I will no longer be updating Iron Guide (see below). Instead, I am now writing at my new, personal blog. Though that will be about some of the newer things I'm doing in life, if you want to see updates about Louie, Lester, and now Dusky, add me on Facebook -- there's enough ridiculously cute pictures to go around.

Turns out one of the research scientists at Google, T. V. Raman, is blind and has a guide dog, Hubbell. A bit like this blog, T. V. wrote up a daily log of his experiences at guide school with Hubbell and the remarkable story of Aster, his first guide dog.

I haven't met any blind engineers at Amazon, so I think we'll have to settle for me and my guide puppy in training.

Who knew? Small world.

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 3:40 PM | Post a comment | 3 comments | Trackbacks

From lifehacker. Does your house smell like dog? I know my car does. I've tried everything from the standard $1.99 air freshener to a total, inside-out vacuuming-detailing and it still smells like a wet Lester. Lifehacker suggests soaking a cotton ball peppermint, putting it in a plastic container with holes and then leaving it in the smelly room. I'm going to go buy some peppermint and try this first thing when I get back to Seattle.

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 8:34 PM | Post a comment | 1 comments | Trackbacks

In Stanford at Startup School. At this moment, I'm listening to Mitch Kapor speak. Lester is staying with the Rohrers. He's a happy little puppy generally, but hopefully he'll keep his whining and solicitousness under control. Mary Ann knows to not let Lester get away with anything, since he occasionally tries to probe just how much he can get away with if he's with people he doesn't know.

One of the incredible things about Guide Dogs is the puppy sitting option. I travel frequently, once or so a month. While Marina and I were still together, I was traveling even more and it was an even bigger issue. This isn't a problem just for us as raisers for Guide Dogs, but for anyone with a dog in general. If you're single, and even occasionally go away on business or pleasure, it's almost a total show-stopper. Yeah, you can board your dog, but that becomes very expensive very quickly. Yeah, you can have your friend or neighbor watch them, but, unless you have, say, a co-worker who not just loves dogs, but loves your dog, you're going to run out of people pretty quickly.

Really, without the Pringles, the Rohrers and all our other puppy sitters, I wouldn't be able to do this. Let's hear one for them.

UPDATE 2007-03-25: I decided that the name of this post ["Puppy Sitting (Again)"] didn't quite capture how much I appreciated our puppy sitters. So, now, it's "Puppy Sitters to the Rescue".

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 10:19 AM | Post a comment | 1 comments | Trackbacks

Sigh. I just baked doggie treats into my track pants.

As normal, Lester and I went out for our morning walk. Hoping to practice food-induced recall/come on a long line (basically a twenty-five foot leash) in a more challenging area, I pocketed a couple dozen pieces of kibble. The usual tennis court romp and walk went well, and even food-recall practice went well. Lester ignored a huge flock of honking geese and came running, straight to me. Twice. We had practiced "come" a few times before that, so, wanting to end on a positive note, we went home after the geese.

It was raining (surprise surprise), so, at home, I toweled off Lester, peeled off my drenched clothes and tossed them in the dryer.

Twenty minutes later, something clicked. I. FORGOT. THE. KIBBLE. I ran to the dryer and yanked out my track pants. Where's the kibble? Peering into the dryer, I saw that it had all fallen out and been rolling around in the dryer the whole time. Sigh. The whole thing reeked of kibble. The pants. The sweatshirt. Even my boxers! And the dryer!

Getting out of my laundry room, looking back, I saw Lester nervously licking my pants. "It looks like kibble... it even tastes like kibble, but... it doesn't look like kibble. It looks like Kushal's pants. I'm supposed to eat kibble. Definitely not supposed to eat Kushal's pants. Am I supposed to eat this? I'M SO CONFUSED!" Normally, even thinking of eating the alpha male's clothes is a crime punishable by immediate banishment to the tie-down, but his confused expression looked so funny I couldn't stop laughing.

A normal wash should get the smell out, I figure. Of course, I imagine this is a bit of a first. I mean, what, someone baked a lemon tart into their dress shirt and now wants to wash it out? I can't exactly imagine this being a common problem. =P

Not quite sure what to do about the dryer though. No matter how well I wash them, if my dryer smells like kibble, it gets the last laugh. Hell, if it sticks around, all my laundry will smell like kibble. I'm just hoping the smell goes away on its own.

If your dog really likes me next time we're in the elevator, you'll know why.

Labels: Lester

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Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 3:35 AM | Post a comment | 0 comments | Trackbacks

Lester has had a very social week.

On Thursday, after work, George, Jim, Brett, Yogesh and I went to go watch 300. Despite the hundreds of half-naked men charging around in togas for two hours, it was actually a pretty good movie. (Possibly an acquired taste, however. If you liked Sin City, you'll probably like 300. Same creator. Similar surreal, rotoscoped filming technique. The truckloads of corn syrup needed to make all the fake blood also probably numbers in the same ballpark.) Given all the screaming, blood spatters, explosions, and general excitement of the movie, you'd think Lester would totally misbehave. He didn't. Well, no more than normal, at least. He kept trying to eat all the spilled popcorn around him (which he successfully did, ultimately) and whimpered 5-6 times, but, all in all, was OK. Hardly anyone even heard him whimpering: the guys only heard it twice. As Brett put it, the idiot a few rows down whose cell phone rang not once but twice was a thousand times more annoying. At least Lester's cuteness makes up for his vocal indiscretions.

We all had gone to Mexico before that for dinner. The hostess and her friend, as usual, went totally gaga over Lester. George thought one of them was cute, which led into a conversation about cuteness I won't repeat here for obvious reasons. (The conclusion? Decidedly not cute. It's all about the smile for me. And nothing stood out in that department.) These dogs are a serious chick magnet for guy raisers, though. Hm. Maybe that's how we can recruit more guys? I mean, really. Chick magnets? 17-year-old guys? It's foolproof. How could that possibly fail? =P

In either case, Lester just wouldn't settle down during dinner. I kept re-arranging him and giving corrections to bring him back under me, but he just wouldn't stop. As far as I could figure, he kept trying to eat Jim's foot. During one last correction, I whispered "that's enough" into his ear, and Lester -- amazingly -- instantly and perfectly settled down and went to sleep, stretched out over my feet. Wow. I guess he really does know his commands.

On Wednesday, Quincy and I went to Delfino's, where Lester (and Louie before him) is practically a regular customer. He was introduced to the waitress and was an all-around charmer there.

On Friday, Lester hung out with Kaushal, Gita, Pawani, and Balaji and Karan's apartment. Lester did well there too, except I had to break the news to Karan (and Pawani) that they wouldn't be able to pet Lester for awhile. He's been acting rather solicitous recently and I worry that he's coming to expect attention from everyone he meets. So, he's on restriction for the next few weeks. I think it'll be harder on the humans -- Karan, Sagarika, Brett, Stephanie, Sung -- than Lester. =P

Yes, I still get to pet and play with him. Yes, I know it's a double standard. Yes, I know it's unfair. He's my dog. I pick up his poop every day. You pick up his poop and then maybe I'll reconsider.

Labels: Lester, Louie

Permalink | Written at 11:14 PM | Post a comment | 2 comments | Trackbacks

Now that Lester has all his vaccinations, he's been getting to go out and play more. At the same time, Lester knows enough standard obedience that we can start work on some training specific to Guide Dogs. But, really, for now, we're happy to just go out and play more. =)

After work today, back in Kirkland, I took him out to the tennis courts and cut him loose. The courts are enclosed to prevent tennis balls from escaping, but, as far as I'm concerned, they're enclosed to prevent hyper little puppies from escaping. That means they're perfect for said little puppies to get out their sillies. (And not take it out on my poor apartment.) For a puppy who sleeps as much as Lester... well, let's just say he's taken to doing laps around my living room as a way of telling me when he hasn't gotten enough exercise.

Officially, I don't think Guide Dogs wants us to do this, but, mreh. You do what you gotta do. It's intense enough to have these dogs around you for 23 of 24 hours and sometimes you just have to bend the rules a bit to get the job done. I learned it from -- er, well, maybe I shouldn't mention that, lest she get in trouble. It's a wonderful, life-saver of a trick, person who shall remain nameless. =)

Anyways, a few warm-up laps around the courts, a dozen wind-sprints from leaf-pile to leaf-pile (and dead worm to dead worm, and ...), and many puddle hurdles later, the boy looked ready to pass out. Panting, tongue flapping wildly in the wind, it was a sight to behold: a tired puppy! (They're a rare species; you've probably never seen one.) Mission accomplished.

Well, mostly. Time for training. What with all the leaves, worms, and random stuff only puppies can find, "that's enough!" had gotten more than enough practice. Some trials of "sit," "stay," and "come" later, we went for a walk to practice loose leash handling and, well, go for a walk.

Loose leash handling is basically the idea that, no matter what, whenever the dog is with you, he should always be on a loose leash. It's important for several reasons, some specific to Guide Dogs, but the general idea is that, on a taut leash, (a) dogs learn to pull (and you really don't want your full-grown, eighty-pound Labrador pulling you anywhere) and (b) you can't give proper leash corrections. So, loose leash, always.

Turns out puppy wasn't so tired at all. Two steps into our walk, he decided that a wriggling, dying worm was the most exciting thing in the world since... the last most exciting thing in the world five minutes ago. Of course, this wasn't just any worm. (How could it be? It's the most exciting thing in the world! I mean, really.) It was the worm wriggling right where my shoe was about to land. Of course, now that it was officially the most exciting thing in the world, it was going to be worm + Lester's nose under my shoe. And that'd be bad.

To make a short story even shorter, both Lester and I ended up planting our (previously clean) faces straight in the mud.

We're going to need to work on distractions. Dirt doesn't taste so good.

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 1:31 AM | Post a comment | 7 comments | Trackbacks

Louie made breeder! [!!!] We just got official word from Michele, our advisor from Guide Dogs. Along with Nyland, he will go to San Rafael to sire 2-3 litters and then return to Oregon for the remainder of his training.

Labels: Louie

Permalink | Written at 8:39 PM | Post a comment | 5 comments | Trackbacks

Need your regular cuteness fix? Here you go.



Dozens and dozens of little month-old furballs rolling and romping around at Guide Dogs. They're uploading movies once a month to here.

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 4:47 PM | Post a comment | 2 comments | Trackbacks

Lester knows sit pretty well. A couple days ago, he even started sitting up on command (i.e. from laying down on the floor).

We've been working on come, that's enough, down, stay, and OK for the past few weeks. Every day in the morning and after I get home from work, we play and work on these basic obedience commands. I started out doing the training separately with Louie, but it just got too boring. It's easy enough -- and not much of a stretch at all -- to do it during play-time.

Say Lester is playing with his favorite chew toy. One command that all puppies need to learn is "that's enough," which just means to stop what they're doing. It's not intended to be a bad thing. For example, if you're playing tug with your dog and see blood all over, you'd say "that's enough". The dog didn't do anything wrong, you just want him to stop because you're worried about him. How do you teach him to stop without making it a negative thing?

Well, you randomly stop and re-start play. Because you don't correct the puppy, he has no reason to believe he did anything wrong; because you re-start play, he figures out that it just means to stop for right now. How do you re-start play? "OK!" Said in a high enough and encouraging enough voice, this isn't exactly rocket science for Lester. And, really, he's more than happy to listen in this case. =P

To make it a little tougher, you can add "stay" into the mix. After "that's enough", you can take away their toy and put them into a sit-stay. Or, initially at least, you try to put them into a sit-stay. You keep their leash and walk a few steps back or to the side, and try to keep him in the same spot with gentle leash corrections or just simple man-handling. Having said "stay" and repositioned them enough times, they get the picture pretty quickly. To make it even more challenging, you can roll around their toys in front of them or make funny noises or something. Eventually, we actually put them into a sit-stay and walk across the room, but Lester is nowhere near that yet.

What about "come?" Well, first, it's more like "Lester, COME!" instead of "come." And it's kind of fancy.

We do something called food-induced recall training, which is really just a glorified, ten-step process of food rewards to hard-wire "COME!" into our puppies' little heads. Initially, when they're tiny babies with tiny attention spans, we actually walk backwards holding a single piece of kibble right in front of their noses to get them to follow us. (They get the piece of kibble each time. We're not that cruel. =P) As they grow older and associate "COME!" with food, we still walk backwards but without the explicit lure and just give them a reward at the end. Eventually, they only get the reward some randomly chosen times and, later still, only in really tough cases. After all is said and done, the training produces dogs that very enthusiastically and immediately respond to the come command. And, if you're blind and need your dog, that is exactly what you want.

With Lester, this is best done at work where we have lots of long hallways. He's progressed now to step three, which means I can put him in a sit-stay and then have him come to me for a food reward on an extended leash. He still gets the food every time and is pretty good about enthusiastically coming each time, so the next steps are going to involve more distracting locations and random rewards. If you see me walking backwards in PacMed and Lester bounding towards me, that's why.

I've been slacking on down, which is why he doesn't know the command yet. Oddly enough, however, he's figured out he needs to lay down and stay down during car rides. So, all I really need to do now is just get him to make the connection between the word "down" and the action of laying down.

All in all, Lester is progressing pretty well. He knows most of his commands at this point. That's not to say that he'll actually execute on a command, however. =P That depends on all sorts of other things. It's complicated. At this point, on average, there's probably a 30% chance he'll listen to a random handler and a 60% chance he'll listen to me. We're working on it.

Labels: Lester, Louie

Permalink | Written at 12:54 AM | Post a comment | 0 comments | Trackbacks

My shiny bald head may disqualify this as an obligatory cuteness entry. But, meh, here it is anyways. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the puppy headlock.



Perfect for keeping your adorable but perhaps not totally potty trained puppy near you while you nap. Works even when your puppy throws up all over his crate.

YMMV.

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 12:39 AM | Post a comment | 1 comments | Trackbacks

Ten hours later, we still don't know where the rest of my sock is or what happened to it. (Of course, the answer to the first question would also provide the answer to the second one.) For that matter, we don't even know where my mom's sock is. All we know is that Lester threw up half of mine. And that, despite that, Lester will probably be OK as long as he doesn't get diarrhea.

Just to be safe, I'm going to take Lester to his (regular) vet on Monday to get him x-rayed, the special food to flush his system, and/or get him checked by an actual doctor. Best to be safe.

That said, Lester seems just fine. We had dinner with Rob and Kaushal at Cafe Flora, an amazing vegetarian restaurant in Capitol Hill [*], and this was the one time I was happy to see Lester hunting around for scraps. At the moment, he's curled up on my blanket, fast asleep. He's annoyed because I keep poking and prodding him every so often to make sure he's OK.

At least he's OK.

[* Quincy, this is all you.]

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 3:33 AM | Post a comment | 0 comments | Trackbacks

At lunch with my mom, while catching up on lots of random things, we happened to end up talking about Koji and Louie and how Lester had vomited this morning. I was musing about what he could have possibly eaten when my mom happened to mention that she was missing a purple sock.

Oddness. There was this little purple thing in the indescribable mass.

Oh. Wait. NO. He couldn't have. There's no way. There's just no way.

Crap. We finished up lunch, packed up the rest to go, threw Lester in the car and raced off home. At home, I finally worked up the stomach to go into the garbage and dig it back up. Nasty, nasty stuff.

And, in all the nasty, nasty stuff, there it was. A sock. Not a purple one, though. The purple blob was something completely else. (We don't actually know exactly what else, though.) But, nonetheless, a sock. Or at least part of one.

Lester had seemed fine all day, eating and pooping just fine, playful as ever, just as mischievous as normal, so I hadn't worried about the early morning vomit too much. But eating a sock is something completely different. And then there was the matter of where the rest of the sock was. Did he just tear off a chunk and eat the chunk? If so, where was the rest of the sock? Or did he eat the whole thing and only vomit up half of it? Or was the rest unrecognizable and actually in there somewhere?

I called up Heidi and asked her for advice. Hearing about the unaccounted-for half-sock, she suggested calling up the vet and having them check him over. Apparently, Bernie had eaten something a couple weeks before and the vet had given him this special food that totally flushes their system. It also apparently produces huge mountains of poop. With that lovely picture in mind, I called up the vet. The vet, hearing about the unaccounted-for half-sock, strongly recommended I immediately take Lester to the ER.

I was growing progressively worried with each call. Lester seemed perfectly happy. Puppies throw up all the time. I hadn't given the incident a second thought initially. But the ER? Had I totally screwed up? Crap. My mom was freaking out about the ER, telling me how some shady ER in LA had tried to con my dad out of $500 when Koji got sick, and not exactly helping the situation. I pulled Lester into my room, closed the door, and checked him over once more. I made a judgment call to follow whatever the ER suggested as long as they didn't want some exorbitant amount. Obviously, I'd pay whatever if Lester was in trouble, but... having just checked him over, it didn't look like that big a deal.

Rather worried now, I called up my emergency clinic. Within a few minutes, it was clear that they were decidedly less worried about the whole thing. They asked a few questions and were particularly curious about his appetite and stool. I explained that he seemed perfectly normal: playing with his toys, eating normally, pooping normally, etc. They said I could bring him in if I wanted, but that it'd probably be fine to just watch him for a few days. The big indicator, they were saying, was diarrhea: ultimately, the real issue here is an intestinal blockage and diarrhea would flag that. If he started having diarrhea, that would be an immediate emergency. Otherwise, they said to not feed him anything for the next 24 hours, start him back up the next morning with something bland, and not too worry about it too much.

No diarrhea. Check. No food for the next 24 hours. Check. Watch poop like hawk for next 3-5 days. Check. One huge karma point for my favorite emergency clinic. Check.

Labels: Lester, Louie

Permalink | Written at 3:17 AM | Post a comment | 1 comments | Trackbacks

My mom's visiting for a few days, so I'm sleeping out in the living room with Lester. I often sleep on the floor anyways, so I'm as happy as a clam with a pillow and a blanket. Lester sleeps in his crate -- sprawled out on his back, paws flopping around in the air no less -- just a few feet next to me.

Four in the morning, half-asleep, I hear this kind of deep burping sound. Imagine the loudest, most obnoxious, belly-lurching burp you've heard and then triple it. (And then imagine that big nasty thing coming from this cute little puppy.) It's a bit hard to explain, but, if you have a dog, you know it: it's what happens right before they spew up everything they've eaten in the last six hours. If you don't have a dog, trust me, you'll know it if you hear it.

Within half a second, I'd shaken myself awake, opened the Lester's crate, and reached inside to pull him out. Too late. Already vomiting. I let him finish, pulled him out, cleaned him up and checked him over. Seeing that he was OK and it being 4am, I figured I'd just sleep with him in a headlock -- er, I mean, cuddling -- next to me and clean the crate in the morning.

Come morning, I see this disgusting, indescribable, surprisingly heavy mass of ... stuff. (Well. It's not that I can't describe it. I just don't think you want me to describe it.) I gingerly pick it up and and go throw it in the trash. I 409 the crate into oblivion and figure that's the end of it.

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 3:16 AM | Post a comment | 0 comments | Trackbacks

We're all a bit confused. It seemed like Louie had made breeder or was just about to make breeder, but now we just don't know. We have a spy inside Guide Dogs (more on that later) and we still don't know. The weekly status report, as far as Heidi (my group lead) and Michele (our advisor from Guide Dogs) can tell, says that he's just been pulled for breeding evaluation. We think he's down in San Rafael for additional evaluation now.

I forgot to post the update from last week, so here are the updates from the last two weeks.

February 21st:

Puppy	Breed	Phase	Breeder Watch	Group
Artemis	Lab	2		GPS
Beethoven	Lab	2
Binny	Lab	3
Brewster	Lab	3		GPS
Fresca	Lab	2
Frontier	Lab	3
Louie	Lab	3/BRDEVL	yes	GPS
Naoka	Lab	3/BRDEVL	yes
Nyland	Lab	3/BRDEVL	yes
Rae	Lab	3/BRDEVL	yes
Silvana	Lab	3
Sport	Lab	3

February 28th:

Puppy	Breed	Phase	Breeder Watch	Group
Artemis	Lab	3		GPS
Beethoven	Lab	3
Binny	Lab	3
Brewster	Lab	3		GPS
Fresca	Lab	3
Frontier	Lab	4
Louie	Lab	3/BRDEVL	yes	GPS
Naoka	Lab	3/BRDEVL	yes
Nyland	Lab	4
Rae	Lab	4
Silvana	Lab	7
Sport	Lab	4

Woah. Lots of stuff happening -- I didn't even realize. Artemis (and Beethoven and Fresca) re-join Brewster and their old buddies in phase 3 on February 28th, after staying in phase 2 an extra couple weeks. Brewster and Binny got dropped from the breeder program on February 21st and are continuing along as normal. Nyland and Sport also got dropped from the breeder program (although from the more official sounding "BRDEVL" phase) but were bumped up to phase 4.

But here's the kicker. Silvana, the pup that had been held back in phase 3, jumped in one week all the way from phase 3 to phase 7. Damn.

Labels: Louie

Permalink | Written at 2:27 AM | Post a comment | 0 comments | Trackbacks

Long ago, Cory suggested I keep track of Lester's weight. (Kind of like notches in the doorframe, except for dogs.) So, I've been doing that -- well, trying at least. Right now, Lester is gaining something like a quarter-pound every day on average. In other words, every week, he adds a full 10% of his weight.



I had him at one cup of kibble per meal for three meals a day, but Heidi and Diane upped him to a cup and a quarter, and now I've got him at a cup and a third. Four cups of kibble a day.

So Lester weighs ~30 pounds and I weigh something like 150. Multiplying out, that'd work out to twenty cups of, say, pasta for me. (Sorry. Kibble just ain't my thing.) Without any sauce or anything else, each cup has ~200 calories. With sauce, if I ate in proportion to Lester, I'd be eating something like 5400 calories a day.

Craziness.

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 1:50 AM | Post a comment | 0 comments | Trackbacks

Turns out there's a whole bunch of raisers all over the country writing blogs. Who knew?

In Carson City, there's middle-schooler Princess Dova writing about Cordova. Ever seen a dog in a sexy little diaper? Here you go. [Cordova went into heat a few days ago. Good reminder to self of why I stick with males.] Highschooler Kelsey, also in Carson City, has Chappelle. Chappelle apparently has this as a backyard. Here's my snow-covered backyard. I feel so inadequate.

Elsewhere, there's four-time raiser Joanna with Guide Dogs of America. And MK and Edgar in New Jersey -- although, occasionally, a cute little puppy comes by and confuses Edgar. There's Natalie in Toronto and high-schooler Sarah in New York. From mom Angie in Maine, we get an "optimistic meditation on puppy raising".

See a trend? Yeesh. I need to recruit more guys for this thing. Or maybe it'll balance out my choice of a career. =P Oh well.

Labels: Lester

Permalink | Written at 3:44 AM | Post a comment | 12 comments | Trackbacks