This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.
This time it is our beagle, Peanuts.
Beagle?!
Yes, I owe readers an explanation. With the kids growing up, and Peanuts’ mate passing away last year, I have been taking Peanuts to many more trails and walks. He overheard me say “Peanuts is now my hobby”.
Next thing I know he was lobbying me to write about him in this hobby guest series and soon thereafter offering to write it for me. He used an argument I did not have a response to – On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!
Here he bays:
“Readers, let me first say I am humbled to be allowed a chance to join other guest contributors who work for $ 20 billion dollar companies. And others who live in glamorous France and exciting Australia. But you may know we are no slouches - we come from a royal pedigree. So let me tell you about technology of Beagles, for Beagles and by Beagles. (Vinnie's note: if Peanuts is Royal, the Queen is Indian but let him be - he is on a roll!)
Let me start with a few things us Beagles really enjoy and how technology has shaped that. BTW, if you click on a photo it enlarges, so you can admire what I am talking about.
Walks and travel
Oh, we do love the outdoors. The British Royal family innovated with carrying us in horse saddle bags on their hunting trips. Sure you have heard of the Queen Elizabeth Pocket Beagle. But these days, we can go so much further in vehicles and much as horses are fun, they are just too bumpy. Today my human just puts my spare office (as in the photo) in the back of his SUV and drives me to one of my favorite trails.
By the way, my office is called a CuddleCloud. I hear clouds are the hottest thing in technology these days, so glad my Data Center is contemporary. And we used the latest thinking in Data Center design. It is made from soy materials. They say it's trendy and "green". I wouldn't know. I am color blind - just happy it is comfortable. And we also have a DR back-up (Vinnie's note - Office? yeah right! The Toshiba is actually my daughter's. Good luck to her getting the dog hair out of the keyboard. And DR actually is short for Drive - we have a backup bed we use when we take Peanuts in the car. And Peanuts has been missing his production SLA. At night he is nowhere minding his bed, sorry office - usually in one of the kids' rooms)
Google Maps to the right shows 5 of my favorite trails. Each is waterside near a lake or a canal or a bay. How did I find them? There is an undocumented feature which allows you to scan street signs. Since we live in Florida, I look for “Beware of alligator” signs. Now that i go there regularly, they should now warn the gators and change the signs to “Beware of beagle”. Heheh.
There are websites these days which make it easier to find hotels when I can convince my humans to go further. And airlines like Jetblue are pampering pets to travel even further away. They even have Animal Planet on their live TV. May be some day I will visit the English Royals. They will be shocked how much bigger their American cousins are.
Entertainment
You want to entertain me? Find me other dogs. Thanks, but no need to keep bringing home Wiggly-Jiggly, LED frisbees and even cameras for us to use. Our job is to entertain you, not the other way round. Thanks to the magic of Hollywood we have brought you 101 Dalmatians and other classics. Comics dogs like Snoopy (don’t ask me why a beagle like me is called Peanuts), Dogbert, Olaf and more. You had Gigapets, now you can adopt Touch Pets in the iPhone store. In Japan, there are even electronic puppies you can train to do karaoke
Food
Again, give the English credit. James Spratt created the first dog cake way back in 1860. Nasty stuff, if you ask me. This video from the Veterinary News Network talks about all of today’s choices in dry and other dog food. I am not that discriminating - like it all. The most aggravating times each day are during meal time when my humans squint and read all the nutritional junk fine print while I am howling from starvation . Tell you what though - much as I dislike cats, you have to admire their taste in seafood.
Let me now talk about things we don’t enjoy quite as much. In addition to miserable cats
Medicine
Last time we went to see our vet, Dr. Allen Saunders he was telling my human how canine medicine is evolving faster than human medicine. (Yes, you guessed right he bribed me with some fine cookies while he pulled and poked). Since we live shorter lives, results from clinical trials can be validated quicker – or some such other gibberish. He was animated when he talked about the mapping of the dog genome. But I did tune out when he started talking about painful spinal and brain surgery where apparently dogs have helped human medicine. The good news as this article mentions “In 1987, about 32 percent of the nation's dogs were over the age of 6. Now, 44 percent have passed that threshold” Wonder if dog health insurance will also need a bailout?
Tracking
Now here is something us beagles really dislike. I mean I follow my nose – quit trying to restrain me. But humans put microchips in us so they can scan our addresses in case we get lost. They set up electronic fences. They even train us with electric collars. They watch us on streaming video. We even have GPS tracking of dogs.
What’s wrong with good old-fashioned dog tags? BTW – my human is really cool. He allowed me to pick out that rainbow colored tag (just pulling your chain when I said I was color-blind) and even pick my own words in the pictures below. He took me to the factory where it was made. I mean there were hundreds of workers there producing precision tags like mine. Made me feel really important.
(Vinnie's note – actually the “factory” I took him to was a WalMart store. The “workers” he saw were customers running around in the store. The tag cost $ 6 from the Quick Tag Kiosk they have in the store. But please don’t ruin it by telling Peanuts)
We do enjoy helping humans track things. Us city boys don’t get to use our noses much for hunting, but we help the good guys sniff out polycarbonates in pirated DVDs, help Customs find other contraband and we can even help homeowners detect termites. Those are even nastier than cats.
Other Beagle technology
It’s good to see our namesake used by the British for their Mars exploration (seeing a pattern here? The Brits must really like us. Tell me is "Bloody Pommie" a respectful term the Aussies use for Brits? I will have to ask my cousins when I visit London) There are Beagle games on iPhone. Even software companies named after us.
What did I tell you? We are pretty high-tech.
Hope you don't mind my bragging below - and if you don't agree let's settle it outside. Let's see who's louder :)"
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