of our students were talking to a cop.  Our students had changed into morph suits.  A morph suit looks like this:

Cedar Point has a rule prohibiting guests from wearing costumes.  It has something to do with their affiliation with Hanna-Barbara.  Jess loaned one student a jacket to cover the suit, then traveled to the lockers with that kid to get their clothes. 

It was a violation of rule #1, so I had to punish them.  They could serve a week of detentions, or bring ice cream for the class.

That’s how I feel about Sparky’s infraction.  The bag was right there, he chewed a little hole, didn’t scatter any trash or get barbecue sauce on anything.  I’m not going to feed Sparky garbage, but if he eats some, well, that’s on him.  I didn’t lecture him, just pointed out the hole in the bag and put him in jail.  In that photo, Sparky was laughing, but tried to cover it by licking his paws.

I left him in there for 5 minutes.