sheepdog

LOL, not only am I not good at computer stuff, I'm not even really good enough to explain what it is I can't do that I need to! Somedays I think I'm pretty hopeless. But yes, that is is picture I wanted to downsize. I actually sent it in an email to another buddy of mine and somehow he resized it and emailed it back to me. He didn't even know if the program he used was standard microsoft or something he got as an add on. I tried to do what he said he did and my computer didn't have that option, so I guess it's some odd program. This stuff is all so confusing. Wish I could just stick to dogs!Thanks for helping!

Welcome Dyson to Xisto. I hope you do enjoy the forums. Tell us a little more about yourself, your interests, hobbies, are you going to have a web site hosted, and if so, what kind of web site are you going to have?

Welcome Vicki!This is certainly a good place to make friend and exchange information. Xisto covers a very wide range of topics from people all over the world. I'm sure you'll be able to make lots of friends and discover some great stuff too. Welcome aboard!

Been butchering chickens all afternoon, I'm now down to 3 live birds left in the pen, from my first hatching this summer. I still have another group coming on, but it will be a couple months before they are ready to start in on. A few years ago I got the hubby one of those grills that has a smoker on one end. I really can't get him to use it all that often, since it is time consuming and a bit of a hassel to smoke chickens and such in it, it takes a lot of hours and you can't really just go off and leave it. But when I butchered the last round, I conned him into smoking 3 chickens. OH My God, were they ever GOOD!!!! I probably shouldn't even tell this on myself, but I managed to eat ONE WHOLE CHICKEN all my myself!! (that was for dinner, one sitting and I wolfed down a whole bird) I picked the middle size bird and just put the whole thing on my plate, and fixed one flour tortilla to eat with it. Hubby only managed to eat half of the smaller bird. I polised off the other half of his for lunch the next day, and we shared the last bigger bird for dinner that night. I wish I could talk him into to using the smoker more often, but then again, maybe it's just as well I can't, I'd end up weighing 300lbs!

Ah Ha! Thought so. Wanna know what gave you away as to your not being a complete novice? You mentioned taking her temprature before I did, and there just aren't many people that would of known that otherwise. I used to raise bulldogs, so I have assisted my fair share of c-secs. All our vets in this area expect the breeders to help, when those puppies start coming out it's all hands on deck to get their airways cleared, get them moving and breathing and woke up from the anestetic they get from mom just before they come out. It can get rather hectic for a little while. One winter day when the roads were bad, my vet actually came here instead of me dragging a large in labor dog threw the cold to his place. We did a c-sec on her on my kitchen table. She had one huge pup in her. That dog happened to be a Dogue De Bordaux. (or the Turner and Hooch dog) I sure understand about forgetting things! Now when someone asks me a horse questions I really have to stop and think about it before I can answer. All these years of dog stuff has pushed the horse knowledge to the dusty back shelves of my brain. But don't worry, when the time comes it will probably all come back to you. I'm really quite glad your here and going threw this. Sometimes I feel as worthless as teats in a boar hog around here, knowing nearly nothing about computers like I do, so this gives me a chance to contribute something for a change that is right up my alley.

Sounds like you really have the situation under control. Sure you haven't done this before? Most labs are long removed from their hunting heritage, as are most dogs today bred away from what they were originally bred for. Much as I love them, I don't know of a single Old English Sheepdog that will still herd or protect sheep. Of course, now they can devote their attention to caring for human babies, for which they do a wonderful job. One of our pups taught his owners grand children to walk, they would pull themselves up on to their feet by his hair, and then hold on to him for balance and he would walk them a few steps. Yes, any color can occur, it all depends on what is in the background of your dog. If there are a lot of yellow or chocolate dogs in their backgrounds, you can get colors other than black. It is black that is dominant though. I had a beautiful blue male Standard Poodle years ago, he never threw a single blue pup, all were black.

I really can't answer your question, I have no idea where such a foolish notion came from! Maybe from the same mind set that thinks our goverenment should protect us and care for us in every form and fashion? Who cares about freedom, just keep me safe mentality! Of course, once the kids are in public school the education they get helps to foster this notion that we need big government to keep us. And now is when I am going to miss anwiii, as he isn't here to bust my chops over this post!

I think UND3R's advice is very good. Hang in there. Be patient and spend time with her as much as you can without being pushy about it. It's ok to say something short like, "I hate to see you wasting your time with that bum" but don't nag about it and don't mention it all the time. Just so she knows without a doubt how you feel, so when she wakes up and sees what a jerk he is, she will remember you told her and she will know she can come to you for comfort/friendship when the inevitable break up occurs. (and please, avoid the "I told you so thing when it happens") But if you nag her about it, she is not going to want to hang around you, so play it cool. Women are actually pretty stupid when it comes to men. (I'm a woman, so it's ok for me to say that.) The more their friends tell them they should give some bum they are dateing the brush off the more likely they are to stay with the slob. Honestly I have no idea why, but that's just the way it works. Good luck!

Oh yes, I absolutely belive it. I heard of one case where a PETA member had to have the court system put a stop to his attempt to donate one of his young child's kidneys to a sick baboon! I've heard countless stories of people who hassel homeless people on the street that have dogs with them, they try to take the dogs away from the homeless people and get the dogs in a "better" home. They don't give a rats hind end about the poor homeless person, just save that poor dog! There are some really sick people in this world.

I'm not the most familiar with Lab genetics, but I believe black is a dominant color, and most likely all the pups will be black. But I could be wrong. And labs can have have very large litters, a dozen is not unheard of or all that uncommon, but honestly, I'd way rather have 6 fat healthy pups than a dozen scrawny ones. Hopefully the fire works will be over soon, that could really be stressful for her. I take it she's not from hunting bloodlines that would be thrilled and happy about the sound of gunfire. I did see your post in the vent too. I'm sure things will be fine, most of the time they are. But I will check in here frequently to help you if you need it. Another tip.Don't hover! Dogs are very sensitive to their owners feelings. If you are nervous about the impending whelping, your dog will know it and it can cause problems for her. I really feel that a large percentages of the c-sections are not the fault of the dog, but the fault of the owner for making th dog nervous. Dogs can up to a point, control or stop their labor. If you make her nervous, she can hold off having pups, and this will throw her hormones all out of wack, and she may not be able to easily resume labor when things calm down. Even if your dog loves you very much and is your best friend, it's her natural instinct to be alone in a quiet place to have pups. Try your best to remain calm, and if possible, watch from a bit of distance and don't hover over her.

Well, I could of saved you a lot of time on the phone, NEVER call the human society groups if you have a dog problem. All you will get is an *bottom* eating for allowing your dog to get pregnaunt when supposedly so many dogs are dying in shelters because they can't find homes for them. (yet most rescue groups are begging at the doors of breeders for unsold pups and small breed adult dogs that they want you to give them for free so THEY can sell them) If it's any consolation, 99% of the time dogs manage their deliveries with no complications. I will make it a habit for the next few days to check into the pet forum frequently, if you have a problem, I can probably help. And if you have any questions between now and the delivery, just ask away.Here's a tip for you. You can tell when your dog is within 24 hrs of delivery by taking her temprature. Take it morning and evening. It will drop drasticly within 24 hrs of delivery. Normal is 101-102 for a dog. It can drop a full 2 degrees pre whelping.

Today on the radio I heard them telling about PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Anmimal, for those of you not familiar with the abbreviated name, newest lawsuit. They are sueing Sea World under the Thirteenth Amendment, which if you are not up on your constitution, shame on you, but it's the amendment prohibiting slavery. They claim Sea World is violating the constitutional rights of KILLER WHALES by keeping them captive and having them perform shows at the park, in other words, claiming they are slaves. Those PETA patters are absolutly nuts. Our constitution is for HUMANS!!! Not animals. While I certainly believe animals should be treated humanly, to give them human rights is just way over the top! The sad part of all this is that if some liberal bleeding heart judge even lets this come to trail, look at the money and effort that will be wasted. PETA gets it's money from little old ladies in part, who honestly believe they are helping poor little animals, and have no idea that PETA funds such riduculous court cases such as this one. And Sea World will have to be out thousands of dollars in lawyer fees defending their business. That just gets tacked on to the price of an admission ticket and hurts everyone who would like to enjoy the park. I hope this case gets thrown out before it ever has a chance to come to trial.

Weird, I got that same error message, or one something like that at any rate a few days ago when I tried to log in to check my mycents total. Freaked me out! But it just happened the one time, I tried again the next day and it didn't do it.

I wanted to make a link graphic to put on my web site in support of the Common Sense Coalition Radio Talk Show, http://www.commonsensecoalitiontalkradio.com/chronicle.htmlI was able to save the top part of that page to a file on my computer to make the banner, however, when I open it in photo draw, the file is too big, and my program won't load the picture. I don't have a clue as to what to do. I can't get it to open in anything else, I even tried emailing it to myself so I could work it over, but nothing is working and I'm at a total loss as to what to do. Photodraw is the only editing program that I have, aside from the one that my camera came with, and I tried putting it in that program, but that didn't work either. Sure could use some help here!

I'm not aware of any data or studies that would suggest that the blood types of the parents have any bearig on the sex of the offspring. Ph factors in utro, timeing of the mating, genetics, etc would all have a lot more to do with determining the sex of the child instead of the blood.

Well, sounds to me like she does care a lot about you at least. Maybe she was just scared off a little by you proposing. Give her some time, keep seeing each other and see what happens. Your still young, you have lots of time, and no use rushing into something as permenent as marriage if your both not 100% completely ready for that kind of commitment.

rpgsearcherz, you are probably right. All our lives we are taught to ignore bullies in the hopes that they will tire of their silly games and will eventually go away and leave us alone when they don't get the desired result from their bullying. There is just one problem with that idea. Look at all the crap you have to put up with until they get tired of hasseling you! I personally have a pretty low tollerance for putting up with other people's BS. So for me, it works better to cut them hard and quick and make them look like an idiot, they will much sooner realize that you are no fun to hassel and they will leave you a long a lot quicker than if you just ignore them. Saves you from have to put up with all that BS.

Well, you wouldn't nessarily have to be, but I suspect you probably would be if you ran your business the same way you ran your life, which most people do. Christian values include things like not lying, cheating or stealing, so if you wanted to have a good business you would have to follow those principles wether you were technically a Christian or not.

What a damn shame you got pregnaunt before you found out what an *BLEEP* he is. You can't make him care about you if he doesn't. This is a very sad situation any way you look at it. I hope things work out for you.

Nice, very nice actually. I was impressed especially with the butterfly one. That's because for the past few weeks the butterflys have really been swarming my cosmos flowers and I have wanted to take pictures of them sitting on a flower, and have found it next to impossible to catch them with their wings open, they are always folded up and not very pretty when I try to snap the pictures. The big bovines, are those water buffalo? We don't have any critters around here that look like that. That's probably my favorite shot, I love the bird sitting on one of their backs.

I am starting to know how our former President Bush feels. It's just amazing what I get the blame for, even when I'm innocent. Couple weeks ago I get a not very nice email from a puppy customer complaining because I hadn't mailed them their dogs registration papers. So I emailed them back and apoligised, since I do often forget about that sort of thing. Anyway, I had to ask them for the date of birth the pups were born, and any information they had from when they picked up the pup, or had it sent to them. I honestly didn't remember the people, but that doesn't mean anything, I don't remember people under the best of circumstance. Sure, I can look at one of my dogs and tell you who the grandmother was, but don't ask me to pick out a puppy customer from last week in a police line up cause I probably couldn't do it. While I don't always send off for the registration papers and frequently send pups to their new home without them, I do always give the people a shot record, and the date of birth and the sire and dam information are on those records. Anyway, I finally heard back from them, and they told me that I had named the male puppy one name, and the female another, and they gave me the date of birth. So no I'm really starting to scratch my head and wonder what's going on. For one thing, I never name my pups, I leave that for their new owner. And for another, after I checked my records, I didn't have a litter of pups of that breed born on the day they said. I thought maybe they hadn't read the shot record right. So I really started digging. I went threw all my old airbills, and all my sold puppy notes. I even went to my Pay Pal account and went back over 6 months to see where they had made a payment on the pup. I did a search of my email account, and while I found several emails that we had exchanged back and forth, there was no kind of finialization email, like one that said "ok, we sent you the deposit," or "ok, we will be there on such and such day to pick up the pups." Nothing, not a dang thing. After hours of digging threw every possible thing I might be able to find a connection from, I finally had to email them again and try to explain my delema to them, I figured I was really going to catch hell over it, I was sure they figured I was trying to scam them or cheat them out of their papers, but I just can't send out dog registration papers to anybody that asks for some and have to do things right. So, finally a few days ago I get an email back from them. They apoligised profusly. Turns out I was not the breeder they bought the puppies from!!!! Sheeesh! Can you believe that one?

I am really pleased with the new variety of Zinnias I tried this year, the Candy Cane mixed colors. I actually got the seed from someone at the swap meet that had a whole big box full of outdated seed selling it cheap, so I was actually just glad that it grew to start with. You never know with old seed how it will do. Sometimes you get lucky, and in most cases, you buy it cheap enough if it doesn't come up you haven't lost much to start with. I would highly recomend this variety to anyone interested in flower landscaping and gardening. They are a pretty mix of color on each individual flower. They really hold up well after blooming, the flowers seem to stay pretty and last and last without wilting down like most flowers that fade just days after blooming. Since I am saving them for seed, I have been watching for the blooms to fade so I know the seed will be mature and viable for next year. Because of that, I have noticed with this variety a very intersting thing I've never known of any kind of flower to do before. It seems that the original bloom stays, but in the center of the flower, new bright colored flower petals continue to sprout out of the original flower bloom. I'll put a picture below of one of the flowers with just the first few new petals coming out of center. In this next picture, you can see one of the blooms that has developed a full and complete center flower, you can just still barely see the older, and still fairly nicely colored and unfaded bloom around the outer edges of the new bloom. I really think these flowers are just amazing.While I was out taking pictures this morning, I thought I should go ahead and take one for you guys of my main flower bed. It's 194 feet long, so getting it all in a good picture isn't so easy. The Cosmos has really gone wild and is blooming like crazy. Just too bad it waited till so late in the growing season to start making a showing. You can also see two of my cane patches that I started a few years ago, on the right side of the picture, near the beginning of the flower bed, and the other smaller one down at the end of the driveway, on the left. It's a lot smaller patch, and has never grown as well due to the very poor quality soil, or should I say lack of soil, it's mostly rock and clay down there. Of course, our Schnauzer had to get in the picture.

How do you know? Well, a lot of that depends on your age. If your just 6 or 7 years old, she may throw rocks at you! But yes, from what you've said, she probably does like you. Be friendly, non demanding, show interest but don't be pushy, and see where it goes.

Welcome to Xisto! This is about the best place for getting free web hosting there is, I've had my site hosted here for several years now. Not only hosting service, but the people here are really knowledgable about compters and web sites and that kind of stuff so if you ever need help you can sure get that here too. Now me personally, I don't know beans from apple butter about computers, so I can't help you there, but if you ever have a dog realated questions, that I can help with. What kind of web site are you going to have?

Well, the 2011 growing season is rapidly approaching it's end. A hard freeze is predicted for this thursday. I sure hope it hold off, but I probably won't get that lucky. I got a fair amount of Zinnia seed this year, early on, but for some reason, my cosmos was very slow to start blooming. It's actually just now in the past 2 weeks really kicked in gear and started blooming like crazy. I am just afraid that it's not going to have time to set good viable seed for next year before it gets froze out. I've never seen it take so long to bloom before. So I'm holding my breath on those. The merrygolds were slow too, they are just now starting to bloom too. I did notice I have at least 4 distinctive different types of merrygolds grown, some orange, some yellow, some tall and yellow, and some red/orange mixed. All are really pretty. I'll try to save the seed seperatly to see how it does next year. My big failure this year, as usual, is my white cosmos. For I don't know how many years now I've tried to propagate more of the white. My bed is mostly the light purple, probably 60% and then 29% dark purple, and one percent white. Every year I save white seed, and every year when I plant that white seed, it grows up purple for the most part. I planted a large bed of white seed this spring, and guess I got it planted too thick or something, and though I transplanted out a lot of it, 99% of the bed ended up dying off before it ever bloomed. It's getting pretty frustrating. I guess it doesn't breed true to color. My new variety of zinnia, Candy Cane, did nicely, I just had a tub full of those planted, I'll attatch a picture of them. I've been watching the last of the blooms, trying to wait until they were fully mature before I harvest them for seed, and I am amazed at how long they hold their flowers and keep good colors to the blooms. As a matter of fact, they almost seem to be blooming out more from the center of the original bloom with new petals! They are pretty amazing. I think they are going to make a great addition to future years of flower bed plantings. The Sean Connery Cosmos were a bit of a dissapointment. The blooms were beautiful, but they set practicly no seed whatsoever. I only got maybe 4-5 blooms that made seed. I do hope it's not a hybred, I tried looking it up but couldn't find any information on them. Maybe I'll have better luck with those next year, at least, if they aren't hybred, as I did get a few seeds.