sheepdog

I believe it was Bob Dylan that said, "Oh the times they are a changing." Boy was he ever right! Sometimes when I have time to eat lunch, I like to watch a little Tv while I'm eating. Don't want to take a whole 2 hours to watch a movie so I like to watch some of the old shows, especially the westerns, like Bonanza, Gunsmoke, or the Lone Ranger. And if I can catch an episode I really like Lassie.(that should not come as a surprise to anyone here who knows me right?) The other day that show really blew my mind. Timmy and Lassie befriended a stray dog, they called him Duke and were trying to find his owner, but Duke got sick and it was obvious that he had rabies. Timmy's mom called the sherriff, but by they time they got there Duke was gone. Duke soon came back and was threatening Lassie, Timmy grabbed the rifle and went out to shoot Duke, Timmy's mon was standing behind him telling him to shoot, but Timmy couldn't bring himself to do it. (no surprise there) His mom got the gun and fired a shot in the air and Duke ran off. Later they got a call from the sherriff telling them that Duke had threatened some neighbors chickens, and as his mom told Timmy that Duke had been "put out of his missery." Can you imagine the uproar an episode like that would cause today??? Child advocates and gun control nuts would be having a hey day about how a small child could have such easy access to a loaded gun. People shouldn't have guns you know! And the animal rights wacko's would be screaming about how cruel it is to shoot a dog. It should be captured and humanly euthanized at the risk of human life contracting rabies from a mad dog of course. And what if something like that happened in real life, and not on TV? Family Services would of taken Timmy away and put him in foster care, his mom would be in jail for endangerment of a child, and Lassie would probably be sent to the pound to have her head cut off to be sent to a lab because she was exposed to a rabid dog. The enviournmental protection agency would quaranteen the entire county due to a rabid animal being found. No one could by or sell an animal in or out of the county. Homeland security would be prowling the landscape in search of terrorists who where plotting to turn rabid animals loose in the country side to threaten the lives of people. All this for a show that back in the day when it aired, it was not legal for them to show a bra on a living woman, they had to put in on a plastic form.

"a road trip is hours or even days in a car with kids screaming and fighting in the back" Or, in my case, pups yapping, or even worse, pooping in their crate. I have never quite understood why a kennel's worth of poop doesn't smell even one tenth as bad as one tiny puppy size pile in the back of a car! And god forbid you ever haul bulldog pups. They won't poo in their crates, but they can pass gas that will make a green fog inside a car! Pups like catch you off guard too. They will be quiet as little mice, and then all of a sudden after an hour or 2 of silence, they will let out a screeching yelp that will startle the dickens out of you.

So what is everyones opinion of Windows 8? I was in a computer store the other day messing around with a new computer that had 8 on it, and oh my dear, it is SO different! It gives me terrible pains to even think about having to learn everything all over again. I have XP now in case it makes any difference. I had a rental computer for awhile, and it had Windows 7 on it, it was not too bad to figure out but 8 is just off in a new realm to me. I remember when Vista came out and everybody hated it, so was just wondering what the concensis is about 8. The guy at the computer store did tell me that probably none of my old software will work with 8. I have a photo editing program that I have used for years and I know how to fix my pictures in my sleep I've done it so much, so that is another thing I would have to do is find some other program and figure that out too. I'm sure nothing else I have now would work on it either, including Front Page, my microsoft office, which also includes the program I use to make my web site graphics, and maybe not even my Zuma game. I just hate that you have to buy all this crap new! It's bad enough to be out big bucks for the computer but the softwware and programs eat your lunch too! I honestly can make up my mind if I want to just get a refurbished computer with Windows 7 on it or shoot for the moon and get a new one with 8. The new computer I was looking at was an All in one, touch screen. I've never had a touch screen, not even on a phone, so there is something else again. The big problem I see with just upgrading to 7 is that it will make me just one year closer to being obsolete again.

I didn't realize you could only host one domain name here. Glad you brought that up. I have toyed with the idea of a site called USDAsucks.com! Of course it's just an idea I have on those moments that this particular government agency annoys me. Which are actually pretty frequent. But I barely have time to keep up with the web site but it would be kinda fun to have another way to annoy them.

Well I'm glad you are here posting too! You just keep it up, someday you might want to start a web site and you'll be money ahead and can go for it right away. I used to try really hard to keep at least 2 to 3 months worth of hosting credits ahead, but in recent months I just haven't been able too. I really need to because there are times when I am just too busy with the kennel to spend much time here, and it comes in what seems like a month at a time. LIke right now, I am trying to get my fall dog shearing done. That in itself is a major chore, but then we have had all these other projects going like trying to fix up the trailer for the thief, and this week it's been getting the fence fixed around the other place so we can move the goats to some new pasture. I put an ad on craigslist last week for some extra help. that took up a fair amount of time, talking and emailing people and culling out the ones I didn't think sounded like anyone I wanted to trust, (which honestly after the past 2 helpers, I was a major skeptic.) I think I did find a really good girl to help out. She already has one full time job so was fine with part time. And it's kinda nice to have another female around here, right now all the help is male. She was here the past 2 days and got a lot of work done, I was really pleased about that. Hopefully she will come back next week. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

One more among many as of late, I had a really weird day this past week. It seemed like an evil or at least mischevious magician was following me about tormenting me. I was grooming dogs that morning, and my clipper blade was getting dull so I was running it in the blade wash frequently. After you dip it in the wash you have to wipe off the excess oil on a paper towel to keep from getting oil all over the dogs. I usually just keep one paper towel handy and use it several times until it's all soaked up. I wiped off the blade, cut a bit more doggie hair and when I washed the blade again the towel had dissapeared! Vanished, without a trace. I looked everywhere, and since I was standing still in one spot I knew it couldn't be more than an arms lengh away, but I never did find it. So later, after the grooming session, my only desire is to hit the shower. You wouldn't believe how itchy dog hair can be when it is cut into tiny pieces and distributed all over your body, including up your nose and in your eyes. While in the shower, I grabed my bar of homemade lye soap, it is wonderful on itchy places, and I had some bug bites on my chest that where bothering me almost as bad as the dog hair. (not quite as bad, but pretty close.) Luckily I did get myself soaped up before the bar slid out of my hands. I heard it hit the tub wall, but it too dissapeared. With the shower curtain pulled shut it would of had to land in the tub but it was gone! Big bar too, it's not like it disolved or anything. I never did find the bar of soap either. I can't figure out how I can loose things in such small, enclosed spaces.

Well, I'm not really sure why they arrested him, he told that story to my other hired man, and apparently there was also a warrent out for him from some other county, I haven't a clue as to why. But believe it or not, this situation just keeps getting worse, if you can believe that! I just got my letter from the court house the other day, my court date is not until NOVEMBER 13TH!!!! My god, that's 6 weeks away! I am furious! I stormed the court house today to complain and was just told the judge only heard this type of case once a month and the october day was already full. I asked them if they realize that I was being held a prisoner in my own home, I can't leave the place unguarded in case he breaks in again. Not only that, by then the weather will be bad and the trailer he is in has no underpinning, it was not meant for people to live in, was just a work shop, and now all the pipes will freeze up and bust because of him.

There is a considerable difference in having to obtain a licence for an individual dog, and a kennel licence. When you have to have one of those for a city or town for an individual dog, it is only for your local area, (or if you travel from state to state with your dog) and the soul purpose for it is to prove your dog has been vaccinated for rabies. The only thing the local dog warden will or can do is verify that your dog has had a rabies shot. He is not granted full police powers to invade the privacy of your home to check your dog. However, when the USDA forces private individual with 5 or more dogs to get a kennel licence, the law grants them the power to invade the privacy of your home at any time without a warrrent and without pryor notice. And the big problem here is that a human home does not comply with USDA regulations. This one particular rule: "All surfaces that come into contact with the dogs must be impervious to moisture." Things in a normal home are not impervious to moisture. Your carpet, curtains, couch all have to go if you have dogs that have the freedom of the entire house. You can set aside one room in your house and have the dogs in it and make all the surfaces impervious to moisture, but then the dogs are required by law to remain in that room only. Yes, sooner or later I will have that POS out of there, I just wish it was sooner. I did find out that while they were checking him out for stealing from me, they found drug parfifinala (wish I could spell) so while they didn't find my money of course, it was long since spent, at least he got 5 days in jail for the drug stuff. Not like that helps me financially but at least it made me feel a little better.

Wow, lucky you, $15! I haven't had a balance that high in ages! I used to keep it up there when there was more activity here and more to talk about, but that's been hard to do lately. I'll only have a nickel left by the time this months web hosting service comes out of it. And that could be pretty soon, since they started changing the dates the take it out. Seems like that has been coming sooner every month.

That's good advice, I have removed as much junk from the old computer that I possibly can, and have emptied the system files and defragged it. That helped some but not very much. I also got Spy Bot and installed it, thinking maybe that was the problem. It doesn't seem to help much, about all it acomplishes is getting rid of all my cookies so ever time I run it after word I have to look up and retype in all my passwords, which is a royal pain the rear. I have a pretty good internet servic provider, it's DSL from my phone company, it seems to be a lot faster than eve the satalite internet I used to have, and oh forget dial up that I started with! Now there was slow for you!

If you think things get heated on a political board, you should see what happens on boards with dog breeders, or even worse, open dog breeder forums that animal rights wacko's can also post on! Breeders boards are bad, I've seen some real slug fests start over something as simple as the type of dog food you prefer. Those can get so heated I have reached the point that when a customer asks me what kind of dog food I recomend I will no longer name off a brand. I tell them only to read the ingredient label and know what is actually in the feed. I also mention that price is not an idication of quality. There are some high dollar feeds out there that will make dogs sick and starved for certain nutrients. I also will mention to NEVER get involved with fad diets for dogs. There is a dog food out now, Salmon and Sweet potatoes..Seriously, what dog eats salmon and sweet potatoes? Thats just goofy. And then there is the Humane Society's vegatiarian dog food. This one is a serious threat to the health and welfare of our canine friends. Yes, very busy here. It's time to start fall grooming for the dogs, and I am now somewhat short on help, though I have some filling in and taking care of the daily routine we are not gaining any ground on major projects. Winter will be here too soon and a lot has to be done by then, because there are a lot of things you can't do in the winter, like painting dog houses for example. Only good thing about winter is that you don't have to mow grass.

Things are looking up, at least for me, I did get an email today from here saying I had $6 in credits. So at least now I know I am ok for this month. Good thing too because I sure have enough other junk to worry about. Mrdee, hope you get your problems straightened out too. Now that I have a balance, I need to go check and see if it is showing on my account info page.

I bet you do at that! I'm sure running this board and staying on top of everything can be a real headache. I wouldn't want your job. Believe it or not, I would rather deal with dog poo and hair than computer problems. I had more trouble from the AH yesterday. Talk about a sick prank, though I'm not sure which one of us actually got the worst of it. We had to deliver a puppy yesterday a few hours from home, hated to leave but have to make a living. On the way out right square in the middle of my driveway down at the road was the rotted carcuss of a road kill that had been hit about 20 or 30 feet down below my mail box about a month or more ago. I know it was human done because at the edge of the highway was a red shop towel he had used to handle the carcuss. Seriously, that is pretty sick. He had to handle it and drag it all the way over there, of course all I had to do was drive over it, so it was no big deal to us, but I have to worry seriously about the mental state of the person who did it.

Just an update to my current delema. It is certainly not getting any better. I went back to the sherrifs office yesterday afternoon to see what had come of my complaint I had filed and what I needed to do to get the POS out of my trailer. It appears that scum bags have all the laws on their side. Our system is really screwed up. If you are a total bum with no job, no income, and on public assistance they will bend over backwards to save your sorry *bottom*, but if you are a working, tax paying, contribution citizen, you are pretty much screwed. If a person squats on your property for 4 days or more they have rights, can you believe that? So after he robbs me, tries to extort $700 from me, I then have to pay the court system to get him thrown out and they can't even give me a time frame that he will be out of there on. Even more annoying, when I went to pay them at the court house they told me part of the fee that went to the Sherriff had to be a money order, I had already pulled the cash out of my billfold and was trying to pay them. I had to go back to the bank and get a money order. They make everything just as difficult as they possibly can. And I am now wondering even more why in the hell am I paying taxes? If I have to pay for the services in the county what good are all those taxes I pay?

By Check availability of Domain Name I have a tan box that says "Our Latest News: Due to Recent Dallas Datacenter Migration at ThePlanet (now Softlayer), We were forced to..." There isn't any amount anywhere on the page that says what my credit balance is. It is rather worrysome not knowing. I figure I am aways off from having enough hosting credits right now and don't want to end up loosing my site.

I feel for you mrdee, it's so hard to work and promote a site and then loose all that effort when the site goes down. I am in much the same situation when my site goes down, and my living rather depends on my web site. Any customer that ends up on the "file not found" page is the potential loss of a sale for me. Not to mention people are eary enough about buying a puppy online, so any hickups hurt my creditibility with possible customers. It's hard enough as it is to compete with scammers giving away free pups for only the cost of shipping as it is. Didn't you have this same problem awhile back? I hope you get it fixed real soon. I do have to say any down times on my site have been fixed quickly after I send in a ticket.

I'm curious as to what a person would gain/benefit from making a goofy post like the one above? What would make it worth the time you spend making it? I can see plugging a business or posting a link to something, but a bunch of random words that make no sense whatsoever? Who is even going to see it in a random discusion about cars?

The 79.26 is not the balance I have in my account. I'm actually not sure now what those numbers represent. It used to show how close you were to earning another $1 back when they were updated on a daily basis. In other words, right now I would have to write a post worth about 20 cents to add another dollar to my funds. Anyway, that was my understanding, that by no means means I'm correct of course. Yes, has been a fair amount of spam lately. I rather giggled when I saw spam from a dentists office. You would think any good dentist would have all the work they need. I know here in the states you have to have an appointment for weeks in advance, especially in late summer, when all the parents are getting the kids ready for back to school.

Well, now that you have mentioned it........Last time I ended up paying my balance with pay pal, because things are so slow here and I just haven't had the time or energy to make posts, and I figured once I got in the hole I'd never catch back up again, so I did it that way. First time since I started here that I had to do it. But today when I logged in, I noticed that in my account information there is absolutly no mycents showing, not even a place for them to be listed, I have no idea what my balance is. Does this information just dissapear if you don't have any? I would think it would at least show a zero or there be a place holder for your ammount. But if the mycents haven't been updated since I paid with pay pal I would I suppose be showing nothing, so I don't know if it's because I have Zero or what is going on. And seriously guys at this time I truely do not need anything else to worry about.

So sad, prayers are being sent their way. What a terrible thing to have to go threw.

Where we live we get frequent brief power outages. The power will only go off for one or two seconds, but of course, that causes all the electronics in the house to go haywire and have to be reset. With most things it's no big deal, resetting the time on the alarm clock takes a minute, and the TV takes a few minutes to reset, but my computer really screws up every time the power goes out. It takes forever to restart, and then for about an hour or so nothing works right. Some times even though I can see my desk top, the mouse won't work. Or pages take forever to load. Even just my files and stuff on the desk top are painfully slow to open. Heaven forbid I want to check my email. I have to mess around with it and eventually it will start working, but every time it happens I wonder if this is the big one and my computer is going to bit the dust. Any ideas on what is going on or what I can do to speed up the process of getting it back to working? Or am I due for a new computer?

Wow, sound like a really neat trip! Did you get to meet Sara Palin? That would of been a real highlight for the trip, at least to me! I enjoyed watching that TV show they had on for awhile, Sara Paline's Alaska. It had several different episodes that highlighted many of the recreational activites and work in Alaska, it was a very interesting TV show, and showed a lot of what I'm sure you saw in the beautiful scenery of the great state.

No, I don't think you were insulting or anything like that at all. That's the beauty of this board, we all are able to express our opinions and discuse matters at hand. Sadly, there are way too many people who don't want to allow anyone else to have an opinion if it is one they do not agree with. Take the internet for example. Very few topic boards can have converstaions that don't end up in flame wars and people calling each other names and just getting downright nasty with each other. You should see some of the dog boards I have been on over the years, man, do they go nuts sometimes! And it just seems to get worse and worse all the time. You think because you are behind a computer screen you can say and do anything you want to, so the worst and most nasty side comes out of so many people. I've seen a few flame wars here, but not nearly as bad as other places. It all ends in people getting their feelings hurt and leaving the boards, then the quality of the exchanges goes down and eventually everyone suffers, it's just really stupid to take the entire world so seriously.

Sometimes it really sucks to be me! I just never seem to get a break. I already told you the story of my previous employee/renter that destroyed the trailer they were living in a few weeks ago, but since then life has slid further downhill for me. It started just over a week ago with the announcment of the implimentation of new regulations by our fedral government, the USDA to be exact. They are now going to stick their noses into the private homes of anyone with more than 4 dogs who sell and ship even one puppy and force these people to get a USDA licence. When you are licenced, the inspectors have the right to inspect your kennel at any time they want, unannounced. For those folks who raise a few dogs in their homes, this is an absolute abomination to their freedom and rights to privacy in the security of their own homes. It will also cut deeply in my ability to sell my pups since I refuse to get a licence too. The law is touted to prevent undesirable kennel conditions, you have to let the people come and see the pups on your property in a face to face sale. However, the same new regulations allow you to meet the buyer at any puplic place, so how the hell is that going to help anything? So I have been worring myself sick over how I am going to manage to stay in business and then I get another kick in the teeth. This past sunday we went to the swap meet as usual, got home a bit later in the afternoon, since we stoped and visited with our widowed sister in law for awhile. I was really tired when we got home and decided a nap was in order. I had been laying down just long enough to be drifting off when the phone rang, a potential puppy customer, which I talked to for a few minutes and then tried to get back to my nap. Allk of a sudden there is this bull roar in the front room coming out of my old man saying GET IN HERE! I had really never heard him make such a noise before, he was mad! I walked into the frount room and he told me we had been robbed! He saves all his change and rolls it up and saves it all year so we have some extra money for vacation time. He had about $150 in rolled change and some still stacked up but not rolled. After reviewing the events of that day, it was pretty obvious that it was the new kid I had hired that had done it. I am absolutly furious over this one. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! This kid had no where to go, he was being evicted from where he was living. We made a deal that I would give him a couple months free rent in exchange for fixing/cleaning up the trailer that my fomer employee/renter had trashed. He had started cleaning it out but he ran out of time on his eviction notice, so I allowed him to move into what I call my pottery trailer, which is right next door to the one he was supposed to be fixing up. It's the trailer that I used to live in before my father passed away, and I had been planning on getting together with another friend to set that trailer up to make pottery and do other craft type things that I don't have room to do over here, like sign painting and that sort of stuff. I told him right up front that he could not stay in it very long, it sets in the middle of what I need for goat pasture and it is time to move the goats over there. He has really been dragging his heals over getting the other trailer fixed up. I have to stay on him to get him to do any work over there at all. So now I am paying the other hired man to work on that trailer, and paying this stupid kid to do the work here that the other guy should be doing. And I have spent well over $1,000 already on building supplys for the trailer, and have not even got a good start on fixing it up yet. Yet I was willing to spend thousands of dollars of my money to get this kid a decent home to live in. I gave him a job, and also found a few things his wife could work at here to make a little extra money for them. He doesn't even have a car, so he is seriously limited as to where he can get a job, so he more or less had it made here living next door so he could walk to work. I also made him several advances on his pay when he got in a bind. Basicly, I helped him in every way I possibly could and he repays me by robbing me. So now, he is sending text messages to my other hired man's wife, demanding that I pay the sorry POS $700!!!! Or he will not get out of my trailer until January! Can you believe the nerve of this dirt bag? Extorsion on top of robbery! I am so pissed I hardly know what to do. Hubby is ready to fire up the bulldozer and scrape the trailer right out into the middle of the county road. (with said dirtbag still in it of course.) And he is fairly likely to do it, but then I would be out my pottery trailer, which I am not real crazy about. And now I have to worry about having that thief living practicly in my back yard until I can get him out of here. I filed a report at the sheriff's yesterday for what good that will do. So for now the drama continues. Cross your fingers for me for a decent outcome.

Sometimes I feel like starting a one woman campaigne against political correctness. Not a day goes by when some word or phrase we use is now found to be offensive to someone, and you can't tell a joke about any one or practicly any thing these days. But the most recent round to hit has me absolutly furious! At a Rodeo at the Missouri State Fair, a bullfighter, Tuffy Gessling put on an Obamma mask and proceeded to make jokes about our commander in chief. Nothing even all that bad even. And for those of you that might think there is something racist or bad about this, please be aware, every president that we have ever had has been riduculed during rodeo proformances for the past 20 years. Bush, Reagan, Clinton have all took hits from the bulls. So why should Obummer be any different? Obummer supporters have gone balistic over this one. The Missouri State fair board has banned Tuffy Gessling for life! This poor man has recieved numerous DEATH THREATS! He has been threatened with being run over, and they have even threatened to burn down his home! Over a frigging JOKE! Mad dog Obummer supporters are crazy, that's all there is to it. They are poor pathectic humans with no sense of humor whatsoever. How can telling a joke about someone, anyone make the person telling it deserve death? What kind of sick twisted logic is that? You can't call it being racist. Bush, Clinton and Regan are not black and you didn't see anyone complaining when they were made fun of. As a matter of fact, you should see the pictures that were made public by Machelle Malkin on her collection of top 10 Bush bashing pictures. (don't misunderstand, Malkin didn't make the pictures, she just saved them, want to be perfectly clear here.) Now if you want to see something that is not funny and I think offensive check these out. Certainly a far cry from a harmless joke at a rodeo http://michellemalkin.com/2013/08/14/10-images-mocking-george-w-bush-that-were-far-worse-than-a-harmless-rodeo-clown/ And now the rodeo clowns are going to be required to take "sensitivity traing?" How absolutly insane is that? This men are out there risking their lives in what is probably the most dangerous profession in the world, trying to save the lives of cowboys who have fallen, or worse yet, got hung up in a bull rope and are about to get gored, stomped or killed by 1500 lbs or more of hamburger on the hoof. And they need to be trained to be sensitive? Here are a couple more links to the whole story, and interviews with Tuffy. http://therightscoop.com/obama-rodeo-clown-tuffy-gessling-speaks-out-about-death-threats-says-performance-had-nothing-to-do-with-race/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/26/tuffy-gessling-rodeo-clown_n_3818877.html I don't know about the rest of you but I am sick and tired of all this walking on egg shells being afraid of offending everyone. I say to hell with it. Lets not loose our sense of humors, lighten up a little and stop all this crazyness. You have a lot more fun in your life if you are not a tight *bottom* bitter prude. So, to start off my own personal war against PC, here is an Obama Joke! Don't threaten to kill me, just laugh and have a good day! Pinocchio, Snow White, and Superman are out for a stroll in town one day. As they walk, they come across a sign: "Beauty contest for the most beautiful woman in the world. "I am entering" said Snow White. After half an hour she comes out and they ask her, "Well, how'd ya do? "First Place ," said Snow White...and Pinocchio and Superman congratulated Snow White. They continue walking and they see a sign: "Contest for the strongest man in the world." "I'm entering," says Superman. After half an hour he returns and they ask him, "How did you make out?" "First Place ," answers Superman. "Did you ever doubt?" Again, congratulations from the other two. They continue walking when they see a sign: "Contest! Who is the greatest liar in the world?" Pinocchio says "this is mine" Half an hour later, he returns with tears in his eyes. "What happened?" asked Snow White and Superman. "Who the hell is Obama?" asked Pinocchio