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Thursday January 10, 2008

More Dog Tales

We've had Dusti for three and a half years now. It was my first dog. I wasn't always sure what to expect. I think I'm understanding a lot better now. I've also got a copy of the book How Dog's Think which I need to read rather than just skim.

I have three more observations.

Positioning: I've noticed that during the day, as I'm working at home and Duncan is at school, she'll position herself, if possible, so that she can see what both Lynea and I are doing. That usually involves lying on the back of a chair in the living room, so she can look into the office where I am, and down a corridor to the room where Lynea is. As we move around the house, she'll adjust accordingly.
Farting: Yes, all dogs do it. I can remember a pub I used to go to by the canal in Exeter in England that had a large Irish wolfhound that used to lie in front of the fire and every now and then let one off that would clear the room. Dusti is usually more dainty then that. They typically are silent-but-deadly, and only occur after she has eaten some people-food that disagrees with her. We have noticed that when it's an audible fart, she'll look back with a disgusted look on her face as if to say "where did that come from?" and quickly scuttle across the room as if to try to get away from it. It would be quite amusing if it wasn't for the smell.
Burrowing: At night, Dusti sleeps on the bed with us. If it's cold she'll wedge her butt right into one of us, and try to put her nose under the top blanket to keep it warm. Some of the last few nights have been quite cold. We've got a smoke detector where (I think), the battery is starting to die. It'll give a beep about every 45 seconds. The strange thing is that it'll currently do it only in the dead of night when it's really cold. When I go looking for the particular detector that's doing this, later in the morning after I've got up, and the heat has been on, the beeping has stopped. Presumably this is a natural property of electricity. Feel free to educate me here. Anyway, this beeping is affecting Dusti at night. She tries to push up the blanket with her nose and get completely under it. As you can imagine, this is not conducive to getting a good night sleep. I suspect the only solution to this one, is to get up in the middle of the next cold night, hunt down the malfunctioning detector, and replace the battery then and there.

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( Jan 10 2008, 11:18:22 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [8]

Comments:

Not so much electricity, but the chemistry in the battery. The cold causes the chemical reaction to slow, so less electricity is produced.

Posted by 152.23.69.157 on January 10, 2008 at 11:53 AM PST #

I recommend fixing the problem by changing the batteries in all of your smoke detectors. It will cost an extra half battery per smoke detector now, but will save you the trouble of hauling out the ladder as each battery wears out -- in a year or so, when one starts giving the low battery warning, replace them all again.

One of my upcoming projects is to haul out the ladder and replace all the light bulbs in hard to reach places.

Posted by David Schleef on January 10, 2008 at 12:42 PM PST #

Thanks unknown person on the North Carolina
Research And Education Network. So if it's a
new battery, fully charged at 9 volts, am I still
likely to have the same problem when it gets cold?

David, you have a good point. I should probably
just do that.

Posted by Rich Burridge on January 10, 2008 at 01:02 PM PST #

"So if it's a new battery, fully charged at 9 volts, am I still likely to have the same problem when it gets cold?"

Not unless you let it get _really_ cold in your house. The requirements of most consumer electronics and the output of batteries are never quite exactly what they say on the tin. There's generally an acceptable performance envelope on both the supply and demand sides of things. As your previous poster pointed out, when it gets cold, the chemical reaction slows and the output of the battery drops to the point that the circuit in the detector thinks the battery is failing. A new battery's output will be much higher than this threshold and will vary less with temperature changes, so it will not set to beeping. Until, of course, it begins to wear out.

Also, when you get your ladder out to change all your batteries as David wisely suggested, see if your detectors can accept the newer 10-year Lithium cells. If they can, you will be able to postpone your next ladder dragging for some time. If they can't, it might be time to replace them anyway. New detectors are much more sensitive and discerning than old ones. This could buy you precious minutes in the case of a real fire, and avoid annoying false alarms caused by steamy showers.

Posted by Quentin Hartman on January 10, 2008 at 03:10 PM PST #

Thanks Quentin!

Posted by Rich Burridge on January 10, 2008 at 04:00 PM PST #

heh, at least saying 'it was the dog' can get you out of a sticky social embarrassment ;-)

So was that pub the Double Locks? When did you last go? Haven't spotted any windy wolfhounds. We went on Nov 5th which was fun but it's not so good since it changed hands (no Smiles beer for example).

Re batteries - they work by chemical reaction which slows down when cold. A time on a warm radiator can reactivate them sometime, but not to hot...

Posted by Steve Lee on January 11, 2008 at 06:23 AM PST #

> heh, at least saying 'it was the dog' can get
> you out of a sticky social embarrassment ;-)

Yes indeed. More tea vicar!
http://www.ciao.co.uk/The_Complete_Book_Of_Farting_Alec_Bromcie__Review_5581586

> So was that pub the Double Locks? When did you
> last go?

That sounds familiar. This was back in my teens
so over thirty years ago. All I remember is that
you drove through the Marsh Barton trading
estate (I think that's called something else now)
out the back, down a narrow road/lane, and over
a *very* narrow single car bridge. Navigating back
over that bridge at the end of the evening was
quite an adventure.

The pub sold lots of great Real Beer (6X was my
tipple of choice) and I think had a games room.
The room with the fire was on the right as you
went in. You had to go into a separate room on
the left to order drinks.

Posted by Rich Burridge on January 11, 2008 at 07:54 AM PST #

All smoke detectors batteries are now changed
(there were 11 of them). Three were on sloping
hard-to-reach ceilings so this was definitely
worth doing just once. The offending batteries
was on one such ceiling and it went off again
last night giving the dog conniptions.

Only one of the smoke detectors was capable of
taking the new lithium batteries, so I ended up
just putting the rectangular 9v ones in all
detectors.

Hopefully that's the last beep I'll here for a
few years.

Thanks again for all the useful help and tips.

Posted by Rich Burridge on January 13, 2008 at 09:32 AM PST #