This is a book about dogs. Thus it goes on Missouri Books and Animals That Give Pause too. The Art of Racing In the Rain is by Garth Stein. I'd give it a 9 out of 10 or maybe an 8, not the most intellectually stimulating read I've had but it's a dog talking, gimme a break. I bought this book for like $10 @ Wally world because I had to wait an hour in KC and had NOTHING to read and NOTHING to do which is a fate worse than death if you know me.
You can buy it from Amazon by clicking to your right in that handy dandy amazon box or down below. In fact you can buy anything from amazon, anything, you are getting sleepy...back to the book review.
I love dog books. I love books on training dogs, about dogs, by dogs, (supposedly, most of them are not trained for proper grammar) I love dog books. This one is no exception. I'm not saying it gives particular insight into your fido's secret life but who is to say? So what happens in the book? Basically it follows a dog through his years with a family, through good times and bad though this family seems to have the market on bad times cornered for awhile. If nothing else read this book for the psycho thriller scene with the zebra........
Showing posts with label puppy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label puppy. Show all posts
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Kids VS Dog or Who Is More Jealous?
I think these pictures were taken in January or February of 2005 which would make Kaylin (granddaughter) almost 2 and Dispatch 1 1/2, isn't Kaylin a doll, she still is and not because she is the child of the one the other kids call my favorite (my favorite is supposedly my oldest stepson whom the other kids say can do no wrong in my eyes, @ that point I tell them I've disliked them all equally @ times). Anyway this is back when we thought Dispatch was a poodle which is another story, thus the horrible haircut. That and my oldest daughter decided to try her hand @ grooming him.
Dispatch (the dog in the picture a bichon and maybe poodle) was pretty good with the grandkids, didn't trust them but there was good reason. They did strange things to him. He did bite another granddaughter but she was teasing him taking food away from him and then giving it back, he learned better. Also Dispatch learned that if I had the camera out
he had to be in the picture. He likes our children, loves some but that's another story.
Our children are all horribly jealous of the dog except for the two youngest who are both blond and Christy and Christi respectively, that's what happens when you have a blended family, I can't say Judy is jealous either but she is the youngest of my husbands two oldest daughters, so it's mostly the oldest kids that are jealous? My husband had a 10 year gap in between his two sets of kids so the respective oldest 3 of each family are the worst about not liking the dog. They say we spoil him horribly and they were never spoiled like that. One did admit ONCE that I must have spoiled the kids and they not known it considering how much I spoil the dog. She has @ last count 7 dogs with separate schedules because some of them fight so I don't know about me spoiling MY dog? We got Dispatch when the youngest child we had living with us was barely out of high school. Anyway the kids were basically gone from home and we had this foo foo dog that they were jealous of. We aren't talking babies here, they are in their 20s and 30s and professionals for the most part. But they don't want to h
ear about the dog, they grimace when we have to go home because the dog is there, they pass over the dog pictures, ...........they call him horrors, that stupid mutt?
For an example my oldest daughter who is really a loving caring upstanding person (she's the school nurse, has 4 kids, and a sunbeam group @ church) and I were talking the other day. I told her I had the new video of Dispatch "talking" on youtube and she said she could care less?
We went on a trip to the Florida Keys one Christmas eve when we were in Ft Lauderdale took my youngest daughter and my husbands youngest son and of course Dispatch too, it's referred to sometimes as the trip from hell because they had to ride in the back seat of the pickup with Dispatch who wanted his Mommy and Daddy in the FRONT seat the whole time. We went to the dog beach down there BTW, there and Dairy Queen, only two times we stopped except some state park with an old bridge and lots of shells. And yes the dog got ice cream @ Dairy Queen. BUT I did try to make the dog behave and not be like attached to me the whole trip.
So in short I guess the dog was our answer to the empty nest syndrome (what empty nest, they kept trying to come back!) and the kids didn't like what they viewed as a stupid replacement. And of course when we got married most of them were WAY too old to sleep with us (5-21 years old) but the dog gets to sleep with us, and go everywhere with us, and I carry him when he wants carried, and play when he wants to play (sometimes). I think the worst is if I talk baby talk to him and they say I never talked that nice to them. AND if they had came in from outside and jumped on the furniture with wet feet they would have been severely punished and the dog isn't, and he gets to sit on my lap when I watch tv or "daddies" lap. There are myriad more reasons why they think he is spoiled. Probably one of them is I blog about him and animals and not children but I don't think they want so much of their lives and habits exposed as Dispatches have been?
Anyway the kids are jealous of Dispatch. My husbands cousin has 3 girls the same age as some of our kids. They didn't have a dog inside when the kids were growing up either. The girls left home and voila, the parents get a dog. They have a NEW house in town, nice house and they get a terrier. Their girls tell me the dog eats steak and gets towels warmed up for him but I'm not sure that's all true. They say you have to be careful when you have a new baby when you have a pet already established in the home but no one ever warns about getting a new pet when you have children who are already established in the home?
Dispatch (the dog in the picture a bichon and maybe poodle) was pretty good with the grandkids, didn't trust them but there was good reason. They did strange things to him. He did bite another granddaughter but she was teasing him taking food away from him and then giving it back, he learned better. Also Dispatch learned that if I had the camera out
he had to be in the picture. He likes our children, loves some but that's another story.Our children are all horribly jealous of the dog except for the two youngest who are both blond and Christy and Christi respectively, that's what happens when you have a blended family, I can't say Judy is jealous either but she is the youngest of my husbands two oldest daughters, so it's mostly the oldest kids that are jealous? My husband had a 10 year gap in between his two sets of kids so the respective oldest 3 of each family are the worst about not liking the dog. They say we spoil him horribly and they were never spoiled like that. One did admit ONCE that I must have spoiled the kids and they not known it considering how much I spoil the dog. She has @ last count 7 dogs with separate schedules because some of them fight so I don't know about me spoiling MY dog? We got Dispatch when the youngest child we had living with us was barely out of high school. Anyway the kids were basically gone from home and we had this foo foo dog that they were jealous of. We aren't talking babies here, they are in their 20s and 30s and professionals for the most part. But they don't want to h
ear about the dog, they grimace when we have to go home because the dog is there, they pass over the dog pictures, ...........they call him horrors, that stupid mutt?
For an example my oldest daughter who is really a loving caring upstanding person (she's the school nurse, has 4 kids, and a sunbeam group @ church) and I were talking the other day. I told her I had the new video of Dispatch "talking" on youtube and she said she could care less?
We went on a trip to the Florida Keys one Christmas eve when we were in Ft Lauderdale took my youngest daughter and my husbands youngest son and of course Dispatch too, it's referred to sometimes as the trip from hell because they had to ride in the back seat of the pickup with Dispatch who wanted his Mommy and Daddy in the FRONT seat the whole time. We went to the dog beach down there BTW, there and Dairy Queen, only two times we stopped except some state park with an old bridge and lots of shells. And yes the dog got ice cream @ Dairy Queen. BUT I did try to make the dog behave and not be like attached to me the whole trip.
So in short I guess the dog was our answer to the empty nest syndrome (what empty nest, they kept trying to come back!) and the kids didn't like what they viewed as a stupid replacement. And of course when we got married most of them were WAY too old to sleep with us (5-21 years old) but the dog gets to sleep with us, and go everywhere with us, and I carry him when he wants carried, and play when he wants to play (sometimes). I think the worst is if I talk baby talk to him and they say I never talked that nice to them. AND if they had came in from outside and jumped on the furniture with wet feet they would have been severely punished and the dog isn't, and he gets to sit on my lap when I watch tv or "daddies" lap. There are myriad more reasons why they think he is spoiled. Probably one of them is I blog about him and animals and not children but I don't think they want so much of their lives and habits exposed as Dispatches have been?
Anyway the kids are jealous of Dispatch. My husbands cousin has 3 girls the same age as some of our kids. They didn't have a dog inside when the kids were growing up either. The girls left home and voila, the parents get a dog. They have a NEW house in town, nice house and they get a terrier. Their girls tell me the dog eats steak and gets towels warmed up for him but I'm not sure that's all true. They say you have to be careful when you have a new baby when you have a pet already established in the home but no one ever warns about getting a new pet when you have children who are already established in the home?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Mother hides guinea pig death, would you?
Link to Cnn story here.
It seems a mother hid a guinea pigs death from her 3rd grade son because he would be upset and had multiple tests in the next two days.
I've never done this. Most of the little furry things we had in the house survived when the kids were little. We had one hamster but I think I missed his death by being @ work and the girls were teenagers? I accidentally ran over my 5 year old daughters dog once on the way to the school bus because I swerved to avoid another car and I didn't know he was racing my car on the driveway. She wasn't horribly upset, in fact it's a family history story, she asked in her cherubic blond way "Are we going to skin him and eat him Mommy?" You have to understand we did NOT kill or eat dogs or cats for that matter. We did kill the flock of chickens because I'd discovered most of them were roosters and didn't feel like they should live all winter getting fat and tough and mean. We live in Missouri also and killing deer and turkeys is a time honored tradition and I usually got the job of skinning and butchering or @ least helped. We were too poor to afford the meat locker option. So the kids point of view was sort of understandable but you can imagine my shock when she asked that particular question?
My other daughter loved black animals, we lived on a farm with her grandpa and grandma in a different house and it seemed like we always had puppies or kittens, she always claimed the black ones and they would die. Not be killed necessarily but succumb to a mystery illness or just disappear. She always named them Blackie. After about 2 puppies and 3 kittens named Blackie the name became off limits and we got a black terrier and named her Cujo. Cujo survived for years and years, the spell was broken, Cujo weighed about 15 lb. soaking wet. We still won't name animals Blackie.
For the next story you have to understand I was a very independent child, my mom worked or went to college all the time it seemed like (or was with her family her brother was dying though we didn't know it @ the time) my dad raised me a great deal of the time and he had a business on the farm, a fix it shop, big metal building, he worked on everything from TVs to combines, to big trucks and tractors, mostly tractors and trucks though, and a dairy with 30 Holsteins. He had 2 or 3 employees @ one time so from the time I could turn on the TV and be depended on not to kill myself and watch for traffic on the driveway I could wander between the shop and the house and barn and about 200 ft. from the buildings. I learned to warm up lunch when I was like 6 and I don't remember learning to drive, I was too young and my mother always said they had me because my dad didn't like the way she drove a tractor? This was the early 60s.
When I was a child I had various animals, only one dog was mine, Shep, but more on him later. I think it was one of Shep's puppies this story is about. He was a curly little white and black English Shepherd, cow dog all around farm dog, we had had him for a month or so and one day I was playing in the yard before Daddy came home for lunch (I think I was 5 or 6) and I saw something funny in the driveway not far from the house. It was the puppy and he had been ran over and there were flies all over him. I didn't cry, it was shocking and horrible but I went in the house and turned on the cartoons that used to come on @ noon. I almost think I was afraid it was my fault somehow, I'd played too rough with the puppy or done something wrong. Can we say avoidant paranoid personality? My dad came in the house and told me he had something bad to tell me, he gathered me in his arms kneeling in front of the TV and told me the puppy had been ran over and was dead. He actually cried which was the most shocking thing that happened, I'd never seen him cry before, men didn't cry back then @ all, I don't think I'd ever seen a man cry much less my big dark burly father. Putting it all together now I'm not sure he wasn't upset because my uncle was ill but my father loved dogs too. He had 29 hounds for hunting when he and my mother were married, a year after they were married it was down below 10. She wasn't a dog person. Anyway I never told my parents that I can recall that I'd found the puppy first and hadn't cried or really done anything but switch on the TV.
Not saying the mother in the CNN story did anything wrong or my parents or I did it's just the different ways we approach life.
Can't find a picture of my dad @ the time of the story, this is not long after, the cat is enjoying itself contrary to what it looks like, it's name was Whitey? From left to right- my niece, grandpa, brother, me, grandma, sister-in-law, and my mother down @ the old house around Christmas after my uncle passed away. I still have the flower pot, didn't realize it was that old!
,
It seems a mother hid a guinea pigs death from her 3rd grade son because he would be upset and had multiple tests in the next two days.
I've never done this. Most of the little furry things we had in the house survived when the kids were little. We had one hamster but I think I missed his death by being @ work and the girls were teenagers? I accidentally ran over my 5 year old daughters dog once on the way to the school bus because I swerved to avoid another car and I didn't know he was racing my car on the driveway. She wasn't horribly upset, in fact it's a family history story, she asked in her cherubic blond way "Are we going to skin him and eat him Mommy?" You have to understand we did NOT kill or eat dogs or cats for that matter. We did kill the flock of chickens because I'd discovered most of them were roosters and didn't feel like they should live all winter getting fat and tough and mean. We live in Missouri also and killing deer and turkeys is a time honored tradition and I usually got the job of skinning and butchering or @ least helped. We were too poor to afford the meat locker option. So the kids point of view was sort of understandable but you can imagine my shock when she asked that particular question?
My other daughter loved black animals, we lived on a farm with her grandpa and grandma in a different house and it seemed like we always had puppies or kittens, she always claimed the black ones and they would die. Not be killed necessarily but succumb to a mystery illness or just disappear. She always named them Blackie. After about 2 puppies and 3 kittens named Blackie the name became off limits and we got a black terrier and named her Cujo. Cujo survived for years and years, the spell was broken, Cujo weighed about 15 lb. soaking wet. We still won't name animals Blackie.
For the next story you have to understand I was a very independent child, my mom worked or went to college all the time it seemed like (or was with her family her brother was dying though we didn't know it @ the time) my dad raised me a great deal of the time and he had a business on the farm, a fix it shop, big metal building, he worked on everything from TVs to combines, to big trucks and tractors, mostly tractors and trucks though, and a dairy with 30 Holsteins. He had 2 or 3 employees @ one time so from the time I could turn on the TV and be depended on not to kill myself and watch for traffic on the driveway I could wander between the shop and the house and barn and about 200 ft. from the buildings. I learned to warm up lunch when I was like 6 and I don't remember learning to drive, I was too young and my mother always said they had me because my dad didn't like the way she drove a tractor? This was the early 60s.
When I was a child I had various animals, only one dog was mine, Shep, but more on him later. I think it was one of Shep's puppies this story is about. He was a curly little white and black English Shepherd, cow dog all around farm dog, we had had him for a month or so and one day I was playing in the yard before Daddy came home for lunch (I think I was 5 or 6) and I saw something funny in the driveway not far from the house. It was the puppy and he had been ran over and there were flies all over him. I didn't cry, it was shocking and horrible but I went in the house and turned on the cartoons that used to come on @ noon. I almost think I was afraid it was my fault somehow, I'd played too rough with the puppy or done something wrong. Can we say avoidant paranoid personality? My dad came in the house and told me he had something bad to tell me, he gathered me in his arms kneeling in front of the TV and told me the puppy had been ran over and was dead. He actually cried which was the most shocking thing that happened, I'd never seen him cry before, men didn't cry back then @ all, I don't think I'd ever seen a man cry much less my big dark burly father. Putting it all together now I'm not sure he wasn't upset because my uncle was ill but my father loved dogs too. He had 29 hounds for hunting when he and my mother were married, a year after they were married it was down below 10. She wasn't a dog person. Anyway I never told my parents that I can recall that I'd found the puppy first and hadn't cried or really done anything but switch on the TV.
Not saying the mother in the CNN story did anything wrong or my parents or I did it's just the different ways we approach life.
Can't find a picture of my dad @ the time of the story, this is not long after, the cat is enjoying itself contrary to what it looks like, it's name was Whitey? From left to right- my niece, grandpa, brother, me, grandma, sister-in-law, and my mother down @ the old house around Christmas after my uncle passed away. I still have the flower pot, didn't realize it was that old!
,
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Newman the English Bulldog
I hope my nephew Mikey doesn't mind me using his words but his email was just too much this morning. I asked him if he was coming for Christmas and his reply was...... Then of course, I have this super huge growth named Newman that I must lug around with me and that becomes problematic at times because he is a big oaf. We bought a 
PediPaw, "the revolutionary nail trimmer for your dog or cat. It’s the newest and fastest way to keep your pet’s nails trim rounded and smooth with no mess," the other night for him and just in case you were wondering, he does NOT like it. I'm gonna do it again today because he scratched my face last night. I looked somewhat like a battered woman. He poops outside though and so it is all good. Why's JJ want my address? She want the dog back? Wants me to change the name? I'm not sure that would be possible.
I'm sure everyone can relate. Newman used to be Runt, he's named after Newman on Seinfeld. Here's his halfway grown and baby pictures.
PediPaw, "the revolutionary nail trimmer for your dog or cat. It’s the newest and fastest way to keep your pet’s nails trim rounded and smooth with no mess," the other night for him and just in case you were wondering, he does NOT like it. I'm gonna do it again today because he scratched my face last night. I looked somewhat like a battered woman. He poops outside though and so it is all good. Why's JJ want my address? She want the dog back? Wants me to change the name? I'm not sure that would be possible.I'm sure everyone can relate. Newman used to be Runt, he's named after Newman on Seinfeld. Here's his halfway grown and baby pictures.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Puppies save three-year-old boy lost in freezing Virginia woods
It seems this 3 year old boy wandered away from home and spent a 17 degree night outside in the cold protected by two furry friends.
quote:
A toddler lost in the Virginia woods was back home safe Sunday thanks to two puppies who kept him warm through a harrowing night of freezing temperatures........another member of the search party that found the boy, said the puppies refused to leave his side.
quote:
A toddler lost in the Virginia woods was back home safe Sunday thanks to two puppies who kept him warm through a harrowing night of freezing temperatures........another member of the search party that found the boy, said the puppies refused to leave his side.
As the child was placed in an ambulance to be taken to a local hospital for examination, "The puppies were watching where he went.
unquote:
Read the complete story HERE
I know dogs sense helplessness, I had a dog when I was a child that wouldn't let me get close to water and would start tugging @ me if I started climbing when I was a toddler, I can barely remember it but he was my built in babysitter, Shep, he was an english sheperd, big furry black dog. Lets remember our animal guardians today no matter how large or small.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Adopt a Boxer
You can find pets for adoption on moads4u or on the Stover Animal Control Website.
This is Miller, he is a boxer/lab mix with that special look that made me take my yellow puppy home when the last thing I thought I needed was a baby lab. Miller is beyond part of his puppy days but he still has that I wanna play look about him. Check him out or the other animals @ the websites.
More about Miller:
Nov. 5, Miller was an owner surrender. He does well on leash and gets along with everyone. He is partly house broken but needs work. The girl at the vet office said he never once made a mess in his run for the 24 hours he was there. He could not wait to get outdoors to go when I picked him up. His eyes have such a great expression. Adoption $75.00
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thanksgiving
What it's all about:
Couple has 32 people are headed to their Littleton townhouse
We had a wonderful turkey day,a bulldog puppy, 2 turkeys and a ham, ONLY 9 people which made it a small holiday around here, more food than we could eat in a week. Nice weather and a very small nap made it complete except husband was in Laredo TX which was a bad deal but money is money.
Hope everyone had something comparable.
We pray for the safety of all in Mumbai which I confess I didn't even know where it was till Wednesday night. Let's count our blessings once again.
BTW if someone can think of a good 2 syllable name for the boy bulldog throw it this way in the next couple hours.
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