Tell me Thursday - it's September already?!?

1. What five things can't you live without?
Coffee.  My geek gadgets (iPhone, iPad, MacBook).  Kiehl's Ultra Facial Moisturizer.  Audiobooks for the long drives.  Food Network.

2. How do you transport your dogs?
Ah, that would be the Hello Kitty Van!  It's a 2005 Ford Freestar that has about 156,000 km on it.  I bought it with 15K km on it, so it's done a bit of dog transport for me.  I am kinda over the minivan, though, and I'm going to go back to an SUV.  Probably an Expedition or a Yukon.  Maybe a Suburban if I can figure out how to park it.

3. What role does obedience play in your training or running of your dog(s)?
In agility, apparently none!  So long as they don't cause trouble running with the other dogs at the trial and they don't make a scene when crated, I consider them suitably obedient.

In herding, I have one that is EXTREMELY obedient in trials, though he kind of blows me off when training.  Seriously, Lou takes maybe 50% of my commands when we're training, but 100% in trials.  I guess better handlers would do something about that.  Still, he's a very natural dog, and I generally leave him alone on the outwork.  Because he can't hold a line on the drive, I whistle a LOT, and he takes every one of them.  Is that obedient?

Rex is as obedient as his genetics allow him to be.  There are times when his tension overrides his obedience and then we have a big ol' wreck.  But it's getting better.  Slowly.

4. At what point do you start putting commands on your dogs?
I've never trained a herding dog (I buy 'em trained, or have them trained).  In agility, I put a command on the behaviour once the dog is offering me the behaviour reliably (80% of the time).

5. Do you talk to strangers in elevators?
Oh yes.  I'm very sad that I currently work on the 3rd floor as the elevator ride is too short to engage strangers in random talk.  In fact, it has been pointed out that  I should be taking the stairs, so short is the walk up.  Pox on those people, I say!  Have you seen the height of my heels?

When I worked on the 19th floor, I had a lot of fun talking to people in the elevator.  It's also fun to eavesdrop.  In venture capital, there's something called an "elevator pitch" where you have to sell an investor on your idea in the time it takes to ride the elevator to his floor.  I enjoyed listening in on desperate entrepreneurs pitching their Next Big Thing to a bored, somewhat drowsy investment banker.  Sometimes, I would even join in!

Somewhat random side note:  do not, with four colleagues, bounce up and down in the elevator to see if you can achieve zero gravity.  You will anger the elevator and it will stop, then you will have to make the call of shame using that little telephone under the number panel.  It will take them a long time to restore service and you will regret drinking so much bottomless pop at Red Robin.  Just saying ...