Part of the floodplain at our park. ©voyager, all rights reserved
Can anyone tell me what the man in these photos is doing? Jack and I encountered him at our local park yesterday. He was slowly walking from one side of the creek to the other along a measuring tape laid out between the banks. He would move a step or two and stop, then fiddle with his machine and look up to the sky for a while and then fiddle with his machine again until he was satisfied with something and then he’d take another step or two and repeat the process. At the rate he was moving it would take him an hour or more to cross our wee creek. I suspect it’s related to the flooding you can see in the first photo. Two years ago they removed the concrete barriers lining the creek and naturalized the banks. It was an all summer long project and it was quite picturesque when completed. Since then, though, the area around the creek floods easily and essentially makes large areas of the park unusable.
I would have stopped to ask him what he was doing, but the children in the photo were tossing stones into the creek that kept landing close to the poor man and the 2 adults in their group let several minutes pass before stopping the action. I thought the fellow
really didn’t need anyone else annoying him. Also, I didn’t want Jack to go into the creek because the last time he did he came out smelling like a sewer. We watched for a while and finally came home with my curiosity piqued, but not satisfied. If you have a clue or a notion about this endeavor I’d sure appreciate it if you’d share.
That’s curious.©voyager, all rights reserved
Very curious. ©voyager, all rights reserved
What’s he looking for up there? ©voyager, all rights reserved
Jack looks as if he really wanted to join the sensible human in the water.
I don’t know what the man could be doing, but I wonder if it has something to do with flow rate as there is wire going down to something under water. I don’t know why you’d need such a detailed picture of the flow though.
I’m guessing that the person is building a detailed cross section of the water flow, so that in future stream flow can be modelled based on one discrete measurement, done remotely.
Such incidents annoy me immensely. Parents shouldn’t just watch as their kids do bad things. My family owns several dogs; they are tiny, cute, and fluffy Pomeranians. When I take our dogs for walks, small children routinely approach us. Their parents routinely do nothing about it. I keep my dogs on leashes, but kids regularly come close enough to touch the dogs. The problem is that one of my dogs can bite. My dogs interpret strangers coming near us as a threat, they react with barking, and one of the dogs may also bite if some person comes near enough for reaching with her teeth. If one of my dogs bit a clueless kid, for some weird reason I would be the one in trouble. The idiot parent who didn’t stop their child from approaching strangers’ dogs would proclaim innocence. Apparently, the fact that I take dogs for walks means that I’m a free petting zoo and it is my duty to accommodate the desires of every clueless child I encounter. For some odd reason, it is also my duty to ensure that every child can safely pet my dogs without getting bitten. The fact that maybe I don’t want any children near my dogs is irrelevant for the parents. What matters is that some kid wants to pet my dogs. The fact that my gods feel scared and don’t want to be petted by strangers doesn’t matter. Whenever I see a child coming near me, I always walk in the opposite direction. On multiple occasions I have been literally chased by children who kept following me as I kept walking away from them. Their parents, for some odd reason, didn’t interfere and didn’t call their children back.
On one occasion, when a particularly persistent child kept following my mother for a while, she released from the leash one of the dogs about whom she was certain that he won’t bite. The dog simply circled around the kid barking angrily and keeping a distance from this child. The whole point for releasing the dog was to frighten the kid to finally get the hell away and leave my mother alone. The parent who was happily watching her child stalk my mother for a while then immediately ran forward and yelled angrily at my mother. What the hell did this parent expect? Did she really imagine that it is safe for her to just let a child approach random stranger’s dogs? This parent ought to have been grateful for the warning. If instead that kid had gotten close enough to the dogs that were on leashes, the child could have been bitten instead of just being barked at.
Occasionally I envy dog owners who have large and scary looking pets. I’m assuming that stupid parents who allow their kids to approach my Pomeranians wouldn’t act the same way if the kid got near a larger animal.
Children at least have an excuse, namely they don’t know any better. What is even worse is the fact that some adults approach me and intentionally frighten my dogs just to watch their reaction (angry barking).
Andreas
Having German Shepherds certainly reduces the number of peope who let their children approach, compared to when we had one GSD and a springer spaniel, but it doesn’t eliminate the problem. Our GSDs are both long haired, Jake resembles rq’s Ronja, Thorn is classic black and tan, and they do look like large cuddly ‘teddy bears’, They are not, both are resuces and both have their problems, and I know Jake would at the least nip as he’s done it before, it’s how we discovered his idiot previous owners had taught him not to growl, his first reaction used to be to air snap and on one occasion he missed the air :-( Thorn would be very frightened and shut right down while shivering :-( I don’t know why walking your dogs in public is considered by so many to be tacit permission for them to be stroked, but it is and it still surprises me how angry some people get whe you prevent them or especially their children from stoking your dogs. They would be appalled if I wandered up to their kids and stated playing with them without asking permission and might even call the police on me, but my dogs are fair game and damn the consequences for us. Yes, it annoys me :-)
Andreas,
A man and his young daughter once stopped Jack and I so he could show off his new puppy. I told him that Jack didn’t like puppies and would he please stay where he is. The man kept coming towards us trying to tell me that it was OK because Jack was wagging his tail. Well, Jack is afraid of puppies and sometimes he wags his tail just before he goes berserk. The guy’s got the puppy in his arms and he starts to lean forward with the puppy above Jack’s head and sure enough, when they got closer Jack lunged and snarled and then the guy says to me, “Hey, what’s the matter with your dog. He’s a lab, they’re supposed to be gentle. I only wanted to let him play with the puppy.” I told the guy that he should listen to the owner and to never do that to another dog again. Moron.
Most adults assume Jack is gentle and they’ll walk right up to him. Kids, on the other hand, usually ask if it’s OK to pet my dog. Thankfully, Jack is always good with humans of any size.
Jazzlet @#4
And here I was imagining that a big dog ought to eliminate this problem.
voyager @#5
When some person gets near me and refuses to go away, I tend to yell at them in an angry sounding voice something like, “Get the fuck away from me.” I strongly dislike rudeness, normally I prefer not to say anything similar, but my experience with people who want to touch my dogs is that they refuse to understand the simple fact that a dog can feel frightened when a stranger approaches it, and that a frightened dog can bite. If the person goes away, because they assumed that the dog’s owner is crazy, rude, and angry, then at least they have left. That’s better than them staying nearby and getting bitten.
My Pomeranians are tricky. When approached correctly (slowly and in a non-threatening way), they are friendly towards strangers and can be safely touched. The problem is that most of the time they get scared when some person just walks towards them. From the perspective of a tiny dog, a big human who quickly approaches can seem threatening.