In computer news this week:

Software for dogs , and it's incredible !

I leave for a few weeks, and the computer industry goes to the dogs, literally. I have 2 dogs; a 2 year old German Shepherd, and an 18 year old cockapoo. I was feeding them a few weeks ago and I noticed a coupon in the dogfood bag for a cdrom computer game for dogs. It's called Incredible Dog Challenge from Purina, and it's free. Of course you do have to buy a big sack of Purina dog food to get it. I sent in the coupon, and when I returned from vacation it was in my mail box.

The Incredible Dog Challenge is actually one of the best computer games I've played, and the best part is that it's for humans too. There are two parts to it. The first part is a live training video with sessions on how to warm up your dog, train your dog to play Frisbee, walk between your legs, jump through your arms, and do a backflip. There's lot's of dogs barking and jumping chasing frisbees on the video, and my dogs actually sit and watch that part - they love it.

This will actually allow you to train your dog to chase frisbees and do tricks; you can bring a frisbee right to your computer with your dog and train him. Just move the office furniture back.

The 2nd part is really for humans - Play the Incredible Dog Challenge Game - which consists of 4 parts.

You get to pick a dog for this game, out of small - medium - and large. But wait - there's more. The Purina Incredible Dog Challenge game is internet interactive, and you can download a special new hotrod dog - a superdog - complete with a mask and a cape - that performs better than your stock dogs.

The first game is a jumping off a pier contest - see how far you go before the dog hits the water, and you get 3 tries. My best is 28 feet 7 inches so far.

The 2nd game is catching frisbees. You control the dogs running and jumping, and the frisbee throwing. The strategy is to run out to a place in the field where the frisbees are aimed at, and then jump and try to catch them as they come down.

The 3rd game is a dog obstacle agility course, with barriers to run through and jump over, inner tubes to jump through, and rivers to jump over. This game goes fast and takes a lot of practice.

The last game is the 4 dog flyball competition, where you run 4 dogs though an obstacle jumping course and back - and they have to jump and catch a flyball during the run.

Then when you're finished, there's an award ceremony, and your dog gets a medal and looks very proud. Then you're asked if you want to post your high score to the internet so you can have world wide bragging rights, but you have to have at least 17000 points to get posted. I'm lower than that right now, but my dogs and I are working on it. So if you hear a lot of barking and jumping in my office, and see and occaisional Frisbee come flying out the door - it's just us playing the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge.

This really is a great game and the training video is excellent. I'd recommend it both to pet and game lovers.

For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 Email: fdspokane@aol.com