sheepdog

Now there's an idea! I like that one, at least that will cut down your laundry time in half. Yes, great movie. Of course the star of the show was the little Brussels Griffon that got the trip down the laundry chute. But to your problem..... Good hot water should help. Showering before bed will too. You might also try pretreating the stains with Dawn dishwashing liquid....Dawn...it takes grease out of your way remember the commercials? I use Dawn diluted to clean the inside ear flaps of the dogs, and those can get pretty greasy, and it works well on that.

It isn't really the cold so much that bothers me, it's all the things that the cold causes. I can bundle up in enough clothes to deal with the cold, but then there is the problem with even that. Laundry! Tons of it! Stop and think about how much more room in the washing machine it takes to do sweat shirt and pants, T shirt, compared to my summer time tank top and shorts. (not to mention the bigger piles you have to trip over until you get around to washing them. ) Of course, our little dog likes the big laundry pile by the bed, it gives her a nice soft cozy place to sleep in. Then there is the water situation. It's wonderful free flowing summer time form turns to ice in the winter and creates a whole new world of problems. Last week we spent most of one day just trying to get things situated to where we could actually do the daily routine. Frozen hoses, (even though we carefully stretche them out and drain them when we finish with them) frozen pipes under the kennel, hot water heater frozen up, then fixing broken pipes that went to spewing water when we did get them thawed out. Even though we have numerous frost proof water hydrants, when it gets really cold, even they freeze up. And there's all that dang ice in the animals water pans. If you try to beat it out of the pan, all you end up with is a very dented up pan. You have to either lug them inside where it is warm, or turn them over and run water on the bottom, (that is if you have the water going) to thaw them out so you can refill them so they can freeze again. Then there are the mirad of other minor annoyances, the cold natured 4 wheeler that takes forever to warm up so you can use it, the dog poops that freeze to the ground makeing even poop scooping a challenge, the ice slick you get when hosing out the concrete dog runs that you can break you neck negotiating. Chopping ice on the pond adds another chore, not to mention the cutting,hauling, splitting and skoking of the wood furnace, and of course, hauling off the ashes. Winter is just way too much work.

Oh man, I absolutly, 1,000% agree with you on all of the above! Drunk driving is the dumbest thing a person can do. Even if you don't kill yourself or somebody else, if you get caught, that can mess up your life pretty much forever. Higher insurance, credit, everything is made more difficult if you have a drunk driving charge on your record.

I have yet to figure it out why they call it "sweet 16." That seems to be about the age most teenagers turn into raving monsters/lunitics/ or idiots in general. You can't tell them anything, they know it all, and by gosh you better not even try because they have the whole world allready figured out. Lay the law down and stick by what you tell her. Be her friend as best as you can, and be supportive but don't put up with any crap from her. Eventually she will grow up and see the error of her ways. Maybe. Hopefully.

Mice. Definatly, without a doubt, Mice. I hate those %(%$&(_!(_&)&%_(^@^%$&) things. We have tried everything to kill out the little varmits. Poison, traps, those electronic gizmo's, you name it. This fall we even bug bombed the kennel building and as soon as the gas from those dissipated we fired up the old tractor and ran a pipe under the kennel building and tried to gas the little suckers. (yes, we removed all the dogs first, in case you are wondering) I even tried leaving the dogs out for some time after the gassing hopeing they would starve out without any of the dogs food to steal. Nothing is working. I hate those pests. They are so destructive and eat up everything and crap all over everything. Anybody got any clues as to how to kill them out? Any ways to make cheap mouse poison? That works? Nope, puppies don't count as pests, they are far too cute! What kind of puppies do you have? Oh yea, I hate those too, but at least you can kill them out. A friend of mine had a real bad problem with them. You could actually smell them in the house. One day their phone stopped working and they had to call a repair man out to work on it. When he took the phone off the wall it looked like a black explosion, roaches just flew out by the hundreds and ran up the walls, it was really embarrassing for my friend.

LOL, now those are some good ones......I especially like I'm thinking maybe he said this one first, and then that's why all the others came out like they did???

Mine would of been that day almost 18 years ago, (on January 20th it will be 18 years) when I came into my father's house and found him dead on the floor. I believe he had died the night before. I had been on the place all afternoon, at that time I was working for him at the kennel. I hadn't seen him that day, but that was nothing out of the ordinary, he often didn't come down to the kennel. I stopped by the house to see him before I went home. I knew something was terribly wrong when I opened the back door, the smell in the house was awful. It was dark and he didn't answer when I called out. Apparently he had been sitting in his favorite chair and had a heart attack, he made it across the living room almost to the kitchen. I was so freaked out it took me awhile to figure out what to do. I tried calling the cops, and then really freaked when I didn't get an answer. (I had dialed the city police office and it was closed) I finally got the sherriffs office, but by then I was so rattled it was just unbelieveable. The police came and briefly looked around the house to make sure it wasn't a robbery or something, then the corenor came to take away the body. It was just awful. For many many months after that, no matter how much I cleaned and vacumed, I could still see the shape of his body on the carpet. It was a very hard thing to have to deal with. In many ways, as I found out later, his passing was a good one. He did not suffer from lingering illness. Matter of fact, the night he passed away, he had 3 or 4 of his good buddies over visiting and had just bought 6 more dogs. That eventually really helped me to deal with it, but it was sure rough for awhile.

Ok, call me old fashion, but I fail to see the facination some people have with weird creatures for pets. To quote from Jim Stafford, "I don't like spiders or snakes...." I just don't get it. I barely understand having a cat for a pet. They are independant, and only pretend to love you when they want something. Unlike dogs, who love you all the time, crave your attention, learn to do neat tricks, lick your face when they can, entertain you when you are bord, try to cheer you up when your blue, and just generally do their best to be your friend.

Hotmail recently changed their format rather drasticly. I personally hate it, but what can you do? I'm slowly getting used to it, but the one thing I haven't figured how how to do is to make it show more than 20 or so messages per page. In the old hotmail I had 50 per page. There was a place you could go into and change it in the old version, but I can't find it anywhere on the new one. It's a real pain because I have customers that I communitcate with often several days apart, and the messages get on the second or even third page and I tend to forget about them. Anybody know how (or if) I can fix it?

I don't know about dreams predicting the future, but I have had a few strange experiences with dreams I've had. Once I had a dream about this lady I really didn't know all that well, we had talked a few times at our local growers market. In my dream I went to her house for a visit. Some months later, they actually invited me to come over, and I have to say, the simularities with her real house and my dream house were uncanny. She had never spoken a word to me about what her house looked like, there was no way I could of known anything at all about her house, but yet, there is was, just like I saw it in my dream. Another weird one was one day I saw a good friend of ours drive up the road past our house. We hadn't talked to him in a few months. That night I had a dream about him, and a few weeks later when I talked to his girlfriend, I was shocked at how clearly, (though in an abstract way) my dream was about what was currently going on in his life. Experiences like these make me really curious about dreams and other things, like mental telepathy. The only logical way I can really explain knowing these things is if I picked it up from my friends subconcious minds. I suppose there could be other explainations, but that does seem the most likely.

Wow, talk about different worlds!Fingernails are handy when I have an itch. Or if I need to catch, pull, and crush a tick. They also come in handy for opening those innerseals on most products. Other than that they can be a nusance. During kidding season, I have to cut them off at the quick. Goats occasionally need help delivering their kids, and you can't go poking around inside a goats uterus with long fingernails. And I won't even mention what I have to scrap out from under them when working around the kennel...........

Ok, well, I hate to the the wet blanket here, but I have to wonder, how many $$$$ of the tax payers money went into this study???We don't tip over when we are pregnaunt. We just don't. Never have. All that falling down would be hard on the baby. Might knock the baby senseless then it would have to grow up to be a politician. (or laywer) And since we don't tip over, and never have, I have to wonder, why in the heck anybodys cares as to why we don't tip over. Hey, I wonder, ya think I could get a grant from the government to study how men with big feet and short arms learn to open doors by walking up to them backwards?? Is this a survival skill learned from early cave dwellers breed into us for eons of evolution????Actually, I'd be more interested in seeing a study on how the heck women walk in those god awful looking high heels you see them trotting around in. How in the world can they balance on tippy toes and that tiny spike of a heel? Now there's where women ought to be tipping over all the time!

LOLOL, oh man, you could become the most popular guy in town if the news of your ability to make your girlfriends loose weight gets around! Absolutly NOT true. Woman just get fatter and fatter every day they live. Sad, but true.

That's great you've figured out the big secret of life. Hopefully your still young enough to enjoy it for many years to come. Sometimes it's a lesson learned too late. We are all guilty of taking too many things for granted and not realizing what we have until it's gone.

Well, I'm running a bit late too, gave myself the day off from the computer for Christmas! Do want to wish everyone here at Xisto a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and an exceptionally happy and prosperous New year!You have all been really great, and I enjoy all the good converstations I've had with all of you.

Dogs vomit for many reasons. Many of which are completely natural and normal. So, before you rush off to the vet, spend some time paying close attention to all your dogs symptoms and actions, make note of all behaviours, when the vomiting occurs, after eating/playing/ or just odd times. The vet is going to need a lot more information before he can make a proper diagnosis of your dogs problems. Natural and normal vomiting can be based on your dogs very own survival instinct. Wild dogs that run in packs have to bolt down what food they can grab at a kill, and then run off to a safe location to eat where the other members of the pack will not steal the food from them. Some dogs still have that instinct. They will gobble up feed and then eat it again later. Female dogs regurgatate food they carry back to their pups in their stomaches to get pups started on eating solid food and wean them from sucking milk as the pups get older. Vomiting can also be a symptom of the dog being wormy. How long since your dog has been wormed? Depending on the climate where you live, older dogs should be wormed a minimum of twice a year. (probably more often in warm climates, where the cold does not kill of the parasites in the ground) Young pups should be wormed even more often, as often as every 2 weeks. Also, dogs that have had parvo are prone to excessive vomiting. If they survive parvo, the lining of the stomach is damaged and digesting food is a problem for parvo survivors. Parvo destroys the villa in the stomach that secrete digestive enzymes and stir the food. Even a mild case of parvo does considerable damage. And also, some of the first symptoms of an actual case of parvo is vomiting. Though parvo is rare in adult dogs, it does happen. Feed, human food, snacks have allready been mentioned. Poison is another posibility. Not only deliberate poisoning like from a hateful neighbor, but dogs are the worst at picking up garbage and eating it and then getting sick.

Oh yes, very good idea. Not having water for that many dogs/goats would be a disaster. Actually, we have both. My better half designed a high preasure washer for the kennel, and it has a 1,050 gal watertank as a reserve tank. We run water into it whenever we do the wash downs, so it is always nearly full. And we have a small portable generator. It wouldn't run everything, but we could take it to the pump house, run the well for awhile, fill everything up and then move it back to the kennel/house. Out of old habits, I always keep plenty of empty plastic bleach bottles around, so can always store plenty of extra water. The biggest problem is the direct heat needed for newborn pups. There is no way to get that without electric. I use heat lamps and heat pads on the newborns. A few years ago, we installed one of those ventless gas heaters, and I love it as it works without the need for electricity, but keeping the kennel air temp high does not help the newborns. At any rate, so far most of the really bad weather has just missed us. We've had lots of rain, but that I can live with.

It was on the local Springfield Missouri TV channel, I don't remember now if it was Channel 3 or 10. I did hear it wroung though, sorry, the father was not at his house, he had stopped at a friends house for a minute. To my knowledge, the thief has not been caught. One thing the media has been doing that rather annoys me is "hinting" about charges being filed on the father. It's like they are pushing the cops to punish the poor guy. The little boy was asleep in the back seat, and lets face it, you can't watch your children every second of their lives, he may of thought the best and safest place for the boy was in the car, but leave it to the media to push to cause him more problems than he allready has.

OH PLEASE!!! Maybe you should do a little investigating of PETA before you believe their propaganda. Did you know that they deliberatly set up what they claimed in their stupid little videos was a canned hunt, and it was actually PETA members that shot and injured a deer and filmed it suffering just to make hunting look bad? Did you know that they deliberatly pose as people wanting jobs at kennels and other animal enterprises and then harm the animals to make the owers/farmers look bad? And then of course, what makes you believe that just the chickens killed for KFC are killed inhumanly? Chicken processing plants are all just alike. The chicken is going to die, and we are going to eat them. Doesn't matter if you buy it in your local grocery store, or KFC or your local restuarant. They all die pretty much the same way. And personally, I don't care. I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to live on bean sprouts and tofu. Now, personally, I quite eating at Mc Donalds a long time ago. For several reasons. First of all, they tried to tell the farmers how to raise meat, in an attempt to suck up to PETA. They need to run their own business, and not worry about anyone elses. Coprerate businesses have no clue about farming. And the main reason I quite Mickey D's? Well, we used to get some bags of their tossed out burgers and stuff, mostly what sat under the heat lamps too long to be used for human consumption. My dogs loved the bread and pickles, but what freaked me out was how the sheep would fight over the burger patties. Now that was scary! God only knows what is in those things!

You know, I almost hate to say this, but I'm beginning to reach the point that I don't believe anything any of these "studies" come out with. Seems like every few years they come out with a new one that contridicts an old one. Some years ago if you were even a few pounds overweight that was bad, then just a week or 3 ago their saying a few extra pounds may actually help you fight off illness. The sun was causing skin cancer, and now it's curing not only skin cancer, but lung cancer as well. They tell us not to eat eggs cause those are bad, but now they are a good sourse of low fat protien. Eat vegtables, don't eat meat. Ok, eat some meat. I think in the future I will just eat and wear and do as I dang will please and take my chances.

That's a good one, hadn't heard that yet. But yes, I think you are exactly right. Just one last check of my email, just read a couple more posts at Trap 17.....before you know it it's the middle of the night and you have effectivly messed up your whole next day cause you are going to have to sleep some, and will get up late and end up not getting anything done. I think it gets worse as you get older too. If you don't stay physically active, you lost the ability to do things even faster than when you are young. I know it seems to get harder and harder to lug those 50lb feed bags around. So you try to avoid it, and do things some other way, and it just makes things worse.

it also helps give your face some "lift" and not make it look sagging. Ok, that part got my attention! I can probably use some help in that department! Ok, I did. Wow, I have to say that after a couple times, I could feel the muscles were tired, so apparently they needed a workout. I'm just glad I don't have anybody around at the time when I try this, it would look pretty stupid.

Ok, you are making me feel like a contestant on Jeff Foxworthys "Are you smarter than a 5th grader!" What is Pre AP ELA class and gynourmous collage???????

Couple things to add.If you have a standard transmision, you can start droping gears. Blowing a transmission is a lot better than crashing. Also, going around corners slows the forward momentum of the car. If traffic allows, weave back and forth. Depening on the type of road you are on, if there are gravel shoulders or those otherwise annoying rumble strips, droping one side of the car on them will also slow you down. If you are in familiar territory, try to remember where the nearest uphill run is, and definatly avoid down hill runs!

That is just pretty cool. The story to the link isn't working anymore though. Amazing how they keep comming up with new ways to make life a sticky situation. From what I have read in the past, one of our more popular stickys, Post It notes were actually made by accident. Just one thing troubles me about this one though. I hope it is for real, and not that crazy car insurance company just trying to get promotion and news attention on their friendly little Gecko.......