09:04 – I’m still hard at work on the documentation for the life science kit.
It’s easy to understand why so many Border Collies end up in rescue, often at about the age Colin is now. For the last few months, Colin has been breaking house training, always in the hall bathroom. As a puppy, he decided that because his humans used the hall bathroom, he should as well. We finally broke him of that, and for many months he was reliably house-trained. Now he’s back to his old habits. Fortunately, the bathroom floor is ceramic tile, so it’s actually easier to clean up in there than it is to clean up outside. Still, this is unacceptable.
It’s not a matter of us missing signals or expecting him to hold it too long. When we go outside, that’s the last thing on his mind. He wants to sniff. He wants to play. He wants to stare at anything remotely interesting, including people standing two blocks away. He wants to play stick and tug on the leash. He wants to do anything except what he’s out there for. I think he’s holding it intentionally until he gets back inside.
This morning, for example, I took him outside at about 0645. He sniffed around a bit, peed a couple of times, and then headed for the door. He did his usual morning routine, including licking the milk out of Barbara’s cereal bowl. Then I took him outside again and walked him around the yard for several minutes, encouraging him to do something. Nothing. We came back in because he didn’t want to miss Barbara leaving for work. Within a minute of us coming back in, he’d shit in the bathroom. Barbara yelled at him and told him he was a bad dog for doing that in the house. I cleaned up. Then, a few minutes after Barbara left for work, I walked him up and down the street, encouraging him to do something. Nothing. All he wanted to do was sniff and play tug-of-war with the leash. I finally brought him back in. Within literally two minutes, he’d shit on the bathroom floor. I hate to do it, but I think I’m going to have a chat with him about what happens to dogs who shit on the floor. They’re expelled from the pack.
11:11 – Boy, can Brother ever make things come out even. The last time I was printing a bunch of container labels for the science kits, the black toner cartridge ran out on my Brother color laser printer. So I ordered a replacement black cartridge, along with replacements for the cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges. I installed the black toner and printed one page. Everything worked fine. Then this morning I started to do a real print run. The printer printed one page of labels and then the Data fault light came on. Sure enough, the display was telling me the color cartridges were out of toner and needed to be replaced. Not just one of the color cartridges, you understand. All of them. The display specifically said to replace the cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges. How did they manage to make all four cartridges run out of toner within a space of two or three pages?