Now with 100% more Small Human.
The missus had the ball thrower tucked down the back of her coat so she could ride her bike with Nuke to the schoolyard where we take him for his exercise. She took the selfshot and as you can see, Nuke has focus on only one thing…The Ball.
Or, I suppose, you could just assume he’s photobombing her.
I love my dog. He’s a handful, and often a troublemaker, but I will, without remorse or compunction, instantly put my fist through the head of anyone that tries to hurt him. One thing I’ve neglected to do, though, for my little buddy is to set up his doggy bugout-bag and set back some food for him.
A doggy BOB isn’t a silly idea. Think about it..if we have to beat feet and take Mr. Furman with us what are we going to need to make things conducive to travelling with him? First off, we’re gonna need a leash (or two or three), spare collar, copies of his vaccinations, a couple muzzles, water bowls, food bowls, and a few other goodies. If we wind up having to stay in a crowded friends house or something, last thing we need is puppy being unwelcome because he wants to eat someone’s four-year-old….hence, some muzzles. And, really, if I can swing it, get the vet to prescribe some tranquilizers…in a high-stress environment some doggie-downers might come in handy for keeping him calm when we need him to be.
Food, though…I hadn’t really given it much thought. I figured that he’s a dog so he’ll pretty much eat anything we eat (and a lot of stuff we won’t.) In retrospect, that’s really not a good idea. After all, that means our supply of people food for two has become a supply of people food for two-and-a-half…turning a 12 month supply into a 9.5 month supply.
Here’s a great post about borrowing the canner from the LDS cannery and putting away some premium kibble. Certainly some #10 cans are gonna last quite a while but I think most dogs, when theyre hungry, aren’t really going to turn their noses up at their dog food because it’s stale. There are, after all, critters that are designed to eat roadkill. However, from a storage standpoint, if youre going to store a bulk amount of food you want it stored in a manner that does not promote vermin, insects and other pests. Just heaving a 50# bag of kibble onto the shelf and expecting it to sit there for a few years might not be a terribly good idea unless you like the idea of some really well fed and happy mice setting up shop in that bag. I think I might just go the mylar bag route. I have a stack of them from the cannery and they should hold about the same as a #10 can. I also have quite a few 5-gallon buckets sitting around with GammaSeal lids on them so that might be a way to go as well.
Of course, borrowing the canning machine from the cannery opens up a few other possibilites since I could can..well…anything.
Regardless, I’ve been neglecting Nuke’s post-apocalyptic needs and need to get him squared away.
Last year’s birthday ‘cake’ – Prosciutto and stew beef. A traditinal dog birthday favorite.
Eighty pounds, jaws of steel, and tougher than Chinese arithmetic……the Bioweapon Mk I is two years old as of yesterday.
It’s pretty much a standard in most preparedness literature that, at some point, a well-trained dog should be acquired as a bit of a force-multiplier. (We’re still working on the ‘well-trained’ part). One idea is that, since you have to go to sleep sometime, the dog provides an early-warning system if someone or something creeps too close to your slumbering form. There is some merit to this…Nuke obviously has better hearing than me and, since he’s usually laying on the floor or otherwise in close contact with it, can sense the vibrations of people coming to the door. He is more useful at night when we’re out walking. He may stop and stare intently off into the distance and let me know that there’s someone (or something) wandering around the street that I didn’t see.
Unfortunately, he can also be caught unawares….and his lack of situational awareness in some cases leads to him being caught by surprise when someone walks along the sidewalk and comes up behind us. At this point, to validate his existence, he starts lunging and barking. Always an exciting moment. But he’s getting better at that sort of thing.Still need to get him acclimated to little kids. He hasn’t quite figured out if they are simply miniature humans or prey.
Is he an asset, from a preparedness standpoint? I’d say it’s pretty neutral. There’s nothing he does that cannot be replicated through technology or gear…early warning, seismic intrusion, intimidation, night vision, etc. On the other hand, he does provide all these features into a fairly compact form that requires only moderate upkeep. The major drawback, of course, is the unreliable nature of his willingness to do what he’s told. Again…a work in progress. So far we’ve pretty much got a handle on sit, go (as in ‘you can range ahead of us if you want’), stay, come, down, and up (either stand up or jump up onto an object). All commands come with matching hand motions. What I should have done when I started this was incorporating whistles into the commands as well so I’d have three options – voice, hands and whistles.
Probably his most useful function is as an early warning detection system against visitors. That may not sound terribly exciting or dramatic, but it is probably the most practical and useful feature he offers. I can take a nap with the doors unlocked and the windows open and not worry about waking up to find some stranger standing over me with a baseball bat.Passively, he probably promotes people keeping their distance from us when we’re out and about.
So today he is two years old. We’ll go pick him up a big bunch of meat scraps and give him a nice dinner. No gifts, though…he’s spoiled enough already.
Running alongside the bicycle kinda tires him out…. Which is good.
Today was the day I dropped Nuke at the vet for a little surgery…you know the kind.
I handed the leash to the gal and she led him (or, more accurately, he led her) down the hallway to where they keep the animals until they’re ready for the surgery.
It was really weird and disturbing to watch someone else walk away with my dog. I kinda choke up just thinking about it.
The problem with having a dog, and I suspect it is a similar situation with children, is that your previous indifference about them not only goes out the window once you have one of your own but suddenly every child/dog everywhere becomes a concern to you. I dodged a bullet in the kid department, but after raising Nuke up from a puppy I feel amazing empathy and concern for almost every dog. Which sucks because this popped up on Facebook and I cannot get away from it in my mind.
I was going to treat myself to ten bucks worth of Chinese food for lunch but I think I’ll do something else with it instead.
Damn puppies.
A couple of people have asked how the bioweapon is doing. Sub-commander Nuke is approximately 16 months old. He weighs in at just a hair under 80#. He still looks far too skinny for my tastes. In fact, I took him to the vet because I was worried. The vet came into the examination room and asked me what the reason for the visit was. I said I thought my dog was too skinny. She looked at me like I was the dumberst person on earth. “He’s a teenager“, she explained to me, “he’s going to be skinny for a while. In a few years I’ll be having to convince you to stop feeding him so much!”
His ability to destroy/deflate every toy he comes across is uncanny
In addition to the basics, he also practices his kung fu
He’s better at letting the humans sleep. I take him for his final walk at midnight and then he’s pretty content to not bother us until morning. He’s not a fan of other dogs. He doesn’t want to hurt them, but he wants to run over and play and jump and generally be a puppy…which is great except he’s eighty pounds of teeth and fur.
His ability to be tube-launched from submersibles is sometimes apparent
Then there was the time he got loaded and went to Mardi Gras
'Quiet! I think I hear someone dropping a piece of chicken on the floor!'
Morale patch for the bioweapons vest arrived today. The missus takes him out in the hills so he can get some exercise (and burn off some energy that would otherwise be spent tearing my house apart) and when he’s out running in the sticks I dont want him ‘mistaken’ for a coyote or other nuisance. So…reflective orange vest for puppy. We sent a picture of him wearing it to the manufacturer and they sent us another free vest and said they’d put his pic up on their website. Yes, my dog is doing endorsements. I think that, for all intents and purposes, puppytime is over and we should probably start getting more serious about his training. He’s a decent companion, when we’re not pulling shoes and socks out of his mouth, but I didnt sign on to this ride to have someone to talk to.
Speaking of things he eats, he ate half of one of my wool mittens yesterday. Fortunately I have about 20 more pairs but I was still a bit pissed off.
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Its going to be time to start this years seeds soon. I didnt start them last year until around March and I think that might have been a little late. I think next week I’ll dig out the gear and get things set up. Last years efforts at growing in buckets was a resounding success … so much so that I think Im pretty much done digging holes in my yard. The buckets were easier to keep watered, to move around as lighting requirements demanded, and were just easier to deal with all around. This year, I think I’ll get a little more complex in how I do things. Someone sent me this link about using a pair of nested buckets. Looks interesting. Last years peppers did pretty well, although the tomatoes were hit-n-miss. I think a smaller bush-type tomato will be called for this year. Last year I didnt do very much with herbs so I think this year I’ll correct that.
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A couple weeks back a fella from one of the neighboring businesses came by and chatted me up regarding preparedness. I gave him a few books and told him to read them. He came by today to say hello and we chitchatted some more. He said that I was a ‘strange duck’, no doubt because of my own interests, but that he always learns something from me. I suppose Im not exactly ‘average’. In alot of ways I’m below average and in even more ways I’m neither above nor below average, just ‘different’. But, and this is improtant, I usually dont care. To paraphrase Popeye, I am what I am. You dont like it, thats cool..youre entitled to your opinion. You dont have to like me and I dont have to like you. Nothing wrong with that. I stopped caring about what people think about me a long time ago. I care what certain people, the people Im close to, think about me but theyve known me long enough, I hope, to figure that I’m generally an okay guy. Anyway, I gave the fella some more books and told him to come back to me when he was done with them and id be happy to talk end-of-the-world with him. He seems to be on track for becoming an ‘economics’ survivalist. That is to say, he sees economic issues and problems being more likely than a Mad Max we’re-all-eating-our-children future.
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Egypt apparently activated their ‘internet kill switch’ to isolate itself from the internet. Dissension needing to be muzzled and all that. Note that the Obama folks have been wanting an internet kill switch as of late. Not sure I see any reason for such a thing. At least, no reason that sits right with me, anyway.
