Kunoichi: Doggie Ninja

If Ichi got gadget lust, I’m sure this is what it would be over. Seriously, check it out, it’s bacon flavored bubbles. I can’t imagine how they someone came up with them, but I saw them in action on It’s Me or the Dog. Just find a cheap bubble blowing machine, pour the bubbles in, take it outside and Ichi could be entertained for quite some time. As noted in the picture, they also come in peanut butter and barbecue chicken flavors.

Seriously though, who realized they could put a flavor on bubbles and how awesome is that? You should have seen the dogs on the show, normally so aggressive but they were all about the sweet taste of bacony bubbles. I’m seriously thinking aout getting this for ichi despite not having a really good place for it. Maybe the porch.

Really, I’m still in awe of flavored bubbles. I wonder if Ichi would still chase after less expensive normal bubbles. Probably not as much. It’s probably worth the extra dollar.

Also, I’ve decided to get my scanner, I’ve just been waiting for my gift certificate from Amazon to arrive, so I can get it cheaper.

Well, Ichi’s right back to having issues with food. I’ve begun the process of taking it away after 10 minutes of it just sitting there. This now enforces that if she doesn’t eat, she won’t eat. There will be no more food brought to her just because she doesn’t like this food.

I subsequently had a fun conversation where I joked with mom about how she probably should have done that with me and my sister. She told me it was because we would have complained too much, so she would fix us whatever we wanted when she cooked if we didn’t want what was on the table. I told her that the complaining portion probably came from Daddy’s routines of “where’s the ketchup, no I’m sorry, we’re all out”. Somehow we ended up as smartalic (sp?) little kids who got our way more often than we should have. (It probably helped that we were cute.)

But I’ve learned this lesson through my own misbehavior and thus, if she doesn’t want it, she won’t be eating. She’ll eat it when she’s hungry. I did treat her to just a LITTLE bit of fried rice the other day realizing that it was essentially the contents of the dog food (rice, chicken, veggies). But I was good to put it in the bowl and mix it with her food.

Funny story though: my sword and shield came in for a costume and they were packed in packing peanuts. Ichi clearly thought that was her portion of the package. Um, no. But, in her typical way she attempted to carry her “toy” out of the house when we went for a walk. She was semi successful cause I took the opportunity to yank it out of her mouth and tell her it was bad. Exact phrase: “don’t chew on things that could kill you”. She responded by picking up a cigarette butt from the sidewalk to chew on. *FACEPALM*

In other news: Bama now has 1.43 arrests per win this year. Seems like a lot. Phrases to express this phenomenon include: “criminal tide”, “parole tide” and “rammer jammer yellow hammer go to jail alabama”. On the surface it’s funny, but when you get down to it, it’s really sad and pathetic. So many people who are making a mess of their lives for what? And no one to tell them no apparently. I guess whereas some folks think “look where I”m at no one can touch me” I tend to think “do not screw this up do not screw this up do not screw this up”. I guess my parents could have done worse than indulge me at dinner.

Oh, and there are more pictures from that set in the gallery.

Well, I bit the bullet and bought the furminator because everyone seems SO HAPPY with it. And now I’m officially one of those people that has posted a picture of the results. I think the picture doesn’t quite do it justice cause you can’t see how tall the pile is.

Suffice to say, Ichi and I are doing better now that she’s less furry. No, she’s not bald, but I can touch her again without getting covered in fur. And she looks skinnier, but overall happier and healthier.

Seriously though, the fact that all of that will not be in my carpet was worth the money I paid for it. Now, to just restore the carpet to it’s original glory and then figure out how to keep it that way.

Oh, and while Ichi endured the wrath of the furminator, I endured the wrath of Ichi. My arms are covered with scratches and bite marks. She REALLY doesn’t like to be still for any reason. Eventually I did figure out the best way to hold her so that she couldn’t bite me, but it took a while.

You and the rest of the world are probably asking this. Afterall, I never share pictures anymore. Well, you are in luck as this is one of the changes I intend to make! MORE PICTURES! *points*

Ichi is doing well. She’s still a little on the destructive side and can’t really be trusted, but the two of us are heading more swiftly to a happier life. Ichi is, in general, calmer. This may be easier for others to see than me as Dad noticed she’s always more hyper around me. This is probably due to the fact that I am a sucker for her batting her eyes with a ball in her mouth.

Currently I’m working on breaking her of this “I see something I want so I’m gonna jump” attitude. I’m trying to replace it with “sit”. She actually will now sit if I say “what do good puppies do?”. Hopefully she is picking up on the fact that she will never get what she wants by jumping, but will usually get what she wants by sitting patiently. We’re also working on “stay” and trying to get her to stay in the living room while I go to the kitchen. That’s not going as well.

But all in all, much much better. Now, if only she wouldn’t think of her leashes as chew toys

(Oh, and the picture is of Ichi at Peach Park in Clanton. She didn’t quite know what to do about the dog that was just standing there).

I’ve spent a decent amount of time upgrading things today. As the twitter post suggests, upgrade the biggest thing first (Wordpress) then the little things (plugins). Most of the plugins, I upgraded twice. I added a few new ones that require further work when I get home.

For you, my loyal reader, nothing much has changed. Although I did add a new event *points to the right* and will have probably made a few changes to the blogroll by the time you see this. For me, a lot has changed and I’m loving the cleaner, sleeker interface that runs all of this.

But never fear, things are about to change. Oh yes, how they’ll change. I’ve decided that I need to write more concise posts that stay on a single topic. So don’t expect “this is how ichi is and this is how I am” all lumped together. Nope, 2 different posts. Could mean shorter, but more, could just mean shorter. We’ll see. There’s a change I want to make that correlates with that, so….yeah, we’ll see.

Well, it appears that Ichi is blowing her coat. Since she was born in October, she wasn’t on the normal schedule I think. I’m sure she’ll get there. But it appears now that temperatures are in the 90s down here (how are we not in the 100s and the northeast is?), Ichi’s decided it’s time to shed some pounds in the way of fur. After a weekend full of dog related allergies (I’m slightly allergic), I broke down and ordered a FURminator from Amazon. It’s not a cheap brush, but it’s supposed to cut down on 90% of the shedding. So, it appears that this will help the allergies, the carpet and make Ichi a literally cooler dog. It’s supposed to get the undercoat. We’ll see.

Also, after not really getting any sleep Sunday night/Monday morning, I “woke” up realizing that all my careful father’s day planning had reached another speed bump. Last time we went home, Ichi ate through her leash (previously she stuck to chewing through the loops that help pull the seats up and it is a LOT harder to do without those BTW). We’ve got other leashes, but not ones that allow me to set her up in the car. I forget what she chewed on on the way back, but she did find something. Perhaps it’s not good that I can’t remember. Anyway, I stopped at PetSmart on the way to Hancock’s with Lauren yesterday and I picked up a new seatbelt harness. Since her harness is most likely too small for her now, I went ahead and picked up one of the “you won’t be moving puppy” harness/seatbelt combos. That thing has a for real carabiner on it. She’s going NO WHERE. Or at least that’s the hope. It says she’ll be able to sit, lie down, and stand. Hopefully that all means “nap”.

I guess the only other news worthy things are that we’ve gone 4 days without an accident, our nails are so long I’m tempted to pain them, and she’s almost refusing to eat. Though, this morning I think that was a product of exhaustion because her usual 10 hour sleep was reduced to 8. When I went back in to get her, I found her in her kennel asleep again, which is unusual to say the least. And before anyone goes “OMG you leave her alone for 10 hours!!!”, trust me, every morning I have to wake her up.

I have gadget lust to the point that I made a whole category for it. Remember the post with the optical scanner to scan in dvds? Yeah, I ended up buying software (not the scanner) which actually uses my macbook’s isight to scan the UPC’s of books, movies, cds, (and with the update clothes, tools, etc.). I actually really liked the release before this one. It had all the info in the sidebar, not it’s at the bottom and kind of clunky. It’s still a delicious piece of software…HA! And being able to search on the laptop for movies and keep track of loaned out stuff has been cool.

But as my life becomes more cluttered and yet also more digital, I’ve been toying with the concept of going paperless. I have papers all over the apartment and most just serve as fodder for Ichi to chew on. So I’ve been looking at lots of OCR (character recognition) scanners on the market. There’s one that I’m LUSTING over and very tempted to get despite it’s incredibly hefty price tag. However, since it comes with Adobe Professional, it’s sort of like buying Adobe and getting the scanner for free.

But believe me when i say it’s a hefty price tag. I think I’ll let this one sit for a while until at least July. The concept of my filling cabinet being reduced to one drawer of papers and the rest just drawers for other stuff would be fantastic though. (In all fairness, one drawer is already the “upcoming projects” fabric drawer. Wouldn’t it be great to file away the fabric instead. I could have a drawer for twills and gaberdine.) Imagine 7 years of notes on a single DVD, that’s a whole lot easier to drop at the lab for Quals folks than a big stack of copies. But still, i need to wait. For one thing, I’m not ready to scan it all yet. I have a 6 step plan to get my backups in order and restructure the pc for the last time.

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So, ‘kunoichi’ is the japanese word for ‘female ninja’. When debating names, it was on the table as she’s a female black japanese dog. She LOOKS like a doggie ninja. When she arrived and would follow me only until I turned to look at her, or hid under furniture, I decided that was the name. But let me tell you, I’ve found MORE reasons why she’s a ninja.

1) She’s sneaky. She’ll sneak into my room and under my bed in no time flat. Fortunately for me, she hasn’t figured out that I can almost always hear her under the bed. Then there’s the occasional outline and my favorite trick she picked up from Sunny…peeking out so that just her nose if visible. It’s adorable.

2) She now hides all over the house. Yesterday I found her hidden in the pantry. How she got into the pantry I have no idea. She was BEHIND the garbage can where it’s REALLY REALLY dark. Thank God for that curly tail or I would have been really freaked out.

3) She’ll steal your stuff without your knowledge. Like SD cards and Jump Drives. She likes to fake you out by chewing harmless on a bone. You go back to your business thing, paying no mind to the chewing sound that’s now almost comforting cause it means she’s occupied. And then, you return and instead of bringing you the bone, she runs. This is typical “oh crap I’ve been caught” Ichi behavior. Yeah, not so much fun for me.

More on her behavior lately after the cut.
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