This is the Clayburg Road--it's legal name is the Silver Lake Road but I still call it the Clayburg Road. Several years ago towns in the County changed road names and assigned numbers to houses so emergency vehicles could find specific buildings. My road was named the Girls Camp Road but Bill asked if we could change the name. The girls' camp was Silver Lake Camp (not really a rival camp, but my Hawkeye Trail Camp friends all know it was far inferior to their camp). Anyway, we asked to have the name changed. I picked the name and wish I'd just called it Hawkeye Rd instead of adding "Old" to the beginning. It would make it so much easier to write my address, to tell people my address, etc. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing, but foresight is even better.

Anyway, this road has terrible frost heaves this year. Frost heaves happen when the ground begins to move and, presumably, the frost line is moving toward the surface. They appear on this road in late Feb., which I think is early, but by March they are full-blown. Hitting these frost heaves is like flying over a reverse speed bump. Ken says he knows where every frost heave is. I don't see how he can, unless they appear in the same place every year. I know where the worst one is but the others take me by surprise. I guess I'm in a zone when I drive to & from work--listening to a book, mostly. The town puts up orange flags to mark frost heaves, but it always seems they miss the worst ones. Are they just goofing around?

Yesterday Fred came for Sunday dinner and said the road was like a corduroy road. You can guess what that means. My road gets to be like that from time to time, then the town either rakes it or runs a grader over it. It's a lot of fun to keep track of the environment by noticing different sorts of things and comparing notes with people.

Here's a view of Lyon Mountain from the Clayburg Road.

This is a view I get just before I reach the main road, Route 3. It's great watching the changes in Lyon Mountain--sometimes it's a magnificent blue, sometimes the ridge of the top looks as if someone ran a black marker along it, sometimes it's covered by clouds, sometimes it looks as if you could reach out and touch it. Molly has vistas like this, too. I like to use her views of the sea, the islands, the beach--that sort of thing--for my desktop background. I get to change the image all the time because she posts different pictures. Sometimes I even use pictures of her dog. Such a pretty dog with a very expressive face.

Last night I watched a great show about dog intelligence. It was British and included some cool studies and conclusions. One of the smartest dogs they found was a border collie who could differentiate one toy from among a huge number of toys. They put something like a hundred toys the dog recognized in a ring, like a circus ring, and put the dog in the center. Someone would tell the dog to get a specific toy--say a stuffed cat--and the dog would walk around until he found the cat, then retrieve it. To prove that the dog could use the process of elimination they added a toy he'd never had before--a stuffed soccer ball. They used a made-up name: BVI. They told him to get the BVI. He walked around the circle and picked out the soccer ball. How cool.

Another dog was a doberman, a rescue dog. A woman took the dog in and was having trouble getting him to bond with her. She got him a bunch of stuffed animals. The dog would arrange the animals in geometric patterns in the yard: first triangles, then semi-circles, then parallel lines. He did this time after time. Then he'd sort them by type--all the monkeys together, all the frogs together. Once he put two toys together, one with its arm around the other. She said that was just after he allowed her to hug him for the first time. How cool! The scientists didn't believe her so they set up video cameras--they showed Ronnie the Dog arranging his toys in speeded up motion. It was magic to see.

Another conclusion was reached after they deciphered the significance of tail wagging. They determined that dogs wag their tails primarily to the right when their owners (or someone they have good feelings about) approach. To the left when another dog approaches.

It was also determined that dogs can distinguish a human's command/wishes by looking at their eyes (the dog would leave the treat alone when the woman's eyes were open, but as soon as she closed her eyes the dog walked to the treat and ate it). Also that dogs can understand a simple hand signal (like pointing to a treat on the floor) without training. I thought that was questionable, since I'm always trying to get my dogs to pick up food I've spilled by pointing to it. Huh? huh? they seem to say. I have to practically touch the food to get them to it. I also wonder what effect my wearing glasses has on their ability to read my expressions. Tess always responds to my smiling, wags her tail as soon as I smile or raise my eyebrows.

It was a lot of fun watching the dogs do these things rather than reading about it. The doberman thing was incredible.