Sparky no longer wants to go past the top of the hill. I’m starting to think he’s smelling something in the woods, rather than being intimidated by yellow jackets. He will go on if he’s on a leash, but he isn’t nuts about it.
It might be a good idea to leave him with his phobia. If he goes on a walkabout, and won’t go passed the top of the hill, he is a lot easier to recover.
That is all from one walk. I like how Sparky looks back at me like I’m crazy.
The sticky snow that we had last night leaves the world looking bleak. I love it. Sparky is sleeping in, so I decided to tramp around outside to take some pictures before it melts off.
Work kept Sparky pretty busy last night. I’d like to see his job description, he seems to have a helluva lot more to look after than I do. My job responsibilities are opening doors and retrieving toys that roll under the furniture. That doesn’t sound like much, but I’m counting the lid to Sparky’s food locker as a door, along with the patio and car doors.
Sparky doesn’t respect my work. If all the doors were gone, he’d be fine. Sparky wouldn’t see a problem with burying his snout in the dog food trough. Car rides are fun, and driving doesn’t seem too hard. Toys rolling under the furniture is a bigger problem than he will admit. Sparky is certain that if he continued to paw at the furniture and scamper around, the toy would come out. More likely he’d just grab one of his other 40 toys.
To be fair, I don’t respect Sparky’s work. Pawing at his bed took 10 minutes of dedicated attention. I don’t know why, but he thought it was critical. Throughout the night, Sparky had to get up several times to check the house. He doesn’t disturb anything and dogs don’t see ghosts or spirits the way cats do, so it’s a mystery what problem he was trying to solve.
When Sparky wakes up, he will see that there is snow on the ground. Since this is the first snow, I have to remind him that I don’t mind walking in the snow, so pooping in the house is not doing me a favor.
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.
The Democratic Party is off in the weeds. They are making excuses for lunatics, and it would be better off if they weren’t.
The Republicans took the House, Senate and presidency, but only because Democrats made it happen. Not the Democratic Party, they are off in the weeds, but people who were Democrats not too long ago. Trump wasn’t a Republican when he was a TV personality and real estate developer in NYC. He was the first president to take office in favor of gay marriage.
Establishment Republicans don’t have to learn a lesson from this because Trump has pushed most of them out of office.
When Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, there were many Twitter posts from celebrities and influencers describing poignant reactions from their young children. The posts were too on-the-nose, and people called bullshit. This time, it’s “Just So” stories purported to have been written by high school girls or teachers.
Turns out Sparky can do this. With his wiggly spine, I didn’t think he could sit up on his butt.
Being a heterodox free-thinker, students would occasionally ask if I believed in conspiracy theories. A group of people colluding on a secret plan to do something sneaky? Sure, conspiracies happen all the time. Of course they meant “conspiracy theories”, like faking the Moon landing or something along that line.
You shouldn’t read any further because I intend to discuss a conspiracy theory.
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.
I’m not an alcoholic or participant in any 12-step programs, but the Serenity Prayer seems like a broadly useful sentiment.
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