sheepdog

LOL, wish I had a dollar for ever time I heard that one! We moved back and forth from Illinois to Missouri, and believe me, even if they are neighbor states, they speak completely different languages. Every time we were back in Illinois I'd get that question, but then back in Missouri I can remember my speech teacher in high school telling me what a nice speaking voice I had cause I didn't have that Ozarkian twang. Fortunatly, I haven't been back to Illinois for years now, and I think my twang is going to be permenently hillbilly now.

I guess funny is a matter of perspective. To someone who rasies animals, this is very disturbing. I wonder if wallaby farmers get attatched to their wallabies?I do know if I caught someone walking off with one of my dogs I'd shoot their sorry *bottom*.

LOL, you got that right! We only want to save the "cute" animals! Reminds me of my hero, Dennis Leary, in one of his comedy sketches, where he was talking about this very subject... Hello, I'm an Otter, I do cute little things with my hands and swim around.. Ok, you are free to go. Hello, I'm a cow.... Get in the truck... But I have feelings.... Your a damn baseball glove, get in the truck.... When I see the lion evolve enough to humanly euthanise the antelope he kills for his dinner, maybe I'll rethink things. Or maybe not.

Now that is truly amazing! I thought sure you were going to tell us you got smacked in the head by a mean old fat lady...... It is nice to know that some parents realize their rug rats aren't little angels. I thought one day I was going to have a knock down drag out with some stupid woman over her bratty little kid. I had a low display pen at the swap meet, and this little girl reached over and pick up one of my pups by the neck and was choking it. I firmly told her to put that puppy down, didn't really yell at her but did say it quite firmly. Brat droped the pup and stood there looking at me like I was an ogre, which of course I didn't care, then she tottled off and caught up with her mother who was by then a few booths away. Then the little brat started bawling, so the mother came back and gave me a cussing for yelling at her little darling. I proceded to tell her if she'd spend as much time teaching her damn brat how to properly handle a pup as she spent cussing me I wouldn't have to yell at the stupid kid. So, believe me, parental stupidity is not limited to sporting events!

It just sounds like she isn't used to a collar, most pups will scratch at them when they are not acustom to wearing one. If it's left on she will soon forget about it. I do want to ad one thing here though. If you decided she doesn't need a collar on full time, please be sure to have her micro chipped, or tatto'd. You never know when she might dart out a door and escape, and with out a collar and tag or some form of identification, you may not get her back.Shaker cans are effective for some bad behaviours but they only work on some dogs, and their effectiveness wears off quickly for a lot of dogs. In a dog that is self confident and not easily startled, they don't have much effect. Dogs also don't always connect the strange noise to their own bad behaviour. Play biting and mouthing human hands are typical and normal behaviour for a pup. But they are behaviours that should be discouraged immediatly. When pups play together, and one gets too agressive and bites too hard, the other pup will yelp, and stop playing. Copying this behavour in the human form will help your pup know that it is the wrong behaviour. You can "yelp" an OUCH when you feel the teeth, and then a firm NO, or no bite! and then stop playing with the pup. Grabbing the muzzle and holding it shut while you say NO Bite just for a couple seconds will help to get the point across. Then just walk away and ignore the pup. Also, while the pup is young, avoid tug of war type games. I know they are fun, but wait until your pup understands some basic commands first and knows what to bit and what not to.

OMG!!! That is positivly SCARY!!!! What on earth are they going to be like when they grow up? I just can't even imagine 8-9 year olds doing that kind of crap.And for the blame game. Video games, violent TV, who knows. We can lay the blame on the parents, which should be the first thought, after all it is the parents who control (or are supposed to control) what goes on in the home, which games are played and what TV shows are watched. But it is a very sad fact that parenting rights are rapidly being destroyed by do gooders that don't want you to disipline your children or make them mind, so how can a parent teach their kids anything if they are afraid to bust their little butts when they need to be busted? Kids are told to run and tattle to their teachers if the parents so much as lay a hand on them, so what are you going to do? And don't give me that "give 'em time out in the corner" crap. If you've got a juvinile delinquent on your hands, that does about as much good as a midget pissing on a forest fire.

Well, thank you for the hug, I sure needed one! Things are a bit better, the last rain we just got a few drops of leakage threw our red neck roofing job, and just today I finally finished cleaning up the mess in the bathroom. It is pretty hard to get the inspiration to clean up the mess when you clean everthing up and it still looks like crap anyway. Especially when housekeeping isn't my strong point anyway. Now let's keep our fingers crossed that the dog market picks up, and the price of scrap metal stays up, maybe we can get a new roof sometime soon.

Articules about designer dogs have been popping up in every form of media for the past few years now. Since raising dogs is what I do, I always try to keep on top of any and all issues related to dogs in general. So far, I have not been able to bring myself to join the huge crush of breeders cranking out those malti-po's and schnoodles. Amazingly, certain crosses are now selling for higher prices then their purebred counterparts. Personally I find this a rather sad state. Especially when you consider the many many years deicated breeders have spent perfecting certain breeds to do specific jobs and act and look a certain, reliable and predictable way. Well, we certainly do agree on Puggles! Lordy, I think they are butt ugly! Of all the breeds there are, I do believe Pugs probably have about the most dedicated fan club out there. For some people, there are no other breeds of dogs, it's pugs and that's it. I have never completely understood the facination with a snorting, sneezing, gurgling, farting dog, but hey, to each his own! People just love pugs. Maybe cause when their mouth is open, (which it nearly always is, as they are big on panting) they have a built in automatic "smile" on their faces. They do have a great personality, love everybody, and I have never in my life seen an ill tempered pug. They are also very tolerant of human crazyness, including dressing up dogs, pushing them around in baby carriages, and all the weird things humans subject dogs to. I hope you are soon able to get your very own pug so you can join the ranks of Pug dogs Forever gang!

I haven't had an episode of deja vu in many years. I had it happen frequently when I was a teenager/young adult. Really no clue as to why they stopped either. And I, like you always was confused and rather disorientated by them. Mine were always really strong, I was certain I had done exactly what I was doing at that moment before. Right down to the last detail. I still think it is very interesting how we can be so intelligent (sometimes) and still know so little about how our minds actually work.

Well, I suppose it would depend on which finger we are talking about here. I do get a lot of personal satisfaction from the use of the long finger in the middle of my hand, I'm not sure it would be worth a million to lose that one......

That's a good idea, I hadn't even thought of that. Thanks. Sounds like a good place to start.

Well, for starters, in all the pups I have raised over the years, (and there have been many) I have only seen ONE pup that was put on a lead and walked off with his new owner like he'd been doing it all his life, without a single missed step. Most pups have a major temper tantrum the first few times, complete with double back flips, roll overs, screaming and howling like they are being murdered, slobbering, eyes rolling back in the head, etc. Other pups sull up and refuse to move a muscle, or lay there trembling violently. Either of these is actually a normal reaction. Unfortunatly, many pet owers go soft at this point thinking the pup is going to hurt it'self, and are unwilling to wait patiently untill the storm of protest passes. I think the harness is probably a good idea. They are less likely to cause damage to the pups trachea, which in your breed and other snub nosed breeds is always a problem to watch out for. The biggest problem with the harnes instead of a collar is that a pup learns to lead because the body follows the head. If you get the pups head going in the right direction, he will move the way you want him to. This is not so easy to manage with a harness. I am also not fond of the dragging the leash around behind them trick many people favor. It really doesn't teach them anything, and sometimes just gives the pup the idea that the leash is just something to chew on. You definatly would not want to attempt it unless the pup was under strict supervision, in the event it got tangled up in the leash, or the leash got hung up in something. It is not a learning experience for the pup if it is simply stumbling around and triping over the leash at random intervals with no comands given by the owner. The pup just doesn't understand what is going on. Leash training is just that, key word...training. The pup needs input from the owner, work commands, instruction, and praise when he responds properly. If the pup dislikes the colar and leash, you might start off with just letting him/her wear only the colar. Call the pup to you, put on the colar, give pup a treat, and praise, pet him, and let it wear the collar for awhile. You can remove it in an hour or so. Repeat the process frequently, until the pup actually looks forward to the collar. (or, actually looks forward the the reward for getting the collar put on, which will be your praise or a treat.) It also helps greatly with the leash training process if your pup has allready learned the "come" command. Put on the collar and leash, step a few feet away while still holding the leash, and tell your pup to come. Gently take up the slack in the leash as the pup moves to you, putting only the slighest tension on the leash. Pet and praise the pup when he comes to you for a moment, then back off a few more stepps away from him and repeat the process. Remember, a pup's attention span is short, keep the lessons down to 10 minutes or so, and ALWAYS end any training session on a positive note, with a treat, or praise for even the slighest good behaviour. You can repeat this short sessions several times a day, short frequent sessions are a better way for a pup to learn than a long drawn out ordeal once a day. Hope this helps a little.

LOL, oh no! Campaigning on Trap 17! Like we aren't getting enough of that crap on the media with the upcoming presidential election! And of course, I'm dissapointed, though not surprised I didn't get any nominations. Those are some tough catagories for a non computer knowledgable person to get into. I thought maybe "comedian" but I'm not really that funny. I try though. Maybe next year there will be a catagory for "Doggedly Determined dumb Blondes" or something to that effect. Good luck to everyone!

LOL, bet you can guess mine......Remember the sheepdog that used to sit quietly up on the hill watching his flock of sheep and the coyote that was always trying to carry off a sheep? though it seemed the sheepdog never moved, he always bested the coyote. I don't even remember the name of it, but I just loved that one. Roadrunner and coyote were probably my next favorite.

Well, I should of known better than to whine about my computer problems, as it is now, things can (and did) get a lot worse. Oh sure, I got my satalite and boy do I LOVE IT, but everything else promptly went to hell in a handbasket. You probably all saw on the news last week about the torential rains we had here in the midwest, and all the flooding. It was a giant mess. Here were we are we got 7 inches of rain. Many people lost or had serious damage to their homes. Some even lost their lives. So, while I can be at least thankful to still be breathing, it really doesn't help all that much. We live on a hill, so the water coming up from the ground up was not the problem, it was the rain coming down that turned the whole ordeal into a first class nightmare. Our roof has been leaking for awhile, can't get enough money ahead to put on a new roof, so we just put a few buckets down to catch the drips and call it good. Well, with 7 inches of rain, well, the buckets just weren't cutting it. Water was just pouring into the bathroom, kitchen and utility room. I could hardly keep them dumped fast enough. Sometime after midnight the rain finally started to slow down. I went to bed later, but was having trouble going to sleep. We had been extremely busy with other projects around the kennel and had run out of firewood. So of course, the day of the big storm, we also ran out of propane, so the house was cold and damp. About 2am I hear this god awful crash in the kitchen. I was cold and miserable and tired and didn't even want to get up to see what it was. I really thought the kitchen ceiling had fallen in and the light fixture had broken. Oh if only that's what it was. One of my kitchen cabinetes had come loose from the top of the wall and tipped down, dumping all my dishes out in the floor. On the top shelves were my mothers set of beautiful antique dishes. Nearly every piece of the set was destroyed. It was a really fancy set of dishes, complete with every peice imaginable, gravy boats, sugar bowls, platters, salt and pepper shakers, the whole deal. I suspect they were probably quite valuable. They were very old and had that gold trim on them. I was just sick over loosing them. I got up the next morning and headed straight to the bathroom as always, and walked right into the next disaster. The bathroom ceiling had colapsed. It was just about the biggest mess I had ever seen, sheetrock, fiberglass insulation and that blown in insulation was covering everything in the bathroom. All wet and nasty and stuck to everything. It's taking hours and hours to get it all cleaned back up and of course with the big hole in the bathroom ceiling, it's a real pain to take a shower unless the weather gets warm, no way to heat the bathroom, it all just goes up and out. So, I'm sitting there trying to pee and in comes the old man to tell me the goats are out next door. I mean, I don't even get to finish my urgently needed first thing in the morning potty break for crying out loud! Off to chase goats, and by the time we get over there they have gone back in. We get back in the house, haven't been there 10 minutes when the neighbor lady out at the other places calls and says the other goat herd is out over there and in the road. So even though my bathroom is covered in soggy insulation and my kitchen floor is totally covered with broken glass, we are off to chase more goats. And the amazing thing, while I dreaded all morning long what it was going to be like if and when I ever made it down to check the dogs, when I finally got to the kennel, it was in absolutly amazingly good shape. I had one pen with 2 dogs in it that I had to move to another pen as it had some standing water in it. They still had a dry house and over 1/2 of their pen, so even that wasn't too bad. I really figured I'd be facing a lot worse. Still can't figure out how I lucked out down there!Sorry to be such a whine bag, but man, life sure can be a bit--- sometimes.

I voted no, but I think you should of had 3 choises, yes, no, and maybe! I think it depends on the situation. I will admit, I sometimes enjoy watching trains going down the tracks that have well painted up cars. Some of the "artwork" shows a great deal of talent. However, seeing stupid stuff like "Bobbie Loves Mary" painted on a rock in a public park is quite annoying. I suppose it would be hard though, to draw a line between good quality graffiti and vandalisim.

I watch nervously as my hosting credits sink down and down, and nobody wants to talk about dogs. What's with that? I'd say over 50% of households in the USA have dogs, surely someone could keep a good dog conversation going? And since I don't have much expertice in any other subject it's sure making it tough on me to keep up credits.So to that end, let me throw out a topic for discusion. (I hope) Designer Dogs. Or Hybrid Dogs. Or, to my way of thinking, Mutts. It started off innocently enough, some goofy celebrity chose a "puggle" for a pet and before you know it, the world became flooding with the likes of labradoodles, goldendoodles, scnoodles, morkies, snorkies, *BLEEP*s, cashons, chipos, cavashons, cockaliers, you name it, somebody is crossing it. Now some claim there are reasons and benefits for crosses. The original Labradoodle was developed as an attempt to create a hypo allergenic dog for blind people with dog allergies. All that comes to mind for me is why not just use a standard poodle for a seeing eye dog? They are intelligent, sturdy, clean, and easy to train. I see absolutly no benefits to adding Labrador to the mix to make something some claim to be superiour as a guide dog. Then the claims that a puggle is an improvment because it doesn't have the breathing problems a pug has. Well, of course it doesn't! Duh. But it isn't a cute, adorable, snoring, snorting, sneezing pug either. If you don't want a dog with breathing problems, don't buy a pug. Simple as that! But don't create a new breed, there are allready hundreds of dogs out there that don't have breathing problems, just pick one of those. And you sure as heck can't say adding pug to the beagle line will make a better hunting dog! Then there is the excuse that cross breeding give hybred vigor. Another absolute myth! If you cross a lab with hip dysplacia with a poodle with bad hips, you are going to get a labradoodle with bad hips. These "new" breeds will have all the same health risks that the original purebreds used to create them had to begin with. And not only that, people who cross breed are quite unlikely to keep records and weed out dogs with health problems and dog that do not conform to breed standards. (actually, there are no breed standards for mutts) Records on purebred dogs can be traced back through multiple generations and health screening is far easier to acomplish with registered purebreds. Conformation shows keep dogs that do not conform to the breed standard weeded out of purebred lines. Another big problem I see coming down the pike in years to come is the mess it is going to make with future generations of actual purebred dogs. The chances are always good that when you cross 2 different breeds of dogs, some of the pups in the litter are very likely to look more like one of the purebred parents. What happens when somewhere down the line the person who bought the cute dachshund/poodle puppy that mostly looks like a dachshund decides to breed it to another dachshund? The resulting pups will look "mostly" dachshund, so they find a registry that accepts a picture of a dog to issue registration papers, and then this person breeds and sells pups passing them off as purebreds, and later the buyer of one of the dachshund look alike breeds it and gets a curly coated puppy? People who don't know any better are really going to be in for a shock when their supposed purebred pup that they paid big bucks for ends up being a mutt. I think the whole thing is going to end up being a giagantic disaster!

I bet your thinking I'm posting in the wrong forum don't ya? I couldn't help but think of good old Jeff Foxworthy today while we were making preperations for the upcoming rain storms. During that last toad strangler of a rain we had, (7 inches) and the colapse of our bathroom ceiling because of the leaky roof, we didn't figure this poor old house could take much more. Our finances being what they are (broken) putting on new shingles is out of the question for now anyway. So this mornings project found us up on the roof, spreading tarps and weighing them down with old used tires. A hillbilly and/or redneck solution if I ever saw one! Jeff would of been so proud! Of course, it wasn't an easy job, carrying big old tires up the ladder. Too bad hubby didn't get the brillient idea of putting them up on the roof with the front bucket of the back hoe untill we allready had a bunch of them up there. Sure wish he would of thought of it sooner. I'm really tired and sore. Ya'll keep your fingers crossed for us that we got enough tires up there the tarps don't blow off when the rain comes.

Abortion of a fetus is one thing, but when you are talking about partial birth abortion, your talking about a baby that is ready to come into this old crazy world and survive as a normal infant. Sucking out it's brains with a tube as it comes out is not my idea of abortion. I think it is pretty disgusting. And I am quite liberal about abortion otherwise. We have enough humans in the world. Stupid humans at that. So stupid it takes them 9 months to decide to have an abortion??????

Hope this is the right place to post this question.While I am not really ready to sit down and decide who gets what when I croak, I am wondering about what to do and how to protect my partner in the event something happens to me. We are not legally married, so I can't count on that to protect him. I would like to make sure he becomes exucuter of my estate. I own the house we live in, and I want to make sure he can stay in it for as long as he desires. I do not want to envolve a lawyer. (I dislike them as much as I do politicians, and doctors) Anybody have any clues at to where to start?

I think it is entirly possible. Though I don't believe we would come back as a lower life form than we were to start with. I think we have to come back to improve and develop into the next higher level. Or pay for past mistakes. Or learn from past mistakes, not really sure, maybe all of the above.

I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that no one close to you has died. Like a parent or lover, or best friend. But if someone has, you have got to be one cold cold cold soul.

I am about the last person that would tell you this, but if this is something that is happening frequently, or has been going on for some time, you should probably consider seeking profesional medical help. I hate to go to doctors myself, and won't go unless I am pretty sure I am going to croak if I don't, but blacking out like you are doing is pretty dangerous. Especially if you are driving or doing something like running a chain saw when you pass out. It does sound like a sypmtom of diabetes though. Weakness and dizzyness goes with the drop in blood sugar. Have you ever noticed the timing of these spells? Does it happen if you haven't eaten recently?

OH....I love that one! I used to have that one done simply by folding my arms across my chest. Someone taught me that trick when I was having problems with my asmatha. This is a great trick for relieving the shortness of breath and chest pains related to asmatha. Unfortunatly, since my better half hurt his back, he can't help me that way anymore.

Wow, meal planing, set recipies, shopping lists......that sounds almost painfully ORGANIZED! I'm not sure my disorganized life style could stand that kind of emotional strain. I can't imagine it possible to know 6 days in advance of what I am going to cook. Heck, most of the time now I don't know what I am going to cook until I actually start cooking. I usually put a pan on the stove and then start rumaging threw the refrigerator and cabinets and start throwing stuff in the skillet.