Happy Birthday Zeppo!

We have been helping to take care of the dog of a neighbor of ours who is ill. This dog is an 70-pound Airedale and quite a handful. His name is Zeppo. (Personally, Lisa and I think he looks more like a Harpo, but we didn't get to name him.)

Poor Zeppo has a lot of energy and hasn’t been getting out too much. When we walk him around the neighborhood we’ve been having to keep him on the leash, since he’s not our dog and we don’t want to risk having him run off (not to mention it’s not strictly legal, of course, outside of designated off-leash areas; and until last Sunday there was no such thing in Somerville).

So on Friday, March 17, which happened to be St. Patrick’s Day, we took Zeppo to the nearest real dog-park, near the corner of Chestnut and Park St. in North Reading. I took a couple of video clips on my Nokia 6256i cell phone and now I’ve uploaded them to YouTube, which kindly supples the <embed> code needed.

These mark the very first videos I've uploaded anywhere. I chose YouTube because unlike Google Video, it doesn't make you wait while someone "approves" your uploads.

So here they are!

Zeppo running around:

Zeppo playing fetch:

Sadly, the YouTube 3g2-to-Shockwave processing seems to leave quite a bit to be desired ... They're coming out a lot choppier than they should. When I play the originals in QuickTime they aren't choppy at all. I'll have to find a way to convert them from 3g2 to something else and then upload them again.

Also, they are extremely tiny. You're better off watching them here and clicking this little button: to play them original size. They're still choppy but slightly more watchable.

Yes, they are the world's lamest videos, but the upside is, they're short!

Categories: dogs, pets, friends, dogparks, playing, fetch, zeppo, videos, clips, videoblogging, videoblogs, vlogs, web2.0, personal, regional, local, bostonarea, byjjmg