sheepdog

You know, that is actually very good advise! Thanks. I suppose it certainly isn't going to hurt anything if I yak about dogs (or goats or gardens) since nobody has to read it. And maybe someday some other dog person or farmer will come along and will feel more at home with somebody else here to talk about something other than computers. Certainly worth some consideration.

See, this is what bugs me. Now we sit and play with our gizmo's and do not interact with other humans on a direct and personal level. Kids don't get on their bikes and ride to the playground to play with their friends. Humans are CONSTANTLY "in touch" with each other, but not together, and if your sending that many texts per day as some teenagers do you are definalty in constant contact. Doesn't anybody feel the need for some space occasionally? Just a few minutes where nobody can bug you? Just some nice quite time by yourself where your thoughts are your own? I live for those moments. Am I weird? I love road trips where I can drive for mile and miles with just my own company. No cell phones for me thank you. Another thing that scares me is that we are being conditioned to be acustom to not actually owning anything, and spending all our money on these basicly worthless gadgets. I've been hearing a lot lately about being in the cloud. We will be paying for things like books, music and movies but we won't own them, they will be in a "cloud" stored on somebody somewhere's computer, but we will have no tangable property. So the wind comes along and blows the cloud away and what do you have to show for the money you have spent on these kinds of products? We can say that technoligy is here to help us, and to make our lives easier all we want to, but I really have some serious doubts that it's the truth.

As the saying goes, you learn some thing new every day. Today I got a real eye opener. I was always under the impression that the Better Business Bureau was a legitimate, honest and reliable way to check up on a company. They were I thought, supposed to be a non profit organization to help protect the consumer. Unfortunalty, I just discovered that's not the way it is. We had quite an in depth discusion about the Better Business Bureau on my dog board today. It seems they have been calling trying to sign up some area breeders. Which in itself is hypocritical, since they were supporting proposition B but anyway, it seems that all you have to do to become "accredited" by the BBB is pay them $300!!!! That's right folks, you can BUY into the good graces of the BBB! Now what kind of a crock of Poo Poo is that? Seems to me to be defeating the purpose of giving out non biased information about a business. I would hardly trust their opinion on any business after hearing all that. What a sneaky, underhanded way to do business! Somebody should turn them in to the Better Better Business Bureau!

Of course you should!Visit my web site and just pick one out! http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ I have every type of home security types you might need, from tiny ankle nipper size to kill 'em and bury them in the back yard size. No home should be without one! Nice thing about these is they are also portable, you can take one with you just about anywhere you go for personal protection. Or get two, one to go with you and one to guard the castle while you are away.

Eeek, I think my cast iron stomack has finally rusted! All my life I've been able to eat just about anything that didn't eat me first, but boy the last 4 days have been awful! I have had indegestion for 4 days, and bad too. Acid reflux, constantly belching and passing gas, stomack cramps, and just felt like crap. No matter what I eat it makes my stomack hurt. All I wanted to do was sleep, one day took an afternoon nap, got up for a few hours and went back to bed, and even slept all night, which is really odd for me. Only had trouble sleeping the first day of what ever this is, that night I couldn't sleep for haveing nightmares. Both the hired hands have been feeling punny last week, but their symptoms are a little different than mine, so I'm not sure if this is just a bug going around or if it's just me. I sure hope what ever it is get over with soon!

Nice pictures! The poultry one gave me ideas!By the way, was the turkey in the picture Thanksgiving dinner? I could use those cane polls to do a roof simular to the one in the picture. But that got me to thinking, I wonder what kind of grass is used to make "thatch?" The stuff they use to make roofs out of. It surely has to be some sort of tough, rot resistant grass. I can't really think of any grass types that grow around here that wouldn't rot down very quickly. After a couple lousy days of weather, we finally got another decent day so I got really ambitious. Finished cutting the cane, and dug the last of my canna roots. Now the only big project left is the burning of my poor pathetic flower bed. My zinnias get fungus, so I thought burning it this time might help that problem. This was the worst year it ever had. It was so bad I didn't even get enough seed back to plant it again next year. This spring I used 17 jars of flower seed, and this year I have only harvested 5 jars. Last year I could go gather the flower heads for seed and pick a bucket full almost ever trip, this year I never got even one bucket half full. Even my cosmos, which normally makes tons of seed had these weird underdeveloped little flower heads. It is going to be a real challenge to plant it next spring. I'm going to have to do some serious planing. I'm hoping to get the hubby to get me a truck load of saw dust so I can lay a strip down the back side of the bed so it isn't as wide. And I can put my canna's back in it, they haven't been in it for the last couple years, so that will take up some space. LOL, maybe I will have to sneak a few tomatoe plants in it! I tried to make some cuttings from a wave petunia, and for awhile they looked like they were going to survive, but this week several of them croaked, so that idea is out. Every year I try a few new varieties of flowers, this year it was Irish Poet, Bachlor Buttons, and Cosmos Red Crest. I did get quite a bit of the Cosmos Red Crest seed, but it was a bit of a dissapointment as it looks almost identical to the orange cosmos, I was hoping it was going to be a lot more red. The Irish poet is a pretty little orange flower, but very difficult to save the seed from, about the time it matures, it makes this fluffy little downy fuzz that carries it away. If I don't kill it this winter, I can put my big potted Angel Trumpet plant out in the flower row and I have a couple concrete sheepdogs I can put on either side of it to take up some space, and then put a few low growing plants around the base of them. Hopefully I will have a bunch of moss ross volunteer plants come up from a tub I planted this year, I think those would be pretty around the big planter. Anyway, I have all winter to figure something out.

I definatly agree with you on this one. The word Troll springs up from the lips of anyone who seems to be on the loosing end of an online debate, no matter how factual and relavent and accurate the supposed "trolls" opinion may be. I try to resevere the word troll for those annoying humans that just pop up and start blasting foul language or excedding stupid comments, like someone who comes into a G rated chat room and asks if anybody want to suck his ____ well, you get the idea. Anything for shock value. What ever it takes to get a rise out of people and create a nusance. I personally don't understand this mentality.

Actually, this might be a good time to try a couple more pictures. One is taken at the front of the house, if you read my roadrunner post, this is one of them sitting on our bulldozer. The other one was taken right out by back door of my back yard. As you can see we are surrounded by wild life.

Oh yes, we definatly got rain. Better that then snow of course. Your being 2 hours north is almost like being in a different country from where I am. We live in a pecular area, just 8 miles north of our place there is a line where the climate changes considerable in just that short distance. My vet is 25 miles north of me, and I don't know how many times I was comfortable at home and then gone to his place and feel like I'm freezing. It's always a few degrees warmer here, or rain instead of snow. I think we are actually more likely to have whateve weather Arkansas is having than north Missouri.

Beautifully put! Not all things can be asigned a dollar value. Things that bring us joy and friendship bring a value to our lives that cannot be boiled down to dollars and cents.

Aggression in dogs, very good subject, and also very complex. In recent history, one of the important problems breeders worked to correct was aggression in dogs. Most dog do not play the same role in our lives that they did hundreds, or even thousands of years ago. Breeders deliberately bred out bad temperaments in a lot of breeds that otherwise would be a menace to society. For most dogs living in human society, having good manners is an absolute necessity. Pet dogs need to be friendly and easy going and able to adapt to the congregations of mass humanity they now find themselves in. It would seem that for the most part, aggression would not be a good thing, but there are many times when it is wanted and needed. My aforementioned reference to the Komondor in the previous post about why to have a dog, that protect my goats is one example where aggression is a wanted and desired trait. Dogs that protect us in our homes and cars and when we walk down the street are another perfectly reasonably time to have aggression in dogs. There are those who don?t believe in owning guns, in which case a dog can provide protection nearly as effective as having a gun. (personally I have a gun and a dog, so I?m unlikely to end up as a victim.) Would you trust your dog with a baby or small children? This can only be answered as a case by case basis. Not all dogs are trustworthy around children. The vast majority of dogs will not tolerate ear tugging and eye gouging by toddlers. There are however quite a few dogs that will tolerate it, and those canines can make the finest baby sitter you will ever have. Most will not only tolerate bad behavior from children, but will defend their tiny charges with their very lives. I have a ?fun? page on my web site where I collect funny dog cartoons and other jokes.http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ If you scroll down about three quarters of the way down the page you will see the start of the ?hug a baby? series of pictures. I think it?s just really cute! And maybe a bit scary when you think about it. Especially for anyone afraid of dogs to start with. I?m sure the parents were taking the picture and knew the dog and knew what to expect. I don?t know this particular dog, but I am real familiar with the breed itself, it?s a Neapolitan Mastiff. I?d be willing to bet that if anybody prospective child nappers approached that baby that the dog didn?t know, they would not live long enough to bother the baby. The right dog in the right circumstances can be a great thing. There are also different types of aggression. What is usually called food aggression is to my way of thinking, not even a true form of aggression. It is part of the instinct for survival and self-preservation that is hard wired into the dogs from the time of survival of the fittest was the way they lived. If a dog does not get his share of the food, he will not live. Just because his kibble bowl is never empty, he still has a few thousand years of evolution telling him that he must have and protect that food. There are also ?temporary? forms of aggression. A mother dog with a newborn litter that otherwise is as gentle as a lamb may turn aggressive when someone approaches her new litter. I still remember the only time in my life I ever saw my father run was when he went to see my new litter of Airedale pups my dog had just had. He was a big Airedale fan, had one as a boy, and wasn?t thinking when he approached her in his eagerness to see the new pups. She sure put him on the move! But this too is part of dog?s natural instincts for survival. There are also learned forms of aggression. Dogs that are tormented by certain types of humans, like children or ethnic groups can develop a serious dislike for that type of human. Case in point. My original Komondor female was wonderful with all baby animals, and she also liked most children, she would romp and play and wrestle with our step son, who was about 4 or 5 years old, but for awhile when she was a puppy we had a woman staying with us that had a small, 2 or 3 year old blonde headed boy. He used to throw rocks and sticks at her. For the rest of that dog?s life I could never trust her around small blonde children. She was great with bigger kids, and even dark haired youngsters. But she never forgot that one brat. And by the way, she did get her vengeance on him when she grew up, and managed to do it without even hurting him. He was bugging the daylights out of me one day, I was trying to milk and the brat was jumping around, making a racket and making the goats nervous, and they were about to dump the milk. I repeatedly told him to get back and leave me alone, but he would keep coming back and would not listen to me at all. After about the third time of me telling him to get back, my dog suddenly appeared at my side. She opened her mouth and took his entire arm in her mouth. She shut her mouth down just enough to hold his arm, never even broke the skin, and for about 30 very long seconds she just stared with those big evil yellow eyes into his face. Then she let him go. Scared the living daylights out of that rotten brat. He left quickly. Waited till he got far enough away and started screaming his little head off for his mommy. I loved it. He really had it coming. Aggression can also be a good thing if it is properly channeled. Our old Giant Schnauzer would kill my rabbits if she could get to them.. Not a good thing. However, when we impressed upon her that the rabbits were not to be killed, we later taught her that it was ok to kill rats. She became the finest rat killing dog in the area, and never even thought about bothering rabbits again. Training is the key to it all. A dog has to learn right from wrong. What they can and cannot do in our society. It is up to the owner to train his dog. And picking the right breed to start with also plays an important part in having a dog in our lives. That is why humans have developed over 400 different purebred breeds of dogs. And one of the reasons I have a real problem with today?s current fad of designer dogs. When you mix two different breeds together you have no way of knowing anything about the size, temperament or anything else about the dog. If you have specific needs in a dog, always consider a purebred first. So, yes, a dog can be dangerous. But they can also be a life saver. Just depend which side of the teeth you are on.

Thanks, I have toyed with the idea of blogging,and I do enjoy writing, but truth be told, I have enough trouble keeping up enough posts here to keep up my web site hosting. I went over 2 months without even updating my web site. Which when you consider that's how I make money, it's not a good idea to leave it get behind. I don't think I could ever bear to live in the concrete jungle. I'm just not geared that way. I have plants and animals surronding me every day of my life, I take much of the enjoyment I get from the living things around me. Many times I find myself out in the goat pasture just standing and watching the goats. It's relaxing and refreshing and so peacefull and satisfying. I get a great feeling of contentment being outdoors and around the critters.

ROTFLMAO!!! Oh, good one! Now thats and angle I hadn't even thought of to campaign for Sara! And to think I just liked her because she is the only politician I know that could field dress a moose!

It was a normal size mouse, not a real huge one, but certainly I would of thought too big to fit thew one of the connection holes. Your mention of the roaches trying to commit suicide reminded me of something I saw once at a friends house that was even more embarrassing than my dead mouse. Their phone had quite working and the repairman was there, when he took the cover off the phone it just exploded with cockroaches, it looked like a roach explosion, thousands of them went running when he exposed their hiding place. That was by the way, why their phone wasn't working. Yuck.

Thanks for posting some of the Wikileaks. I have been hearing tons about this on the news, yes, it's made every news media out there for sure. I haven't bothered to go read up on them, been a bit busy for that so I'm glad you posted a few of them. I personally think it's kind of funny. Our government wants to access all of it's citizens private emails and telephone messages, but boy, they sure don't like it when it happens to them! So in that way is serves them right. Also, I have a very simple policy in my life. Never say anthing behind a persons back you wouldn't say right to their face. It may not be politically correct, but since I don't have a political correct bone in my body anyway, it works real well for me. If you don't like somebody, either keep your mouth shut, or just tell them you don't care for their company and they will hit the road and leave you alone. Problem solved. Why keep secrets and the back stabbing garbage going on? It's just unnessisary.

Today has been a rainy dismal day, not fit for much of anything, other than work on my hosting credits here, there's always that. And I decided I need to learn how to post pictures with my messages, so this post is also part experiment. We had a couple pretty nice days before it turned yuky today, so I took advantage of the nicer days and started my cane pole cutting. This is the first year I have cut the poles down in the fall after the growing stoped and they died back. The plantings were pretty new, just been about a couple years, my vet had given me a bucket full of starts and I had planted them all over the place. They grow really tall and one of the reasons I hadn't cut them back in previous years was that even after they die back they still are rather attractive plants, with their tall stalks and feathery tops. I have been dreaming up all sorts of projects that I can make with the poles. Aside from the obvious use as a fishing pole, I think they will make really nice shades. I want to rebuild a little arbor that I bought some years ago at Big Lots, it's pretty but cheaply made, it lasted a lot longer than I expected it to by now it's in pretty rough shape. I have some fairly well established clematis plants on either side of it, so I have to put something back there for it to grow on. I think I will rebuild it from scratch, using cedar poles we can cut here, and the cane for a shade on top. I think it will look pretty cool when I get it done. I would also like to build a concrete bench to set under it. Now, if I can get the picture to post, if you look real close at the planting, you can see a dog pen panel behind the plants. From the base of the concrete to the top of the panel is 5 feet, so you can get a pretty good idea of just how huge this plant gets.

Yea, sometimes I can be a little slow on the uptake. I never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. It does seem kind of odd though that they finally showed up after I made the post in this thread. I kept putting off making it, knowing it was a holiday and all, but I figured after a whole week it was time to say something.

You?ve covered quite a few of the useful things humans need dogs for. There are a few others I would also like to add. I am also a goat farmer, so I keep Komondor dogs out with my goats. They protect my goats from ANYTHING that might bother them. I can sleep well at night knowing nothing is going to bother my goats and live to tell about it. In most parts of the United States, it would be impossible to raise sheep or goats due to coyotes, or even stray dogs. Or neighbors who live in the country and think it?s cool to let their dogs run free. Did you know that dogs have also been trained to detect cancer? There was a Standard Schnauzer named George that after being retired from military use as a bomb-sniffing dog, was retrained by his owner with the help of a dermatologist to detect melanomas. George was so good that he most likely saved one man?s life. George insisted that a mole on the man?s body was cancer. The mole had been checked by three separate doctors and biopsied twice, the doctors insisted it was not malignant, however, George continued to insist so the mole was removed, and was dissected a microscopic slice at a time until in the very center of the mole, ONE cancer cell was finally discovered! George?s success rate was 99.7%! I seriously doubt there is any high tech expensive laboratory equipment that has that good of an accuracy rate. There are many other instances of pet dogs with no special training what so ever, that have alerted their owners to various health problems, remember a dog?s sense of smell is something like 220 million times stronger than a human?s. We also have dogs that are trained as seizure alert dogs, for those with epilepsy. Now, aside from all those useful things you and I have come up with, we still haven?t covered the average everyday pet dog that you see in probably three quarters of all the household in America. Yes, their maintence can be expensive. They do require food and medical care occasionally. Toys and bowl and other equipment all all needed. And yes, left unatended they can be destructive if not properly trained. But the fact of the matter is, they are just good company! Your dog is never going to be unhappy to see you come home. Your dog will always love you no matter how you feel or what kind of a mood you are in or how bad your day has been. They are committed to you and are stead fast in loyality, a trait not that frequently found in our fellow humans. They give us purpose. Did you know that studies have proven that dogs are a benetfit to our health? Elderly dog owners in general live longer than their counterparts that do not have a dog. When you are upset, just sitting and petting a dog can lower your blood pressure. Of course, getting out to walk your dog has the benefits that your dog is not the only one getting exercise. Dog give a lot of their owners a reason to get out of bed in the morning when otherwise they might not have the will power to do so due to illness or even just depression. There are numerous cases of autistic children who never responed to any outside stimuli that actually would respond favorable when exposed to a friendly, cuddly dog. They can give children confidence, and teach them about responsibility. So, it?s pretty much a no contest when it comes to the benefits of owning a dog as to not having one. Our relationship with our canine friends continues to develop and grow and prosper, even if snow mobiles have replaced dog sleds and high tech gadgets provide home security. (personally, I?ll trust my dog with my personal security before I?d trust technoligy anyway.) Dogs will continue to prove their worth to us without a doubt. Now if only those dummys at TSA would figure this out and get a bunch of dogs working at airports. I?d sure rather be sniffed by a dog than groped by a government employee!!!

Let's cull your list a bit shall we?First off, lets just say polution is a problem. Just one polution please. No fair counting it as 4 different problems. As I see it, the big one here is poverty. If you weren't living in poverty you would have money to buy food. If you buy healthy food, and take care of yourself, disease would also be a lot less of a problem too. And of course, your medical care would be much better if you aren't living in poverty. You could afford doctor visits, and medicine as needed. So...if we concentrated our efforts on ending povery, one of the problems would completely dissapear, and the other problem would nearly go away on it own. Some disease is unavoidable, when you live in close contact with other humans you are going to pick up some illness no matter how carefully you take care of yourself. Polution. Now, not too much can we do about that unless we add a problem you left off your list. Overpopulation. Any good farmer knows you can only run so many cows in one pasture. If you try to run more, your cows will not only starve, but they will be more likely to get sick from being in too close quarters and not haveing sufficient nutrition. The same hold true with humans and this planet. Now, lets keep culling our troubles. If we didn't have an overpopulation problem, we wouldn't have near the polution we have now. And also, with less population, there would be more jobs and other recourses available for the people here. More jobs and recourses mean less poverty! Isn't it amazing!? All those problems boiled down to just one! If there wern't so many dang humans on this planet, we wouldn't have any problems!

Hey, if it works for you, that's great! As long as your feeling good and have plenty of energy, it shouldn't be a problem. Unless of course, you have a job, or school you have to go to and can't sleep in the afternoons. My sleep cycles get messed up all the time. Sometimes I have to get up early so I can do that for a few days, but after awhile the night owl in me wakes up and no matter how bad I want to I just can't make myself go to bed before one, two or sometimes even 3 am. Mine seems to be tied into cycles of depression too. I'm more inclined to stay up half the freaking night when I'm depressed. Yea, weird I know, you'd think I'd just want to go to bed when I was depressed. I do feel better if I go to bed fairly early, 10 or 11, and get up early, I get more done that way, but I just can't always manage it. And as for naps, Oh, I would love to take naps, and would pretty often except for one thing. I don't wake up well. even if it's just after a nap of an hour or 2, or after sleeping all night, I always feel like crap when I wake up, and it seems to take forever to get going. So if I take a nap, I have to go threw that groggy yucky feeling of being half asleep twice in one day, and that's just more than I can handle, so I have to be really really tired before I will take an afternoon nap. And of course, when I do take one, then it makes it that much harder to go to bed early.

ROTFLMAO!!!! Oh, I'm sorry, but that was just too funny not to comment on. While I hate critisizing others for the spelling as I'm not that good of a speller either, but that was just too cute! Dogs should never have vegetarian treatment, though they may occasionally need to see a veterinary. I'll have to get back to you later with some more constructive comments.

How many movies/Tv shows have you seen where we are visited by aliens from another planet, and for the longest time our government tries to hide them or cover up the truth with some off handed comments like "If the population knew it would create mass panic." Then there are the supposed coverup at Rosewell New Mexico, and area 51, UFO sightings and all that. It does seem our government thinks we can't handle aliens from outerspace. So, my question, do you really think that we would all freak out, go nuts and not be able to handle it. And just what about alien visitation would cause such a terrible reaction in us? A lot of us have grown up with Star Trek, Star Wars, Babalon 5, and the countless other sci fi movies and series. We talk about Klingons like we actually new them and even developed and learned the language of the Klingons. It seems to me that the acceptance of aliens is already rooted in our belief system, so I really just can't figure out why we would freak. Sure there would be the initial fear of the unknown, why are they here, what do they want from us, and the suspicions that would sroing from watching shows like V, but overall I just don't think it would be that big of a deal What do you all think? Are we ready to accept ET?

Yes, that would work I suppose, but there are already so many sections that I can't contribute to, anything to do with computers, games, etc, as I have no real knowledge in any of those areas. I just hate to miss on any where I might be able to post. Now, funny thing is, after complaining, my posts finally showed up today. Guess the sqeeky wheel gets greased after all!

Is it actually working? I rack my brain sometimes for new topics that are of interst to the gang here, and a lot of times I can't get anything started up at all. Sometimes I think my brain doesn't work like the average persons. What I find of interest and is important to me nobody else gives a hoot about. I try to use current news topics that catch my interst on the TV news that I assume others are interested in, but it doesn't work to well. Oh well. I do try.

As to your question about feeding a dog people food. Most dogs seem to prefer human food to dog food. Seems anything they see us eat they want too. Unlike their own dog food. Some people say you will ruin your dog by giving it table scraps, that it will no longer eat it's kibble, and that may be true if you let your dog get away with it. Unfortunatly, most people just can't resist those big sad eyes and whimperings when no table scraps are forth coming. They are afraid the poor pooch will starve before it eats dry dog food again. Well, I hate to tell you this but dogs are the worlds greatest con artists. A dog will NOT starve it's self if you don't feed it table scraps. Sooner or later, it will eat kibble if nothing better comes along. The only problem with basing your dogs diet on table scraps is balance. Dogs need a fair amount of protein. Left over mashed potatoes and gravy aren't going to cut it unless you throw in some of that steak too, and I don't know about the rest of you guys, but if I get a steak, I'M EATING IT!!! If you can find an inexpensive and good protien sourse to include with the table scraps, your dog will probably be fine. If priced decently, milk and eggs are a good option. Also, sometimes you can find organ meats at reasonable prices. (hearts, tongues, etc) It may sound gross to you, but meat is meat to a dog. The reason canned food is more expensive is the extra processing. It has no more meat in in than dry feed. You are paying the extra for water basicly. The extra water gives more "usless" weight, so even shipping and transporting canned food adds to the costs. Also, metal cans cost a lot more than a paper bag. And it is no more fresh just because it is in liquid form. When we are talking fresh for humans, we generaly mean fresh fruit or vegtables, eaten raw. Canned dog food and kibble are both cooked, so technically, nether is "fresh." The only way a dog is going to get fresh food is if he goes and and kills somebody's chicken, which is good for his diet, but will most likely shorten his life span considerable when the chicken's owner catches him. The key is as always, balance. If you don't have a good protien sourse to include with your table scraps, keeping out dry kibble will work. If you make your dog understand that table food is a treat and not his main course, he should be fine. A little spoiling is just fine, that is after all, why we have dogs anyway!