Well, I can't run or lift or ellipticate or ski or climb rocks or wakeboard , but I can walk.

So I've been walking.

Yesterday I had an audience.

                      

I was walking out on the BLM land between Circle Mountain and Cave Creek, and came upon the above alert group about a quarter-mile from the gate. They were all (I believe) laying on the ground until I got to the dangerously-close range of about a tenth of a mile away, whereupon they all stood up and started staring at me. (ISuddenly being stared at by ten or so cows made me just the least bit self-conscious - but after I  checked my fly, the feeling went away).

There were a couple of larger cows - not in the above frame - and that group didn't get up until I got much closer - and, when they did get up, they were a good bit larger, and they seemed to be cows of the boy persuasion; their staring at me was more of the aggressive variety than the cautious. Right about then was when I decided that it was time to turn around and head back to the house.

The cows staring was different, but quiet. However, when I walk into my house, dogs bark. When I walk out of my house, dogs bark. Our dogs bark to tell us that we are home, or to tell us that we are leaving, or to tell us that there is oxygen in the air.

After years of putting up with this, I've ordered bark collars from PetSafe. They are very expensive, but they are high-tech bark collars that have two important features:

1) They have a variable level of correction that is supposed to teach the dogs to actually stop barking, even after the collar is removed.
2) They have an additional sensor - throat vibration as well as sound -  that insures that they only shock the dog when it is the dog in question who is barking.

The second feature is important, as we bought bark collars before that only operated based on noise. Thus, when Maia barked, Maia, Kia and Lucy would ALL get shocked. This would cause Lucy and Kia to (of course) bark, which caused them all to get shocked - including Maia, who hadn't barked, so she quickly figured out that it wasn't HER barking causing the collar to shock her, so she told the other dogs to STOP BARKING so that she wouldn't get shocked - and she told them the only way that she knew how to tell them, which was (of course) to bark at them.

This didn't work. Basically, it just resulted in a lot of barking by dogs laying on the ground, convulsing with electric shocks.

Now, that's a lot of fun, but not very quiet - and it really uses up batteries very, very fast (however, it doesn't use up the dogs - they seem to recover okay. It may cause brain damage in Cocker Spaniels - but how would you know?) So I hope that this two-sensor innovation works okay.

The other feature - the variable correction level that's supposed to teach them to stop barking completely - I have no idea how that's supposed to work. But I have to admit that I don't really care that it does - I don't mind keeping the collars on them, if it keeps them quiet. In fact, in at least one case, I'd rather that the dog keep getting shocked.