One in, one out.

You may recall that back in January I posted about a new rescue dog; Mina.  The idea was that we would adopt her, but sadly it didn’t work out.  While things started out well, as Mina became more settled and her confidence grew issues started to surface.

Initially it centred around resource guarding, especially with regards to food.  It then escalated to guarding the house against men coming in the door, including me!  Finally she started attacking our other dog, Barney, to stop him getting to his food.  At that point we accepted defeat and that she had to be returned to the rescue centre.

We were once again a one dog family until a couple of weeks ago when our daughter asked us to look after her 18 month old working Cocker Spaniel; Mabel.  Mabel and the other dog in the their house don't get on so they needed to be separated.  Whether this is a permanent arrangement remains to be seen but for the moment double doggie life is happening once again at Chez Elenderil. 

Mabel, looking like butter wouldn't melt...

We have been forcibly reminded that an18 month old working Cocker is a lot more energetic than a 10 year old Kooikerhundje or even George at his prime for that matter, and don't get me started on food!   She even makes the late great George look like he was watching his weight.  George used to wait to eat Barney's left overs, well I say eat, hoover up is more accurate.  Mabel doesn't wait, if Barney turns his back for an instance she is in (like Flynn as we used to say).  Other than that they are getting along really well.  We are also back to some aspects of puppy training, but she is a bright girl, keen to please and the training is going well enough that we can let her off lead for a run in the local park secure in the knowledge that her recall is good (as long as the dog treats hold out).  I'm currently having to get up a couple of times each night to let her out to wee, but that seems to be due to a bladder infection which she is having treatment for and does seem to be reducing the trips to the back garden in the wee (see what I did there) small hours.  For the last few nights there have been no 'accidents' so that seems to be going well too.

It's nice having a second dog around the place even if she is currently on my side of the bed sleeping snuggled up to Mrs E!  Dogs eh?

George Dog is unwell!

Sad to say he has a tumour under his tongue and bumps, lumps and sore patches elsewhere as well.  He seems OK in himself and the Vet is of the opinion that for the moment there is nothing to do other than keep an eye on how things develop.  Although it is quite a large tumour it isn't interfering with his ability to eat or breath so until it does we wait.  At that point it may be possible to remove it without too much trouble but we wouldn't know at that point if it was malignant or not, and if the latter if it has spread.  Bugger!

George last year, before he became ill

Still happy especially with a new toy

He is about nine years old now, I say about as he is a rescue from Spain so we can't be certain as to his exact age.  He has slowed down a bit in the last couple of years but still loves his walks, although of late he's struggled with the stairs and doesn't always want to come upstairs to sleep at night.

We knew that there would come a time when health issues would arise, we just didn't realise how quickly that was going to be upon us.

Barney on the other hand continues in the same old way, barking at every passing dog cat, squirrel or hedgehog and generally lording it around the house and garden.  No signs of slowing down with him.

Barney doing cute

Random Thoughts - A dog is for life not climate control

 I'm writing this post in a bit of annoyance.   You see this morning Mrs E was watching Good Morning Britain ( no that's not why I am annoyed) and there was an article with some 'expert' (quite probably self-appointed) Donnachadgh McCarthy on the impact of household pets on climate change (no I haven't really heard of him before either).  What annoyed me was the claim that an average dog contributes as much to climate change as two SUV cars, and a cat does as much climate change damage as a small family car!  No statistical evidence was put foward to support the claim.  So as a researcher by nature (and in some respects by profession) I went data hunting.

I started by looking for evidence of the speaker's credentials.  He is a columnist who has written green columns for a couple of newspapers and runs an environmental consultancy advising on how to green up client's businesses.  What I couldn't find online were any hints as to his credentials or qualifications.  in fact he has a minimal footprint on social media.  So while he could possess a Phd in environmental statistics on the other hand he may only have a CSE in woodworking I can't tell.  So i turned to looking for the factual basis to his claims.

The first thing I found (quite quickly) was that the initial claim comparing dogs and cats carbon footprint to cars comes from an article which was released back in 2017 and was not peer reviewed.  There was a second study (also not peer reviewed as far as I can see)  carried out at the same time which came to almost diametrically opposite findings.  Finally I found a peer reviewed paper also released in 2017 by Gregory S Okin on the 'Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats'.  This looked to be on firmer ground but only covered part of the claim the carbon cost of raising meat animals for inclusion in our pet's food chain.  A second more popularist article by the same author (it was a graphic novel layout for god's sake) included the costs of disposing of animal facies (that's dog and cat poo to you and me) and the plastic used in poo bags and toys, clays in cat litter and materials in packaging.  The first article is here if you really want to check it out Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats (plos.org)

While I'm confident that pets have a carbon footprint and that it is larger than it perhaps needs to be I still cannot see a direct proven link to equate my two dog's carbon foot print to four Chelsea Tractors.  Certainly I don't see the evidence to equate to the guest's call for a ban on dogs and cats.  The evidence does support a conclusion that smaller dogs have less impact than bigger ones (who knew!) but doesn't really look at the balancing impact of pet ownership (especially with dogs) of owners taking low carbon dog walks and other offsetting activities.  Part of the peer reviewed paper suggests that a large proportion of the meat in pet food is by products of processing for human consumption but that it shouldn't be ignored as with more processing it could be made fit for human consumption, but doesn't ask what would be the carbon cost of the additional processing.

My conclusion while this is an area worthy of research our man on Good Morning Britain is an Eco warrior jumping on the next available bandwagon to stir up debate about climate change rather than a someone who has actually considered the evidence in any great scientific detail..

 

The Joy of Dogs!

Or how to become poor in easy stages.

One of the early posts I made was on the subject of having recovered my painting mojo which had been dented by the arrival of two rescue dogs, to whit George and Barney.  At the time there was a slight doubt over whether we would keep George as initially we were an emergency foster home for him when his original adopters decided they didn't want him.  Long story short we did keep him.

George being goofy you can see why we kept him.

George on the chair, Barney on the floor

 George is a French breed once known as a Breton Spaniel and now (in the UK at least) known as a Brittany. They are a general purpose gun dog although George is a family pet pure and simple.  To describe him as 'affectionate' is a bit like describing Stephen Hawkins as 'a bit clever'.  Every where Mrs E or I go he wants to be.  He really doesn't understand that he isn't a lap dog (or even a two lap dog to be honest).  They are almost two dogs in one skin, inside the home they are cuddly and people orientated, outside they become independent and determined to explore just one more hedge line even if it's in the next county!  Its what they were bred to do; flush game where its scarce by ranging far and wide.

Mrs E trying to see around George

Barney is a little more stand offish until he decides not to be and then he wants attention NOW.  He is a Dutch breed known as a Kooikerhundje (no I can't pronounce it properly either).  From a re-encating perspective Barney is perfect as the breed existed in the early 17th century, at least in the Dutch Republic.  Apparently William the Silent was saved from Spanish Assassins by his Kooiker who barked during the night alerting him to the danger.  George looks a lot like the hunting dogs in Dutch Genre paintings so they are both good to have around a 17th century BCW event.

A Kooikerhundje in one of Jan Steen's paintings

What we didn't really grasp at the outset was how much they would change our lives.  The immediate impact was that we take a lot (I really mean a lot) of walks with them, which is good for Mrs E and I as we get older. Since having these two furry rapscallions we have had to buy a house with a larger garden as it turns out that George has the need to run around like a mad thing at any and all opportunities.  I swear that at our old house he used to do wall of death turns using the shed wall and the back fence he could get moving so fast. When we first got him he loved to take long runs in the park at every possible opportunity without that being coupled with any concept of recall, which meant that we quickly learned every trick in the book for getting him back within collar grabbing reach.  George on the other hand knew to a nicety how long a human arm is!  As a result he now has his walks on a lead and his runs in the garden or when we hire a secure paddock.  Most recently we had to buy a bigger bed so there was room for Mrs E and myself when George and/or Barney decide to come and join us in a short snooze.

When we bought the current house the main consideration was 'will the dogs like it' and not as I had thought would be the case 'is there space for a war games room', The next way to get poor are the vet bills!  After all we would have bought a new home anyway but vet's bills are a slightly unexpected extra. To be fair we expected vets to be involved but just not quite so frequently!  George it turns out has developed quite serious arthritis in his left hip and recently started to struggle to put that paw to the ground without pain relief.  This is probably due to an injury when he was a pup or a young dog.  The vet has suggested that at some point he may need a hip replacement, and the other hip looks like it could go the same way!  Don't ask about the cost I'm just grateful for pet insurance!  Barney currently has an eye infection on top of that that is needing pain relief and eye drops.

Assuming human private medical bills would be even more expensive that canine ones, it really brings home what a world without the NHS would be like.  It also leads me to wonder why didn't that nice Mr Bevin think to include dogs in the plan.  The bottom line to this post is that George is in no pain now the pain meds have kicked in, Barney's eye is getting better and I'm not buying any more toy soldiers for a couple of months!  On the plus side I might get a head start on reducing the lead mountain in 2019.

Well that's it for this year.  All that remains is to wish you all a Happy New Year.

World War One Air combat rules

In my last post I was waxing nostalgic for the "beer and pretzels" games of yesteryear. I suppose I should come at least partially clean, when it comes to some types of war game, simple rules are all I can manage to write.  I spent a couple of mind melting days attempting to come to grips with formulas to allow me to calculate snap turn rates and sustained turn rates from basic aircraft statistics.  It tuns out that Mrs E's oft made comment "your not as smart as you like to think you are" is more true than I like to accept because I had to give up.  I fell back on the stats one of the other members of Hull University's war gaming society came up with back in 1975.  I will try to see if I can find an easy set of correlations between the real world stats and the game stats from those and extrapolate the results for the airplanes I don't have game stats for.


My favourite WW1 flying ace.  The late great Charles M Scultz's Snoopy from Peanuts.


The rules are pretty much done and I just need to wrote them up.  The original rules Jim Dunnigan wrote for SPI's board game Flying Circus all those years ago didn't really need much adding to them.  I have simply added  energy gain in dives and loss in subsequent turns to allow "Boom and Zoom" combat to be a little more doable.  The game handles "Turn and Burn" pretty well I only needed to penalise sustained moves in tight turns with some altitude loss to make it more accurate.  The dive rules were the biggest issue but as part of the energy gain/loss rule I think I have something that will work.  Lastly I have added structural failure rules both to the combat result tables and the over speed diving rules.

All I need to do now is finish creating the game statistics for the 60 or 70 airplanes my obsessive mind set says I need to have.  Then its on to creating a game map and some height adjustable flight stands.  Then its off for a few games.  Mind you I expect it to end like this!

 

I hope they walked away from this one!

Got my Mojo back

Although to be honest I hadn’t realised that I had lost it.  Let’s be clear we are not talking Austin Powers style of mojo loss this is a family friendly blog after all, no, it was my figure painting mojo that had evaporated.  Mrs Elenderil and I adopted a rescue dog back in February and one thing led to another and we ended up with two - Barney and George. 

Barney came first and wasn’t any real trouble, he settled in pretty quickly and with a minimum of fuss.  George turned up a couple of months later as a fostering arrangement.  The couple who had agreed to adopt him couldn’t cope with him.  I can understand this as he needs quite a lot more attention than Barney as he is a particularly energetic breed and heis at the top end of the energy levels even for his breed.  Fostering appears to have evolved into adopting so I’m pretty sure that we are now the proud owners of two dogs!

Barney is furthest from the camera, George is working very hard at being cute at the front

So what with training, walking and general care and feeding our free time reduced dramatically.  Something had to give and it was my painting time.  I don’t like to start painting if I’m tired and by the time the dogs were sorted out it was late in the evening so I kept putting it off.  Before I knew it I had gone a couple of months and not done any painting.  I kept meaning to get my painting table set up but as George has an inquisitive not to mention acquisitive nature, that is to say he likes to grab anything that looks interesting and run off with it, I was a bit worried about the effect of Vallejo’s finest on his digestion!  He has settled down a lot now so I thought it was safe to set up and I have managed to make some inroads into my lead pile, not much  but it’s a start.  As a bonus I haven’t spotted any rainbow poos so I’m pretty sure he has left the paint alone!