sheepdog

Well, interesting, because I don't have any knowledge in any of those critters. Unless you want to count chickens in the bird catagory, I do know my chickens! Fish I don't know the first dang thing about. We had an aquarium when I was a kid, no work to raising them that way, just have boy fish and girl fish and then you would get baby fish, which the adult fish would then eat. I remember some black mollies we had in our tank, I thought it was cool to watch them give birth. You'd see one of them sort of poop out this perfectly round ball that would start to fall towards the bottom of the tank, then about half way down it would just sort of pop open and a little fish would swim away. So, if I'm going to pick one from your list, let's go with gold fish. First question, aren't Coi a type of goldfish? So if they are they would be simular in habits. I think it would be neat to have a little ornamental fish pond with some coi or goldfish in it, so if you can tell me more about that, it would be great. I'd like to know how deep a pond would have to be, and what about freezing in the winter. A friend told me their gold fish survied outside over winter, which is surprizing since a shallow pond would freeze solid where we are. I didn't think much of anything could survive freezeing and then thawing out.

Well, learn something every day! I didn't know there even was anything like this in existance! I'm going to copy some of those address and check them out. Maybe set up an account with one of them in case I loose this tiny little flash drive. Yes, my bookmarks are important and I would be in a mess without them, and could waste hours and hours of time getting them all back again. Thanks so much for another idea that I can really use! I still want them on the flash drive though.

I'm using internet explorer, not sure these days which version, which ever one is probably outdated by now, and XP. I'm glad I finally found this post again, I forgot where I had posted it and just now found it today. Amazing I found anything today with the new formatting of Xisto.

Sure, everybody's allowed here, unless of course you are a spammer, which you proabably aren't so welcome aboard! It's a great way to earn free web hosting, and nothing like saving money any way you can!

Good Grief! I turn my back for a few days and Xisto is so different I can even figure out how to start a new post, answer an old one, or even read the list of topics that have been started because of boxes for google and twitter and face book that block the first few letters in each subject line. You have to scroll up and down to try to get around them, and then there are all those stupid underlined words that make windows pop up so you can see the screen until you stop and X them out, this REALLY SUCKS. This is definatly NOT an improvement. I hate it. Anyway, I decided to name my new dog T'Pel. That would be Tuvok's wife from Star Trec Voyager. She is getting a little better about going outside, thank god, I was about to give up on her. I am still in utter amazement about the amount of energy this dog has. Our poor mini schnauzer, who is 8 years old is doing her best to keep up with her, they just run and play and play. I'm not sure how the old dog is managing to keep up but so far she is. She is good to follow me around, but she has a few thing that she is definatly going to have to learn. She keeps running in front of the 4 wheeler when I'm riding it, and I'm afraid I'm going to run over her. And I have to make sure she is not loose where there are any cars coming in and out, since she is not afraid of them and hasn't gotten any sense about staying out of the way. And while I want her to follow me, I have to teach her that there is one place she is not allowed to follow me, and that is out in the barn yard, because the Komondors will get her, so that has yet to be resolved. Yesterday one of the Koms almost got her when she came back a second time after I put her back out of the barn yard. Anyway, thing are going pretty well with her, but we sure have a long way to go yet.

Aw, the joys of puppy raising!I finally decided that it was time I picked myself a new puppy for my own personal dog. It's been over 3 years since Ebony passed away, she was my last Standard Schnauzer, and as good a dog as I have ever had. Replacing her is just about impossible. She was my constant companion and was so dedicated to me it was almost strange. She would never be more than 5 feet away from me at any time if she had the choise.For my new puppy, I picked another Standard Schnauzer, a black one just like Ebony was. So now I am once again going threw the puppy training stuff, and honestly, I'm not liking it one bit. This little dog is the fastest pisser in the world. I swear I can be looking right at her and blink and there will be a puddle in the floor. (on the carpet of course) I just don't seem to be able to time her trips outside all that well. I am crate training her, and she is holding it over night just fine and will go when I take her out in the morning, but other than that it's really quite random, and far to frequent for me. She's nearly 5 months old so she is perfectly capable of holding it over night at least. And other than the peeing, she is doing pretty good. I really thought she would be more of a holly terror getting into things, but she learned the word NO real quick and so far is not being destructive at any rate. Our only other difficulty is that once she is loose she doesn't want to come to me. She has a ton of energy and just wants to run and run. I let her loose for quite awhile this afternoon while I was working on shelling out some more of my flower seed, so thought she would be tired enough to be willing to come into the house on her own, but no such luck. Now, if anyone has some sugestions for a good name, I'm listening. Only thing I've come up with so far is Leona, since her dad's name is Leon. But that's kind of a dumb name for a dog. I've been naming my Standards with Star Trec Voyager names, like Chakotay, Kes, Suspira, and so on, but I've used up all the good ones in that series. Maybe I should go online and find out what Tuvock's wife's name is. The dog is black with pointy ears, so that would work maybe.

Yes, I believe you are probably thinking of the right breed. They blend in perfectly in a herd of sheep. Unless of course they were black sheep, but nobody should have more than one black sheep in the herd.(or family) Their hair forms long cords, they actually resemble a giant string mop. And yes, they are definatly huge. Lets see if I can post a picture.I don't post pictures often enough that I remember how to do it. Hopefully it will show. That's my male on the right, and some pups from a previous litter. The dogs are still giving me fits. I finally got a chance to sell 2 of the older male pups, but now I can't catch them. I got them caught a few days ago, and put them in my horse trailer, but they managed to climb out and escape, and now they are so spooked they won't come anywhere near the barn. I am getting seriously annoyed with them. And since we had to move the goats to the other property, they aren't really in the mood to hang out here now. And of course, on Black friday, the day I was afraid to even go out of the house, they went down to the neighbors and were hanging out near the road, and wouldn't let her get out and go to her mail box, so she had to come and get me to go run them off. It was black friday last year I burnt my foot so bad. I had every intention of staying indoors and drinking instant tea. But I managed to survive, just nearly turned the 4 wheeler over on myself and stopped a little traffic on the highway. it was a minor miracle that the stupid dogs didn't get run over. So now we are just playing the waiting game. If they want to eat they are going to have to come back to the barn. One of the older females and one male that I was keeping came back today, but I haven't seen the others since black friday. And of course, the momma dog, she's hanging around too, thank goodness.

I wish you the very best of luck catching them. I hate these kinds of people too. Thieves are down there on the bottom of my list of disgusting humans. I h ave not even the smallest shred of respect for anyone who makes their living by taking somehting that is not theirs from somebody else. Believe it or not, I put them even below murderers, they do what they do deliberatly and on purpose. A lot of people convicted of murder acted in fits of anger, or even accidentally.

Dog can without a doubt be a real challenge. Sometimes they get the better of me. This was the case with Pippin, one of my female Komondors. I suppose I should give you a little background into this remarkable breed before someone panics and turns me in to PETA. Komondors are Livestock Guard Dogs. It is their mission in life to live out in the wild with their flocks of sheep or goats and protect them from any preditors that would threaten the life of the livestock. These are not your average little foo foo house pets. They live outside, year round, are hardy and tough and strong dogs, and quite capable of killing any threats to their charges, be it coyotes, wolves, bears, mountain lions, bob cats, or for that matter, any humans that might like to help themselves to your animals. In order to bond with their flocks, they Koms need to be born and raised right with the sheep or goats.(or whatever type of livestock you have, they can protect horses and cattle also) These dogs can never be kenneled. The very best of these dogs are born right in the barn with the livestock. I normally let them have their pups in whatever spot they choose, there was a great big dead tree in our barn yard that years ago they dug under the roots of, and I can't even imagine how many pups were born under that tree. But when Pippin came up pregnaunt this time, I knew bad weather was coming and I thought I would help her out, so I fixed up a really nice place for her to whelp. We gave an old doghouse a real good cleaning, and put it in the corner of the barn, and I got a big heating pad to put in it, and even got some plastic pipe to run the electic cord in so it would be safe from chewing. It took awhile, but I finally got her caught and put into her new pen, I placed a horse panel divider across part of the barn so she had plenty of room, and a pretty good size area outside of the barn. Just a perfect place to have pups. Or so I thought. Apparently, she didn't think so. 2 days after I locked her up she dissapeared She managed to dig out under one corner in the outside part of the pen. I searched all the places I thought she might have choosen to whelp in but there was no sign of her anywhere. Days went by and I never even caught a glimpse of her. One day last week she did appear, but before I could finish up what I was doing she slipped away and dissapeared again. So this past Saterday when she finally showed up again, this time I just dropped everything and sat and waited her out. I knew sooner or later she would head back to her pups and I figured I could follow her and find them. She was of course, pretty suspicious of me hanging around, so I tried to act casual and did some other odd jobs around the barn yard, and finally she started to slip off. I got the four wheeler threw the gate after she got a little way out of sight, but she stopped down at the pond for a drink and hung out there for awhile, I was just about afraid she wasn't going to go on to her pups. But finally she went down to the very farthest corner of our property and somehow slipped threw the fence and got over on the neighbors farm. So, I'm old and fat remember, and climbing barb wire fences is not my favorite fastime, but I really didn't have much choise in the matter. I climbed our property line fence, and started after her. She went threw the edge of the neighbors field, threw a lightly wooded corner, I nearly lost her in my slow struggles to get my fat rear end over that dang fence. Luckily, I caught just a glimpse of her as she went under another fence and into the woods, still heading away from home, and a long way too. Lucky for fat me this time the gap was big enough I could crawl under the fence too. I soon lost sight of her, but while I am no Indian tracker scout, she had been walking the same trail threw the woods for at least 2 weeks, so I was a good enough tracker to be able to follow her path. I didn't see her any more, but the trail kept going and going, so I kept following it. I actually almost walked right up on her before I saw her again. There was a very large old tree that had been blown over, root ball and all, and she was under the trunk of the tree. After a few cursory growls at me, for which I scolded her and told her she better be quiet, I was not real happy with her, she shut up and started wagging her tail at me. And there were 5 fat and healthy little pups that came toddling out to greet her. I was really surprised at how big they were, I was not expecting that at all. Their eyes were open and they are at the starting to walk around stage. And I hadn't thought to bring anything to carry them back in. So I spent the better part of an hour trying to get the pups back home. I'd gather them all up and walk until I either got out of breath or was about to drop a pup, then I'd just sit down real quick and keep them piled up around me or on my lap. The were pretty agreeable little dogs, never freaked out when I started messing with them or carrying them, and they'd stay right with me when I'd sit down. Of course, I was the very first human they had ever seen. So I thought their behaviour was excellent. It sure was a long walk back to the 4 wheeler, I was never so proud to see that thing as I was then. But at any rate, I finally managed to get them all back to the barn, though I was so tired, I think I ended up going to bed at 8 instead of my usual midnight, and I was sore and a bit brused the next day, but all is well that ends well. The pups still won't sleep in the nice dog house I fixed for them, they prefer the dirt behind the dog house, but at least they are here, and mom didn't try to lead them back off. Which I didn't think she would, but with my luck you just never know.

I hope things are settling down for you at home and there have been no more muderous accidents. Even the best of dogs can try our patience sometimes. Fortunatly, 99% of the time the good we get from our pets far outweighs the troubles. I do hope you are feeling better too. I know we have never met and probably never will get to, but from all the posts you've written I feel like I really do know you and think your a pretty good guy.

What the heck is the point in a word that long, and to me it doesn't sound at all like English. Why don't they just call it a thingamabob?

Today my Aunt sent me a link to a You Tube video that shows the lift off and landing of the Mars probe, it's pretty interesting. I wish it was a little longer and would go more into how it's taking those soil samples and analizing them and all that other stuff, but if you'd like to see it you can watch it here. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Every 30 minutes???? Really? Wow, that's a lot! I actually just got my second check from Google! But when you figure my site has had the ad sense ads on it for years, that's not really all that great. Before I got my first check I think I checked it every month or so. And really the only reason I did that is a friend of mine told me that he got really close to this $100 mark and therefore the issuing of his first Google check and some how Google "lost" his account information or some thing happened and he couldn't prove his balance, so he lost it all. So every now and then I would go in and make a print of my page that showed my earnings up to that date. Just so I wouldn't get cheated out of it. Maybe. But honestly, this last time I don't think I checked back since I got my first check from them. I wish I had a little more traffic that clicked on the ads, but I guess something is always better than nothing.

Thanks C41, I actually got that to work for me. I'm sure glad, I hate typing the same stuff over and over. Now, if I could just get the folks who have a transport company that I use all the time to fix their web site so I could use my auto fill on it I'd be happy. I guess no matter what your settings are some web sites just don't allow auto fill.

Oh now your scaring me! My breathing is going to get worse if I quit smoking???? That would really suck, it's bad right now. Does is get better in time?

Oh well, I can always hope for better I guess. Luckly I don't use Yahoo that much anyway. And I seldom have any problems with hotmail, which I use ninty nine and nine tenths of the time anyway. Thanks for explaining at it anyway. You'd think as I get older I'd have more patience, but I seem to be getting worse instead of better in that department.

Yes, there are certainly better ways to handle a cheating spouse than to resort to physical violence. Divorce comes to mind first.

Do you know what a Baker's dozen is? Many years ago the government stepped in to protect consumers. Now a days it's called the department of weights and measure. But anyway, back to the Bakers dozen. In the old days the bakers would sell you 12 one pound loaves of bread, and they were supposed to weigh exactly 12 lbs. Bakers got in serious trouble if you didn't get your full 12 lbs of bread, I think they used to cut off a hand or some barbaric thing like that. Anyway, so Bakers would give you 13 loaves of bread, in case any of them where under one pound, hence the bakers dozen is actually 13 and not 12. Today we have all sorts of government agencies regulating commerce. The Department of Weights and measures, the Food and drug adminsitration, the United States Department of Agriculture just to name a few that you better label your product accurately or you will be in deep doggie doo doo.

You know, it flabbergasts me to know that the media could probably tell you what color socks George Bush was wearing the day before he was elected last time, and they don't know one bloody thing about Obama. As I figured, not one peep have we heard from our Prez about the offer Donald Trump made him. I have a very independant nature. Every thing about Obama is completly opposite of my own personal values. I don't want to work for the government, and give them all my money, and let them take care of me. I can take care of myself thank you very much. I have no use for lazy people who want government hand outs and free food and houseing that are too damn lazy to work for it to get it for themselves. If your too lazy to work I could care less if you starve. Cold witch aint I? No, not really. Don't get me wrong, I know that sometimes things happen that are beyond your control and everybody needs a little help sometimes. that's the problem. A little help is fine, it's just that there are a lot of people out there that make it threw their entire lives depenant on government handouts. I believe in a hand UP, not handouts for life.

Ok, any of you smart, computer savy folks know how I can put my entire favorites list on a flash drive? I just bought one so I could put all the files I use frequently on it so when/if I go on vacation I can still manage sales. I can figure out how to get my work documents and notepads on it, but not the entire favorites list unless I copy each url onto a notepad or something and that would take forever. I know it can be done, cause I did it years ago and put them on a floppy disk, which nobody uses anymore, see how ancient I am, lol. I have a little bitty one (and I do mean little, it will be a miricle if I don't loose the tiny dang thing) drive that holds 16 GB. I have no idea how much that actually is.

Well, I am in the home stretch of finishing up the flower bed this year. Just waiting for the cosmos to finish up developing their last seed heads. It is a pretty hardy flower and is not completely killed out by cold tempratures and light frosts. I worked on harvesting seed a couple hours this afternoon. There are 2 or 3 small zinnias left in a sheltered spot under the cane patch, but all the rest of them are done for now. I hated having to give up on my organic gardening tendencies, but that one application of fungicide really made all the difference in the world with them this year. I still plan on burning off all the old stems and junk on the bed to keep funguses down next year, but I am going to spray it again during the next growing season. It really did help it a bunch. Then when the seed finally finishes off, I have all the canna's to dig, I may cheat a little and let the hired man help me with that job, I usually do all the flower bed work myself. The Cannas didn't do as well this year as they usually do, and I think I'm going to try an experiment next year, I'm going to put a double row of soaker hose down the bed, one row right over the cannas. I've noticed the last few years of using the soaker hoses they don't wet down a very wide area. Canna's seem to grow in direct proportion the the amount of water and sunlight they recieve. Several years ago I planted a row along the south end of a set of dog runs that have an automatic watering system for the dogs, with a drainage pipe down the center to keep the pens dry, but there is a lot of water coming under the runs that keep the lower end where the flowers were quite moist. That year I had cannas nearly 12-25 feet tall! I've never seen them so tall! What has amazed me the most was the amount of seed I got this year. I counted 39 jars, and I still have some drying and a lot of cosmos to wait on to finish maturing. Last year I think I got 7 jars for the whole season. I should have plenty left overs after reseeding it in the spring to sell some at farmers market, along with some cane roots, and of course, hopefully lots of eggs in the spring. Sure aren't getting any now, I think my chickens have gone on strike. But I will have that batch of young pullets that I just raised up so I will have several more chickens than I do now. I have another gardening experiment going on right now. I've always heard that you can take cutting off of tomato plants and get them to root if you put them in water. So right before we had the first frost, I took a bunch of clipping off the one plant I had that I set out late that was still pretty and green. Hopefully that will work, if they root and keep growing I can keep taking cutting off of them to keep them small until spring, and then hopefully won't have to buy a bunch of tomato plants. Or take the slow path and try to start them from seed, which I am not real lucky with at any rate. Anyway, winter will be here before long, bad as I hate it not much you can do about it except wish for spring to hurry up and come!

Don't know about the rest of you, but I am more than ready for this election to be over with. I have never heard such BS in my life, back and forth back and forth, This one says my opponent did this and this and supported this cause, and I won't do that, I'm on your side, I did this and that, and the other guy says no, I didn't do that, I did this, bla bla bla. But here's the thing, One of them has to be lying. If 2 people are saying totally opposite things, at least one of them has to be lying. No 2 ways about it. Now, if you were a company in this country and you developed a product, you couldn't go on television and claim that your product did all sorts of wonderful things for people if it wasn't true. The government would come down on you like stink on poo and fine you and make you stop your advertising campaigne immediatly. They would force you to provide scientific data and the reasearch you did to prove your claims of whatever it is your product is supposed to do. In many cases, it would require you to spend tons of dollars in reasearch before you were ever even allowed to put your product on the market. But then on the other hand, all these dang politicians can get up there and say pretty much whatever they want to say about their competition weather it's true or not and they can get away with it. Why is that? I wonder if it's because they are the ones making the laws? Sure would be nice to make rules and regulations and then make yourself exempt from them!

Just wanted to remind everyone to say a prayer for all the folks over on the east coast that were hit by hurricane Sandy. The flooding and wind damage looks devistating on the news today. And such a huge area hit, so many millions of people affected, this really is a disaster. I haven't heard yeet weather or not the flooding actually reach the subway tunnels in New York, they mentioned they thought it might. Complicating the disaster as if it wasn't bad enough, a full moon like we had at the time always makes the tide higher than normal to start with. I wonder if anyone thought to sweep threw the tunnels to warn all the homeless people who take shelter in those tunnels, who probably don't have TV's and weather reports sent to their cell phones who may of not known about the incoming storm.

Sorry you had to witness this. But as jlhaslip said, it is pretty much dogs being dogs. However, the first thing I want to say is that there is a great deal of difference between a cat and a child. Not only to our minds, but the mind of a dog also. Just because a dog would kill a cat, there is no reason whatsoever to think it might do the same to a child. You have labs, they are natural hunting dogs and it is bred into them to help mankind find food. There are a couple of things coming into play here you might not be aware of. I noticed you mentioned it was a windy day. I have noticed that dogs do not like windy days, it makes them anxious, and quite cranky. I see way more fighting and other bad behaviour on windy days than I do on pretty sunny days, or even cold damp rainy days, just as long as it is not windy. Never have really understood why, but it's an observation I have seen time and time again. Another thing is you have 2 young dogs that are just what we would call, coming of age. At nearly a year of age, they reaching sexual maturity and so there may be some issues of changing domint roles in your "pack." Just like a teenager who begins to rebell against the authority of their parents, juvinile dogs go threw much the same thing as they mature. This is all very bad timing of course, with you being sick and all. You sure didn't need the aggrivation. I feel pretty safe in saying that if your main concern is the children coming into the home, you really don't have a single thing to worry about, if that makes you feel better, and I hope it does. I can't however guarantee they won't kill a cat again. But they might not even ever do that again, getting warped with lawn furnature is a pretty good detriment to bad behaviour. I do hope you are feeling better.

Greetings Sorch! This really is a good place to make new friends and learn about all sorts of things. We have a wide and varied group of good people here, from computer geeks to goat farmers! The goat farmer, that would be me!