Miki Journal

Yesterday was a day of hard work for me: programming a new piece of software, which required hours of intense concentration, study, and effort. I work out of our home office, which is about as pleasant a work environment as you could have. Debbie was out running about with Mo’i and Lea, so it was Miki, myself, and our nine cats all home alone.

Every two or three hours, I took a short break. What better way to give my brain a rest from programming than to play with a puppy?

Each break, I’d go out to our livingroom, where Miki’s crate was, and greet him. Each time, he’d bound out of his crate, joyously shower me with puppy kisses, then run over to his water bowl for a drink, and then run to the door to be let out. I’d put his leash on him, and we’d walk together over the concrete pad where Debbie park her car to the “lawn” (it’s green, but it’s more from chaparral weeds than from grass) where he’d do his bit to water and fertilize a patch of ground. Then after some exploring outside, and some practice with new kinds of terrain, we’d head back inside for a training session. Yesterday we mostly worked on “heel", a concept that Miki does not yet grasp at all <smile>.

This is a well-understood routine at this point. Miki knows just what to expect when I come out on a break; there aren’t any big surprises to be had. Until yesterday.

On one of my breaks yesterday, we went through the greetings, water break, to the door, and out for a walk routine as usual. But…when we got to the concrete pad, there was a big surprise for Miki: a black-and-dark-gray lizard of a species common to our area, about 10” from head to tip of tail, doing push-ups on the far side of the concrete pad near our stack of firewood. This is the time of year when a young lizard’s thoughts turn to love, and if you’re a male lizard (like this one), you pretty much assume that anything that moves is a female lizard, until proven otherwise. And apparently female lizards are very impressed with lizardly push-up displays.

When Miki spotted that lizard, his little head shot up from his usual snuffling position into a direct stare at the strange being before him (the lizard was perhaps 4' away), while inhaling deeply to see if he could smell it. His astonishment was plain to see, and I swear you could see him mentally working the possibilities. Should I be afraid? Can I eat it? Can I play with it? Oh, please, someone tell me what to do! After a long period of deep thought, Miki glanced up at me (I was right alongside him, holding the other end of a slack leash), then let out a happy “yip!” and lit out after the lizard.

"Lit out” doesn’t really convey what happened — in the space of about 6” Miki accelerated from zero to about ninety miles an hour, heading straight for the lizard. In the split second of Miki’s approach, the lizard figured out that the rapidly approaching brown fuzzball wasn’t a female lizard, and he darted into the woodpile, instantly disappearing into the middle of a few hundred pounds of oak logs. Miki kept right on going, full speed, until his head ran into the woodpile with a loud “thwonk", and he sort of bounced off, ending up on his haunches.

He shook his head a couple of times, and then ran back to the woodpile and started trying to dig into it, with the same front-paw action he’d use if he were digging into soil. Of course, this didn’t work all that well on oak logs — the lizard didn’t have a thing in the world to worry about. But it took Miki a while — two or three minutes — to decide that his digging was futile. In the meantime, he worked himself into a lather trying to get to the lizard. His front paws were flying like mad, and he had a frustrated look about him. He’d run around to different parts of the woodpile, trying a spot here, a spot there, to see if there was some place more amenable to a digging attack. Every few seconds, he’d give out with a frustrated yap. Finally he gave up — just sat down, looked at me mournfully, as though he was begging for my help.

Of course this entire time I was laughing my fool head off. It just looked so funny to see this itty-bitty puppy attacking the stout wood pile with such enthusiastic ferocity — but making zero progress. And then when he gave up on the venture, his despondent, end-of-the-world look was just as funny.

But Miki definitely likes lizards — whereas Mo’i and Lea basically just ignore them. I can’t recall either of them ever getting all excited about a lizard, as they both do over rabbits or quail.

When we came back inside from that particular walk outside, Miki was uninterested in a training session. He ran to his water bowl, drank it dry, and then voluntarily went into his crate and laid down. The poor little lad was all tuckered out from lizard hunting! Within a minute or so he was sound asleep, no doubt dreaming about the day when he would catch that damned lizard…