Donald Trump and Scattergood Baines

Image from Washington Bear Hunts

It was an attribute of Scattergood's peculiar genius that even after you had encountered him once, and come out the worse for it, you still rated him as a fatuous, guileless mound of flesh. You did not credit his successes to astuteness, but to blundering luck. Another point also should be noted: If Scattergood were  hunting bear he gave it out that his game was partridge. He would hunt partridge industriously and conspicuously until men's minds were turned quite away from the subject of bear. Then suddenly he would shift shotgun for rifle and come home with a bearskin in the wagon. Probably he would bring partridge, too, for he never neglected by-products.   -Scattergood Baines by Clarence Budington Kelland, 1921

 I wonder if Donald Trump studied Scattergood Baines.

The shredding of America
I see no evidence of it.

Were I called into court to testify I would have nothing to say.

Opening my yap would be a case of bearing false witness.

I know what the electronic media keeps grinding our noses into.  But I cannot testify about their stories  because I have no knowledge of the context.  The people who I interact with on a day-to-day basis are unfailingly civil and professional regardless of which way they may have voted.  It is very rare that they share what they did in the privacy of the voting booth.  Maybe it is a mid-Western thing.

Much of what I hear is people echoing something they saw on TV or on the Internet.  Most people, you can hear a change of tone, or pacing or vocabulary when they are "recitin'"  Reciting is not evidence, it is hear-say.

Even normal people can be jerks.  Five percent of any large population are certifiable screwballs.  They are highly resistant to the signals that communicate the norms of behavior.  Everybody else picks up those signals as naturally as breathing the air.  That five percent that cannot, or will not, would likely be diagnosable with some mental illness like Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD).

More than 60,000,000 people voted for both of the leading Presidential candidates.  Five percent of 60,000,000 is three million boneheads on each side.

The media can craft any story they want, any time they want.  It is simply a matter of paring away the context that does not support their preferred narrative.  Media sells clicks or ad time.  Not facts and news.  Never forget that most people store their brains (and souls) in their wallets. Cui Bono?

Show me that there has been an increase in the number of boneheads.  Show me the data that the base rate of boneheads has grown from 5% to more than 8% and then I will nod my head when you tell me America is coming apart at the seams.

A trip to the Dentist

We had three inches of snow last night.  Kubota went all drama-queen and insisted that school was going to be called off.  I got him to school, but ten minutes later than usual.

Everybody's brain turns to oatmeal when it snows.

My perspective is warped because I have REAL snowtires on our vehicles.  Trying to squeeze every last mile out of a set of tires is false economy.  The car in front of me was driving 35 mph in a 55 zone.

Image of office staff waiting for me to show up.  Not as large as the crowd that waited for other celebrities...but I am humble.  I don't care.

I was ten minutes late for a 7:45 AM appointment.  Everybody in the office was waiting behind the reception desk to see if any patients actually made it in.

Yes, he is young.  Former Navy guy.  And speedy quick.
I don't know if they are taking new patients, but his number is 517-482-5546

The procedures became more complicated than originally planned.  Dr Stone was unflappable.   He was calm, polite, courteous even though one of my teeth looked like a glacier that had calved a small iceberg and the wearing surface was grossly undermined.

He even apologized for the chaos of the remodeling.  I looked around and could see no signs of construction.  I suspect he meant that he had added another dental hygienist.  Did I mention that his staff is not only cheerful but that they are extremely easy on the eyes?

Confession
I made a strategic error.

I pray when I am having my teeth worked on.  I say Hail Marys and Our Fathers.  I pray for the souls of the dentist and his assistant.

If I had the foresight to go to confession before going to the dentist, I bet I could have gotten those prayers to count triple!

Joking aside, if you can pray when you are having your teeth worked on you can probably pray any where, any time.  It is good practice.

It is good to be home.  I have chicken fingers baking in the oven.  They are topped with bacon.  The bacon is hissing and starting to crackle.  I am looking forward to being able to eat food without having shreds of it wedge between my teeth.

Young Drivers

I was gifted with a honk of the horn and the bird today.

The young driver took exception to my turning right on green.  She was traveling in the opposite direction and turning left.  She entered the intersection after I did.  She was pissed that I was occupying the space she was sure belonged to her.  Maybe her brakes did not work.

Older drivers have been lamenting young drivers since the days of ancient Sumer.  It is a fine tradition.

 However, I think is worse than when I was young.  From a very young age we absorbed the protocol for who had the right-of-way.  We watched the "body English" of other drivers.  There was nothing else to do when riding with your parents.  Now kids are completely absorbed with their electronic toys.  They are clueless, absolutely clueless about who can go when.

They also get lost traveling to the closest shopping mall.  How hard can it be?  Drive north until you hit M-43.  Turn east.  It magically shows up on the north side of M-43.  Every.  Darned.  Time.  That is it.  One turn.  The mall does not move around.  And they still get lost.

I can only imagine the young lady steaming, "He should have let me go first...I had my signal on!!!"

It should come as no surprise that the front of her car was already pretty banged up.  I did not worry too much.  My truck is old enough to vote.

Apple trees with wet feet

Somewhere in Alberta.  Image from GardenWeb.

There are few perennial plants that can match apple trees for the amount of food produced per square foot.

Apples are highly sought after by both humans and animals.

One of the few shortcomings of apple trees is their aversion to "wet feet".   More and more the only parcels left over for wildlife are the swampy bits too wet to subdivide and build on or to plow up for row crops.

Apple trees with wet feet
One of my projects is to collect scion wood from apple trees growing in exceptionally wet places.  It is a retiree project.  There is no way one could justify paying money to collect this genetic material.  The chance of an economic pay-off is too remote.

This tree is just south of Eaton Rapids city limits on M-188.

It is growing in close association with Pussy Willow (toppled), Red Osier Dogwood, Buttonbush, Reed Canarygrass and Skunk Cabbage.  Skunk Cabbage means it is wet, wet, wet.

It is not Malus domestica but some kind of flowering crab.  One weakness of small-fruited apple species is that they tend to be very sensitive to plant virus.

Site Two

Site Two is on Island Highway.  Two of the three specimens are massive.  They are Malus domestica.  Associated vegetation includes Reed Canarygrass and Box Elder.  This is the driest of the three sites.  The water table is approximately 10" down.

Site Three

Site Three is next to M-100.  This is the overview.  There is standing water in the foreground.  There are Cattails and Reed Canarygrass.  There is Buttonbush growing behind this little island.  Peak elevation of the island above the standing water is approximately 6".  These are probably M. domestica.

This specimen leans, indicating weak rooting.  This clone is less desirable than the other two at this location.

My plan is to contact the owners of the property and offer $5 per scion to collect from their trees.  Further, I plan to graft them all onto a tree that I am using to collect potential rootstock breeding material.

Enforcing Federal Law

Borrowed from The Feral Irishman

Headline: LAPD Chief Refuses to Enforce Trump Immigration Law

It is easy to be the bravest guy in the bar when you are standing behind three brutes or dating the bar-owner's daughter.

Indemnification
Indemnification is the concept that your organization will provide legal shielding of your actions as long as your are compliant with their policies.  It is not altruism on the part of the organization.  Organizations offer indemnification because they must defend their policies and procedures in order to function.  The fact that individuals get shielded is incidental.

An unintended consequence of "indemnification" is that individuals can start to believe that they are not responsible for the consequences of their actions.

An executive order making it illegal for governmental agencies (states, municipalities) to extend "indemnification" to individuals or smaller governmental units when those individuals (or units) are accused of being in violation of Federal Laws would be highly desirable.

How this might play out:
Suppose a cop makes a traffic stop and the driver might not be a legal citizen.  Further, suppose that driver goes on to commit a violent crime.  Can the victims of that crime...or the next of kin...make a credible case that the cop had enough information, of high enough quality to make a judgement of increased risk to society?  Maybe...a very, very weak case.

Let's contrast that to a case where "perps" break into a house.  Maybe people are in the house.  Maybe not.  The perps don't know and must not care.  They break windows or smash doors to get in.  They steal over $500 of property  (replacement cost).  They are not very professional and the suspects (95% certainty) are hauled in.  They have gang tattoos.  Further, let us suppose they are not legal citizens of the United States.  How can you justify, personally, not deporting them should they continue on the logical trajectory of their criminal career?

Any moderately competent lawyer would shred your defense.  You can kiss all of your assets, and your personal reputation (because your actions dragged the governmental unit into the bloodbath), good-bye. You would not be able to get a job as a dog catcher.

I suppose there are work-arounds.  Cops could put all of their assets in their spouse's name or into blind trusts.  Governmental units have fewer options.  Noble intentions are a wonderful thing, but not when they are financed by victims.  Accountability is the sun that burns off the mists of illusion.

Second act, same play
Suppose the perps are deported.  Suppose they come back.  It has happened before.

Do we toss them into prison where they will cost us $30,000 per year?

One alternative would be to ship them back to their country of origin with a contract.  We will pay the country of origin to incarcerate them.  Let's say the perp came from Mexico.  The Purchasing Parity ratio between the US and Mexico is 0.5

That suggests that the cost of providing services that are the equivalent of what US prisoners are used to would only cost $15,000 per year.

However, most prisoners in Mexico, for instance, do not receive the luxuries available to US prisoners.  Prisoners who received that level of service would generate resentment and their safety would be at risk.

For their own safety, it would be much better to compensate the originating countries to house the returnees in a manner similar to other prisoners.

Do you suppose that Mexico would refuse an "outsourcing" contract of $7000/year/head to incarcerate Mexican nationals?  That price would have to comprehend the cost of providing evidence that the prisoners were actually still alive and in the prison.

Issues of due-process are a gray zone.  The perp can be induced to sign an agreement to not come back when first deported.  Failure to abide by this requirement  would result in their agreeing to place themselves into Mexican (or similar) custody.  That would be a business agreement and not subject to Bill of Right protections.

Quack like a duck
If somebody is already inside the US.

If they work.  If they pay taxes.  If they keep their noses clean...there is no percentage in rooting them out.

If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and if it quacks like a duck: Then for most practical purposes it ought to be treated like a duck.  (I, personally, would reserve voting rights for citizens).

If they push their way into Law Enforcement's attention by way of anti-social behaviors, that is a different story.  Then it is game-on.

"Daisy Chain" ropes and extension cords

I learned something while I was working in the woods with Salamander last week.

He supplied the ropes we used to guy the trees we were cutting and to direct the direction of their fall.

He stores them as what he calls a "Daisy Chain".  When I asked him about it he gave me one of those, "Gee, doesn't everybody do it this way?" looks.

I need two videos to show what Sal was doing.  This video (six minutes long) gives a great lead in but his method of making loops is more awkward than the way shown in the second video.

The hand motions shown in the second video are closer to what Sal was doing.  Sal used the two-strand method shown in the top video, not the four strand method shown in the second video (two minutes long).

This became an issue as Kubota and his friend use extension cords to power battery chargers on various POS, motorized toys.  They also use ropes and tow straps to extradite those same POS motorized toys out of mud, swamps, ditches and so on.  Few things weaken a rope more quickly than giving it a huge JERK while there are knots and snarls in the rope.

I learn something new every day.  My only concern is that I am forgetting four things to make room.

Don't you love it when you find a Christmas Present?

Click to embiggen.

I ran across one of Christmas gift that Pelé gave us.  Pelé is my oldest son.  We don't see him much, partially because he is a private kind of person and is living his own life, partially because he is working third shift.

Pelé makes five different kinds of trail mix.  This is one of the versions.  Somehow this box got misplaced in the shuffle.

What sets Pelé's trailmix apart is the quality of the ingredients.  For example, the version he gave me had little chunks of peanut brittle in it.  The notable thing about those little chunks of peanut brittle is that they dissolved beneath your molars like ripe watermelon.  They really were peanut brittle...and buttery...and delicious.

The same level of attention was lavished on each ingredient.  The nuts were large, plump and FRESH.  The dried fruits were tender and had the perfect balance of sweet and tart.  The chocolates were flavorful; no brown wax here!

And there are little surprises.  The coarseness of the mix means that each handful will be different.  Those small "peanut butter cup" looking things on the left side of the box;  yeah, those.  Butterscotch!  Who would have expected?  Some of the chocolate had dried cherries inside of them.

Now I just have to figure out where to hide this box so nobody else can find it.

Do you have a Plan, Part II

A schematic of the "set up" for the Thanksgiving work

Continued from Do you have a Plan

Today I am going to talk about  the other factor that monkey-hammered the work done that Thanksgiving weekend.  I will also give a few reasons why this problem should concern more than just industrial planners.

Line fill

The original thinking is that installing the equipment would take one shift.  Then, there were six different products that had to be programmed into each piece of equipment.  The conventional thinking was that it took one shift to tune in each product, i.e. programming, for any given work cell.  Let's do the math:  1 shift install + 6 shifts programming = 7 shifts.  4 day X 3 shifts per day = 12 shifts.  It should be a walk in the park, right?

Let's assume installation started on first shift, Thursday.  They did the installations.

Second shift walked in and indexed the set-up by one job.  Product F was in the first "Empty" station.  The remaining five empty stations to the right of the one now holding Product F were still empty.  Second shift had all kinds of workers scheduled but no productive work was available for them because the set-up did not comprehend line-fill issues.  They got Product F programmed into the first station.

Third shift showed up.  They indexed the set-up by one job.  The first two "Empty" stations now held Product E and Product F.  They easily got them programmed by the end of the shift because they had way more resources than work available.  There are still four Empty stations where nobody had done a lick of programming work.

This is what the line looked like when First Shift showed up the second day.

First shift showed up.  They index the set-up by one job.  The first three "Empty" stations now hold Product D, Product E and Product F.  (And you can bet that they complained that second and third shift had not done more work)

No programming is done in the last "Empty" station until the start of the seventh shift.  At the end of the seventh shift there are five shift remaining in the weekend and there are five products (Products A-through-E) that still needed to be programmed through the last empty station.

The same problem occurs during the programming of the last empty station on the last few shifts.  There are gobs of resources but they cannot be activated.  There is no way to have multiple people simultaneously "programming" a single piece of equipment.

There was no margin for hiccups...like shifts deleting each other's work or the dimensional integrity of one of the products being used for programming being destroyed.

Even more critical is that the line was not validated by "running at rate" before production walked in on Monday morning.  Did I mention that the post-mortem was ugly?

The solution was pretty straightforward.

If the planners had taken the time to ask Who, What, How, Where, When, Why on a half-shift by half-shift basis, they would have easily foreseen the problem.  They would have also seen the solution.

Extra material was staged in the set-up.  At the completion of the equipment installation the line was indexed six times so that there was product in every station.  Then the line was indexed once at the end of each shift.  See if you can figure out why Product A is not repeated.

Product is expensive.  Not starting up on Monday morning is much, much more expensive.

Back to prepping
I have a few readers who are interested in prepping.

The concept of "line-fill" is germane to prepping because of the lead time associated with replacing purchased inputs with home made or home grown inputs.

These potatoes are from our 2016.  They are going to Willie, one of my coffee drinking buddies.

Consider a garden.  If you knew in advance, you would till up your back yard the fall before you needed 2000-to-3000 Calories/day/person.  In Michigan, you would plant potatoes on May 1 or field corn on May 15...remember, we are after gross Calories.

We would nurse them along through the spring and fall.  We might start harvesting the potatoes in September and the corn in October.  We do not have significant amounts of home-grown calories until one full year after we started our garden.  And that assumes you have all of the tools, fertilizers, pesticides and seeds.  It assumes you know how to use, mix, spray and plant them.  It assumes that your backyard has decent soil, enough sunlight and is not too steep.

Storing food until you are ready to eat it  is part of the production process.  You can gain expertise in storing food by buying inexpensive produce and practicing.  These "deer carrots" were less than $5 for forty pounds.

Fruit bushes and fruit trees have even longer lead times.

Ideally, the prepper will have had a couple of years of "running at rate" to validate their production plans before things get tough.  Remember, there is no way to schedule when the poop will hit the propeller.  You are either ready, or you are not.

Having garden produce to give away or feed the wild life might be expensive, but it is far cheaper than not having 2000-to-3000 Calories a day when things get tough.

I stole it from The Feral Irishman

 Shamelessly stolen from The Feral Irishman.

And reposted it so I can find it.

It gets lively at about the 9:15 mark.

Do you have a Plan?

Do you have a plan?

Wrong question!  And if you ask the wrong question you will always get the wrong answer.

The first question should be:

Do you know what a plan is?

A plan is....

A plan is a story.

And my mother, a former English teacher, will gladly tell you that a story must address

• Who
• What
• How
• Where
• When
• Why

And then it is a story...or a plan.

The order can vary.  Some stories will put more emphasis on Why or How.  But a complete story, a complete plan, must hit all five "W"s and the lonely "H".

My awakening
I was involved in an equipment installation in an industrial plant during a long weekend.  I think it was Thanksgiving weekend.

The company brought in full crews of skilled trades on all three shifts and paid them double-time.

It occurred to me as I watched the train wreck unfold that my brothers and I had better planning when we executed "deer drives" than the best talent in this Fortune 500 company had for the four day weekend.

• Who is going to be standing and who is going to be driving?
• What is each person going to be doing?  Which way are they going to be looking or moving?
• How are the drivers going to communicate?  How often will they zig-and-zag?
• Where will each person be at any given time?  
• When will they start?  When will they end?  When will they communicate?
• Why are we doing things the way we are doing them?  Is there a better way?  Do we shoot at coyotes?  Is it bucks-only?  Are we putting meat in the freezer?

We did not consider it overkill.  Every one of us was capable of heaving a one ounce chunk of lead at 1600 feet per second.  Mistakes are expensive.

It took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that a handful of "rednecks" absolutely crushed a bunch of hot-shot corporate executives in planning.  But it was a fact.

Back to equipment installations
The equipment installations became much more efficient over time, primarily due to better planning.

The single biggest gain came when each shift was assigned specific robots/equipment to program/prepare.

What had been happening was that each shift would come in and review the work done by the previous shift.  Then they would delete the programming because it was not exactly they way they would have done it.  They would download the programs they had saved on thumb-drives at the end of their shift the previous day.

At the daily meeting, the leaders would contend that they had no idea what the MFers on the other two shifts were doing because not a lick of work had been done in the previous sixteen hours.

This was particularly vexing to second and third shift. Upper management never showed up on second and third shift.  The only message upper management heard was that second and third shift were not only drunk-and-disorderly but that they deleted the work done by the workers on first shift.

The post mortem of the weekend was ugly.  Very, very ugly.

You cannot make this stuff up.

A good plan has clear assignments.

Deleting the work done by other shifts is industrial sabotage.  It was done very casually before the leaders got religion about planning.  It was perceived as "being fussy" which is generally a good thing.  It was not perceived as throwing away $20,000 of labor and frittering away one of the few four day windows of opportunity.

Later installations required that each shift "lock out" the specific equipment they were responsible for.  There was no way other shifts could mess with it.

Leadership's mentality had been that shifts that finished early could work on other shift's work.

Reality proved that there are many things that are worse than a work crew that gets done early.

Just remember:

• Who
• What
• How
• Where
• When
• Why

And my mom will be proud of you.

Do you have a Plan, Part II

Brings a new meaning to "Prairie Dogging"

Photograph by David McMillan.  Source

Belladonna is competing today.  It is Mrs ERJ's turn to watch her.

Her performance is improving by leaps-and-bounds.  That is particularly heartening because she was not allowed to practice during November and December due to health issues.

Her best performance in competition puts her at the 75th percentile for all athletes.  Her best performance in practice puts her at the 90th percentile.

Go Bella!!!

Filberts for Wildlife

Orange circles approximate where filbert (hazelnut) bushes will go in the hinge planting.

I took a census of filbert bushes.  I think I need between ten and thirty plants.  Ten if I graft over them.  Thirty if we practice mass selection and cull 2/3 of the bushes.

I hope there are at least ten filbert seedlings in here.

Seedlings marked with masking tape "flags".

Green circles are nut pines.

Excellent prices on Korean Nut Pines at Burnt Ridge Nursery.  The shipping is a bit stiff.   I bought ten of the small plugs to amortize the shipping over more units.  Korean Nut Pine is very similar to Eastern White Pine and can even be grafted using EWP as the rootstock.

Kubota's new wheels

He got it running yesterday.

He only got it stuck twice.  Once was 40 yards from the road on the drive back to where a local law enforcement officer lives. 

I wonder if his mom knows he is using bath towels as slip covers.

Big adrenaline rush from living on the edge.

Why be a "prepper"?

Everybody has their own reasons to prep.

One of my main reasons is that I find thinking about processes, infrastructure, systemic weaknesses and how people react to be infinitely more interesting than crossword puzzles.

I would rather think about the heat transfer characteristics of a tandoor oven than try to remember the name of the river that flows through Dudinka, Russian Federation (hint, first three letters Yen____).  I would far rather perseverate on building the perfect semi-dwarf apple tree for Eaton County, Michigan than fumble through a single Sudoku puzzle.

I like real problems.  They keep my mind and body sharp.

Frankly, I hope I never NEED to use my preps.  I take joy in blogging.  I love tasting apples and get great enjoyment at inviting my coffee-drinking buddies to help me pick and distribute produce to needy families.  I like hunting and fishing for recreation; the food is a bonus.  That is plenty of motivation.

My prepping is not driven by fear.  Not that fear is a "bad" emotion.  Fear is very useful in the proper time and place provided it is not paralyzing.  I prep because that is how I am wired.

But if the balloon goes up, I hope to be more "ready" than not.

Tandoor Bread Ovens, Part II

Bread ovens
Multi-fuel capability of tandoor ovens is one of their most endearing features. The burner tray can be fueled with natural gas, LP, producer gas, stove wood, charcoal, coke, buffalo chips, jets of atomized petroleum oil...you name it.

Pizza ovens and the ovens used to make submarine sandwiches are heated with natural gas or electricity.  Period.

Tandoor ovens also appear to offer reasonable energy efficiency, a feature you would expect in a technology that evolved in a region that is chronically short of firewood.  Your barbecue grill might work as a bread oven in a pinch but it is neither flexible regarding fuel nor is it particularly energy efficient.

Supplying a medium sized metropolitan area would require about 500, 60", four feet deep shells.

Another factor that favors tandoor ovens is the availability of shells or housings for those ovens.  Literature suggests that concrete can survive 750 degrees Fahrenheit provided thermal shocks (gradients) are avoided and free water is carefully baked out at the first heating.  Above 750 F the concrete loses water of hydration and rapidly degrades.

Ready availability usually means economical prices.  This price schedule supplied by Northern Concrete Products.

An approximation for the bread production of a 60" diameter, tandoor oven is 1.5-to-2 loaves a minute provided it can be kept fueled.  Running around-the-clock that gives a top end production somewhere north of 2000 loaves a day....enough for 4000 people.

Why the fixation on bread ovens?
Logistics.

A cubic foot of baked bread (four, 20 oz loaves) delivers about 5500 Calories, requires special dunnage (racks) to transport and has a shelf life of about a week.

A cubic foot of bread flour (35 pounds) delivers about 70,000 Calories, does not require special dunnage and has a shelf life of about six months.

If you were the National Guard, would you rather drop off 20,000 pounds of bread flour once a month or would you rather deliver 1000 loaves of bread every day for a month?  Maybe delivering 1000 loaves every day does not sound like a big deal...but there is more to consider.

Keep in mind that a large disaster will shrink the number of foods being supplied so each food that is supplied will be eaten in larger quantities.  In normal times loaf of bread might last four days in your house.  In times of emergency that loaf of bread might supply half your daily calories and that one loaf will disappear very quickly.

Consider Columbus, Ohio is a medium sized metropolitan area with 2,000,000 people.  That noodles out to about 1,000,000 loaves of bread a day (a thousand deliveries) vs. thirty-three deliveries of flour.

Far fewer emergency workers will be pinned down delivering flour vs. bread.  They will be exposed to less hazard.  It will drive resilience, industry and "agency" down to the local level.

Tandoor Bread Ovens

Ancient Uzbek technology.

Uses anti-gravity.

Yes, Captain, the anti-gravity reactor is functioning.  Source of photo

This would be a snap to automate.  Rotate the cylindrical portion like a cement kiln.  A paddle loader to dump four rings of dough over tapered posts at a time (at about the 7:00 o'clock position). A cam driven ejector or scrapers at the top dumping the finished bread onto a slide or chute to take it out of the oven.  Louver-doors over load and unload openings.  Source

Source

Injection molding guys call that fancy stuff "boogering".  Except....the boogeringis facing the fire.  Source

Darned if I know how they get the bread dough to stick to the ceiling.  Maybe they found a use for that kid in middle school who always threw wet toiletpaper at the ceiling.

Here is an East Indian version.  Source of image Youtube!

Belladonna, this post is for you

I wonder if I can do more push-ups than Justin Bieber.  Whaddya think, Bella?

Oh, wait.  Here is a before Photoshop and after Photoshop

Overall they grew him by 14 pixels overall.  The calculated volume of his upper arms based on the increased biceps and triceps dimensions at the top-of-the-tiger shows almost 60% increase in muscle.

Dog pictures
Apologies for the blurriness.

Walk?  Did somebody say walk?  (this photo actually taken at the end of the walk...but I am sure they would be up for going again.

 

There was some kind of varmint underneath the collapsed barn.  I had to go back after the walk to rescue the little Boston Terrier.  I had to knock a hole through the roof with a pick-ax.

At least these guys would hold still.

Nice pose.  Crappy photo.

Image of German Shepherd is from WallpapersCraft