The new Petcetera in Dartmouth opened today!

So today me and the dogs went over to Dartmouth to try and find the new Petcetera that opened up in the new "Dartmouth Crossing" complex - and we got abstotutely lost. We ended up calling the store to try to get directions - and then based on those directions sort of just started driving and we eventually found the spot. Yea!! haha!
While we were there looking around we met these 2 dogs who had been adopted like Buttercup and Charlie - from the SPCA in Dartmouth - I think their names were Skye and Pepper - they were very nice dogs, out having a good time with their Mom and Dad.
That's their Mom and Dad who were behind me in the checkout.
The reason why Petcetera is politically correct as a place to shop for a pet store is because they don't sell cats and dogs - they have partnered with the NS SPCA and the Metro Branch SPCA and will be having cats from there in their adoption room and all the proceeds will be going back to the SPCA - isn't that super? They DO sell fish and small animals and birds though. It was too busy today for me to get a look at that section of the store - so I'm going to have to go back and "ferret" that out, if you will - because as a former owner of rats - I have something to say about selling rats and small animals in chain stores - but certainly you can't have anything - but on the other hand - you can certainly ASK for everything.

One other good thing is I don't think Global Pets or Best Friends (or Metro Dog Wash) has too much to worry about because the stock there is different from what they sell - it wash aisle after aisle of Eukanuba and Pro Plan dog and cat food and stuff like that - whereas Global and Best Friends sells food like Natural Balance and Solid Gold - so they're obviously after a different Market - they're after the Pet's Unlimited market - which is SUPER! haha!
This photo and the above photo is of the adoption area for the cats.
This is the throng of people looking into the cat adoption area - wouldn't it be nice if all these people actually adopted animals from shelters?This is Buttercup being held by one of the mascots outside the Petcetera store - doesn't she look impressed? haha!

After I put everybody through the torture of going to an absolutely horrifically busy pet store - we went to the beach - to the "Moose" - Silver Sands beach - and for some reason I felt very kissy today - so the below pictures are the result... I think everyone had a good time - there was lots of dehydrated liver flowing, the sun was brilliant, and I even bought a big bag of horrible marrow bones for the trip from the pet store to placate everyone - and the beach was empty because it was cold and everyone had other things to do on a nice Saturday. It was a good day all around.

Livin' Large and Lovin' It

For a dog who lived completely outdoors in the elements and gave birth to 3 litters of puppies in that time - Daisy certainly does love to live the high life now.
She absolutely loves to sleep under the covers when I put a blanket over her. She will pant like crazy and seem like she's totally hyperventilating she's so hot - but she will not move if I put a blanket over her when she's lying down, she's so happy to be coddled.

She is the most amazing dog to give love to.

And Buttercup goes - what about me? How can you forget about me for one moment in this universe of Buttercupfulness?

A new place to walk the dogs

I'm always game for going just about anywhere new to walk the dogs.

I was at a convenience store last weekend and saw a co-worker of mine who sold a house to a dog-friend of mine and I asked her if there was any good places in the neighbourhood to walk dogs because my dog friend didn't know the neighbourhood - and my co-worker said - "oh yeah - there's all kinds of places" - and she described this place at the end of Whitehead Road out in Harrietsfield that everyone goes to - so today me and the dogs went and had a look-see.

This is also what's great about Spryfield and surrounding area - this is like 5 minutes from the hustle and bustle of my house and Halifax - this is all complete wilderness as you can see from the Google Earth image - I was completely in the middle of nowhere! The top of the photo is the place where my house is.

It's funny how local's who go to places who have lived in an area for generations generally don't think about who owns the land or what's on it - I'm pretty sure it's private property - so I don't think I should say exactly where it is or how I got there - but there was a really neat old graveyard on the property that I think was a family graveyard - there were some stones there from like 1831 and the latest one I saw was 1987 - there were names with "Brunt" and "Yeadon" and a couple others on them. You can see it is not maintained at all.


Buttercup says - "I am getting the hell out of here!" Daisy had a WONDERFUL time today!
Throughout the whole property there were logging roads everywhere - it was a perfect spot for walking the dogs - and no one around anywhere. It was a great day all around - if you had rubber boots on of course! Anything else and it would've been a completely shitty day though - so beware intrepid hikers of the HRM - get your rubbers out.

My Letter is in today's Chronicle Herald

I find it funny how sometimes they call and ask to confirm whether it's the person who sent in the email, so that you know the letter is going to make it in, and then sometimes you read the paper - and boom - there the letter is. And that's how it was this morning - there the letter was in the letters to the Editor.

Denise was right - I should have toned that thing down. I should have taken that "bigoted" word out. Peter Duffy is guffawing into his Bran Buds right now because of the Zinck's righteous indignation with me. Damn my vituperative vocabulary.

Oh well. The only thing you can take back is your bed linens.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Letters/567208.html

Overblown incident


I feel compelled to respond to the March 24 article about the senior citizen who had the encounter with the off-leash dog at Point Pleasant Park, during hours when dogs aren’t allowed on Sailor’s Memorial Way.

First, the article states that more than 350,000 dogs visit Point Pleasant Park every year – with very few incidents. This one lady is now meeting with the mayor – and she wants to know what measures are going to be put in place to make sure that encounters like hers never happen again. That’s one encounter out of 350,000 – I’d say those are pretty healthy odds that encounters happen pretty rarely.

So what is the city going to do? Ban all dogs to stop one out of 350,000 incidents? I certainly hope not!

Second, the lady’s husband is quoted as saying, "If that had been a pit bull, she would have been torn to pieces … sooner or later, it’s going to happen to someone. It comes a time now that we’ve got to toughen up."

I’d just like to let her husband know that pit bulls are exactly like every other dog on this planet – healthy, well-adjusted dogs that are no more likely to "tear his wife to pieces" than any other dog. Period.

That whole article was so unnecessary, and that couple are doing nothing but furthering the cause of uneducated, bigoted people who don’t own dogs. They don’t need to sit down with the mayor – they need to meet some responsible dog owners of the Halifax Regional Municipality and become properly educated about what it actually is to own a dog here, and they will soon understand their own very misconceived and very wrong ideas.


Joan Sinden, Halifax

Frosty Paws

Being a very indulgent dog owner, and a very impulsive shopper - I broke down and bought a box of "Frosty Paws" for the dogs - and didn't look at the ingredient list until I got the stuff home and had given a container each to the dogs and they had gone absolutely ape shit over the stuff.

How can any animal - dog included - go nuts over dried whey, soy flour, animal fat, soy lecithin, microcrystalline cellulose mono-diglycerides, caroxymethycellulose, polysorbate, and a bunch of other chemicals that I'm too lazy to type out? They trick the humans into making it LOOK like vanilla ice cream - but they fill it up with some kind of animal fat to make it TASTE good to the dogs, and then chock a block it with chemicals so it doesn't go rancid.

And then charge us $3.99 a box - that's $1.00 per frosty paw. I think my first indulgence in ice cream for dogs is going to be my last and I'm going to start freezing yogurt for them instead so that they stop staring at me when I'm eating my own ice cream and I'm forced to share with them. It takes a lot of work to maintain my body shape, and I need every mouthful of animal fat and sugar for my own self.

Funny Cartoon

Some days I feel like this....

Good Comment on my Post "Lunacy at the Chronicle Herald"

Denise left a really good comment on my post this morning about the online poll about the Chronicle Herald:

What I don't get though is the name calling on your part? Old biddy? Stupid non-dog owners? You gleamed all of this from one article in a newspaper which was written and edited by someone other than the couple? I can imagine that getting knocked down when you are elderly is a frightening experience. These people felt a need to talk about it which is fine because some good education could come out of this for everyone involved.

What you didn't mention was how the lady said, "Dogs have as much right in that park as I do" So, even after her experience she is still in favour of dogs being there. Hardly an "old biddy" I think. And her Husband, well he wants signs with bigger print. You'd think by your reaction that he was asking for an outright ban on all dogs in the park!

I am a proud dog owner and advocate myself, but I find it hard to take a person seriously when they resort to name calling. All of the good points that you had to make are lost in the nastiness against people that you only know from a newspaper article. If you had a chance to meet with them personally and educated them about pit bull breeds would you say those things to their face? I am going to guess no. So, why do it here, especially in a place where you hope to help people see all dogs in a more positive light.

I am hoping for a better understanding on all sides. A little compassion, even for the "stupid non-dog owners" would go a really long way, I think.

Namaste,Denise

That has set me to thinking - and you have to think about all your life experiences when you take anything into consideration - and whenever I think about senior ladies complaining about anything (even though I myself am going to be one in the not too distant future) I unfortunately think about a car accident I had a couple years ago where I was involved with one with a senior citizen lady and my car insurance went up by $100 a month for absolutely no reason except for the fact that this woman had no idea how to drive in the city and this was her second accident in her 2 days of visiting Halifax from Cape Breton, and she was the most lame brained person I have ever met, and it left such an imprint on me that I've forever associated elderly women with that one person.

So when I read that article I saw that woman there - and one also has to take into consideration that I've been in a bad mood about off-leash dog parks because of the whole off-leash strategy meetings going on and our seemingly inability to have control about what's going to happen - by that I mean the public's inability to have control - and there you have the protagonist of this blog's viewpoint of that article going ballistic about an old bitty.

So my apologies to the readers of this blog and the subject's of that article in so far as I called them mean names.

And Denise is right that Mrs Zinck did say that dogs deserve to be there as much as she did - but I threw that baby out with the bath water. I figured that Mrs Zinck was going to do that herself when she met with Mr Kelly anyway.

I've been also thinking about something for awhile and this seems as good a time as any to talk about it - the fact that "Me and My Dogs in Nova Scotia" and the dogs portrayed there and the human behind it don't really exist - it is in fact a fantasy world that someone has created - it is a perfect world that the author "wishes" existed, but does not in fact exist. It would be nice if that world did exist - if the happy, well adjusted, well socialized, happy, seemingly perfect dogs actually existed - who seem to go for such exciting adventures almost every day - and their owner who seems to go to every dog function that the city offers and then reports back, and seems to have an opinion on everything - actually existed - but that person doesn't actually exist either. It's all just a fantasy that's been created by someone who is actually much smaller and is prone to fits of anger, smallness, pettiness, jealousy, mania, depression, and any other negative normal quality you can imagine. Unfortunately. So that's why sometimes you'll read this blog and you'll go - what in the h-e-double hockey sticks is she saying and why is she saying this? Has she gone completely off the deep end? Well - she probably has, there's been a crack in the fantasy world and the post will be deleted in a couple days - so enjoy it while it's there! haha! So there you go.

That's also why I ended my post about the Lunacy at the Chronicle Herald with my crack about the "Selma blog" - that lady's dog blog is very negative and she's always calling people bad names like stupid and idiotic, which I try not to do - I do try to stay positive, and I know I've been digging pretty low lately - so I'll try to pick things back up and "praise the positive and ignore the negative" like you do with good dog training - it really is the only way to go.

The Lunacy at The Chronicle Herald Continues

So yesterday they had that completely stupid article about the old bitty falling down after the little dog jumping up on her at Point Pleasant Park and now she's meeting with the Mayor.

So today they've got a poll going - "Are there too many dogs running loose in Halifax's Point Pleasant Park?"

And you can guess what answer is going to win. And what has won - depending on when you're reading this post.

That question is like the line from the movie Amadeus when Emperor Joseph says "It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect".

The thing about Point Pleasant Park is that it's IMPOSSIBLE for there to be too many dogs running loose there! It is one of the only 2 off leash parks in the whole of the regional Municipality! Where else are they going to go? And if there are too many - give us more parks!

Give me a break. Shit. I'm starting to sound like Selma. I'd better calm down, and go to the beach.

Ugh - I couldn't help it - My letter to the Editor

My stomach has just been boiling all morning while I've been out in the backyard raking up dog shit - so I had to come in and write a letter to the Editor at the Chronicle Herald about that horrible article that was in the paper today - here it is:

I titled it - "Pointing out the obvious"

Reading the article this morning about the senior citizen who had the encounter with the offleash dog at Point Pleasant Park during hours when dogs aren't allowed on Sailor's Memorial Way made me feel compelled to respond to it for 2 reasons.

The first is the fact that the article states that more than 350,000 dogs visit Point Pleasant Park every year - with very few incidents - and this one lady is now meeting with the Mayor of the City because of her encounter - and she wants to know what measures are going to be put in place to make sure that encounters like hers never happen again. That one encounter out of 350,000 as stated in the article. I'd say those are pretty healthy odds that that encounter happens pretty rarely. So what is the City going to do - ban all dogs to stop one out of 350,000 encounters? I certainly hope not!

The second point made in the article is the lady's husband when he said - "If that had been a pit bull she would have been torn to pieces . . . sooner or later it's going to happen to someone," he said. "It comes a time now that we've got to toughen up." I almost lost my breakfast over that one. I'd just like to let her husband know that pit bulls are exactly like every other dog on this planet - healthy, well adjusted dogs that are no more likely to "tear his wife to pieces" - than any other dog. Period.

That whole article was so unnecessary and that couple are doing nothing but furthering the cause of uneducated, bigoted, non-dog owners - they don't need to sit down with the Mayor - they need to meet some responsible dog owners of the Halifax Regional Municipality and become properly educated about what it actually is to own a dog here, and they will soon understand their own very misconceived and
very -- wrong ideas.

Joan Sinden

An example of stupid non-dog owners encountering stupid dog owners

What a way to start a Saturday - by reading something as assinine as this in today's Chronicle Herald - "Walk in park turns unpleasant" - a couple encounter some stupid people letting their dog run offleash in an area of Point Pleasant Park that's not allowed to have dogs at all after 10am and the stupid dog actually knocks the old woman down. And now this woman's got a meeting with Mayor Peter Kelly to talk about it.

It doesn't matter that the article also states that THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND OTHER DOGS also visit Point Pleasant every year and don't knock down old women - but this ONE WOMAN gets knocked down and she's got to meet the Mayor about it - and what is the City going to do about it. Makes me sick to my stomach.

And then the woman's husband has actually got the gall to actually say "If that had been a pit bull she would have been torn to pieces . . . sooner or later it’s going to happen to someone," he said. "It comes a time now that we’ve got to toughen up."

I almost lost my breakfast when I read that sentence. Can you imagine? I am absolutely without words on that one.

I'm not even going to write a letter to the Editor because it would be just too venemous and might cause the old lady to have a heart attack and die right on the spot to realize how absolutely numb-skulled she is.

Now how am I going to get through the rest of the day with this peach pit in my tummy?

Poor Daisy. She had to go back to the Vet today to get xrays and they have to put the dog out for that. So she had no food after midnight last night, and then she had to leave Charlie for several hours and be in a cage. And she couldn't have any food at all. And there was food everywhere she looked, and it was in bags everywhere, she could smell it.

So it cost $369.00 for the vet to tell me that she couldn't find anything wrong with Daisy, so it must be soft tissue damage that's been making her limp for weeks - so she can't have any exercise for 2 weeks to see if it'll heal on it's own, and Daisy has to lose 10 pounds and she's got to take Metacam - an anti-inflammatory analgesic that vets like to dispense like candy for the next little while - and see if any of that helps at all.
Really, I don't know how Daisy hasn't impaled herself on a tree branch when we're in the woods because she runs so fast and hard when we go on walks - so it makes sense that she's hurt herself somehow and it just hasn't healed - and when we were at the beach yesterday we were there for an hour-and-a-half. Charlie's been feeling so well lately that I've just sort of let the time we spend at places creep up.

So no exercise for poor Daisy Doodle. She's going to be doing a lot back rubbing in the back yard. She is going to go NUTS. I better keep the video camera rolling the whole time.

We're all legal! Dog Registrations in the HRM

Yesterday while I had Daisy at the vet I got all the dogs registered with the City - you can do it at most Vet's offices - you don't have to go the HRM's offices - and that way you don't have to dig out their spay or neuter certificates or other paperwork either - they have it all on file if you're at your regular vet.

I've registered Charlie over the years, but for some reason never registered Daisy or Buttercup - but this year I registered them all. I get emails quite regularly from people asking me about the process - for some reason because I have the "Charlie loves Halifax" site people think I know about those things - little do they know I'm as big a law breaker as anybody else! haha! What people mostly ask me is about the rabies thing - and how they can get around it - mostly everyone thinks that if they don't have a rabies certificate they WON'T be able to get the dogs registered - and that is in fact FALSE.

If you don't have a rabies vaccination all that happens is that you have to pay $10 more. That's it. So if you don't want to get your dog vaccinated, and you DO want to get your dog registered - DON'T vaccinate your dog! There isn't rabies in Nova Scotia yet - so don't do it if you don't want to, but DO register your dog if you want to have anything to do with dog politics in the HRM. I think it behooves us all to register our dogs if we want to have any say at all in what goes on in dog politics in our City - if you don't put your money where you mouth is, then shut your mouth. So go get your dog registered so that you can be counted - because John Charles said at one of the off-leash strategy sessions that they're thinking of tying off-leash parks to where the highest numbers of dogs are registered geographically. Think about that for a moment. And then go spend $15 or $10 or $30 if you've been especially stupid and haven't spayed or neutered your dog. The fiscal year goes from April 1st to April 1st.

A Very Busy Dog Day

Poor Daisy had to go to the vet today. She's been limpiing on and off for the last little while, and I can't figure out why she's doing it and it's not getting any better - so off to the vet we went.
Other than getting her head sliced open by an asshole who didn't like black and tan dogs, and when she was spayed - Daisy has never been to the vet because she's always been so healthy - so she was pretty stressed out today. And its only going to get worse - she's got to go back tomorrow to be sedated and get xrays. Poor Daisy!
And this scale wasn't very kind to her either - she's 88 pounds - 2 pounds more than Charlie! Dr. Lindsay said that she probably shouldn't weigh anymore than the high 70's - so she's got about 10 pounds to lose. The canine garbage can has got to cut back. Poor Daisy.
To apologize we went to Crystal Crescent beach afterward - Buttercup was VERY upset that I took Daisy out and not her - she showed her distate for that turn of events by taking a big dump in one bedroom and a big pee in another bedroom. She was not impressed. That's the first time she's done that - and I hope the last. Dogs are funny aren't they?
Daisy was very happy to be running on the rocks rather than panting among the other little dogs at the vet office! It was super windy today too - so that blew the stink off of all of us.
This is such a neat picture - here's the close up of Charlie and the long shot below. He photographs so neat sometimes.

And then lastly I got this book today, I've wanted it for years - Living with dogs - it's a book about dog paraphenalia - it has got so much neat stuff in it I can't write it all out here - it's going to take me many days to peruse. I'll have to post more about it in the coming days...

Dogs in the News

There were 3 news stories in the last couple days that have caught my eye.

1. A boy scout lost for 3 days in the woods down in the States was found by an SAR dog;
2. A bomb detection dog was just killed in Afghanistan while sniffing out bombs;
3. Millions of cans of dog food have been recalled throughout North America of all different price points because of one ingredient - wheat gluten.

The point of this post is going to be to try to show naysayers that dogs are indeed important to the fabric of society.

The boy scout had been missing for 3 days - and it was a search and rescue dog named Gandalf who sniffed him out less than 1 mile from where he'd become lost - they'd been searching over 1000's of acres for the little rat bastard, and he'd hidden himself in a bunch of rocks where no one would have found him - but that dog could smell him - so that's how they found him. And I bet his family are glad that such a thing like search and rescue dogs actually exist.

Over in Afghanistan a bomb sniffing dog was killed yesterday sniffing out bombs so that an area could be declared walkable - his handler was also injured - but not killed. I guess dogs are used extensively like this. It's probably saved 1000's of lives because they can sniff out bombs and have been highly trained to that very specific job - and you hardly ever hear about them dying - so they must be pretty good at it. And I bet they don't get too much applause for it either.

On another note - Iraqis actally use dogs as bombs - I wrote about that in a previous post. Sick.

The 3rd story is about how millions of cans of dog food are being recalled because of mouldy wheat gluten that has come from one plant down in the States. It's very interesting to me because we all feed our dogs dog food but very few of us actually think about the ingredients that go into it. Some of us have - do YOU know what wheat gluten is? You should find out what it is if you don't know.

I feel very safe that none of my dogs are going to die from renal failure like so many dogs currently are from the tainted food because I have always made sure that any dog food I gave them never had any ingredient such as wheat gluten, corn gluten meal, meat meal, poutltry by-product meal - or anyone of various gross ingredients that you can find out about if you do a little bit of research. I have always tried to feed my guys dog food that are made from "ingredients that are fit for human consumption" - and they also eat what I eat.

You wouldn't feed your child a steady diet of saltines simply because your doctor tells you to, would you? Are you really that much of an idiot? When did people become such automatons? I really hope this food recall is a wake up call to North Americans about what they're putting in their dogs' food bowl every night, and that they're starting to question the ingredients that go into dog food and where those ingredients come from. That it really IS things like brushings from the floor of human food factories and road kill. It really is.

And my dogs deserve to eat better than that.

Daisy's a doberman!

I was going through the dog's papers looking for everyone's spay and neuter documents so that I could everyone registered for April 1st tomorrow and for some reason I thought I'd look to see what they put down as Daisy's breed when they spayed her at Carnegy animal hospital in 2004, and guess what - they called her a doberman mix! haha! So I'm not going to call her a rottweiller mix anymore, from now on she's going to be a doberman mix.
I did a google image search for uncropped doberman pictures and came up with this photo - I think it's pretty close to what Daisy looks like, don't you think? So Daisy is officially not like those awful rottweillers anymore that are being banned everywhere and are owned by rotten right wing wingnut leaders of national dog legislation groups - there must be something wrong with those kinds of dogs if someone like that would want to own a dog like that I'd say. So Daisy is now going to be a very kind and gentle doberman. Isn't she so much more beautiful now?

Horrified, yet at the same time, Horrified

I really like the old Codco saying "Horrified, yet at the same time titillated" - but an ongoing experience I've been having the last few days wuth a local email group has been anything but. It has simply been horrifying x 10.

It all started when a lady who I know who I also know has for some reason got a serious vendetta against the head of Dogs Deserve Better decided to send a very vageky worded email to this group that I don't know if she knew I belonged to saying that "DDB was going after sled dogs", and that in fact for those people on the list who didn't know anything about DDB - it was a group that was in the pocket of animal rights groups like PETA and this lady had been watching it very closely and it really was quite an evil organization, set to basically take over the world.

So I decided that I was of course not going to let the 600 or so members of this Yahoo community only hear from this very biased and wrong woman about DDB, so I put myself out there as a vocal member of DDB and said that the organization was in fact not a right wing organization but a grass roots organization that was simply trying to get dogs off of chains one dog at a time and that we were not in fact "going after sled dogs" but that Tammy Grimes had simply signed an online petition. Did that mean the whole organization was going after sled dogs?

The worst part is that that several members of this "illustrious" Yahoo group - made up mainly of CKC show breeders - chimed in - in FAVOUR of continuing the practice of chaining dogs. Can you believe it? In the last couple days I have been absolutely cricified on this forum because I belong to this anti-chaining organization. How dare I try to work to free dogs from chains, and suggest that all dogs belong inside all the time. And that is an actual quote from one of the posts.

The forum is moderated and one of my posts was even refused to be posted by the moderators - a post where I said that the head of the DDB organization simply signed a petition about sled dogs was the sum and total of our organization's involvement in "going after sled dogs" - and if that was all it took for an organization to be seen as going after sled dogs - then I also saw on that same online petition that a member of our local organization "Maritime Animal Rescue" had signed as well - so by association that means that "Maritime Animal Rescue was ALSO going after sled dogs just like Dogs Deserve Better was! And if that was the case - then that also meant that a local very well known siberian husky breeder was ALSO going after sled dogs because she was ALSO a member of Maritime Animal Rescue - and how THEN did that breeder feel about the original woman accusing Dogs Deserve Better about going after slede dogs if it also meant that she was accusing the siberian husky breeder of going after sled dogs? Now WHY would a post like that be refused? hhmmm.....

I tell you, it's no wonder I hate purebred dog people sometimes. Some of them are worse bitches then their female dogs....

I was going through the drive through at Tim Horton's here in Spryfield on Sunday when I saw this guy and his dog parked in the parking lot - so I asked him if I could take his picture because I thought it was funny. The dog was sitting right in his lap and it made me think of Charlie and the fact that I call him my 110 pound lap dog. Buddy said THIS dog is 115 pounds though! haha! His name is Louie. Louie the 115 pound lap dog...

When I looked over to my right - this is what I saw - Buttercup, my 16 pound lap dog who wasn't even sitting in my lap! (:

Guys who come to fix things part Troix

So the last few days I've been going around with wet socks and saying to myself - MAN, those dogs have really been slopping the water in their water bowl - my feet are wet all the time from the water they're spilling in that bowl! Well it turned out that it was not in fact the dogs' fault, but in fact the sink in the kitchen - the pipe had become disconnected from the drain and water was flowing freely every time I turned the tap on.

I figured I could fix it myself, but my Dad was worried since he's not here to supervise, and my peeing receptacle in the bathroom has been acting up lately - so I figured I could also get that looked at at the same time - so I called this fabulously named company called "the Drain busters" - and in came a plumber this morning.
Isn't he cute? haha! This time I took a different tack and did NOT separate the dogs. And guess what. No problems. The 2 below pictures are where the dogs spent all the time he was fixing the plumbing problems. And that is exactly where they were if the cable guy would've let them be around when he was at the house.
Marjorie really IS right on some levels - other people's paranoia should have nothing to do with me and my dogs. The big question is - how do we convince the paranoid people of this?

Some Interesting Thoughts about dogs and interacting with the public

A couple posts ago I wrote about service guys coming to the house to install cable tv and how because the guy was afraid of big dogs I put Charlie and Daisy out on the deck so he wouldn't crap in his pants while he was doing his work. Marjorie Darby left an interesting comment and I've been thinking about the comment since she wrote it. I consider her to be a mentor of mine, and this is a topic that she's done a lot of thinking about, and it's something that philosphically - is very interesting. Which is more important, continuing the non-dog owner's misconceptions and paranoia about dogs, trying to help educate that person about dogs by forcing them to be around your well socialized, well trained dogs, not doing anything and just pretending that you don't have any dogs and you don't bring the subject up at all - or none of the above.

I guess I chose the tack of allowing the guy to contine his paranoia about big dogs by not allowing him to meet my well socialized, well mannered dogs, but I'm going through a phase currently where I'm not in a very good mood and I don't like human beings very much - I think you are all pretty much complete assholes and you all hate dogs and you can all just go to hell as far as I'm concerned - so I'm not the best person to be educating anyone right now.

But Marjorie's idea is that she doesn't shut her dogs off for anyone - it's the person's problem if they're scared - not hers - and she deals with it on that level. Which is a very interesting idea, and one that has occurred to me about other dog-friendly things. You've got to push the limits if you ever want to get anywhere.

Read more about her ideas in the comment she left and in the web page on her fabulous web site. She's a lot smarter than me, that's for sure.

Some extreme close ups

This morning when we went for our walk up in the woods behind the house the dogs for some reason very graciously allowed me to stick the camera close to their face for about 10 seconds and take some close-up pictures of them.
Daisy was being especially cute and even let her tongue hang out for most of the shots I got of her and cocked her head a little to the left. She is the biggest ham in the world I think.
Charlie of course had to maintain his dignity and wouldn't sit down when I asked him to, but instead layed down and took a rest. He is after all a very gentlemanly senior fellow and likes to rest whenever he's not chasing cats and other things he deems to need a chase.

The last off-leash strategy meeting was last night

The last off-leash strategy meeting being held by the HRM was held last night - so I went to it to see how things were going and it was pretty interesting. Some good news is that the main bylaw enforcement officer for the city of Calgary has been confirmed to be coming to Halifax April 19th and 20th to give a public talk about what they've done right in that city regarding dog issues - which is very exciting - and John Charles said he's going to let everyone know when the details are confirmed - so when he lets everyone know I'll post the information here. I'm sure it's going to be a super talk because Calgary has a template for dog laws that should be and is being used by smart cities right across the continent.
Last night there was a pretty good turn-out again - John Charles said that more than 230 people have shown up for these sessions in our city of 330,000 and in Vancouver - which is going through the same process that we're currently going through, only 200 people have shown up - and they have a population of 2 million people! So I think we've shown that we care about dog issues.

Everybody has an opinion on this issue and what is the best way to go - - just because you didn't make it to a session doesn't mean that your opinion can't be heard. You can email John Charles at parkdog@halifax.ca and he'll post it to the HRM's website at http://www.halifax.ca/real_property/PublicComments.html which I'm hoping is part of the package he's going to submit to the HRM City Council in April.

I hope we're all on the same side when I say that we're looking to improve the quality of life of our dogs' and we want to do it in a way that makes us not break the law on a daily basis. That would be fabulous. But if I have to break the law on a daily basis, I will. Either that or I'll sell my house and take my tax dollars outside the municipality and move to where I can walk the dogs on crown land legally off-leash everyday. That is a very simple solution I'm also willing to look at - but one that is fiscally very bad for the city if very many dog owners also chose that solution - because there are about 50,000 of us currently paying taxes in the Municipality.

I decided that after 5 years I'd finally take the plunge and get cable television and a land line phone - so that necessitated the need to have a service person come to the house to install the phone and cable line.

I always ask the person I talk to when I put in the work order to make a note saying that I have dogs and that they're very friendly so that the person coming knows that they're here and is forewarned when the barking starts as they're coming towards the door, but as a responsible dog owner my #1 priority is to keep my dogs safe - so when I saw the Eastlink van pull up - I put Daisy and Charlie out on the deck until I talked to the guy to see how he actually felt about dogs - and when the door bell rang and I asked him and he said "are they pit bull type dogs?" - I knew right there that the dogs were going to be staying out on the deck.

At one point the fellow looked at this picture here of Daisy and Charlie wrestling at Crystal Crescent that I have on the wall and said "Are these the dogs you have out on the deck?" and I said "yes" and he said "I'm very glad we're in here and they're out there, if they were in here I'd be so intimidated I wouldn't know what to do with myself" - so it just goes to show you that a picture as silly as this can scare someone - to me this is a silly picture - to him it was too dogs fighting.
But I think that part of having a dog friendly city is having everyone feel safe around all dogs - and that includes having this Eastlink employee feel safe going into dog owners homes when he goes on calls. He said that he goes to some people's homes and dogs are right at the front door snarling and the owners don't do anything - which does nothing to curb his fear of dogs - that's for sure. And that's not being a responsible dog owner. I told him that unfortunately even assholes own dogs - and that is too bad. I wish we could fix that fact, but we can't.
Buddy didn't mind Buttercup at all though - so she got to stay inside - I didn't tell him that she was the worst dog of the three - haha! She even got to poke him with the stuffed animal that you see next to him in the first picture!

Prospect Bay and Yesterday's Petpourri!

Yesterday we went to Prospect Bay - we went a different way, along the shoreline instead of climbing the big rocks further in - and wouldn't you know that as we were leaving a group was leaving and they had no less than TWO buoys in their arms. They were carrying them also triumphantly, verily flaunting them in front of me. Fan-damned nova scotia duck toller owners too. I got some nice beach glass though.

Yesterday my rantings about the sports field in Dartmouth somehow made it into Rick Conrad's Petpourri column! You can read about it here - http://thechronicleherald.ca/Living/564278.html - somehow he was able to make it sound reasonable - so that's a good thing! haha!

Further on my blathering about dog parks

I've sent an email to my City Councillor about offleash dog parks and the dirth of them. I went searching through my emails this morning and found 2 old articles from the Chronicle Herald that are very interesting - I'll be very interested to get a reply back - here is what I wrote...

Hi there - I am trying to find out the status of a dog park that was proposed a couple years ago in a Chronicle Herald article that I'm going to paste below for you.

I live in your District and I'm an active off-leash advocate and have attended a couple of the off-leash strategy sessions and plan to attend the last one this coming Wednesday March 14th at the Forum.

Last Friday while walking my dog at Spectacle Lake I was aghast to come upon the new "All weather Dartmouth Sports Field" - and even more incensed when I found out it cost FOUR MILLION dollars to build. What really ticks me off is that 4 million dollars is being spent there and the CIty doesn't seem to see fit to empty the garbage bins or change one traffic light that points inward at Seaview Park - which as you know is one of the only 2 offleash parks in the whole of the HRM. Seaview right now is also an ungodly mud pit like you would not believe. Once the ground unthaws again it is going to be truly unbelievable.

With the work that's currently going on at Point Pleasant Park the dog owners in the HRM are going to be in quite a pickle for off-leash activity - and that is a huge problem. The HRM does not only need a long term off leash strategy - it needs a SHORT TERM off leash strategy. Truly.

Below are the articles I was talking about. If you could reply back, that would be super. I also sent the articles to John Charles for his information, although I don't know if he'll have any insight into them.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Joan Sinden

The Chronicle-Herald Metro, Monday, May 3, 2004, p. B1

New park has tails wagging; Off-leash dog trails, sports fields planned in $500,000 project

Amy Pugsley Fraser City Hall Reporter

Residents of Purcells Cove - both two - and four-legged - could soon have a new place to play.

The area between Whimsical and Williams lakes is sited for a new $500,000 park complete with soccer field, lacrosse box and off-leash dog trails.

"It's going to be great," Coun. Steve Adams said recently of the city park that would border his Spryfield-Herring Cove district. The great majority of the 22-hectare park lies within the neighbouring Purcells Cove-Armdale district and is seen by city staff as an adjunct to the 38 hectares of Sir Sandford Fleming Park.

"We really, really like the idea of expanding that park," parks and recreation general manager Peter Bigelow said in an interview.

The city did some work a few years ago with a community committee and the park has been given the go-ahead by both local and regional councils.

The property - off Purcells Cove Road - is an old provincial Transportation Department quarry.

The pit of the former quarry provides an ideal "active area" that is big enough for a soccer field and parking for about 80 cars, he said.

Staffers are also trying to shoehorn a lacrosse box into the plans now that the city's only one - built on Gorsebrook Field for the Canada Games in the mid-1970s - is too old to keep up.

But before anything goes ahead, the city has to sell some parkland to generate revenue to finance it, he said.

"It's kind of a business approach so that it's not so much of a tax burden," Mr. Bigelow said.

City officials are negotiating for the proper land assembly to finish out the park according to the plan that was put forward by a community steering committee, he said.

"It also has to come up in the queue in terms of competition for capital dollars, like everything else."

Dog lovers should be excited by the park, because it will provide an alternative place for their best friends to roam free.

Seaview Park and areas of Point Pleasant Park are now the only off-leash dog walks for city dogs.

"It does definitely provide an opportunity for them," Mr. Bigelow said.

"It will also help because we're not going to have Point Pleasant in the condition that it once was."

Designating some of the trails as dog-friendly from the park's inception is probably a good idea, he said.

It's one that came from Coun. Linda Mosher, who has been pushing for more off-leash dog areas for a while.

"Doing it this way, it won't create a conflict," the dog owner and councillor for Purcells Cove-Armdale said recently.

"If we opened an entire trail system and designated some sections (off-leash) and posted it, then there wouldn't be a conflict with existing users.

"People would use it knowing that there would be dogs off leash."

The community has already agreed on a concept plan that would have the active and passive recreation, natural park area, a soccer field, and proposed trails, she said.

"All we'd need is a designated width for the trail. We wouldn't have to do a lot of cutting."

Dog walker and canine enthusiast Janet Chernin thinks more off-leash areas in the municipality would be great.

"It's well-needed and it's long overdue," she said last week.

She's also excited that the park would provide a system of wooded trails.

"Seaview Park is more wide open so there aren't as many places to explore," she said.

Before the park goes ahead, the community would have to approve the proposed housing development in the area first, Ms. Mosher said.

And although it won't be in this year's budget, the goal would be to approve it for next year and get it going.

"It won't happen tomorrow," she said.

"But when it does, it's going to be great for everybody."

************************************

2004/09/01
Council sets guidelines for dog parks


Council is sure to get more than tongues wagging by taking the first step Tuesday to establishing dog parks.

Councillors unanimously approved a list of guidelines that will govern how the municipality sets up its off-leash dog areas.

The dog-friendly spaces will first be established in areas that are most underserved, which puts peninsular Halifax - which already has off-leash areas in Point Pleasant Park and Seaview Park - at the bottom of the list.

According to the guidelines, community councils will decide where the parks will be located and then find the money through the capital budget process.

Off-leash dog parks have to be a minimum of one acre (.4 hectare) in area to minimize turf damage, and designated free-running areas in parks should be at least two to three acres (.8 to 1.2 hectares) in size.

To get the ball rolling, staff came up with three potential off-leash dog parks: - Don Bayer Sports Field in Dartmouth. The former field was closed after the municipality deemed it unsafe.

- Glenbourne Park in Clayton Park West. A dog area could be developed on a pad that was to be used for a tennis court in the park, which already includes a soccer field, sledding hill, open play space and basketball court.

- Williams Lake Park in Mainland South. A new park across from Sir Sandford Fleming Park is in the planning stages and could host a large off-leash site for dogs and their owners.

The Value of a Thermos

Some people may call me a bit stunned. Some people have called me a lot worse :) But for some reason I have never taken anything other than water on my walks with the dogs - other than Tim Horton's coffee - and that is such a drag because it's so hard to maneouver when at least one of the dogs wants to be carried around at least part or all of the time - so I haven't done that very often.
But today for some reason I had the bright idea to decant my barely drunk morning coffee into a 500ml metal thermos that I've had forever and hardly used and take it with us for our morning walk in the woods - it fit perfectly into my pocket as well as a bottle of water usually does, and what a difference it made to the quality of the walk!

You know how sometimes seemingly miniscule things can make a huge difference? Well - this little thing made our walk heads and shoulders over usual walks. It was superlatively super. I highly recommend purchasing one of these things. Toss out those healthy water bottles and purchase a thermos you can stick in your pocket and drink caffienated beverages instead. It's much better for your head.
Daisy running by saying - where can I get ME some of that coffee?
Charlie coming up for a sip of liver.
A close up of Charlie asking for his liver.
Daisy posing and looking beautiful
Close-up of Daisy's perfection
My friend Janet was cleaning out her closets on Friday and I was sitting next to her lustily waiting for cast-offs and this was one of the things she philanthropically gave away - a post card from the turn of the century - isn't it cute? I LOVE it!

How to piss off a City Councillor

There's no better way to piss off an HRM City Councillor than to suggest impropriety about the failed bid for the Commonwealth Games, I'd say they're about touchy on the subject currently.

Along with my blog posting this morning I sent out an email to some people noting my unhappiness with the what seems to me to be completely unnecessary Dartmouth "all weather sports field" and Mr Andrew Younger, representative for East Dartmouth who said the field has been open for more than a year. My question though is - if it's an "all weather sports field" and it's been open for more than a year - why was it completely locked up and snowed in?

To me this brings up a huge question in relation to dog owners and the "Off leash strategy" master plan that's being worked on - what exactly does the HRM spend it's money on? And why is so little of it spent on resources for tax paying dog owners? And exactly how much IS spent on resources for tax paying dog owners now? And why are they not up front about how much is being spent on us right now? And why are they expecting us dog owners to raise our own funds for the upkeep of any spaces we let our dogs off-leash in, and not other users of spaces - like on sports fields where other taxpayers use - but aren't allowed to go on - ie dog owners are NOT allowed to take their pets on to the Dartmouth "All weather sports field".

These are HUGE questions that must be addressed - whether or not the money was spent speculatively or not.

As well - this space was taken up in urban park space that had previously been available to hikers, dog owners, and families to use - and now is gone forever. Has there been other urban park space made available to us as an alternative? These are questions I'd like to find an answer to...

Addendum to this post added at 5:45pm - Andrew Younger suggested I search "Dartmouth all weather sports field" and I'd find tons of stuff online about it - well now, shit - I certainly did. The bloody thing cost FOUR MILLION DOLLARS to build! Can you imagine! There's a press release on the City's website that talks about the sod turning from 2005 - here - shit. That's a ton of dough.

No space for public sex at Spectacle Lake Now!!

So me and Buttercup got lost at Burnside yesterday looking for industrial strength grommets so I decided to go to Spectacle Lake since we hadn't been there in a long time and at least I knew how to get there. When I got there everything looked normal from the road, but when we trekked in a few hundred feet I could NOT believe my eyes - the city has built a HUMUNGOUS 3 field sports field in there with night lights, astroturph on at least one of the fields - there are THREE complete fields there, a HUGE parking lot, trailers, seating, EVERYTHING!!

Can you believe it? I think the city built it speculatively for the 2014 Commonwealth Games and now that they've dropped the bid it is all a complete waste of money.

The city can't empty the garbage cans at Seaview park, and the field there is a COMPLETE MUD PIT - but they can build this MONOLITH in the middle of one of the city's parks for NOTHING. And tell no one about it. And keep everyone out. The place is locked up tighter than Britney Spears right now.

I am INCENSED. People have to know about this. Spread the word. See below for photos...

A shot of one of the sports fields
another shot of the sports fields - see all the fabulous lights that can be TURNED ON AT NIGHT?
This is a shot of the parking lot - see there's even lights in the parking lot!
This is a picture of the landscaping that they did of the outside of the fields before winter set in - show me the landscaping that they've done anywhere else in the city for any of the dog owning taxpayers in this city?
This is the ONLY sign in the whole of the facility - there is nothing anywhere noting what this place is for and who it's for - except for the HUGE "Halifax Regional Municipality" ingrained into the astroturf on the sports field.

Some Follow ups and Pet Cemetery in Nova Scotia!

Today I dropped off Bailey - who I talked about a few posts ago who is being fostered by a friend of mine - at the vets to be neutered this morning. She had never seen stuffed animals before, and my car is full of them because Daisy and Buttercup love them - so she had a great time throwing them around and trying to get the stuffing out of them the whole car ride out to Tantallon. I think she figured she'd died and gone to heaven in the back of the Taurus!
But when we got to Tantallon and she was sniffing the front of the vet hospital she suddenly turned around and gave me this look as if to say - "hey - this place doesn't smell like sunshine and lollipops, what is up here?" - and suddenly she wasn't quite so happy! I can tell you that by 7:30pm tonight she was VERY unhappy, and several very unnecessary bits and pieces were missing. Yea! I took some pictures in the car this morning and they're at http://picasaweb.google.com/dogkisser/Baileyif you want to look at them - she's such a beautiful looking dog, I couldn't resist.

Tonight Charlie and Daisy were feeling very playful so I took a couple shots of them - you can't see that Charlie is glommed onto her butt at this point.
Can you believe this dog? This is a dog who is just DYING for some attention. PLEASE LOOK AT ME!
Buttercup was pretty tuckered out from all the day's events, so she just layed in my lap and directed the evening's events from there.

I got this fabulous candle in the mail today from my good friend Lee Anne Tibbo. Isn't it amazing? It's got a picture of Teddy on it. I guess it's like a memorial type candle thing. I think it's beautiful. I like schmaltzy things like this. I have it burning right at this moment.
When I told my friend Maureen about it she started talking about a pet cemetery outside of St. Croix here in Nova Scotia that she took one of her dogs to to have cremated that I knew nothing about before today. They have a website at http://www.atyp.com/peacefulacres/ and it's kind of neat because you can have your pet buried there - but they also have a crematorium on site and sell specially made urns - but I like that it gives you more of a special guarantee that the ashes you get back are of the ashes of your particular pet. I think I may go for a drive some nice day and check the place out.

*********

Now for an update that Marjorie asked about Tammy Grimes - I had posted about Doogie the dog dying last March 1st - on the same day Tammy was bitten quite badly by one of her foster dogs and went to the hospital by ambulance - the dog was a black chow who had been a former chained dog that had been at her house for a few weeks and had been neutered 3 weeks previously. He had some food aggression problems that Tammy knew about and she had been feeding him separately from her other foster dogs - she always has at least 4-6 foster former chained dogs at any one time - and has since she started the Dogs Deserve Better organization in 2002-2003 - so she's become (I am sure) quite savvy about rehabilitating and living with them in her house. I've seen video of the inside of her house and she has dutch doors set up and she crate trains all the dogs coming in - and truth be told - most former chained dogs are simply just grateful to be inside and around loving people.

But unfortunately there are some dogs who do have aggression problems because of the past abuse - and that's why living on a chain is such an awful thing and why it should be outlawed - and that's also what Tammy said about being bitten - she said that it's made her even more dedicated to the cause than before because she realizes now that this particular dog was a ticking time bomb and that if a child had approached him while he was eating and still on his chain that child would probably have been attacked and killed. She said she felt very bad about the dog being euthanized by the Animal Control Officers - that she felt she had failed the dog - but that there was really no choice left for him.

I asked Tammy today how she's feeling and she said that she's still swollen and sore, but that she's doing okay - she had a lot of cuts and lacerations and her achilles tendon on one foot was pretty torn up - but there wasn't anything that won't heal over time.

You can't save every dog, but you can't look a dog in his eyes and not try to save him, that's what I say.

Pictures of Buttercup running towards me

I keep track of the photos I take of pictures of Buttercup running towards me - and I uploaded some of them tonight to my "Google photo album" - you can go see them here -

Buttercup Running Towards Me

Is 5 1/2 months of love long enough?

Doogie - the dog that Tammy Grimes, the founder of Dogs Deserve Better - removed from a backyard because he was on the edge of death, and the owners charged her with theft when she refused to return him - died March 1st 2007 - 5 1/2 months after he was removed from the chain that he'd been tethered to for his entire previous existence.

I have talked here on this blog in several places about the story of Doogie and Tammy and it's ramifications - so I'm not going to talk about it again here, but it just seems to me that 5 1/2 months isn't quite long enough to make up for a whole lifetime of being ignored. I really hope that Doogie has better luck in his next life. I guess at least in the final analysis he didn't die in pain in muck in his own shit where no one even noticed. Like 100's and maybe 1000's of other animals are doing at this very moment. Life is so rotten at some moments, isn't it?

Buttercup's newest video

When we were at the beach one day this Buttercup decided she needed to do a lot of rolling in the sand and on the ice, so I took some video of it, and made the below video. I think it's pretty good - Buttercup is at her highest level of cuteness: