Puppy
sa smith | September 3, 2013Poor Arnie.
As much as Ive disliked writing my dissertation, hes disliked it more.
SO BORED.
So as I am trying to write, I either get Cute Bored Arnie:
Or Creepy Bored Arnie:
Ive been sitting at the kitchen table to write. If I look over my right shoulder, those glowing eyes are literally what I see looking back at me. For the past few months. :-/
He has been trying to do the best he can to entertain himself. Ive also been ignoring the laundry, so hes decided to build forts out of my dirty clothes:
But I am FINALLY pretty much done. Just some editing, making sure the page numbers are right…
sa smith | December 13, 2012Record yourself playing with your puppies for 30-60 seconds and upload the vid to the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab website!
Dog-dog play has been, relatively, well studied. The signs/signals/noises pups play, the repercussions for not playing by the rules, the benefits of play to an adult pup, its a very interesting fusion of evolution and animal behavior (unless you dont believe in using evolution and observation to study animal behavior...).
Some of the dog-dog play stuff I use as a human, I know. For instance, when puppies are playing, and one plays too rough, the 'victim' will make a high…
sa smith | September 9, 2012Summer Arnie:
Winter Arnie:
I have to take video/pics of Arnie every time he sticks his tongue out like that when he sleeps. I dont know whether its a pit thing or a goofy dog thing, but I just think its the CUTEST!
sa smith | September 2, 2012Ive got a fever... puppy fever... and the only cure... is MORE PUPPIES!!!
My Terrible Med Student Neighbor finally moved out, and the new guy who moved in is just wonderful. Really sweet kid, quiet, and he just adopted a homeless puppy! The sound of puppy feet trotting around upstairs... I can barely take it. And she is SO CUTE! I have no clue what breed she is supposed to be-- he said she was a lab/pit mix, but she looks nothing like a lab or a pit to me :-/ White and strawberry blonde, and shes such a dear. Shes super social, and super shy at the same time. ADORABLE!
And then theres…
sa smith | August 19, 2012Ive known for a long time that I have a defective dog.
Any self respecting pup eats Proper Dog Foods like meat and... well... meat. Sometimes grass.
But while Arnieman loves meat... he also loves my vegan chili, roasted vegetables, Pop-Tarts (cherry), banana bread, hell, the boy even begs for fake bacon. And its not that begrudging "*sniff* *sniff* *mouths it for a bit* *spits it out* *sniff*' 'eating'-- he WANTS it. There is nothing he wont eat. What kind of dog begs for roasted vegetables??
*sigh*
Well here is an example of a quality hound-- He refuses to touch low fat jerky:
Right with…
sa smith | July 22, 2012The polite way to describe my opinion of the Humane Society of the United states is 'Im not a fan'.
For those of you who are unaware, HSUS has absolutely nothing to do with 'the Humane Society' that rescues animals in your community. HSUS has nothing to do with rescuing animals at all-- they give less than 1% of their income to shelters. Technically, against rescuing animals-- they wanted Michael Vicks dogs killed (while they became BFFs with Vick), but thankfully, some people know better than to listen to HSUS and the dogs are okay.
HSUS is functionally a political group with a habit of…
sa smith | July 6, 2012I was feeling left out this week-- everybody talking about the Higgs Boson-- I cant contribute anything except links to Ethans fantastic posts (what the hell does 5-some-greek-symbol mean? whats a Higgs? wat?).
But THIS I understand!
The photographer who made that image, Seth Casteel, is AMAZING.
AMAZING.
If you want to make yourself sick to your stomach from laughing really, REALLY hard, check out his gallery of underwater puppahs.
He also takes glamor shots of shelter animals to help get them adopted faster. Fantastic photographer and a fantastic person!
sa smith | September 5, 2011For the past month, I have been living in the lab trying to cram some of my data + new data for a grant submission. I am alive right now exclusively due to the calories consumed via Mountain Dew (classic, and a wide variety of exciting flavors they have added to the collection), because I otherwise didnt eat (too busy/stressed to eat real food). So Friday night, I came home from work, sat in front of the TV and ate an entire large pepperoni and artichoke pizza and several rootbeer floats. I then slept for like 14 hours.
Yeah, science is *nothing* like meth, children.
The grant was…
sa smith | May 19, 2011SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
The first sequenced carnivore genome shows complex host-endogenous retrovirus relationships.
ONE note of dismay: They did not include a picture of the boxer they sequenced. WTF???
Substitute picture:
see more dog and puppy pictures
Fun quickies!
Despite Arnies love of getting into the garbage, dogs have much less junk DNA via proviral ERVs than humans (them <0.15%, us 0.8%)
Of the 407 kinda ERVs, most are gammas (313) and betas (28)
Only 44 had potentially fully open gag-pol-env
Only 36 still had their LTRs
Their ERVs are backwards! With DNA, there really is no '…
sa smith | February 9, 2011I get a ton of spam in the comments of ERV.
Happily, we have a really good spam filter (too good sometimes, as most of us, even me, have gotten comments sent straight to spam for no discernible reason), but still, a bit of Turkish spam or STD dating site spam or steroid spam gets through now and then, and I have to manually remove it.
So at first I was a bit annoyed when a comment was let through a couple days ago that appeared to be spam. It had the markers-- late to the party ('older' post, ie 11 days old), simply a link in the comment section, same link as the 'website' of the commentor,…
sa smith | January 24, 2011Friday, I was walking down the hallway when a professor friend waved me down--
PF-- Hey! Are you still involved with that pitbull rescue?
Me-- LOL! That wasnt a 'rescue'... I just sorta find pitbulls and find them homes... LOL!
PF-- I know a family that wants to adopt.
Me-- O.o (I figured she found one that needed a home)
PF-- Well... they found this girl pit on the street... shes a sweetheart... and she had this bulge in her belly, like people get when theyre starved? They thought it was just that she was starved nearly to death. But they kept feeding her and it didnt go away... She…