I have a busy day ahead, but this started things off just right:
Here you can see the actual throw:
Simone Biles throwing first pitch at the World Series, while also letting the girls know she coming for necks in 2020 ?? #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/vSNqqXlgwW
— Joshua Chenault (@joshuachenault1) October 24, 2019
And thanks to Adam for sending this to me:
And another thing. pic.twitter.com/r4NUrpmNqQ
— jamie (@gnuman1979) October 23, 2019
Bailey used to talk and back-talk aaaallll the time. I miss it, but Scout is working on it. Sometimes she finds her voice and it startles her. Adorable.
Before today’s onslaught, here’s a respite open thread.
CliosFanboy
teeny lil lady. Boy did she look happy!! Loved it.
rp
What is even happening in that clip?
Emily68
The dog sounds just like White Fang on the Soupy Sales show.
Miss Bianca
Played that clip of the Husky backtalk and got a little tea-kettle-like high whine from Watson (who is snugged up in his crate) in reply. Made me miss my Luna. Fortunately, D still has video on his camera, altho’ that was usually the way to get her to shut up, to point the camera at her.
Aw, Luna-boo…she would have loved this morning’s snow. My two current couch potatoes are over it already.
ruemara
lol, at that doggo. I certainly couldn’t talk back like that to my mom. I had no idea Simone Biles was so tiny. But look at those muscles! Goals, man.
OzarkHillbilly
Huskies are very vocal. Percy… *whimpers* when I come home after an extended absence. It’s a happy whimper, “Ohhhh Daddy oh daddy oh daddy, your home your home your home!!!” I’ve been working with him on a howl. He kinda gets it but it’s not full throated yet. My wife hates me for it.
BobS
Marisneck, the guy who caught her pitch, is a relative nobody- he should have been asking for her autograph.
Nicole
I needed that today (both watching the GOAT do her thing and throw a pitch and then listening to an opinionated husky dissent). Thank you.
My pooch is a talker, too. The shelter where I adopted her had her listed as a basenji mix, I think due to her endless chatter when she’s unhappy about something. She’d not basenji; she can bark; she just doesn’t do it often and probably never did it in the five weeks she was at the shelter. I want to say it was a year or two before we heard her do it.
randy khan
@BobS:
Watching the clip, it seemed like she wanted him to sign it, since she’s the one who motioned to get the pen.
There actually was some discussion of this on MLB radio this morning. A former player said, essentially, that the etiquette is that players always sign for regular people (sponsors, Make a Wish kids, etc.), but don’t sign for celebrities unless the celebrities ask.
Soprano2
We had a female husky who used to “sing” to my husband. She rarely barked, same as her brother, although they did howl. And dig holes. And shed dust bunnies. They were sweet dogs, and beautiful, but I’d never have another one.
Nicole
I need to show your post to my 9-year-old, who is currently smitten with them. We’re seeing a lot more in our neighborhood- a dog trainer friend of mine said the upswing is due to the popularity of Game of Thrones. He’s not thrilled about it, as he said they’re not the easiest dogs to keep, especially for novice owners. Which is nothing against the breed, of course, his feelings are measured in how-likely-is-this-dog-to-end-up-in-a-shelter-because-an-overwhelmed-owner-gave-up.
TaMara (HFG)
@Miss Bianca: [[Hugs]] Talking dogs will always bring a little sadness, along with happier memories. Sigh….
Tony Jay
++++++++++MINOR BREXIT NEWS+++++++++++++++
“PUSH THE BUTTON. PUSH PUSH THE BUTTON”
Rumours squirming around under the Westminster skin that Clown Prince Flobalob will be making some kind of big announcement this evening.
He’s spent the day refusing to appear before the Parliamentary Liaison Committee, has held a Political Cabinet meeting, and now has the BBC’s Chief Ballwasher and Doe-Eyed Sycophant Laura Kuenssberg in with him for some kind of ‘personal briefing’.
Chances are he’s going to table a motion calling for an Election, but he’s done that before. The Opposition parties have all made plain that he can’t have one without an extension to the Brexit deadline, but since he sent that childish, begrudging letter to the EU last Saturday the EU itself has been waiting to hear what he intends before agreeing one. I’d assume various Opposition figures are on the phone to Brussels right now asking how instantly an extension would come into effect, but chances are any motion would be defeated unless Skanky Malfoy openly and humiliatingly announces that he wants and needs the extension and is willing to legally fix the date of the Election, because no one in the country trusts the gobshite as far as an ambitious but underpowered two year-old could throw him.
Fun Times. An election just before Christmas? I don’t even know if that’s logistically do-able. What about all the polling stations already pre-booked for Nativity plays and office orgies? Will no one think of the Santa Swingers?
patrick II
It wasn’t until the second video that I noticed Simone added a full twist to her backflip. @CliosFanboy:, yes she did look happy. It is good to see.
CliosFanboy
@BobS: at first I thought he was…. he should have
donnah
Our foxhound/beagle mix Wendy had a great sound. She didn’t bay like a beagle, but she had a “woo woo ma ma ma” throaty yodel that we loved. We used to call her Woo Woo Mama.
Amir Khalid
Cats can be talkative too. With humans, that is. They tend not to meow to each other; they reserve it for us, who don’t tune in to their body language as well as other animals do. Bianca often talks to me and usually greets other people vocally. Right now, though, we’re just chilling together in bed.
Spanky
@Tony Jay:
Well, I wasn’t until you brought it up. Thanks a ton.
CliosFanboy
@donnah: My Fox Terrier, Rocco, did the same. I am glad I took videos of him being a “talky dog.”
Spanky
@patrick II:
Well sure, before the game.
CliosFanboy
I see what you did there…
Tony Jay
@Spanky:
There’s niche websites for all kinds these days.
Kelly
If I were Jake Marisnick (Astro’s #6) I would have asked Simone Biles to autograph the ball so I could have a souvenir of meeting her.
I’m off for a day of leaf peeping at Silver Falls State Park.
Just One More Canuck
Is the dog’s name Astro? (or Tralfaz)
Spanky
@Amir Khalid: Here’s one for you, Amir. Ibanez is sounding pretty good.
randy khan
@Amir Khalid:
One of ours chirps at us, usually when she wants to be petted and sometimes while she’s being petted. They’re these funny little “mrp” sounds. We also had a cat who used to sit in our foyer late at night and emit long, loud meows. We kept going out there to see what was wrong until we realized that he just liked how it sounded in that nice open space. (The resonance was pretty impressive – he was a big Siamese with a voice to match.)
But there is one common way cats talk to each other – to express their unhappiness with other cats. Right now we have a 15-month old who came to us when he was about 12 months old. He’s a bundle of energy, and he’s constantly annoying the other cats. There’s a lot of hissing and yowling as they declaim about their displeasure.
Immanentize
OT — something not so good? If Watergirl or testers are around — since yesterday, when I open the blog on my phone or my desktop — the front page zooms to the bottom and I get an Error code:
That is all.
trollhattan
I just want to tuck her into my pocket and bring her home to mentor my kid.
#TooDangCute
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
TOO much work. Had friends with an actual sled team, in Stockton, CA of all places. Shedding season was epic, plus there’s plenty year round.
LC
Amir Khalid:
I seem to recall that the whole thing with cats not talking to each other much may not be very true. Meows are uncommon between cats but all the chirping and so on isn’t reserved for us humans.
Amir Khalid
@Spanky:
I have a semihollow on my guitar wish list. (Don’t tell anybody, it’s a secret.)
Kent
Since this is an open thread I thought I’d toss out some dog news.
My youngest daughter is 13 (8th grade) and seems to have found her first real crush. What do they do all day? Send dog videos and pics back and forth. We have a yellow lab and the boy’s family has a golden retriever. So pretty much every day and evening after school they are both taking cute dog pics and short videos and sending them back and forth to teach other. They ride the same school bus and when I’m home early she demands that I meet her at the bus with our dog Tucker which I promise never happened before.
It’s honestly too cute for words. Now they want to do doggie play dates on the weekends. Kids these days. Heh.
catclub
@Amir Khalid:
This morning our big singer was in the bathtub to sing. He seemed pleased with himself.
Amir Khalid
@LC:
Mothers talk to kittens, kittens to their mothers, and cats shaping up for a fight cuss each other out like nobody’s business. I’ve always wondered, though, do cats talk to dogs they know?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Here’s a pic of Elijah Cummings lying in state in Statuary Hall.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Soprano2: Our latest adoptee is a mostly-beagle, our first experience with the breed. There are many things we didn’t know. One of them was what a loud resonant voice comes from that little body when he’s on the hunt of an interesting scent. Another is how “interesting scent” crowds out EVERYTHING else from his little brain on walks, even if he was right in the middle of something important like the pooping we came outside to do.
He got away from me chasing a rabbit a few nights ago. Scared the hell out of me because cars on busy roads are another thing he seems completely unaware of when he’s got a scent. But he found his way home and announced it with that roo-roo-roo that I could hear two blocks away.
Miss Bianca
@Nicole: it’s unfortunate. I hate the whole GOT thing for other reasons, but the whole “Husky stand-in for Dire Wolf” thing was one of those things that fanciers like us dread – just as “101 Dalmatians” fueled the rise of demand for them, which led to backyard-bred Dalmatians who fear-bit out of complete insanity, so you get the sad phenomenon of people getting in over their heads with a beautiful but difficult breed like Siberians, and now the shelters will be overrun with them.
I say this as one who fell in love with one and had to learn the hard way how bullet-headed and opinionated they are, in addition to being roamers. Had to re-arrange my entire lifestyle to accommodate them. Wouldn’t have it any other way, now, but that’s a lot to ask of Joe/Josie Average.
TaMara (HFG)
@Kent: That is the most wholesome, cutest thing ever. My niece got a bearded dragon for her birthday because her crush has one. Now I think she’s more in love with the reptile than the crush. LOL
David Evans
@Immanentize: I’m getting the same thing on my Windows 10 desktop but not on my Android tablet.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Miss Bianca: I was going to respond with a post about using an actual wolf in the movie Alpha, which is a fictional account of the first domestication of a wolf by a human. I love that movie, and also love that they had an actual linguist develop a plausible prehistoric language based on linguists’ existing extrapolations of ancient languages.
But I did a little bit of research and found out that, alas, “Alpha” was not a wolf but a Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, a German-shepherd-wolf hybrid.
Still, according to the trainer they are very wolflike.
Kent
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Well, it would probably be worse if the movie spun off a lot of people looking to get actual wolves as pets. Which does sometimes happen. When I lived in Alaska there were knuckleheaded bush type folks who would sometimes capture wolf pups to raise as pets and there was something of a black market in it. Basically your same asshole types who raise pit bulls for fighting in the lower 48. It is illegal as hell but doesn’t stop folks in rural Alaska.
SWMBO
We have had dachshunds for years. They don’t really get their “voice” until about 18 months old. They have all been singers. When you leave them, you can hear them sing the songs of their people. Lol They are barkers too. And some of them have long conversations with people. The vocal range is amazing. When the pups were young, they grunt talked and we called them piglets.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Miss Bianca – I learned through my love of mysteries how lovable but apparently stubborn and too smart for their own good Siberians/Huskies/Malamutes are. I read the Susan Conant dog lovers mysteries when they came out in the 90s. The main character had 2 Malamutes got into trouble because they got bored and would do things like open her sock drawer and move all the socks to the bed. Also apparently blew coat enough to knit a puppy.
Funniest Husky type YouTube I like to rewatch is a toddler and a Husky having a “woo woo woo” contest. They both wanted the last word.
I miss my old cat, she had a stroke and I had to say goodbye a couple months ago. She was half Siamese and talked to me constantly, usually about her objections to having to live with a dog and the lack of enough treats…
germy
Interesting thread about the challenges facing writers in the film industry:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1187023381251670017.html
Miss Bianca
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Roxy, my current Husky/something, has a very, very wolfy look to her – it’s in the shape of her head and the floofiness of her coat, mostly. I’m pretty convinced that there is a bit of actual wolf in her mix, and so was her previous person, to the point where she had contacted the local wolf sanctuary (yes, we haz one!) about taking her when she was planning to move out of state. But, well, fate and Watson intervened, and now Roxy lives with us.
What convinces me about the wolf in her is even more her behavior than her looks. Rox is very shy and aloof with strangers, and even harder than most Huskies to contain – basically had to give up on that notion entirely. Fortunately, we are high on a mountaintop with no livestock in the general vicinity. Also fortunately, for us, is that we seem to have lucked out with the shy, rather than the aggressive, aspect of wolfiness. I would never, never advocate for *anyone* to have a wolf/dog hybrid, because of that uncertainty factor. I certainly never intended to get one, altho’ I adore Roxy.
ETA: And now I am going to order that movie “Alpha” from the library!
robmassing
How do I get my dog to do that? Please advise.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: Photos please!
Marcopolo
I’ve shared my life with three husky mixes (all pound dogs–finding a husky mix at the pound in Fairbanks was not too difficult), none atm. They are the best dogs, big, friendly, soft and oh so huggable. The first and third were talkers, the first in a serious way. He also liked to chase Moose. Being a beginning dog owner was so fun with him. It took me a while to learn that chasing a dog chasing a Moose is a fun game for a dog & they assume they can keep it up as long as you are following them. Of course I didn’t know that at first. Then one day I remember I just threw my hands up & turned around to head home, giving up on catching him & my dog, who’d been vigorously chasing this Moose several miles through boggy black spruce magically materialized next to me 5 minutes later. Good times. As for blowing coats, my secret was using a fulminator outside once a week at that time of year.
Also, God Bless Simone Biles. You’d think scientists would be studying her to see if her body was producing some form of natural anti-gravity. I mean, she pulled that stunt from a stand still and wearing tight jeans. Otherworldly.
Everyone have a nice day.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Miss Bianca:
Oh, do so. I’m sure you’d enjoy it.
What’s weird to me is that i think of the domestication story as the main point of the movie, the whole reason why I wanted to watch it based on the trailers. But in the interview with the trainer, he says he was surprised that there was this “subplot” in this movie about something else. Beats me what that something else was supposed to be. Well, the personal growth of the human character I guess. But the dog part is much more interesting :-)
Your comments emphasize that a wolf is not just a big dog. There are fundamental differences between the dogs in our homes and their wolf ancestors.
And yet at some point in the past there were the first “dogs”. Makes me wonder about the nature of that initial partnership. Some researchers feel those first “pets” were volunteers, wolves who decided for whatever reason to form a joint pack with a local human pack. “Alpha” makes the case that the two are good hunters together, but is partnering with humans really a more effective hunting relationship than partnering with other wolves? I guess somebody (somebodies of both species) must have thought so.
Eunicecycle
@SWMBO: My son and daughter-in-law have a “dachshund” that looks like a long-haired and definitely does the singing thing. But they did DNA (he was a rescue) and he’s only 18% dachshund!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@LC:
That’s the latest theory. However, one of our rescued barn cats (we pulled her and her sister from a barn near us in Central Misery, both had just had litters) would chirp at her kittens, and her sister’s kittens (they shared nursing duties) when they ventured out. We ended up naming her Chirpy because of that.
And Simone Biles rocks. She did that in jeans and not the first time she’s done that throwing out a first pitch at a ‘Stros game. My favorite image tho was her and the Astros player and the size differential.
Otherwise, GO NATS!
Marcopolo
@Miss Bianca: I lived in a cabin 20 miles outside of Fairbanks for about a decade. In addition to my 3 Husky mixes I saw a lot of others. About six years into living there I got a new neighbor (there were only like 12 of us in a few square miles so we all knew each other). One day I was looking out my cabin window and there were two strange “dogs” in the yard. The odd thing about them was they were substantially larger than my 110lb Husky/Malamute /Shepherd mix. He was out in my yard as well and they were like a third to a half again as big. They were wolf hybrids. I walked them home to their owner without a hassle but they were huge. I saw a few more over the years. They were pretty easy to distinguish just because of their size and head/shoulder shape. I never saw it, and the wolf hybrids I met (only a handful) seemed well behaved, but the rumors I heard was that they had an unpredictable temperament.
Eunicecycle
@Kent: We had a neighbor who had wolves. He kept them penned up in a big pen and they would howl a lot. I never understood what the point was.
Yutsano
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I’m thinking humans were a more reliable source of food. Humans and wolves hunt in very different fashions. But it is also possible the wolves who turned into dogs also were able to adapt their hunting style to assist with the human fashion of hunting. No one really knows for sure and we quite possibly never will. But what that first nudge was, even if it was just a child throwing scraps to a stray timid wolf, started a co-evolution that is fascinating.
cckids
@Amir Khalid:
My cats (a litter of 3) would talk to the humans and to the dog, but only to each other when they were complaining or bickering. I think since we had the dog when they arrived, they just lumped him in with the people.
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: Alas, I think you have to have some online photo storage thing to post photo links – maybe I can send some to TaMara!
Mudslide567
@Immanentize: getting same thing on chrome running on Android phone.
Miss Bianca
@Marcopolo: Yeah, the one thing that makes me think maybe, Nah! on the wolf in the mix is that Roxy is not very big or tall – wolves can get very leggy!
J R in WV
@Kent:
At least if dogs like him you know he isn’t a sociopath, so that’s good.
gene108
Cats scared of cucumbers
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pXv44YL_Gio
Martin
@Kent: Dogs aren’t just domesticated wolves, they’re fundamentally different. Wolves basically can’t be domesticated. Huskies and wolfhounds might have a bit more of that wildness in them (I used to have a huskie and she could be very unpredictable) but they still have a natural proclivity to bond with humans. Wolves don’t. It’s like having a pet tiger, which people try to do, until that goes terribly wrong.
OldDave
@Eunicecycle: The fun thing about the current pack singing is that there are four miniature Dachshunds and one Bichon Frise / JRT mix. The dachshunds betray the hound in them by howling (or, as SWMBO put it – singing the song of their people). The JRT mix doesn’t have that in his blood, so he just barks this sad little “I wish I could bay” bark. (Da Boyz)
Kent
@Martin: Yes, that’s what 40,000 years of selective breeding does. Humans have been breeding dogs for companionship qualities like obedience and bonding for basically 20,000 to 40,000+ years. Wild wolves, on the other hand, have evolved to become suspicious of humans. Think about the development of the American west. Wolves were eradicated pretty much everywhere they came into direct contact with humans. Only the wolf packs most suspicious of humans and living out in the most remote and unpopulated regions of the country survived. So thousands of years of contact with humans has actually driven both dog and wolf evolution in opposite directions. You can’t reverse that simply by trying to raise a wild wolf pup like you would raise a dog.
Gravenstone
@Marcopolo:
Gymnasts can be amazing that way. Ages ago I was attending a summer session on campus as the college was hosting a gymnastics camp put on by Kurt Thomas. We were chatting with a couple of the campers (they were raiding our vending machines), and one of the other students said he’d been a gymnast. The kids doubted him so he offered to do a back flip as proof. The kids took him up on it, so he promptly did a flat footed standing back flip off a concrete floor in a room with a not quite 8′ ceiling. That seemed to convince them of his veracity.
justsomeguy
@randy khan: He should have asked her to sign his jersey.
prostratedragon
@BobS: I had the impression he was asking her permission to give her his. Obviously in awe.
prostratedragon
@randy khan: ” We also had a cat who used to sit in our foyer late at night and emit long, loud meows. We kept going out there to see what was wrong until we realized that he just liked how it sounded in that nice open space. ”
I almost knew this fellow would turn out to be Siamese. How I miss those 3am heldentenor recitals.
StringOnAStick
@LC: Cats definitely talk to each other. I recently had to take my dad’s old and fussy cat in to get her claws trimmed (we couldn’t manage it, and we barely managed to catch her). The vet’s office was empty and he had a lovely long haired torbie male wandering about that is the office cat. As we were paying the bill, I had my dad’s cat in her carrier on the floor and she was meowing her displeasure and fear; the office cat respectfully came up to her carrier and attempted to touch noses, then made these little chirpy noises that really calmed Dad’s cat down, and then he sauntered off. It couldn’t have been any clearer that he was telling her to calm down, everything’s OK.