I've been seeing the search engine TrueSearch in our referrer logs so I gave it a try with: jer zone. First two entries are this weblog, the third entry is for the website PURINETHOL. PURINETHOL? I don't have a clue what that stuff is (nor does the site) so I used TrueSearch to search for PURINETHOL. First couple of results seem ok, third one is for MYSS, a site for selling you the secrets to building a successful web business. Huh? No mention of purinethol. Google needn't worry.
Speaking of searching...over the past couple of months we've been playing spot the Beetle during road trips. At one point I had to suspend a game after we missed our exit...by ten miles. That was on the drive back from New York City when Beetles were a rarity and every fourth car seemed to be a Mercedes. Yesterday, after dropping the kids off at the airport, I spotted the very first Platinum Grey Turbo Beetle. I'm still waiting for Apple & VW to team up and make the iBeetle matching car/computer combo.
Later...
Out of curiousity I looked up purinethol on google. The most striking of the results is at askapatient.com and the entry which starts off:
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When Zeke was a much younger fellow I tested his counting abilities. Hold up one finger, one bark. Two fingers, two barks. Spot on (pun intended) like that until he reached six at which point I switched back to one and he barked once. Two for two, three for three. A miracle! It was after reaching three that I paused to mentally add up the millions we'd be making on the Counting Dog World Tour. I was still holding up the three fingers...Zeke continued to bark. Seems that what he'd really been doing was barking as long as I held up fingers. Of course when he reached the right number I'd lower the fingers. A good trick, but not world tour worthy.
A couple years ago we went to the science museum on the outskirts of Paris, France. The featured industry at the time was forestry, with lots of static displays plus a couple of hands-on gizmos. The hottest gizmo was a harvester simulator for an all-in-one tree harvesting machine which cut, de-limbed, segmented, and then stacked the lumber all directed by a couple of joysticks. Here's the next generation unit which adds walking to the list of features.
Well, at least Zeke is as clever as Clever Hans, the horse who got famous in Germany by 'counting' and solving simple math problems. It turned out that Hans was clever, but wasn't counting: he was listening for aural clues (the release of breath held in anticipation, say) from the people in the room to tell him when he'd reached the right answer.
It's funny you should post this today, because my brother and I were trying to determine if my dog can count last night, and so far he is no Clever Hans.
What test were you using for your dog?
Zeke has a low tolerance for tricks. I once spent weeks trying to get him to jump through a hoop (actually my arms held in a circle like a hoop). The most I could get would be one good hoop jump a day, any other attempts resulted in a flying body slam...whoops, missed the hoop.
I tried to show Faith this new trick but all Zeke would ever perform in public is the flying body slam.