Monthly Archives: April 2006

Puppy 101

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Welcome to new puppy life!

Jessie has been pretty much the all-consuming event in our daily life since we got her. Between hourly potty walks when we’re home, playing fetch and tug-of-war until she’s tired out (no easy feat there), puppy play dates at friends houses, puppy kindergarten, and 3am potty walks, it’s been a bit tiring to say the least. But she is the stinkin cutest puppy you’ve ever seen! Yes yes, I know I’m biased…but I don’t care!

There are so many things that she just naturally does, or has learned to do with virtually no instruction. Things like taking food gently, fetching (at least the go get it and bring it within 10 feet of you part), sleeping (gasp!!) when the car is moving, and sit on command where all easy as pie. Liver and cheese pie! But the real treasure is that finally we have a dog that doesn’t bite people, who understands the basics of doggy communication, and who we can let maul an 18 month old for at least a few moments and have them come away just very slobbery. Not that Jasper wasn’t a good dog, he was. But only if we managed his environment very carefully.

So to date, we’ve learned or are learning the following (excuse me being the proud mom):
Sit
Down
Get your [insert toy name here]
Drop it
Wait
Having legs, ears, mouth, etc handled with no stress
Take treats gently; don’t lunge at treats when offered
Come
Pays attention (or even comes) when you say her name just once
Come NOW (emergency recall, we just started on this one – requires lots of lunch meat)
Recognize other dogs’ “calming signals” (i.e. chill out you’re getting too rowdy on me!)
No biting (that’s a bit of a rough one, she mouths EVERYTHING, but that’s what puppies do)
No stress over her food dish being messed with, taken away, hands in it when she’s eating

At just barely 14 weeks old, that’s just…amazing!!

V is for Vendetta

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If I had to pick my most favorite books of all time, The Count of Monte Cristo would be up near the top. Granted, Alexandre Dumas was equivelent to a rennaisance-era Grisham. Good writing, great story but not a lot of depth, compared to the authors that would share the top of my list – Hermann Hesse, Ayn Rand, James Joyce. But the emotional impact of the book when I first read it in my teens was just as powerful.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see that a proper retelling of the story was done in the new movie V for Vendetta. The parallels are fairly obvious to someone who has read the book, but for those that haven’t, the black and white version of the movie gets a plug. However, it is a new retelling of the story; the same emotions, the same rage and agony are perfectly presented, and yet in an entirely new context. The fact that I found the movie disturbingly relevant to events happening today made this all the more compelling. I give this movie a big thumbs up.