sheepdog

You know, there are actually scam artists who do what you describe of getting people to rear end them. Of course they don't worry about the car they get smashed, but they go to crying whiplash and try to get huge damages for medical bills too. It' all one big con, in most cases they don't even get hurt. But a word in defense of cab drivers. They are on the clock. At all times. The quicker they get their fare were they are going the quicker they can get another. And yes, they do drive like maniacs, but keep in mind, they also do more driving in a month than some people do in 10 years. They have one heck of a lot of experience and are for the most part, very good drivers.

Man, that really sucks! Guess it hold true the old saying about how no good deed goes unpunished. So.... do you get a ticket if you run over someone that is dumb enough to step out in front of you?

Had to deliver a puppy yesterday, agreed to meet some folks in the big city, fortunately it wasn't one of our big long trips. At least e got the pup to them, but then our car wouldn't start. This is the newer one, with only 150,000 miles on it, not the old one with 350,000 on it. Cold miserable day to be broke down. Only up side was that we had agreed to met at Bass Pro, so I finally got to see the new NRA gun museum they just opened this summer. It's really great, if you get a chance to get to Springfield Missouri, do be sure to check it out. They have Annie Oakley's guns, and a gun given by Napoleon Bonaparte to some French minister, that is all gold plated, filigreed, inlaid, absolutely amazing looking gun, that was made many hundreds of years ago, so you know the gold on it was not a microscopically thin layer like then can do today, I suspect the gold on it alone was worth many thousands of dollars. I can't figure out how that keep the glass on those cases so clean! I'd think there would be a good supply of drool on them from all the gun enthusiasts looking at the collection. I'd hate to have their Windex bill! That glass was so clean you could hardly even tell you were looking threw glass cases at the guns. I sure saw more than one I would of loved to have taken home. But I digress. Back to the car stuff. We got ahold of hubbies buddy, so he got his son in law and family who wanted to do some Christmas shopping anyway to bring their truck and car dolly, and they brought the van too so the family could take it and do their shopping and we could use their truck to pull the car hauler dolly and our car home. Another advantage to small cars, it was pretty easy for them to simply push our car up on the carrier without having to use any winches or anything, just ran it up there with only the 3 of them pushing, and if you want to be honest, really only one was doing much real pushing, 2 are rather feeble and decrepit old dudes with bad backs and bad hearts. So we brought the car home, took it all the way into town first so they could get O'reilly Automotive to put some sort of computer tester on it. It showed to be an 02 sensor by their tester. Anyway, my real gripe here is the price difference in parts. The factory original part from Ford was over $200. The exact same part put out as aftermarket part was $18!!!! Now that is one hell of a difference in the same part. Certainly pays one to check into alternatives whenever dealing with buying car parts.

Well, to follow up, I seem to have managed to grow accustom to the bigger screen, other than that first day it hasn't caused any more eye strain or head aches. I sure do like it. I am amazed at all the details in films I have missed over the years when we sit and watch old movies we have seen before now on the new TV. You can practically count the leaves on the trees everything is so much bigger. Years ago when our last big console TV went out, struck by lightening and could not be fixed, for a whole year we watched the tiny little 9 inch TV we had bought for the camper. It was really a pain, the show Hero's was on back then, and every time the Japanese guy started talking I had to get up off the couch and go up to the TV to read the captioning on the bottom of the screen to see what he was saying. Finally some friends took pity and gave us an old 19 inch when they got a new one. It was a major improvement too, but nothing like the new one we have now.

Yes, grass is good for the environment, but if you have bothersome neighbors it isn't good for you. They will complain to the city council because your yard is a bit shaggy and not "pretty" and closely mowed. This one is especially bad in some areas, and when the yard owner is an elderly person who may not be in the best of health and capable of pushing a lawn mower it is a pretty stupid law. And the people who do the complaining should be better people and offer to help their neighbors instead of turning to the government to see their sick or elderly neighbors punished. Yes, fluid leaking from junk cars would be a problem. However, in our nearest major city, a fellow who restores old cars was ticketed for one he was working on, it was not leaking anything, just not running yet. He had the car he actually drove every day in the garage and the other one out where he could work on it as time permitted. Sad when you have to give up a classic car you've had dreams of refinishing.

Amazing how things change in just a few years. Wanted to read threw this thread this morning because we have to deliver a pup to the big city and I was thinking about looking at laptops. Been seeing ads on TV all week for laptops for $249! That's a far cry from $1,000!

Yesterday morning I let our 2 dogs out in the morning, I sent them out the front door because that is the door they normally go out, but hubby had asked me to sweep the snow off his 4 wheeler so the seat would have time to dry by the time he got home with a load of dog food, so he could use it to take the feed around, since we still have a lot of ice and snow on the ground here. It was parked out behind the house. It was pretty covered up and it took me maybe 5 minutes to get it cleaned off. I then went back threw the house and out into the garage to get my 4 wheeler. I keep mine parked inside because the seat is bad, no outer cover, just a piece of foam that acts like a big sponge if it gets rained on. As I backed out and got in front of the house I saw our little Mini Schnauzer sitting on the front porch chewing on something green looking. I knew instantly what it was, a chunk of rat poison. I immediately ran to her and kicked it away from her and grabbed her and checked her mouth to see if there were any crumbs in her mouth I could wipe out, but didn't see any. There were crumbs all around the chunk so I knew she had been chewing on it. I went back in and called my regular vet and he wasn't home so I called a local vet. All they could tell me to do way to give her hydrogen peroxide to make her vomit it up. So I tried that. Tried 4 times, would do it every 10-15 minutes and she never did throw up. I called the local vet again and all they said I could do was give her a bigger dose, so I tried one more time and she still wouldn't barf it up. The vet's office told me they had never heard of a dog not vomiting after getting peroxide. I asked them several times if there was anything else I could do and they kept telling me there was nothing to be done. I even mentioned using vitamin K and they claimed they'd never heard of that. By then I was able to get in touch with my regular vet, but he didn't have much more to tell me to do, and by then the poison had been in her for several hours and I really didn't think making her vomit was going to be any help at that time. I did however, find a full box of poison in the car, and in reading the ingredient label and all the warnings, I found the recommendation to give vitamin k. So I ended up taking the box in to the local vets and showing it to them. They still acted like they didn't have a clue, but the did have a bottle of vitamin K on hand so I bought that, and they told me to give her 1 and 1/2 pill every day for a month. So I get home and find out they are not pills, but liquid filled gel caps. So how in the hell do you cut a gel cap in half? I had to call the vet again as soon as I got home and wait till they told me it was ok to just give one pill per day. By then I was getting pretty annoyed, like wasn't it enough I was worried about our dog without all the extra BS going on? Times like that almost makes me wish I had found some way to go to vet school, I told them about the vitamin K long before I got the package and looked on it for the antidote. Anyway, I got her started on the vitamin K. She seems fine today, not acting sick in any way, but the rat poison is a blood thinner and there is always the chance of her having internal bleeding and not really showing any symptoms until it's too late anyway. I worry about bruising her every time I pick her up or our other dog gets to playing around with her. She also hurt her leg a few weeks ago and is still limping from that, that's why I have to pick her up, she isn't able yet to jump up on the couch with me because of her hurt back leg. I guess all I can do is keep giving her the pills and hope for the best.

Dumping stations for Rv's are pretty easy to find. Nearly all RV parks have them and I have seen some in other odd places. We even have one here, thought that is not it's usual purpose, it's the drain for the kennel wash down, but also works perfect for RV's. I truly wish gas wasn't so high. I love traveling in the RV. SO much better than a car. You never have to worry about stopping for bathroom breaks. If you get tired of sitting you just get up and move around, you can even stretch out on a bed and be real comfy if you want to. And have a snack any time you want. Even a 6' 4" lumberjack can be comfortable traveling in an RV. We actually did take the back seat out of our car. It gained us quite a bit of space, even though it would fold up, it still took too much room and we need the space to stack feed and puppy crates in the car, so the back seats went by by.

Well, yes, that is all we can do I guess, hang around and hope for better days. Hopefully today will be better than yesterday. Have a customer coming here tonight to pick up a puppy. Last night in that blinding snow storm we had to meet some people half way to sell one. Quite the hair raising trip. First 50 miles was fine then it started snowing, and all the other drivers freaked out and started driving 30 miles an hour, out on the four lane. The customer had already bumped up the time to meet an hour so we were rather rushed for time. The whole rest of the trip it snowed like crazy. Over 200 miles of blizzard. I never saw another painted white line on the highway until we were 2 miles from the house because of all the snow and ice on the road. There is a big hill before our place, so they had scrapped and salted it real good. Of course, the thermostat in the car is stuck open, so the heater and defroster don't work real well, it barely kept the ice off the window, and didn't keep the car all that warm either. We were dodging wrecker trucks and snow plows the whole rest of the trip. Once, a trucker started to pull over behind another car on the shoulder, for some reason, then changed his mind and started to come back out on the highway, then just stopped all together, about half way out in the driving lane. We had another truck next to us so we couldn't get over, and we almost became the meat in a truck sandwich. It was a pretty hairy trip. But the other folks made it, just as well they were a bit late too so it worked out pretty well. She emailed me this morning, they let the new puppy sleep in the bed with them last night, boy is he ever going to be spoiled rotten!

Well amazingly enough I managed to more or less get the flower bed burned off before the weather went to hell in a hand basket. I got it done the last day just before the big snow hit. It was still somewhat wet and didn't burn the best in the world, I will have to spread out the piles of unburned debris and just till it back in to the soil. I'm glad it had at least a few days to dry or it wouldn't of burned at all. I just couldn't wait any longer to try it with storms predicted to blow in. Hopefully the fire and smoke got hot enough to kill out the funguses. and weed seeds. So now starts the manure hauling job. I do cheat a little in this department. I park a little wagon in the barn and let the hired man fill it full of goat manure when he has time, and when it gets full I take it to the flower bed with the 4 wheeler and unload it, spreading it out along the length of the bed. All 194 feet of the length, so it's a lot of shoveling. Of course, all of that is on hold now. We had one heck of a snow storm, somewhere I'd say between 6 and 8 inches. It's been pretty rough around here the past few days. First day after the storm the hired help couldn't get out at all, so I had to try to take care of everything myself. It's not real easy, and the snow really complicates things a lot more than people realize until you have to go threw it. Like just feeding the dogs. Normally you can pick up the lid to the dog house to put feed in the dish with one hand and hold the feed bucket in the other, but with 6 inches of snow on the lids, you have to really heave to even lift them. Snow likes to drift up in front of the gates, so even opening the gates can be a challenge. Of course, the first day I had no idea where they had layed out the water hoses to drain, so they were lost in the snow, meaning water had to be carried in buckets. All this in 20 degree weather did not make for a pleasant experience. Thought I might have more time to post here at Knowledgsutra, but honestly, by the time I get threw everything I don't have the energy to sit here. I find myself yearning for spring already and winter has hardly even got started.

I need some real basic knowledge about wireless stuff. I want to get a laptop at some point, maybe even before I go on vacation so I can take it with me instead of being offline for several days while we are traveling and having to use my sister in laws computer when we get there. But I don't know the first thing about how all this stuff works. What exactly is it I should be looking for when purchasing a new lap top, what kind of software or is it hardware that it should have? I see lots of places that offer free wi fi like at restaurants and places, but how do you get online at those? And what about at home? I currently have Century link high speed internet, and my computer is hooked directly to a modem. What do I need at home to have internet access without actually plugging the computer into the modem? It would be nice if I could sit on the couch and check my email while I was watching TV instead of having to jump up during the commercial breaks to go check it. What would really be nice is if I could get a connection all the way down to the kennel, so I could keep an eye on my email while I was working down there. Any and all input is welcome. But do keep in mind I'm not very smart about all this stuff, so if you can, explain in simple terms even a dummy like me can comprehend.

Thanks for the tips. I have been using a lot of those myself. Web site promotion is a battle one must enter into with the knowledge that it will be a long term war with battles that have to be fought on nearly a daily basis. There are no quick fixes and one has to be in it for the long haul, and must be determined to think of new and better ways to promote one's site all the time.

Just when you think humanity can't sink any lower than it already has, some brain damaged physco's have come up with a new "game" as they call it. It involves going up to a total stranger and seeing if you can knock them out with a single punch. This has got to be the most disgusting thing I have heard of in a long time. No matter how I try I can see no sense of logic or reason for such disgusting garbage. Several of the victims include a 78 year old woman, and a 12 year old boy. For Gods' sake, how can punching out a 78 year old woman gain you anything? Does that somehow prove your manhood? Think your big and tough? Maybe, just maybe, I could see someone attempting to prove something to the world if they walked up to the biggest guy on the street and tried something stupid, but a 78 year old woman? So far there have been 2 deaths contributing to this insanity. Countless serious injuries. Sad thing is, sooner or later these morons are going to try this stunt on someone who has a concealed carry permit and they are going to get what they deserve, which is shot grave yard dead. Only problem there is that the person who was defending themselves are going to end up in jail for ridding the world of these little creeps. Am I being too harsh? I don't think so. It's hard to fathom the mentality of anyone who would do something so cruel and stupid. I can see no reason to allow such genetic garbage to exist in the human race. Cull them and cull them now.

Yea, demonboy, I know what you mean. Have to wonder about all these people that pop in and then we never hear back from them again. Sure wish we could get some new blood in here. But hey, don't give up, sooner or later someone will stay and give us some new things to talk about. At least I keep hoping that will happen. Just saying....don't give up hope and keep welcoming folks, maybe it will work out someday.

LOL, yes K_nitin_r that was definitely a good one. Sadly,that shepherd was gone years ago. This poor guy had to be checked out by an entire kennel full of dogs, so he really got run threw the wringer. Worked out though, we've been together for 23 years last month. Nope, not gun powder residue, or they wouldn't like me. Interesting about that TV show, guess I never saw it. Did see the Doberman gang years ago, a Disney flick about a pack of Dobermans that were trained to pull off a bank heist. Pretty good movie. But I could see how a dog could be trained to go after someone with a particular scent. Interesting way to dispose of someone you didn't like. Hopefully it won't become too popular in the crime scene as a way to take people out, we already have enough fervor over dangerous dogs as it is. I sometimes feel sorry for responsible people who have pit bulls. They really get a bad rap. And it's not really the dog, it's the idiot on the other end of the leash that is usually the problem.

We have a fire place, but seldom use it. They are not really very good for heating, they tend to suck a lot of warm air right up and out the chimney. We have an outdoor wood furnace behind the house which is piped in threw a kitchen window. Works nice that way, keeps all the mess you get with burning wood out there in the great outdoors instead of dragging it in the house with every arm load of wood you carry inside. Of course we have a Bar B Que. Nothing tastes quite as good as my hubbies BBq'd chicken. Unless it would be his smoked chicken. Actually, we have a BBQ grill, and a few years ago for Christmas I bought him a smaller grill with an attached smoker. Grills these days come in all shapes and sizes, they even have some disposable ones so they aren't really something limited to the financially well off. If you are just cooking for yourself they have small cast iron hibachi grills that only use a few chunks of charcoal to make a single serving meal. Those could be real handy. Not exactly one with a green thumb are you? But hey, I have plants like that too. Aloe vera and mother in laws tongue are good plants for those folks not inclined to remember to care for plants. I'm betting your decade old plant is probably a Mother in Laws tongue. Tall long narrow spiked leaves. Nearly indestructible.

LOL, yes we sort of are becoming the three musketeers aren't we? And a rather unlikely trio, I'm not sure how much evil we could combat if turned loose on the world, but at least we can entertain each other a little here at Xisto. Spam has gotten rather bad lately hasn't it? Annoying isn't it, because as much as you want to make comments and get a conversation going with someone you can't reply to them or it just makes it worse. Oh well, at least we have each other!

For my web site I use the much hated and cussed over program Front Page. I more or less have it figured out now that most of my site is up and about all I do these days it change pictures and birth dates of litters. So maintaining it is not much of a chore anymore. Which is peculiar in a way, because I still hate doing it. I hold my breath every time I fire up Front Page to see how it is going to annoy me this time. It seems like it never works the same way twice. I still miss my image expert program. I download the pictures out of the camera right into that program, and can do most of the editing right in it, with cropping, lightening, saturation, etc. And I can rearrange the albums easily, dragging and dropping pictures from one album to another. I have to take a ton of pictures ever time to get that just right shot of a puppy, so I have a lot to download and delete most of them right away. Bugs? They don't bug me unless they are biting or stinging me or eating my plants. I do truly hate those big fat juicy green ones that can decimate a tomato plant in a days time. I am a bit creeped out about spiders, but am getting better about those. Basicly, if they leave me alone I leave them alone. I've had a wee bit of experience as a bee keeper. If you can handle swarms of bees little bugs become a lot less of a threat or annoyance.

Thanks Forte for the info on Google Chrome. I noticed it's installed in this computer and was thinking about checking it out, just to see what it is like, but as you say, I'm sure they would be tracking my every move and I just find that rather creepy, and quite frankly, none of their business. I'm still getting the log in screen, and have talked to a few other people and I've been told there's no way to get rid of it.

Ok, I don't need the whole check printed out, I just want to have checks like you can order on line or buy from the bank with my name address, bank information, all that stuff on them. I would still hand write them out, I would use them for pay checks, or to send them down with my hubby when he goes to pick up a load of dog food. I don't even really want my banking information on the computer, let alone keep my balances and that stuff on the computer.

Gag, choke puke. PLEASE don't talk to me about eating soy. That is some foul tasting vile garbage. Soy beans make good printers ink, and maybe food for cows, not sure on the cow food though. Might mess up the taste of the meat. I've accidentally eating a few hot dogs with soy protein, and I can tell almost immediately, I start belching and get sick to my stomach from eating them. The only product I ever use that has the word soy in it is soy sauce. And don't use much of it, like it once in awhile. Well, I could certainly agree with not being out 3 grand for a computer that doubles as a TV, TV's are actually pretty cheap in comparison to a lot of things these days. We just finally broke down and bought a big screen ourselves for our family Christmas present. 51 inch. Just got it set up this afternoon. Nice, but I'm wondering if it's going to cause me some eye problems, just watched it for a couple hours and I'm starting to feel eye strain and a bit of a headache. Hopefully I'll adjust to it in awhile. Now about the only thing high tech I'm still considering is a lap top. Thought I might get one with windows 8 on it, so I could gradually figure that out without being forced to do it or when I was in a bind and had to get something done. Would be nice to have it to take on vacation too so I don't have to rely on my sister in laws computer when we are out there. If I could play around with it here for a few weeks surely by the time we leave for vacation I would be good enough to at least read and write emails. Oh, and on that subject, I will need from someone here a crash course in wi fi. Have no idea how all that works.

Those of you who have spent very much time in the company of dogs will recognize that when I tell you dogs have a sort of sixth sense about people you will know what I am talking about. I'm sure many of you have had dogs in the past or present that for some reason or another your dog didn't like certain people. And then later on this person your dog had the good sense to distrust proved to be a bad or evil person in some kind of way. Years ago I had a German Shepherd female that if she ever growled at some guy I was dating, if I had a lick of sense the first time she growled at them that should of been the last time I went out with them. One turned out to be a thief, and later broke into my home, and the others were just your usual run of the mill miscreants, not too bad, but certainly not the kind of guys I really wanted to be around. So, I am willing to accept for fact that dogs do have this ability. But what I am curious about is how do they know? I suppose there could be any number of clues for them, but since dogs sense of smell is what they have the best going for them, I think it has to be some how related to what they smell on a person. But what on earth could it be? We also know that dogs can sniff out cancer cells, and sense when their owner is going to have an epileptic seizure, or even a blood sugar crash. I'm sure there are definite changes in a persons body chemistry that a dog could smell. But what would tip them off to a bad person? What sort of body chemistry do bad people have that could be smelled?

I do this every year. I have lots of lights and strings of sparkly tinsel that I have in years past hung along the roof of the kennel. I think about it every year. And then almost every year I get to thinking about all the million other things that I really need to be spending my time doing, so I always talk myself out of it. Been thinking about that for the last few days as a matter of fact. But I decided that I needed to rake up all the leaves in and in front of all the pens along the front row. It was really getting pretty deep with leaves. Since it was nice out today, and the wind wasn't too bad, even though I wanted to work on the flower bed I figured the kennel better come first. Now I'm tired and sore as all get out, but the place sure does look a lot better. And no, your not boring us. I'm glad you posted about something, anything actually! I'm running out of boring stuff to talk about myself! Nice to be able to just reply and not have to come up with something to talk about myself. Go ahead, just keep talking about something.

Well, the canna's are now safely (I hope) tucked away in the basement for the winter. Still haven't raked and burned the flower bed. It was so pretty yesterday I decided to work on my driveway entrance project, one I've been trying to get done for months now. Been fighting that stubborn grass we have here trying to keep it out of the patch of irises and the mum plant, but it is so tough and hardy it's about impossible to get under control. It send out long runners under what ever kind of mulch you lay down for many feet and pops right back up where you don't want it. I'm cutting up the liner of one of my old swimming pools and using it as a ground cover. Don't think any thing will grow threw it. I got some nice white polished stone to lay over it, so it should look pretty good when I get it all spread out. I also raised the concrete statue of the dog I had because the irises get tall enough in the summer you can't even see it. Would of like to have worked on it again today but we had to cut a little wood, so didn't get a chance too. But it's supposed to be nice again tomorrow so maybe I can work on that some more and maybe start burning off the flower bed if it's not too windy.

I've just been using the Microsoft program that I got with the computer, downloading them from the camera to pictures, in Library. What is annoying me right now is I haven't been able to figure out how to rearrange pictures in the albums. In my old program I could open up 3 or more albums at a time and just drag and drop pictures from one to another. Can only open one now. I usually take pictures of more than one litter of pups at a time, then rearrange them into individual breed albums so I can find them when I need them. Now I only have a few albums and never know where my pictures are. I also hate the crop feature, in my old program I could just draw the crop, now I have to adjust the size on the crop that comes up automatically when I click on crop, and it takes longer to adjust their box than it did to draw one of my own. Amazingly enough, my very old Photo draw software still works, I can use it to make nicer graphics for my web site with borders and all that jazz, but I need a simple quick one to touch up photo's to send to customers.