I took this picture on October 16th when we went for an afternoon walk. The maple tree behind the house was in full fall colors. Today, after a day of chilly rain most of the leaves are on the ground.
This is what it looked like ten days earlier on October 6th. The weatherman has forecast a wetter and snowier Winter this year. We are all looking forward to it.
I was at my desk doing something tonight and all of a sudden the whole little office became overcrowded. My wife came with her little parade following her and sat down at the computer. Another nice shot of our boys Ruff and Axl.
I just finished reading a science article, "What Your Dog Is Thinking" with the intriguing subtitle, " Dogs can count, use touchscreen computers and understand hundreds of words. Soon we might find out what they really think of us" http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/11/what-your-dog-is-thinking/#ixzz29ILVOr4U and it reminded me of a real life experience with our Rottweilers. Every night before bedtime I go to the jar in the kitchen containing small biscuits that we use for treats and count out six to be divided among the three dogs. One of our Rotts, Axl, has gotten into the habit of standing next to me watching me count the biscuits so when I am done I give him an extra one and say, "Thank you for helping me". Along the way I have also given Axl any of the small broken pieces that I pull out of the jar as I count the treats and I would say, "Broken one" and he would gobble it down. Last night I came across a larger piece of a broken biscuit that wasn't a whole one but it was bigger than the usual small pieces so I tried to pass it off as his treat for helping me. He took the broken biscuit but instead of walking away toward the bedroom he just stood there looking at me and the look on his face said, 'So where's my complete biscuit?'.
This was one of those moments when you realize you've just exchanged a real dialog with your best friend and not a single word was spoken.
Axl is a very quiet and loveable sweetheart but he has the most expressionable eyes of any of the Rottweilers we have owned. I can almost tell what he is thinking by just looking at him. I don't know how many spoken words he and the other Rottweilers comprehend but I know they all listen to every conversation we humans have in our house and they react to many of the words they hear. You probably have had the same experience when your conversations include words like dinner, car, go, ride, store, out, and the unlimited number of food names we all use. They probably don't understand complete sentences so it makes for a humorous moment when you suddenly get a reaction that you didn't expect after saying something that inadvertently contained a 'hot word'.
I have a friend in California who has owned many Rottweilers over the years and she told me one of her dogs knew the names of every toy the dog owned and would go a fetch it on command. And then there was another scientific test I read about on this subject that included telling the dog to fetch a toy by name that the dog did not own just to see what the dog would do.
One day, years ago, when I had my first Rottweiler Mo, she would go out and pick up the newspaper in our driveway and carry it into the house. I was privileged to observe her deductive reasoning skills when I saw her do this job one day. When Mo went down the driveway there were two newspapers a few feet apart and as soon as she saw this she paused to figure out what to do. Mo picked up one newspaper and dropped it on top of the other and attempted to pick them both up at the same time. She tried this several times with no success so she grabbed one paper and carried up to the front porch and handed it to me and then ran down the driveway to get the other.
Mo was trained by my wife at a time when I went to work every day and she proved to be a very smart dog. The one thing that she seemed to enjoy most was to be asked if she wanted to 'Go to work' and her ears would perk up and she would listen to what you wanted her to do. When we moved out to the rural part of the county and had our much bigger property the newspaper job became more involved. Sometimes Mo would discover the newspaper hadn't been thrown in the driveway and she would have to search for it. And she did this job with the diligence of the mailman who goes out in rain or snow.
As far as that scientific story I first mentioned, here is a sample paragraph to wet your curiosity. Don't know how many of you have iPods or iPhones, as we do not, but I do know that our baby Ruff has his own email address. It is Ruffin@fuse.net and he use to get a lot of fan mail.
Most impressive of all is dogs’ ability to learn about humans. They respond to our gestures, they attend to our body language, and they follow our gaze to figure out what we’re looking at. They even are susceptible to repeating human yawns, according to a study published in the journal Biology Letters. As the longest-domesticated species, dogs have evolved alongside humans, selected over thousands of years for traits that make them especially sensitive to our cues. Another study from the journal Science reported that puppies only a few weeks old could interpret human signals, while full-grown wolves raised by humans could not. Dogs read people better than do chimpanzees, humans’ closest primate relative, according to research published this year. In fact, the most accurate comparison is to a human child: dogs have the social-cognition capacities of a 2-year-old. (The dogs in one recent study can claim another similarity to iPhone-loving toddlers: their ability to understand abstract concepts was probed by having them use touchscreen computers.)
I suppose I should be getting used to seeing this, but I don't. And every time I do see it I've got to grab the camera. Sometimes they act like bookends and squeeze in on both sides of my wife on the big couch. Today, they just spread out a bit.
Once in awhile when the Sun is out the daytime temps make it enjoyable for our walks. Even though it is now a bit cooler than a few weeks ago. Here is another shot of our Silver Maple getting more colorful each day.
On the same day we passed by my crop of Montauk Daisies that I grew from seeds two years ago. We brought this plant down to Kentucky in 1991 when we moved here from Long Island. The plant got its name from the Montauk Light House on the Eastern tip of Long Island. It blooms throughout October and November. It really brightens thing up when the other plants are beginning to hibernate for the Winter.
The weather here is changing fast. Last year we had no Winter to speak of due to mild temps and only a half inch of snow. Then we had Spring arrive three months early. This year seems on course to make up for lost time. Summer ended abruptly in late August. Fall seems to have come and gone in September and besides the cooler temps we had a lot of rain that made up for the drought during the Summer. Now we are having freezing overnight temperatures and the weatherman is predicting heavy snow for Winter. The Rottweilers are listening to everything and I see their ears perk up whenever the word snow is mentioned. So almost as if I was struck by a beam of sunshine, last night I found a beautiful photo taken last Summer that I forgot to post. Hope you like it.
"Mary had a little lamb, and every where that Mary went, Her lambs were sure to go." OK, change Mary to Mom and Lambs to Rottweilers, and you get the idea. I probably have the best protected wife in the world.
It all began 17 years ago when I got my first Rottwiler, Mocha. She was a very pretty girl and she loved to sleep on the couch laying on her back, spread out like a girlie mag centerfold. Now, we have the male equivalent of that centerfold, my 6-year old baby Rottweiler Ruffin. Here is his centerfold pose for the month of November.
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| Here's Ruffin, Ms Rott-n-Girl magazine's November centerfold |
Eat your hearts outs girls, he's all mine. And he is a great bed-warmer in the Winter. You can click the image for a larger view, and print it if you wish, but that's all you get.
See previous post on this subject:
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The making of a porn-star Rott. The first four years in the life of baby Ruff.
We had a pretty dry Summer this year and by late August our rainfall was 7-inches below normal. During the hotter days I was even watering our trees with a garden hose. September everything changed and we more than made up the lack of water with several rainstorms. Thankfully it came just in time to allow the foliage to change into Fall colors. We took a walk in the back yard this afternoon and some of the trees were already turning colors.
And Ruff and Axl did some exploring.
When we came back inside Ruff waited for me at the top of the stairs.
I have to tell you about the game Ruff plays, it's call "Toll Collector". Whenever I go down to the basement he waits for me just as you see him here. If I am carrying something when I come back up he lets me pass, but if I am empty-handed I have to pay a toll to get by. The toll consists of sitting on the steps and giving him lots of kisses. Who can resist that look anyway.
By the way, if you happen to be one of the people who Follow this blog you may have noticed the little Follower Avatars are all missing. I don't know what caused that problem and the Google Help desk hasn't responded to my questions. According to the Help Forum several people have also reported the problem.
Around our house napping is a favorite pass time. We have, in chronological order, after breakfast naps, after lunch naps, naps before dinner and, of course, naps after dinner. Thank goodness the three Rottweilers don't have to worry about being on guard. That must be my job since I am awake most of the time. So here we have today's after breakfast nap but I seem to have disturbed them with the camera flash. This was, I think, the third or fourth picture I shot of the group.
And they are inseparable. These two spend their days together and their nights together. Axl gets upset when he is not next to his mom. He has a whole routine that he goes through just to be at her side. If my wife and I are sitting together on the loveseat watching television then Axl wants to lay down between us. And he always gets his way. Soon that gets to be too cramped so I usually go sit on the other couch and then he stretches out with his head on her lap. Axl has become so devoted to Jackie that when she leaves him alone by accident - like if she goes outside on the deck and he wasn't quick enough to follow her, he comes to me and makes very worried-sounding moans to get my attention, which makes me get up and let him be with her.
Just a few moments ago I went to check on my wife and found it wasn't necessary. She was being well cared for.
Resting Rotts -or- Couch Potatoes. Take your pick. Indoors play is somewhat limited due to inconvenient obstacles such as furniture and televisions. What else is a healthy Rottweiler to do? Well, how about going into Standby Mode, like the other gadgets around the house. Or just resting on the couch. I think I'm running out of different ways to describe this favorite activity of theirs. Anyway, enjoy the pictures.
