I am watching a mouse make a series of what I can only describe as Fuck Around Choices, and the Find Out is VERY excited to continue this little experiment.

I'm watching my parent's dog Arwen up at their house.

Arwen (Kelpie, 60lbs) is 15(ish?) now and while she has a high prey drive and history of successful hunts, she's also 15 and doesn't give many fucks. I also have my dogs. Charleston (Sighthound/pointer mix, 50lbs) is 10 and another proactive carnivore, but he's also JUST finished making his Perfect Couch Nest and doesn't want to get up.

...Herschel (Corgi, 40lbs and extremely tube-shaped) is 5 and has no Prey Drive, but he does have a PLAY Drive, which i found out last time I was up here and found him, having cornered a baby bunny, play-bowing and shaking his ass at it because he just had a Great Time chasing it, now it was the bunny's turn to chase HIM! Even though all three of these assholes spent all day dragging me hither and yon through the rockies, he still has the endurance of an athenian messenger and still looking for a reason to careen around the house at Mach Fuck.

A Reason has Arrived.

The reason I am allowing this to happen is that The Mouse is unlikely to come to any harm beyond some environmentally-adaptive trauma, and I am Hoping it hauls ass back to the compost bin where most of them live and tells the colony that there's a very large fucked up little man in the house, fuck that shit, let's stay out here.

I don't know if Psyops work on mice but I feel like it's worth a shot.

After a few minutes of waiting for the mouse to come out, Herschel was getting concerned (bored) and stood up all the way, little paw raised, ready to smack the fun back into this poor creature.

"Ah!" I told him.

As much crime Herschel commits, he's actually quite biddable, and stopped, little paw raised, staring at me before slowly lowering it.

"Good job!" I tell him, and he wiggles with joy. "Figure it out!"

Herschel returns his attention to the wobble, circling and sniffing it with small boofs of excitement, looking bac at me for approval eery so often, before giving the bottom of Wobble the smallest, gentlest push with his nose, which doesn't make it rock, but does scoot it along the carpet.

"Okay!" I tell him, and for the last few minutes he has been slowly scooting the mouse inside the wobble across the living room floor an inch at a time.

This has, however, made charlie actually sit up and watch, so I may need to intervene soon.

Arwen is still snore-farting.

Ok so I may have a broken ankle but not because of this, updates when I get back from the urgent care.

FUNNY STORY-

I mean my whole life is a funny story but in this particular case, it's funny because while I do not have a broken ankle, I do have a pretty severe sprain, and a new appreciation for the horrors of Wordle.

I'll get there.

Anyway, when we last left off, Herschel was doing the Canine equivalent of Playing Cars with the wobble, scooting it around the living room with his nose, which was enough to wake up both Charlie and Arwen, who were squinting at him with matching expressions of "What is the Ginger Idiot up to now?"

So I had to go back and get the Wobble so Herschel could have breakfast, and while poking around in the grass, my sister texted me.

The mice are bringing wobble balls of human to the moose...

my current project is going strong so far

follow it on twt

Everyone is so proud of him too, as they should be

What’s the difference between a dog and a wolf?

Fact checked:

This is really cool.

Wtf everyone should know this!

Fiona Apple with a wooden rendering of her dog, Janet (1998-2012), made by artist Patrick Bucklew

<3 THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST WHOLESOME THING I HAVE EVER SEEN <3

had an interaction with a cat at my mother's friend's house (we dropped by to feed her while my mom's friend was out of town) and my mother said "i was surprised how much that cat liked you, she doesn't usually let people pet her but she followed you around and let you pet her a lot"

and in explaining to her my interaction with the cat i put into words a thing i'd never put into words before, having always automatically understood what i was doing. But once i put it into words my mother said she'd never thought of that and it felt like something worth sharing here.

This cat did a typical cat thing where she sniffed my fingers i was holding out, and then acted like she wanted me to pet her, but then when i started to move to pet her, moved her head away slightly to prevent it.

I instinctively understand this interaction, and stopped trying to pet her and moved back to a neutral position and waited to see if she would re-initiate an interaction.

Because this is basically a consent test. This is how a cat can assess "how closely are you paying attention to what i'm telling you" and "how respectful of my boundaries are you".

If i am responsive to her yes/no game, moving to pet her when she indicates i can, stopping immediately when she seems to change her mind, then she knows she can trust me to understand her, and also to respect her choices. That's what i did, so then she knew she could trust me and relax around me and enjoy my company. She was actually a very friendly and social little cat, who clearly wanted to make friends with me.

But if i had insisted on trying to pet her when she seemed to change her mind instead of simply understanding that she didn't want to be pet in that moment, she would have known she couldn't trust me to understand or respect her, and she would have treated me like she has to treat 90% of the people who visit that house, evidently.

I work mostly with dogs these days, but i grew up with cats too, and am generally good with animals. Many shy animals will also do this same "sniff sniff okay touch me nope just kidding" routine, especially if they've had experiences with people that make establishing that kind of communication and trust important to them.

And in fact, a lot of animals will do some version of this kind of consent test in a whole variety of situations. When well socialized dogs do that thing where they are rough housing and then they both stop suddenly for a moment until one of them play bows or makes a little pouncing motion and then they fly back into rough housing mode, that's what they are doing, they are doing a consent check-in, like "whoah this is getting wild, are you still in? are we still playing, is this still a good time for you?"

anyway, that's why this lovely little cat followed me around asking me to pet her the whole time we were visiting that house, because i showed her that i understood her signals and respected her boundaries, which is something i see a lot of both men and women not doing when interacting with cats and dogs.

oh yes of course! I had a similar moment with a client in my trickwork class just this weekend. See, the thing about teaching tricks is that everything is about getting the communication just right between dog and human. I'm using a mixture of luring and shaping because most of these dogs have not experienced shaping at all and take some time to adjust to the concept. A lot of dogs kind of freeze up at the concept, even when we're shaping something as simple as "perch."

So when a dog is having a hard time with a concept, I have a bunch of approaches in my toolbox. To move through class, I start with the one that is most generally useful, demo it with a client dog, and then I go around the room troubleshooting and helping people get at least an approximation closer to the behavior they'd like.

This particular dog was quiet and a little inhibited coming in, so when I needed to show her handler how to introduce a lure, I had to get up in her space to see if I could convince her to follow my cookie in the way I was trying to communicate. She was a little perturbed by this, so I backed out and away--and she immediately relaxed, and was then more interested in getting up in my space when I invited her to do that in exchange for cookies so I could show up close what I was doing.

Seriously, establishing handling consent and manners is huge with animals, just like it is with people. You ask an animal how it wants you to interact with it, and then you take its opinion into account (with allowances for health procedures etc). And you build positive associations and experiences into that trust bank, so that if you have to do something really bad you can make a withdrawal--but only if you've paid in enough. That's just how trust works.

Finished present for my dad of his 7y/o Great Dane Gertrude. She likes to melt on the couch. Really happy with how this turned out!

Salchichita 🌭✨

Weird horses

A proud and delicate creature.

self-portrait

The Ballad of Bella Buttons (based on a true story)