Category Archives: Llife with Lloyd

Lloyd’s Invisible Poop Shockwave

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This might shock some of you, but Lloyd poops a lot.  It’s hard to imagine, I know, but he does.  That’s not even the interesting part (and dog poop is FASCINATING to everyone, I know).  The interesting part is that Lloyd is deeply convinced that he can only poop in a new spot every time, to the point where he prefers to stick his head into a thornbush just to destroy a fresh patch of the landscape previously unsullied.  As far as he is concerned, he will continue to poop in a constantly expanding radius of devastation with our house at the centre, eventually covering the entire Carp River watershed with steaming St. Bernard poop.

Kind of gross to think about.

His plan would work too, except that Lloyd doesn’t know one thing:  his poop never hits the ground.  Unbeknownst to him (because I’m pretty sure he has never noticed) when I take him out for a poop I take a long handled scoop and hold it under his butt as he goes.  He poops right into it and is never the wiser.  As near as I can tell he is oblivious to the poop-knapping.  I dump it into a compost hole dug for this purpose alone, and we are both happy. 

The weird part is, if he’s so dumb, how does he keep track of where he has pooped if there is no evidence?  Even in the winter, a fresh 30 centimeters of wind-blown snow is no match for his mental map.

What kind of marker is left when a spot has been used that is invisible to my senses?  Some kind of radioactive marker, or permanent GPS tag that only his brain can keep track of?

I’m sure there is some kind of science at play here.  Any dogpoop doctorates out there who can help me to understand this?

Dogs at Camp Rocks!*

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*To avoid any Disney lawsuits, not affiliated with any teeny-bopper movie.

To give credit where credit is due, I just thought I would throw out a little shout out to the fine folks at Dogs at Camp.  This is the anti-kennel where we have been taking the fur kids this summer when we are away from home.  To say that these guys (er, gals) love dogs is an understatement, and after experimenting with a few traditional kennels around the area before this, there simply is no comparison.  The dogs are never locked away, and spend the entire day running around a fenced farmyard with up to 40 other buddies.  Then when they are completely played out they have a sleepover with 7 or 8 others in huge comfy horse stalls on sawdust.  The facility is impeccably clean and dry, the staff is awesome, and the owner Cheryl knows all of the campers by name.  I just dropped Harvey and Lloyd off this morning, and it goes a long way to say that this was Harvey’s first visit (Lloyd’s third) and he ran off without a glance backwards at me.  Incredibly different from the first (and last) time we put him in a kennel when I had to physically haul him into the concrete cage so we could close the door.

Anyway, it’s easy to complain about a bad service or business, but recognition of a job truly well done is a bit harder to come by.  These folks are the real deal, and they will take top notch care of your dog without a doubt in my mind.

Check ’em out and tell them Lloyd sent ya.

Blog link.

*** Update:

I forgot to add that in addition to the awesome service and fun dog time, I usually get a follow up email afterwards with a personal note, and even a couple of pictures of the dogs on their weekend.  It’s rather like looking through someone’s camera after a night out:

Vacuuming is important

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Ok, so 220lbs+ of dog can generate a fairly significant amount of hair.  Sadly, this represents about three weeks worth of vacuuming, but does not represent the amount of hair I remove by brushing in that same amount of time.

Wow.  Ick.

This is why we vacuum a lot before people come over.  Be glad we do, people.

The Tale of Lloyd and The Invisible Fence

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Allow me to regale you with a tale today.  The tale of Lloyd and the Invisible Fence.

We are very lucky to have relatively unspoiled greenspace directly adjacent to our backyard, and a park on one side of our property.  This means we only have one direct neighbour, and we get along just fine so we long ago decided to not build a fence in our backyard.  We reasoned that this would spoil our view, and limit our access to nature, not to mention probably reduce our usable backyard since I mow a rather, ah, generous area not technically belonging to me.  The kids and Harvey enjoyed a relatively large yard for a long time.  Fast forward ten years and here comes Lloyd.  As a fairly boisterous puppy, Lloyd was not overly concerned with things like legal property lines, the limits of our neighbour’s patience, and the amount of effort it takes to bath a St. Bernard after swimming in the Carp river.  Needless to say Nikki and I had agreed that we would get an invisible fence as soon as we could afford to (they aren’t terribly cheap).  This would satisfy our need to contain our dogs, while maintaining the fence-less backyard we love so much.

A quick web search and phone call and we were connected with our local dealer, who assured us the fence would work perfectly.  Installation day came, and we were presented with a disconcerting amount of information about how to train your dog to live with the fence.  This was news to us, but we faithfully followed the instructions and we trained both dogs to respect the little flags as a boundary (before wearing the shock collars).  It went very well, really, since Lloyd and Harvey are actually easily trainable.  Finally we worked our way to the day when we would test the actual shocking part of the shock collar.  Harvey learned his lesson in about 3/10ths of a second, and we were done with him.  Never since has Harvey even gone near the edge of our property, whether he had his collar on or not.  Job done on that dog.

Lloyd was another matter altogether.  While Lloyd easily understood that we did not want him to cross the flags, this understanding was only out of convenience as we soon found out.  He seemed unable to notice the collar when it was shocking him.  Literally, he would often stand directly in the field and casually take a leak while the collar was shocking him with the maximum voltage it could generate.  I could tell the collar was working because his jowls were twitching in time to the zapping sound, much like one of those muscle conditioning machines you see on the informercials.  Lloyd would soon be the only St. Bernard with a six pack on his jowls.  We tried shaving him.  He galloped joyously through the field at will and the Carp river smell permeated our household. He was oblivious, and we had a problem.

A call to the fence guy and he explained that he had never had this problem before, but there was a different type of collar he could order in for us to try.  We waited, and it finally came.  It was rather more formidable than the regular collar, with electrodes that made contact at the sides of Lloyd’s neck instead of together at the front.  The thinking here is the more meat the current has to pass through, the much more uncomfortable it will be.  I gleefully (by now more than a little tired of the problem, and the baths) tried to put in on him, it barely fit his neck on the last hole, but I squished it on and we used it for a few days to test it out.  There was no evidence that Lloyd could even tell that this leather torture device was frantically discharging itself into his neck.

Crap.

Another phone call to the fence guy, and he was even more incredulous.  He had to come and see it for himself.  So, we arranged a test and sure enough Lloyd couldn’t tell where the fence was, while Harvey was wetting himself trying to climb the siding on the house from the sound Lloyd’s collar was making.  The fence guy turns to me and says, ok, listen, why don’t you try putting two collars on him?

Folks, I am an animal lover, and I don’t abide cruelty of any kind.  It was only because I was so absolutely, resignedly sure of the outcome that I agreed, and we started to put two shock collars on Lloyd when he went out, which by any rights would be Freaking Painful to a normal animal.

On Canada Day Lloyd made a joyous spontaneous unscheduled swim trip to the Carp River while wearing two collars at the same time, and I left a message on Monday for the fence guy to come and get his fence and give me my money back.  I have yet to hear from him….

Lloyd is clearly unable to determine the subtleties of an invisible fence, no doubt he’s more of a physical fence kind of dog.  We will have to go back to the drawing board on this one.

Lawn Care

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It’s good to touch the green, green grass of home.

I love a nice, rich, full lawn as much as the next moron.  However, it seems that my other love of enormous four-legged animals is in direct opposition of this.  To call our pathetic grass a lawn is a bit generous, as anyone who has been to our house in the last ten years knows. At least in the front yard, where the dogs dole out daily punishment in the form of steamy yellow rivers.  There’s no escape for my grass, even in the winter when Lloyd melts canyons through three feet of ice and snow to poison the frozen turf underneath.

The back yard fares a bit better since the dogs don’t get back there quite as often, but it faces another yellow menace: dandelions. 

Since I am too much of a tree hugger to really put anything on the lawn that would handle that problem (organic fertilizer snake oil salespeople, I’m looking at you) we end up with lots of dandelions.  Lots and lots of dandelions.  There’s a reason why we have so many, it’s right next door. Not sure if you can tell from this poorly lit cellphone pic, but that’s not a blanket of fresh snow in the park beside our house, folks.

Anyway, I was cutting the grass for the first time this year and I stumbled across what must be the first step in the dandelion revolution: the dandelion missile.  Here’s a couple of blurry shots, you can see it has a separate stem inside the launcherlion.

 

It seems clear to me that this dandelion was preparing to launch not only seeds, but a fully grown plant right into the air.  Who knows what they were planning, but it seems I have thwarted them for now, even accidentally.

What horror would have been unleashed had their dastardly plan come to fruition?  We may never know.  I will be watching for the next thing, however.  Heed the grass, folks.

Yes people, even our dandelions have dandelions.