Saturday, April 18, 2009

Clearing up Confusion

Due to popular demand I have decided to make an explanation of sorts for the 'code words' I have been told that I am using. Oooops. Apologies for not explaining earlier! All burrows are marked with a tag on a strong wire pole, and vary in both numbers and letters; although all burrow markers are composed of only two values. For example, I have the 'Z' area, Z4, ZO, ZT, ZR...and so on. Tags that start with the same letter tend to be grouped together, but not always; it's just a matter of getting used to the area, and memorizing where everything is, which has been matter of course.
The vast majority of my dogs came up out of hibernation already marked, so I did not need to capture them to identify them. The ones that came up au naturale did need to be caught and marked, but as that didn't usually happen on the same day as emergence; they need to be called something before they're marked. Therefore, the 'un's' come into play. I had quite a few of those early in the season. For example, I had a dog come up at burrow X6. She was christened 'X6un' until I managed to trap her a few weeks later and she turned into HBS (Head Back Stripe).
Onto naming. The numerical system is used for the first dogs; numbers 1-49 are males, 50-100 are females. As there are less males than females, (they live shorter more violent lives), having 49 options works just fine. As far as females go, however, the numerical system comes up short, hence H (Head), BS (Backstripe), HBS (combo of the two), and also: FBS (Front Back Stipe), H6 (Head, with 6 painted on the flank), or RSBB (Racing Stripe, Black Butt)..the list goes on, but essentially the abbreviations relate to the design. We even have a WS, which stands for wetsuit...she is super cute...get back to me if you want to know what she looks like.....hope this helps!!

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