facebook foolishness

My cousin got a puppy recently. Let me explain about my cousin first before I get into this post. She is quite possibly the vainest, most selfish person alive. She is also one of those people who is constantly complaining that she has no money and can't afford anything. You might be feeling sorry for her about now, except that she makes about $1oo/hr, has no kids, and her car is fully paid for. She lives in a apartment that is super cheap while she is waiting for her condo to be built. She's a label whore. A pauper she ain't.

All I have been hearing from her is how expensive dog food is, how she doesn't want to pay for a dog walker, how expensive it was to leave the dog for a week while we were away and on and on.

Anyhoo....Her sister was telling me that she got a 'poke' on Facebook from the dog. errkkkk. Rewind. I must have had a 'what you talking bout willis' look on my face cause she repeated herself. Turns out that the vain cousin has put up a Facebook profile for her dog. The dog sends email, updates his page, and has 29 friends. I am not making this up.

In case you need a refresher, I detest Facebook. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why a dog needs a facebook profile; I have enough trouble figuring out why a human does. What is this world coming to.

For the record, my dogs do not have web profiles or email addresses.

SunnyShine
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RainyBow note: Ah, delightful facebook. Last week I was poked by someone I apparently went to school with when I was seven. I say 'apparently' because I recall neither his name nor the name of the person he says was our teacher, most probably because I was seven. At any rate, I clicked through to his profile out of sheer curiosity. Although I have no idea who this person is, it's great that he's gay, out and proud of it. His page is littered with photos of and references to his many conquests. This is lots of information, given that I really have no clue who he is.

(And I'm not gonna lie; I shuddered a bit, thinking of what a similar page would look like for me, should I ever succumb to facebook tmi syndrome. Ugh.)

princesses don't walk in the rain

It's been raining a lot lately. I have no problem with rain myself, but Princess The Dog feels it is beneath her to have to go out in the rain. Jethro The Dog, as you can well imagine, doesn't give a fig about what is happening with the weather, he's just excited for the opportunity to chase small 4-legged animals. I dread rain.

When I open the door and Princess assesses the rain situation, she starts to back up into the house. (Most dogs turn around but she enjoys backing up for some reason.) At the same time, Jethro has flown out the door and is pulling my arm out of the socket. I have to drag Princess out the door and down the street. I end up walking like a scarecrow with one dog pulling and the other dragging. She also makes these lovely choking noises to go along with the drag so I feel extra badly for her. Little does she know that I really don't.

Jethro always does his business right away. He has other things to do so he gets it over with very quickly. Princess is never fast to begin with, but when it rains, it's near impossible to get her to do anything. I stand there and reason with her but she doesn't seem to get it. If she got down to business right away, she could go right back inside to her comfy bed, but nope. Stubborn. Sometimes, we've had to spend nearly an hour getting wet before she decides to get on with it. We've gone through this song and dance for nearly 6 years but it hasn't changed. And, don't advise me to get her a coat cause I've tried everything. Clearly, I just need to accept it.

SunnyShine

left boot apb

I love shoes. I'm female so this should come as no surprise. I generally loathe shopping (ok, I'm only mostly female) but I make an exception for shoe shopping. Recently, I had a very frustrating experience while I was looking for some boots. (The only reason I have to buy boots is because Jethro The Dog ate two pairs of them during his shoe-eating spree a few months ago. I'm still bitter.)

I found a pair of boots I liked but couldn't find them in my size. I have large feet so this isn't so unusual. It still makes me mad because the shoe buyers never order enough of the larger sizes even though there are more and more people with large sized feet these days. I asked the salesperson to check the other stores to see if there were any in the city in my size. This took approx 15 minutes. Between the socializing with the person on the other end of the phone and the seemingly monumental task of walking down the row to check for the boots, I nearly lost my mind. Needless to say, no luck.

I then moved to a different store and found another pair I liked. They even had my size. Yippee. I opened the box and found only the right boot. I tried it on and loved it, so I peered around to see if the left boot was on display somewhere. Nope. I then looked around for a salesperson. I found someone and asked if she could help me find the left boot; she didn't work there. Whoops. Five minutes later, I finally located the lone person working in the store. She started to look through some of the other boxes for the boot.

The first box she opened had a pair of boots that were two different sizes. The second box she opened had two left boots - different sizes. This was shoe-buying hell. What has happened to all of the left boots in the world? She then moved on to the cash area to see if there were any stray boots behind the counter. Imagine how pleased I was by this time. I told her to forget it.

Such a disappointing outing...sigh.

SunnyShine

remember when rainy joked about the raw food diet....

Jethro (the Dog) has had health problems since I got him from the pound last Sept 19. On his first visit to the vet, he was 59 lbs, had giardia, clostridium, infected ears and his hair was falling out. He was so emaciated that you could see every rib and bump on his spine and his hip bones stood up like fingers. Basically, he was a skeleton with a little bit of fur. Plus, he smelled and had a penchant for eating poo.

To put it mildly, the last year has been trying. Don't forget that I have two dogs. The other one - let's call her Princess - has never been sick in the 5 years I have had her (she's seriously the perfect dog; calm, quiet, relatively obedient). She's gone to the vet for her regular visit once a year and not much more than that. I haven't added it up but Jethro has easily been to the vet more in last year than Princess has in the last five. Consequently, the cash outlay for him has been significantly more as well.

The two parasites, giardia & clostridium, produce the most disgusting liquid diarrhea and are treated with very strong drugs - antibiotics etc. Giardia goes away fairly quickly but the clostridium can and did last for months. I would say he had it until March/April or so. Yes, that's 7 months in case you are counting.

Of course, I was thinking I was in the clear. He started gaining more weight and was generally healthier or so I thought. He's had some nervous habits like trying to eat his feet. I don't mean licking his feet, I mean that he puts his feet into his mouth and chews. Definitely not normal behaviour. He also has doggie ADD and has been getting increasingly destructive (the list is long). He drinks a lot. He drops a lot of hair. He can't keep still. Never. Ever.

I've been at my wits end and decided to take him to a homeopathic vet to see if there was anything else I could do. I was at the point where I was actually considering drugging him to calm him down (bad bad). Basically the vet said that his system has been completely destroyed by the drugs he was on and it is manifesting itself in the chewing and destruction etc. In a word, he is toxic. He also felt that he had some food sensitivity that should be tested and confirmed. We had the tests two days ago. Turns out he was right. Here is the full list of the things my dog is not allergic and/or sensitive to:

• chicken & turkey
• salmon
• venison
  
• most vegetables
• apples
• eggs

That's it. They tested over 100 things and those are the ones that are ok. The absolute worst food for him is lamb and guess what flavour his food has been. Yup, lamb. I buy them high end specialty food mind you, but still, the lamb is producing all of these symptoms. This explains a lot.

Please note the following things that are not on that list: beef, liver, cheese, grains

I am also need to scratch apples from the list. The vet gave him a piece after the tests were done and he promptly spit it out onto the floor. He may be able to eat it, but he doesn't like it.

Oh, almost forgot that the tests show he still has parasites. Goodie. He now has some holistic remedies for those.

Of course, they have recommended that he goes onto a raw food diet. I am completely on board with the idea of a raw food diet for the dogs. Obviously, it's better for them to be eating fresh food all the time instead of packaged food. The implementation of the raw food diet is another matter entirely. It is time consuming and I don't have a lot of extra time. I barely manage to make food for myself most nights and I don't know that I can get organized enough to make food for two dogs to eat twice a day. Trust me, it's not that I don't want to, it just seems completely daunting. Perhaps if I didn't work full time and spend 2 hours on the road every day, there would be time.

The good news is that Jethro now weighs 85 lbs and is much healthier than he ever has been. I've been googling different prepared foods are there are a few high end manufacturers that make high protein, no grain foods that would suit his diet. I picked one up today and gave him his first try this evening. He loved it.

I guess time will tell how the new food works. Hopefully we are over the hump and are moving on to greener pastures. It's possible I was bad to dogs in another life and am now paying the price. Cross your fingers the food works out.

SunnyShine

what the eff is a yorkiehuahua?

I really miss the days when dog crosses were called mutts. Whatever happened to that? Is it now suddenly un-PC to say mutt? No one told me.

Here's an ad I found today advertising a yorkiehuahua. How do you say that? Is it like yorkiewawa? Can you say that and keep a straight face? I didn't think so. Wouldn't Chorkie have been better? How about Chirkie? lmao. I'm cracking myself up.

The name is bigger than the damn dog. Look at the first picture in the link. His bug eyes seem to indicate that he is not impressed with that name himself.

Also, what use is an 8lb dog? OMG, an 8lb dog that costs $750!!!! That's $93.75/lb. At that rate, my dogs would be worth 15K. Actually, Jethro would probably be in the bargain bin so maybe not that much.

Rainy, feel free to rant about the apostrophe issue; I'm not going to bother.

SunnyShine
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RainyBow note: I wonder sometimes if people believe they might have a better chance of winning the lottery if they just use apostrophes as frequently as possible. Or maybe that they'll become a better person.

I have no other possible explanation for rampant apostrophe misuse.

don't blame me, dumbass

In case you don't know - and you don't - I have two big dogs. One is a dream; quiet, serene, generally well behaved, meticulous. The other is like satan, if satan were a redneck; the human version of him would be a neanderthal. I cannot begin to go into the destruction and general badness that emanates from him. Let's call him Jethro. Anyway.....

I took them to the off leash park today so Jethro could get rid of some energy and run around like he has just escaped from prison. This is the only place I can take him to run as the fences are 15ft and he doesn't seem to be able to jump that high. He can, however, jump (from standing) onto the first branch of the tree into my back yard - 6ft. I'm digressing.

So I'm in the park and there are a few other people there with their dogs. All dogs are playing nicely and then I see my Jethro run over and investigate something on the ground. Some guy had put down his man-bag cause he was tired of carrying it. Jethro proceeds to sniff and slobber all over this bag cause well, it's on the ground. Jethro is very slobbery.

The owner of the man-bag starts yelling at me because man-bag is now covered in slobber. How is this my problem?

If you are stupid enough to come into a dog off-leash park - where btw, dogs pee, poo, throw up, have diarrhea over every square inch - and put your bag on the ground, you deserve more than just a little slobber. Quite frankly, I was impressed Jethro or some other dog didn't pee on it. Slobber was the least of the things that could have happened to his precious man-bag I think.

He even had the nerve to ask me if I had a wipe. No, I do not have a wipe, idiot. Why aren't you carrying those in your man-bag? I doubt he'll be back.

SunnyShine

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RainyBow note: are you talking, by chance, about this guy? Note the THIRD EDITION of his buyer's guide to man-bags. I have to wonder why the first and second editions just didn't cut it. Did the "cool" man-bag styles change significantly between editions? 'Cause, really, none of these actually have any semblance of style, even in Eastern Europe. But several have compartments where the wipes would fit quite snugly....