Category: Sparky (Page 14 of 18)

Now that I am a punkwad, I have come to the opinion that dogs and children should not be indulged, but should conform to the customs of the house.

Being two old guys, Sparky and I agree on a lot of things.  Sparky doesn’t sleep in my bedroom because I am indulging him, we both just sleep better knowing what the other fella is doing.

When Sparky slept in his crate, no matter what time I woke up, he’d be sitting at attention.  He’d come out of the box ready to frolic.  I am not a big morning frolicker.

Now, he sleeps in to give me time to shamble around with my coffee.  I got out of bed two hours ago and Sparky is sleeping past his 10 am breakfast.

He is such a good dog.

Sparky was feeling  cheated for giving up the dead squirrel.  He always intends to do the right thing, but he doesn’t see a dead squirrel as a moral question.  He needed his faith restored, so I took him for a car ride.

While we were out, he made a compelling case for picking up a rotisserie chicken.  After picking it up, the truck smelled great.  Sparky couldn’t stop talking about how much fun we’d have eating chicken when we got home.

Eating the chicken wasn’t as wonderful as Sparky had hoped.  Being a beagle, his idea of a good time is eating so much chicken, he vomits.  Then eating the vomit and taking a nap.  Instead, I gave him an amount equal to about 4 human bites with no greasy skin.

He found a squirrel in the brush, and pulled it out to show me.  After I told him to drop it, I got his WTF look.  To his credit, he did drop and abandon it when I spoiled his fun.

Now that we are back at the house, he is acting like I promised him something even better than a dead squirrel.  I’ll take him for a car ride to even the score.

Playing Chicken Run today, Sparky snatched the prize five times.

When the chicken was gone, pepperoni was the prize.  It’s aromatic, so got Sparky’s attention.  I was concerned that it might mix up Sparky’s innards, so today, we switched to kielbasa.

Driving with FPV, is deceiving.  I seemed to be winning, keeping Sparky on the jump, but when I checked, the prize was gone.  Driving without the FPV, I see how Sparky cleverly comes from behind or wheels around, and snatches the prize without me even knowing he  was there.  And, Sparky can shimmy under the coach.

I’m not sure the prize ever made it to the solarium and back.  Sparky won, 5-0.

I found a deer skull in the woods.  This counts as Sparky’s Christmas present.  We are leaving it outside for now because nobody wants a skull dragged around the house.  Well, Sparky does.  It might get mounted in his crate.  Sparky would like that.

Sparky got his present today, on Russian Christmas, so that may be a cosmic sign that he’s Russian.  That would explain a lot.  He only understands English when it suits him and he likes bread and salt.  Sparky is warm-hearted, fatalistic and reckless, so the epitome of the Russian soul.

Sparky and I have the outline of a good game.

This is the Deadbolt.  An FPV camera is mounted on the front and a tray is placed on the roof rack.  A piece of chicken is placed in the bait tray.

My advantage is that Sparky gets skittish when Deadbolt is coming at him and the Deadbolt can drive under a couch to be safe.

Sparky’s advantage is that he is faster and more maneuverable than Deadbolt and I can only see straight ahead. 

To keep it simple, the video was recorded by the Fat Shark FPV goggles, so the quality is poor.

Deadbolt is hiding under the couch.  Sparky knows there is chicken somewhere, but since he hasn’t connected the dots, Deadbolt ran him down.

This time, Deadbolt is waiting with it’s back to the wall so Sparky can’t sneak up.  Since Deadbolt isn’t moving, Sparky gets bold.  When the screen gets a bunch more interference lines, that is me hitting the gas, but the battery is low.  Too low to escape, so Sparky snatches the chicken.

For the first time in decades, I find myself with no plans for New Year’s Eve.   The party hosts are Covid-positive, but not ill.  It would not have been hard to come up with an alternate plan, but hanging out with Sparky felt like the right move. 

The photo isn’t great.  I used the selfie camera and there isn’t much light.  The living room lamp has been pulled out of rotation.  I wouldn’t have bothered with the photo, but Sparky thought people would think I was a hermit or dead in a ditch, so should take a photo holding a beer while he flashed his winning grin.

During my teaching career, I maintained a nutty professor image.  In retirement, some people think I’m a hermit.  Sure, I don’t do social media, go to the mailbox or text reliably.  I am good at answering the phone, so that’s something, and I do see people every other day or so.  Covid about wrecked me, but even before that, I worked hard as a teacher, and taught summer camps.  As an engineer, I was traveling probably six months per year and did that foreign service assignment for a year.  I like to work.

Now that I’m retired, I love shambling around with my coffee for a few hours, doing what needs to be done to maintain the hound and working on whatever comes to mind here at my compound.  Sparky and I have been working on some trails through the woods.  I’m refinishing the computer table and reinventing the living room lamp.

So, in the new year, I hope you only see as many people as you want.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the TV show, Alone.   Sparky likes it too.  He doesn’t usually care much about TV, but in the later seasons, there are enough bears, wolves and other large animals to get his attention.  They usually play up the sounds of cougars, wolves and bears.  That always get his attention.

When I’m going to be out for a long time, I like to leave something on TV for Sparky.  Not that he watches much, but it gives him some ambient sound and he can watch if he wants.

I’ve tried Youtube videos for dogs.  There are a bunch of these.