[I'm not sure why, but now the camera on my phone isn't working so the only way I can take photos is with Photo Booth on my Mac which only does very low resolution. Hopefully I can find a loaner camera for the rest of Vegan Mofo.]

In the photo she has been sitting in the car with windows and back open, no A/C, for about 20 minutes. The temperature was about 105 F. It helps that my car is white and has maximum legal window tinting, but the first line of defense when it was really hot was a space tarp clipped to the outside of the car on the sun side. These cheapo, small clips, and one of these ball bungees, secured the tarp at maximum speed of over 40 mph. If you you want to use the clips more than one day, it’s probably best to go for the larger, heavy-duty ones. The cheap ones were falling apart after a few hours in the heat and sun. It was amazing HOW much cooler it was in the car with the tarp in place.

She also had a small Cool Core Bed. She didn’t particularly like it at first, but as the temps rose, she was on it all the time. I kept it in a refrigerator overnight when I could and re-filled it with chilled water a couple times during the hottest day/evening. I think you could also put small ice cubes in it, but that would not work great with the foam core.

The towels are Cool ‘n Dry which I had first seen one of the CDD Frisbee dogs using earlier in the summer. I tried one for a few moments myself to see how much cooler it was. I did not want to give it back. Knowing humans are much more efficient at cooling themselves than dogs, I did. : ) I could tell that she felt noticeably cooler with one or two of these towels over her.

For additional ventilation, a few times I used one of these to keep the tailgate open, but secured. I have used that device much more in Colorado. I also brought along several battery operated fans, inherited from my grandfather, similar to these, but I never used them.

Those are all my canine cooling tips. Bonnie hardly panted the whole time we were in Death Valley, mostly when we were on a moonlight walk in 107 F, so I think we did a pretty good job keeping her cool. Bonnie is a naturally low key dog and I think that made it much easier to keep her cool. She was content to lie on her cooling bed and rest under her cooling towels. It would have been much more difficult to keep a dog like Jessie cool, who would have watched, and mentally taken, every step with the relay runners.

… experiments showed that dogs do see color, but in a more limited range than [...] humans, who see the rainbow of colors described by “VIBGYOR”: Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red. Instead, dogs see “VIBYYYR” (Violet, Indigo, Blue, Yellow, Yellow, Yellow, and Red). The colors Green, Yellow, and Orange all look alike to dogs; but look different from Red and different from the various Blues and Purples. Dogs are very good at telling different shades of VIB apart. Finally, Blue-Green looks White to dogs.
- Dana K. Vaughan, Ph.D., Dept. of Biology, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh

This is the best information I can find about the color vision of dogs. I really like playing with different colored discs. They make my human eyes happy, but I have a feeling that in most conditions using any color other than white puts Bonnie at a disadvantage. As the article points out, many factors make a greater contribution to a dog’s ability to see an object than color, but if dogs can’t distinguish between green, yellow and orange, using one of those colors on a green grass field removes one potential aid to a dog’s success. Too bad because currently this is my favorite disc (link to yellow hero xtra).

Interestingly, Bonnie won her first Frisbee award with an orange-yellow disc. The sky was overcast and white that morning and I thought the yellow disc made more contrast. Who knows if the color helped or hurt or made any difference at all. If I am ever reincarnated as a dog I will try to send a sign. ; )

[Links corrected/added 2010-Jul-01] Another article by Dr. Mark Plonsky. This one has illustrations to explain the differences in human and canine color vision.

Blog post by Mike Ettner.

I also really like number three, feigning enthusiasm, and number four, tone of voice. I am really so bad at the happy puppy voice. It is nice to be let off the hook on that.

I bet most of these ideas are relevant to parenting and teaching children and are probably pretty useful for motivating adults too.

The competition on Saturday was very exciting. There were teams from Minnesota, Washington and Montana, as well as Colorado. It was a real treat to see Roo Yori and his famous pit bull Wallace perform. They won the Open/Expert Combined division with Matt and Maggie in second. Roo, Wallace, and Josh Grenell won the Pairs Freestyle followed by Colorado Disc Dogs’ Becky & Jeff Mueller and Bandit. Becky and her dog Flygirl recently placed second in the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge Western Regional, in Phoenix. Darrell Earle and Nitro Nana placed first in the CDD Intermediate Distance Accuracy division, with Jay Smartz placing second and third with his dogs Boomer and Durango. Jay and Durango were first in the Skyhounds Expert Distance Accuracy division. The top four places in Expert Combined and Expert D/A, and top two teams in Paris Freestyle won invitations to the Skyhoundz World Championships.

I learned that believing you forgot your camera is functionally equivalent to forgetting your camera. The power of belief overwhelmed the fact that it was within arm’s reach most of Saturday. The photo to the left is of 11 month old Bonnie at her first competition, Thornton 2005.

I had a depressing meeting with the podiatrist this morning. I am in the boot at least a few more days. The depressing part was his suggestion that I may need to be “immobilized” for a few weeks so my foot can heal….not that absolute immobilization is even possible. Send We11butrin!