p=mv

On the cute side ... He ran down the stairs into the basement office / work area this morning. Usually we sit him at the bottom of the stairs so he doesn't fly up the stairs at full gallop. Well, I reflexive yelled "Oz!" right when I clued in he had gone below periscope depth. Totally out of character he actually turns and starts back up.

Having about 12 feet to get going, he was at full stride entering the stair way. 32 ft / sec² worth of gravity was no match. He accelerated past 14 steps of berber pushing off five or six  steps just to add to his velocity. Tongue out the mouth, ears back, giant grin. For that moment Oz was in his element. His movement was like the perfect video study of mother natures engineering prowess.

At this point I am squarely blocking the top of the stairs. He proceeded with no abatement at all. I was pretty sure one of us was going down and was determined I was not the one. Then, with the grace of a trapeze artist he clears the top step, lands between my leg and the newel post on all fours in a perfect sit. ~ 24 kg*m/sec of energy let him slide about six inches on his polished pads across the tile floor to an even more graceful stop. At which point he looks up at me obviously very proud of his little move.

All I could say was, "Nice job Oz...."

It was win, win. He obeyed the recall, had a little fun, and did not turn it into a challenge. This was a good turn to what had been a really frustrating morning with him.

Yeah ... So today started when the big knuckle head wakes me up at 2:00 this morning. I thought he was just wanting to go out for the skunk. After he paraded around the room, his nails making that clickity clack, clickity clack sound on the wood floors I figured it was not a false alarm. Sure enough, he had to go. It was not pretty. He did settle down and we did get back to sleep. I could have done with out the expedition.

This dog eats anything. Unfortunately not everything agrees with his system. The trouble is figuring out what he's eating and how to either get him to stop or isolate him from it. Kinda hard with a yard full of green stuff.

Teri thinks he's eating sticks. We have a lot of them. Not just on the surface of the yard. He digs up old ones. He might diggin' up grubs & stuff too.That's one of the natural diet items for omnivores right? I think I read somewhere that bears get most of their calories from eating bugs like subterranean termites & stuff.

Hmmm. So I wonder what we need to feed him to balance that out? For now that'll be two cups of white rice at every meal. Sound familiar mom's & dad's. Uh huh. Thought so.