Blogging the Binkie

Behind the times

2009-01-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

It's been way too long since I posted here. Hey, at least I got back to it before a year had gone by. Lots has happened. First, Bunny's mom got a new dog, Tillie. I suppose that makes her my cousin or something. Here she is just a few months old.

She came to visit in April. She was a nice enough person, and seemed to figure out that I wanted to be left alone most of the time. I did try to play with her, but it hurt my neck a lot. I guess I'm just getting old.

Then Bunny had to go and have a baby. It was ok while she was pregnant, because I still got all my usual attention. Here she is loving on me while she was 7 months pregnant.

But then she had the baby, and everything went to pot. For a few months I got almost no attention. I was lucky to get food and water! What kind of a way is that to treat someone who has always been there for her (except when binkies call, or bacon). And that baby is sure a noisy little thing. I've never heard such shrieking. It hurts my delicate ears! Sure, she smells interesting, but mostly I could do without.

Silly Songs

2008-03-07T11:31:00.000-08:00

Bunny wrote these songs about me quite a while ago. The tunes were written for a recorder and are jig-like. She wrote the words to help her remember the melody, but I think the words are more memorable.

Wiener likes to eat the frogs in the grass.
Wiener drags around on her fuzzy ass!
Don't look now, or maybe you'll see
As she eats a froggy or three!

Lots of eating, lots of sleeping,
it's a wiener life!
There's a lot of loving, and there's
not a lot of strife.
First you squeeze it, then you cheese it;
give the dog a bone.
Clean the stinky binkies and it's
you that she will own.

Howl-O-Weenie

2006-10-30T00:08:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday I took Bunny to the Howl-O-Weenie picnic, an annual fundraiser put on by the Dachshund Rescue, Education, Awareness, and Mentoring (DREAM) organization. There were sure a lot of dachshunds there! Bunny made me a great costume, although it could have done with a little more forethought - my "boots" kept slipping off. Maybe if she'd spent more than 20 minutes on it.... Still, you have to give her credit for trying.

There were a lot of other dogs there in costume, but the majority weren't. We watched some great contests - the howling contest was my favorite. I thought about entering the licking contest, but there were so many distractions, I just couldn't have focused. I didn't think I stood a chance in the races, but I did hear that next year they're going to have a contest just for wheelies. I guess next September I better start hitting the treadmill.

I got a lot of attention as one of the only dogs there in a wheelchair. One lady said something disparaging about my costume (she was a Falcons fan) and then felt bad when she realized she'd insulted a handicapped dog. Honestly, lady, I expected that kind of reaction in Atlanta, no offense taken.

Apologies to my loyal readers (all 1 of you) for being so bad about posting lately. Since the move, it's been harder for me to blog because Bunny's home all the time. I do enjoy having her to cater to my whims all day, though. It's much nicer than when she would leave all the time for something called "work," whatever that is.

It's nice to sniff meet you

2006-07-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

We live in a new place that's not as hot and humid as Houston, or at least not for as long. As an example, right now it is 86 with a dewpoint of 70, making a heat index of 91. In Houston, on the other hand, it's currently 87 with a dewpoint of 74, making a heat index of 95. To be fair, I should really add a few degrees to the Houston weather because, in astronomical terms, the sun transits the meridian in Houston about 53 minutes after it does it here. Anyway, I keep hearing people complain about how hot and humid it gets here in the summer. Give me a break.

Humidity aside, Bunny took me to a very interesting party last Saturday. It was interesting because there were more dachshunds there than people. I love people, because I can usually manipulate them into petting me, but it's nice to see someone who smells like me once in a while, too. I was the only one in a wheelchair, but the other dogs were very supportive. Almost every dachshund has at least one family member with disc problems. I had a great time exploring the yard that the party was in. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Saying Goodbye

2006-06-28T00:03:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, Bunny put me in the car and we drove for a long time. When we finally stopped, Bunny took me inside a house and informed me that this was our new home. I've been meaning to put a post up about that, and I still plan to, but this post is about something else.

Dachshunds are addictive. If you spend a week with one of us, you'll come to the realization that we're the best breed in the world: beautiful, loving, protective, and smart. When Bunny was growing up, her family had three dachshunds in succession, spanning most of her life. After that much exposure, Bunny naturally wanted a dachshund when it finally became possible for her to get a dog of her own. It never crossed her mind to get any other kind of dog.

Part of the reason for this loyalty was Gretel, who owned Bunny's parents starting in 1989. I got to know Gretel because Bunny frequently takes me with her when she visits her mom. Gretel and I got along great. We used to play-fight all over the living room, but after a few years Gretel got too old to be interested in that. We still liked to share binkies, though, and give each other the occasional lick.

Gretel passed away about 10 days ago. She was 17 1/2 and enjoyed life to the end. She died doing something dachshunds like most, which is lying in the sun. We will miss her.

It's a mystery

2006-01-10T00:31:00.000-08:00

Bunny and Mr. T are often gone during the day, more than I'd like, but, hey, it gives me more time to surf the web. Anyway, Bunny wondered aloud the other day why she finds me sleeping in places other than my nice "spot" in the living room. I guess humans don't understand about the fairies?

Let me back up. I know humans can't see the fairies - it's common knowledge that our eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell are better than theirs. (And sometimes our sense of good taste, too. Hello! Have you seen some of those dresses on Dancing With The Stars? They look like they were designed by bats!) The fairies like to live around the electrical systems of homes, because it gives them power for their electric guitars, and it's also warm in the winter, cool in the summer. Fairies are avid players of electric guitars. Humans can't hear them because they play at high frequencies. Normally I don't mind it - fairy tunes are generally quite lyrical, although a bit atonal for my taste - but sometimes their music is downright grim. They like to jam in this style, and let me tell you, 50 grim fairies at once is 49 too many.

In a big jam session, the fairies will gather around an electrical socket because it's just not practical for them to draw that much current at other points of a typical house electrical system. Guess what? My little spot, which is cozy and comfortable and otherwise quite relaxing, is right next to an electrical outlet. (BTW, the outlet is up and to the side enough that I don't worry about accidentally sticking my tail in it.) Now, I know Bunny didn't knowingly put me in a noisy place. She's obviously never heard a fairy jam session, or she'd know better.

Some days are quiet - fairies can't jam all the time or they wouldn't get their editing work done. Ocassionally, though, they go at it, jamming on their guitars and sometimes even singing, and I just have to move away from the socket. Some days it's so loud I have to go to a completely different room! Since these sessions go on for hours, either Bunny or Mr. T will come home in the middle of one and find me not in my spot. Mystery solved.

Of all the indignitites...

2006-01-05T00:32:00.000-08:00

Do humans have no shame? Look what Bunny did to me! Sure, I didn't really mind being in the box, but was the bubblewrap really necessary?

Whaaaa?

2005-12-09T00:32:00.000-08:00

Bunny has to take these online safety courses for work, with tests at the end. Whoever wrote the course/test didn't have a good grasp of what kinetic energy is. Here's an actual question from the test:

What is kinetic energy?
a) Any moving object
b) Possibility of movement
c) Potential energy
d) Stored energy

Bunny had a hard time figuring out what they wanted. (Notice I don't say "which answer is correct." None of them are correct.) It can't be lack of knowledge - she has a PhD in physics, for Dog's sake. If you want to take a stab at the answer, leave a comment and Bunny will send you an email to tell you if you're right.

String theory

2005-12-06T00:01:00.000-08:00

Last week I saw the physicist Brian Greene on The Colbert Report. It reminded me of when Bunny and Mr. T were in grad school and I would sneak into Bunny's office at night and read her particle physics theory books. When are they going to find that Higgs particle? Anyway, Dr. Greene talked a lot about String Theory. I don't know about the 11 dimensions, but the idea of the universe being made up of strings seems eminently sensible to me. It would mean we're all woven together in one big binkie.

Brian Greene is an interesting human. There's actually an entry on him in Wikipedia. He's committed to popularizing science, particularly string theory, and has produced several episodes of NOVA based on his books. He's kind of a modern day Carl Sagan. Speaking of Sagan, Mr. T came home one day and said he felt very old at work that day, because he mentioned Carl Sagan in class and none of his students knew who that was.

Training your humans

2005-11-11T00:44:00.000-08:00

Some dogs will tell you that humans can't be trained, but I say those dogs just don't know how to train them. I've found that my humans are quite trainable, although it takes a lot of repetition and sometimes endless patience. For instance, I recently trained my humans to leave my favorite binkie on the floor for me. (They think it's their binkie. How human of them.) Here's what I did.

It started when my male human, Mr. T, was out of town and Bunny was pretty much either gone or in her binkies sleeping. Sometimes she would leave at 7:30 in the morning and not get home until 10:30 at night. Now, I don't mind a little solitude, but when she's gone that long, I start to wonder if she's going to come back! Anyway, I would voice my displeasure when she came home, in addition to making sure she knew I was happy to see her. You see, humans don't train well if you only scold them. A system of praise and rewards works much better. After a few days of this, I could see that Bunny was getting the message. While she would make sure I got to do my normal rolling around on the rug in the bedroom, which Bunny calls "the scratchy thing," it seems like I got shooed out of the bedroom almost as soon as I got in. I just wasn't getting enough quality time.

I started by using that old tried-and-true method of the sad look. It's far more effective than whining, which humans seem to find annoying. I would sit in the middle of the bedroom, watching Bunny run around doing those strange things that humans do, and I would just keep my big brown eyes on her. Eventually she'd look over at me, stop what she was doing, and come over to give me a pat. Step one accomplished.

Step two was to get the binkie on the floor. This was more complicated, because Bunny had to realize that by continuing to give her the sad look after she gave me pats, I wanted something besides more pats. Bunny's a quick human, so she picked up on that pretty fast. I had already trained her to know which binkie was my favorite, and after a few training sessions she put that one down on the floor. She put it in the closet, which is sort of inconvenient for me, but you take what you can get.

We settled into a pretty good routine after that, with Bunny making sure I could get to my binkie if the closet door was closed or something was in the way (like a big, scary pillow). Soon after that Mr. T got back in town, and it was a simple matter to train him to do the same thing. One day, though, all that training looked like it was going to go to waste. Bunny got it in her head the clean out the closet, which was great fun for me because I got to sniff all sorts of things I normally couldn't reach. When she announced that she was finished, I went into the closet to take a look, and, would you believe it, no binkie on the floor! I looked high and low, but I smelled it nowhere. Back to the brown-eyed stare, this time mixed with disappointment. Notice, I didn't scold, but you do have to let your human know when she's done something wrong or she won't learn. Well, shortly after that Bunny got my binkie down off the shelf, and it's been on the floor for me ever since. Good human!

Networks

2005-11-01T00:54:00.000-08:00

Hmph. I turned 10 years old last week, and no one said ANYTHING. Bunny was out of town, sitting in the sun in Hawaii without me, and my male human hardly paid attention to me at all. What's up with these people?

In the competition for best/worst pun dealing with technology, here's an entry from today's New York Times. In an article about monitoring deer activity by strapping small video cameras to them, John Schwartz writes:

The technology for the next-generation network will use a variant of the peer-to-peer technology that powers online file-sharing services like Kazaa. The tiny computers on each animal will gather one another's video and pass it along to the base station in what might be called a deer-to-deer network.

On the road aga....still?

2005-10-13T00:24:00.000-07:00

Talk about your long car drives. My humans decided to evacuate in front of Hurricane Rita. I was personally getting worried by what Frank Billingsley was saying about where the storm was headed Wednesday night, so I think they made the right choice. My humans packed as much stuff as it was possible to fit in two cars, including a lot of my binkies (VERY important) and my favorite toys. They were running around until the wee hours of the morning packing, and it really interfered with my sleep! But I tried to be patient.

I had plenty of opportunity to rest the next day. Living in Houston, you think you know bad traffic, right? Wrong. It took 12 hours to get to Austin, a trip that normally takes 3. And that was after we skipped the worst of the traffic by taking the 290 HOV lane, as instructed to do by those helpful traffic signs on the highway. It was literally everyone and their humans on the road, and inside the Beltway, most of them were out of their cars, walking, sitting on the HOV barrier, or taking pictures. Insanity! Did I mention it was close to 100 degrees that day? Lucky for me, though, Bunny bought a Prius in July, so even in the stop-and-go traffic we were able to sit in air-conditioned comfort. Which is good, because it was a looooong sit.

I got pretty bored after a while and finally started keeping track of how long it was taking us to go forward. Here's a table and a graph showing the entire trip. (Click on the picture for a larger version.) It took us 8 1/2 hours to get past the roundy-round bottleneck in Brenham. We thought we were home free for a bit, but we sooned slowed back down to a crawl and stayed there until we got past Giddings. Giddings has what may be the world's most incongruous eatery, the "Fresh Donuts and Seafood Restaurant."

A window on the world

2005-09-16T00:42:00.000-07:00

I just discovered an organization with posssibly the best name ever:

The National Fenestration Rating Council

As they say on their web page, "NFRC is a non-profit organization that administers the only uniform, independent rating and labeling system for the energy performance of windows, doors, skylights, and attachment products." Can you picture yourself going to career day at your puppy's kindergarten class and saying, when asked what your job is, "I rate attachment products."

Ok, so the organization itself isn't that exciting, but it does bring to mind one of my favorite words, defenestration, which Mirriam-Webster defines as "a throwing of a person or thing out of a window." Does that mean dogs can't be defenestrated? But I know dogs can be fenestrated, because that's what the doctor did to me the last time I had surgery for a ruptured intervertebral disk (my fourth or fifth, I lose count).

By the way, as much as I support energy conservation, I'm against windows that don't let in heat. I'm stuck in the house all day with the blinds closed, and during the rare occasion my humans let actual direct sunlight into the house, I run right over to it to soak up the heat. (If it's hitting the floor, that is.)

Fruit flies like a banana

2005-09-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been longer than I thought since my first post. Time flies when you're under the binkie, I guess. For a few weeks there neither of my humans were ever home, and I thought I was going to die of loneliness. You'd think that I would have spent that time blogging, but since I never know when one of them's going to walk in the door, I have to be careful. Lately my female human (I call her "Bunny" because she likes them so much) has been turning the house upside down looking for items to donate to the hurricane victims. I certainly grieve for the humans, but I'm crushed by all the animals that had to be left behind. It makes me appreciate my warm, dry house and plentiful supply of crunchy bits, as Bunny calls my food, even more.

On a lighter note, I found a web page I just had to share. Meet Fred and Ginger. Aren't they a nice-looking couple? That long hair must be a pain to take care of, though. Speaking of dancing (which I wasn't but I am now), Bunny has been acting quite peculiarly lately. She's always danced around the house - oh, I'd hate it when she waltzes around with me if it weren't for the attention - but lately she's taken up the habit of dancing around with an invisible partner. I wonder if she's ok, you know, up there. Maybe it has something to do with all those old black and white movies we've watched. (Yes, dogs can see in color. I was thrilled when I upgraded my cell phone to a color display.) I'm going to have to keep a close eye on her. When I'm not napping, of course.

Me

2005-08-02T00:31:00.000-07:00

Dogs do too blog

2005-08-01T00:51:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading the New York Times on July 30, I get to the end of an article on blogging by Sarah Boxer, and it states, "Dogs would never blog." Says who? I mean, I know I sleep 20 hours a day, but that still leaves a few minutes for blogging. So I decided to start this blog, just to prove Sarah Boxer wrong. (I mean, come on: her last name is Boxer, you'd think she'd know dogs better!)

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to blog about, but here are a few ideas:
1) The stupid things humans do for their owners,
2) Crunchy versus chewy: the Milkbone debate,
3) Must you shove that pill down my throat?, and
4) Slow down already: Walks are for sniffing, not walking.

You're probably wondering about the title of this blog. My human used to call blankets "binkies" when she was a puppy. I love it - it's so much more creative than the usual "blanky." Anyway, because we dogs love to use silly names for objects associated with our pet...um, I mean humans, I started calling my blankets "binkies." Being a dachshund I naturally spend most of my time under a binkie, even in the middle of summer when the air conditioning is broken. Hence the title.