The Root of all Things

Mom and Darwin

My mother has been a steady, sensible rock my entire life. She is a constant life-long learner, perpetually curious, always reading, brave, tough when she has to be, nobody's fool. 

She grew up as a single child in a small town in Kansas, went to Syria the day she got married, and has been everywhere worth going to, from Petra to Zimbabwe, from Machu Pichu to Japan, from Paris to Mexico, from Mali to Peru, from Germany to Libya, from Turkey to Canada, from California to Lebanon, from Norway to Iran. She knows about the world because she has been in it, double drenched in wonder.

Through it all she raised two kids who now have jobs and kids of their own, and as a teacher for over 40 years, she taught an army of school kids about insects and life cycles, patterns, and history, native cultures, and great story.  

My mom can bait a hook, build you bookshelves, raise a brood of chickens, make a lemon meringue pie, and haggle her way through an Arab bazaar earning respect in every stall.

And is she a terrierwoman?  Only for 75 years, with Trouble, Scoot, Stuff I, Stuff II, Pearl, and now Darwin.

I am my mother's son, and damn proud of it.

  

Dachshund Gargoyle

Unknown location.

Scraping the Pot, Outdoor Life, 1923

Source

Plant Sale

I was out getting more perennials for the yard today. Put down more weed block in some beds and sheared the hedge too. Yard work is never done.

Tree Digger

At the plant sale today at the Blandy Experimental Farm and State Arboretum in Boyce, Virginia. I don't see these big rigs too often.

My New Hoodie

I just ordered this. These are the things that make my happy. 

Haptic Touch with Deer and Dogs

I learned this morning that Apple is calling the tapping signal that the Apple Watch delivers to its wearers when a message comes in, or an event is triggered, a "haptic touch."

No doubt this new wave lingo will sweep the world, as all things Apple do.

Apple writes:

It’s called the Taptic Engine, a linear actuator inside Apple Watch that produces haptic feedback. In less technical terms, it taps you on the wrist whenever you receive an alert or notification, or press down on the display. Combined with subtle audio cues from the specially engineered speaker driver, the Taptic Engine creates a discreet, sophisticated, and nuanced experience by engaging more of your senses. It also enables some entirely new, intimate ways for you to communicate with other Apple Watch wearers. You can get someone’s attention with a gentle tap. Or even send something as personal as your heartbeat.

This kind of thing is only good news for e-collar trainers looking to break through the fright-talk, inexperience, and ignorance of folks who have never seen the new e-collars in action.

Last night I was walking the dogs at their second park of the day (we are all happy that Moxie's heat is over). As we came down a path towards an old fox den that I wanted to check out, a deer rose 20 feet away. I tapped the dogs and they stopped, their noses craning forward and their tails stiff with excitement.

And that was it. 

The dogs did not move more than a few feet, I did not move more than a few feet, and the deer settled down and began to graze less than 25 feet away. I looked around and saw another deer 15 feet farther along.  He too was head down and grazing, only ocassionally stopping to look our way.

The two deer, the two dogs and I just hung out like that for about 10 minutes, until I got bored and walked the dogs back the way we had come. We would check out the fox sette another day.

All of this thanks to the "haptic touch."

Marvelous stuff.

Amazing thing can be done with little taps. And now Apple is going to normalize all of this to the masses.  Not only is the era of shock collars over, replaced by new e-collars with 100-levels of blunt stim, so too is the era of fear-mongering over e-collars.  After all, apparently people can actually feel a "haptic touch" from their Apple Watch.  I cannot feel my e-collar set on 5, but apparently the dogs can and it's enough.  I tap the button and the dogs give no overt signal they feel anything at all other than the fact that they change direction and happily come back to me for a treat. Walking two or three dogs off-leash, and without concern, even with other dogs, children, and wildlife about is a marvelous thing. And not just for me -- for the dogs as well!

This Land Is NOT Your Land, and Was NOT Made for You and Me, So Get the Hell Out Trespasser

Over at the The Mallard of Dicontent, I found this great letter that was apparently printed in the Lewistown, Montana News-Argus discussing recent Republican proposals to "privatize" all federal lands.  A special shout out to Chad Love who writes The Mallard of Dicontent blog and who has been standing up for public lands, wildlife, conservation, and hunting for a long time.

LEWISTOWN NEWS-ARGUS :: April 11, 2015 

Look to European model for land ownership

Dear Editor,

I am extremely disappointed that more of Montana’s citizens are not enthusiastically supporting the efforts of the majority leadership in the Montana Legislature, recently joined by our junior U.S. senator, to divest the federal public lands and transfer them to the state. This transfer to the states should be but a brief prelude to their sale and privatization, so they can be put to proper use by America’s wealthy.

We should applaud the efforts of these representatives and their financial backers to return the public estate to private ownership. For over 200 years, the United States has increasingly strayed from its European roots and traditions of exclusive private land ownership by the wealthy and gentry.

The silliness of President Theodore Roosevelt’s National Forest, National Wildlife Refuges and other conservation innovations can be put aside in this great effort to revert to the European model of land ownership and resource management.

As Montana’s population and its out-of-state ownership grow, there simply won’t be enough high quality hunting and fishing for everyone. As these amenities become more coveted it makes sense that we cash them in for the enjoyment of the most deserving – those who can pay.

The European model of fish and wildlife ownership by the privileged and hunting and fishing for the wealthy and their friends is a good use of these commodities and maximizes their economic value.

Alas, there will always be public land. It is inevitable that some of the arid, ugly lands devoid of game and sport fish will not be sold. Here the public can cling to this ill-considered land use.

Ancillary benefits to privatization of the public lands include the jobs that are created in an increasingly difficult economy. The vast, private estates will require gillies and gamekeepers. Enormous numbers of employees will be required to fence and patrol these lands against trespass. People will be needed to conduct the driven bird and game shoots. Privatization will eliminate all this fuss about public access. Seemingly, endless time is wasted on these access issues. Your newspaper alone will save barrels of ink.

We need to get behind this effort to privatize the public lands and get back to the model of European hunting and fishing.

A. Richard Hunter, Lewistown

Fish On Friday

Sleeping Rough

Digger Bees

Walking the dogs at one of the local parks I frequent. I came across this in the lawn (see below).  

These are digger bees coming out of the ground. Digger bees are solitary bees and are not to be confused with hives of ground wasps aka "ground bees" that I have gotten into several times when digging on the dogs, not are they Cicada Killer Wasps whose larva, the Velvet Ant, packs a nasty wallop. 

Digger bees dig little dirt pipes and stock each underground cell with pollen and nectar, and then deposit their eggs on the food mass. When the egg hatches, the bee larva consumes the pollen and nectar, pupates, and then becomes an adult bee emerging in the spring. Adult bees will overwinter below ground at the burrow site. 

I suspect this location is popular because the soil is soft and a bit sandy.  I wonder if all of these young bees represents the work of just one mamma bee?

Credit the Dog

A Big Bag of D*cks

Ducks.  It could be ducks.

But no, probably not.

This is, after all, a mostly-dog blog, and dogs luuuuv "pizzle" sticks.  Or "bully" sticks.

Whatever you want to call them, the proper term is penis, and when you slaughter 30 million cows a year, as we do in this country, and another 100 million pigs, that means there's a lot of pizzles looking for a home.

Waste is never a good thing, and so we have been turning farm waste of one kind or another into food -- for human and animal alike -- since the beginning of time.

Of course not every pizzle becomes a dog treat.  A few end up as walking sticks.

Which One Is This?

Rez Dogs

source

Before Columbus, there were dogs.

In fact, the only pack animal in North America prior to Columbus was the dog, and some native villages had as many dogs as people.

Dogs were used to guard and alert villages and camps, as well as for pulling travois, and as a food source by at least some tribes. Native dogs were distinguishable from wolves by their curved tails.

Today, "Rez dogs" are a staple in Indian territory out west.

These animals are not always feral, but many are maintained in a way very different from the way dogs are kept in the East or even in nearby towns.

Vehicle impact, injury and death due to severe winter elements and disease are treated philosophically, as if the dogs were part of the landscape, the same as deer.

Few dogs are spayed or neutered and not too many are vaccinated. 

Dog pack predation on deer, cats, sheep, goats, and even horses is fairly common. People too get atacked.

It's easy to paint too broadly. There are many reservations and many cultures.  But when the land is without bound, and the people are poor, dogs rarely do well except in the area of reproduction. That's as true in Macon, Georgia as it is on the Rosebud Reservation of South Dakota.

Hat tip to "Prairie Mary" Scriver for this video on rez dogs, and their people, on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.  



Rez Dogs from Sancho Ex on Vimeo.

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A Well Fed Dog is Never Fat

This article was written for the August 2009 issue of Dogs Today.

I am always a bit amused at how many people have strong opinions about dog food, and how few of these opinions are supported by common sense.

For example, most dog food debates are about quality rather than quantity. And yet, quality hardly matters as most dogs (even most working dogs!) can easily have their nutritional needs met by grocery store kibble or carefully selected table scraps.

Which is not to say that everything is fine in the world of dog food. The problem, however, is not too low a quality of food; it's too high a quality of food, and too much of it too.

Fat dogs are not only losing years off of their lives, but they are also costing their owners billions in unnecessary veterinary bills.

Most of the problem is that people are over-feeding their dogs out of guilt for spending too little time with them.

Another factor, however, is that many modern dog foods are packed with calories which means "just a little more" may end up putting on real pounds. Add in chronic lack of exercise, and you have the same prescription for fat pooches as for obese humans.

It's not just too many calories. Modern dog food is also loaded with vitamins and calcium, and this triple combination means many large-breed dogs are growing up faster than God intended, and as a result they are suffering from increasing amounts of nutrition-related dysplasia.

Are canine web sites and list-servs abuzz about the need to feed dogs less in order to keep them in proper weight?

They are not.

It's estimated that 35 percent of the dogs are over-weight and obesity is the number one killer of dogs and people in this country, but that conversation tends to strike a little too close to home.

Put three people in a room and talk about obesity as a health issue, and at least one of those people is going to cop an attitude: Are you talking about me??!

Which circles us back to the issue of dog food. When people ask me what I feed my own dogs, I tell them grocery store kibble. What brand? I feed Purina at the moment, but what brand does not really matter so long as it is the proper amount. There is no research -- not one whit -- that shows that one brand of dog food is better than another.

Nor, might I add, is there any research to show that corn in commercial dog food is bad for dogs, or that pumpkin, millet, barley, deer, beaver or any other exotic mix is good.

Why do I feed my dogs kibble? Simple: Kibble has been treated with fire.

While cooking does not cure all ills, it cures most, and that is especially important with meat. The more you know about meat -- any kind of meat -- the more likely you are to order your steaks "well cooked."

Whatever brand of kibble you choose to use, one thing is almost guaranteed: your dog will end up eating better than you do.

Not only is most grocery store dog food balanced for proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, but it has probably been tested in the real world with scores of thousands of dogs thriving on it for many years.

Can most dog owners say that about the food they eat? I think not!

As for dog food being full of snouts, lungs, udders, and shin meat, it most certainly is. It also has chicken feet ground up in it, as well as bones and beaks, and pieces of tail, testicles and cow privates.

All of this is excellent food, and most of it was "human quality" until very recently.

Of course, in the English-speaking world we mostly turn our nose up at such stuff. We demand that all meat be the very choicest cut served on a white napkin placed on top of a foam plate. The meat must be dyed the right color to make it pleasing to the eye, and the whole thing must be shrink-wrapped, dated, bar-coded and placed in a cold packing crate in the super market. Only then will we buy it.

Blood and guts? Testicles and snout? Entrails and feet? Most people shudder at the thought of eating those parts of a pig or cow that nurtured their grandparents not so long ago. Go overseas into the markets of Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, however, and people are still eating everything, including the squeal. Ox Tail soup? Bones for Ossobuco? Udders, stomachs and lungs for sausage? Testicles for breakfast? All good food.

What is laugh-track funny are the folks who pop up in every dog food debate to talk about the diet of wolves.

You see, whether wolves are chasing caribou in the Arctic, pulling down wild boar in Russia, or stalking buffalo in Kansas, they are all doing the same thing: they are looking for the young, the sick, and the infirm.

A downer cow? To a wolf that's the dinner bell ringing.

Yes, that's right: The preferred diet of the wolf is not cooked backstrap from the pride of the herd, but raw flesh ripped from the diseased rectum of a downer cow.

Funny how that fact never makes it into all these conversations about "natural" dog foods.

Nor is it ever mentioned that wolves eat a lot of rabbit, deer and rats riddles with round worms and other parasites. Disease? A wolf likes nothing better than a diseased animal; they are so much easier to catch.

Unlike your kibble-fed dog, wolves are not eating flesh from healthy animals that have been given vaccines, regular vet checks, dosed with antibiotics, and given unlimited amounts of high-quality feed and clean water.

But that's what our dog food is made out of.

And then, to make it even better, we stir in corn, rice, and wheat in order to increase fiber and add carbohydrates. We also add in vitamins and micronutrients, as well as preservatives to keep the whole thing fresh. Then we grind it all fine, cook it, extrude it, fire it hard into bite-sized nuggets, and put it in hermetically-sealed stay-fresh bags.

Poor dogs! If only they had quality foods!

Bottom line: Relax about what you are feeding your dog.

You are not a bad owner because you feed your dog a commercial kibble bought at the local grocery store.

Nor are you a better owner because you pay a lot more for an expensive product made from exotic ingredients.

Just remember this simple rule: A well-fed dog is never fat. If you truly love your dog, you will never over-feed it.

Evolution of Fishing

Wildlife In Your Head

All He Knows

The First Law of Nonsense