Beautiful

Lloyd Hines and the Provincial Election in June 2009 – and what Responsible Dog owners need to know about him

Zeus Cameron – who’s Mom & Dad won his fight against Lloyd Hines to live out his life in Guysborough

I heard that Lloyd Hines is taking part in a debate Monday night, so I put together a little sheet that I'm hoping is going to make it down to his corner of the province so that some of his constituents will learn a couple things about what he thinks about dogs. This is what I said on it - and I also put a photo of Zeus Cameron on the sheet - reminding people about that dog - that was a pit bull, who very peacefully got to die in his own home - no thanks to him.

Lloyd Hines and the Provincial Election in June 2009 –
and what Responsible Dog owners need to know about him

In 1995 Lloyd Hines lobbied for and passed breed specific legislation in the district of the municipality of Guysborough – banning pit bulls, with no grandfather clause built in.

Because the media paid virtually no attention to this issue, most residents of Guysborough were unaware of the new law in 1995 . Apparently without public support or, to the contrary, outrage, the municipality amended the by-law in 2004 to ban Rottweilers (the amendment contained a grandfather section to exempt Rottweilers already living in the Municipality). The ban on Rottweilers was passed after the New Brunswick attack that led to the death of the four year old child. Warden Lloyd Hines was active in pushing for these bills, and he threatened to push a breed specific ban through the Union of Municipalities – which he almost successfully did in 2008 – but because people in other areas of Nova Scotia know what happens when breed bans become law – Lloyd Hines failed in his bid to pass breed restrictions throughout the whole province.

Lloyd Hines is currently running as a Liberal Candidate in the provincial election in the riding of Guysborough Sheet Harbour in the June 2009 Election.

When Lloyd Hines was Warden of the District of the Municipality of Guysborough he made it a priority in his mandate to first ban pit bull dogs, and then add rottweillers to that ban.

When Lloyd Hines was first Vice President, and then President of the Union of the Nova Scotia Municipalities he made it a priority of his mandate to have breed restrictions passed throughout the whole province of Nova Scotia.

If he is elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia – what do you think one of his major priorities will be when he gets there?

This is a quote that Lloyd Hines said in 2004 when he was attempting to have rottweillers banned in his municipality –

"I don't want to be the warden of the Municipality of Guysborough and have to go to the funeral of some kid who was eaten."

When Guysborough dog owners go to the polls in June – hopefully they will go to the voting booths with the knowledge that they are voting not just for themselves – they are voting for every dog owner in Nova Scotia.

Someone's been to the beauty parlour!

Today Bobby went to the beauty parlour and he came out looking very beautiful I think.
And I think he think's he's looking quite beautiful too.
He is looking like a proper toy poodle now.


Buttercup doesn't get to go in until June 16th, so I think she's feeling a bit jealous.
Bobby was being quite the bon-vivant in the backyard this afternoon.
Even Daisy's head was being turned by the spectacle.
Jack was at the beauty parlour yesterday - so he's looking very spectacular his own self - 2 dogs at the beauty parlour = about $140 = 2 nice looking dogs = empty pockets, but it's all worth it
But Daisy showed them all up in the end - she gets to roll around in the dirty and comes out looking the same as when she started - you have to love the double coated breeds!

PETA, seals, other countries & making money + maple syrup

So I got a new action alert from PETA today - all lovers of seals are now being called to boycott Canadian Maple syrup until the heinous Canadian seal hunt is stopped forever. And to advertise it PETA has a travelling show of a person dressed up as a baby seal going from town to town taking a hekapik to a very large cardboard representation of a bottle of Canadian Maple Syrup. Isn't that fun?


The email says that 85% of the world's maple syrup comes from Canada - that's a statistic I can get behind. That's fabulous to hear. Bravo for our Canadian Maple syrup producers! You know what I love? Maple syrup peanut brittle - now THAT is tasty. If you've never tried it, you should. It is yummy.


Getting that email got me to thinking a little bit. I remember getting an email about the Faroe Islands a few months ago. You remember that place? In Denmark? That has the pilot whale slaughter every year? That's considered an important part of the culture and history of the area - done since the 10th century? I know that because I looked it up on Wikipedia. I received the lovely photos in this blog post a few months ago - if you do a google search you'll find more.


I wondered if PETA was hollering from the roof tops about this slaughter the way they do about the bloody massacre Canada’s annual seal hunt - "the largest slaughter of marine mammals on Earth" - so I did a Google search of "Peta seal hunt" and came up with the page - "PETA.Org Help stop the Bloody Seal Massacre" - which has video, links to other PETA pages about the seal hunt, links to pages where you can buy merchandise, and the obligatory links to pages where you can send them money to help stop the seal hunt. It's one of more than 68,000 pages about PETA and the seal hunt.


When I typed in "PETA Faroe Islands" - I came up with a page - "Stop the Bloody Whale Massacre on the Faroe Islands" - and all it is - is an advocacy alert page that sends a letter to the Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands. Boy, that's scary - isn't it? That's going to quickly send a very sinister message around the world about the horrible massacre that's going on over there in Denmark.


And when you do the Google search of PETA and Faroe Islands - only about 2 or 3 of the top hits even have anything to do with PETA and the Faroe Islands - it turns out that PETA doesn't even seem to really care about the Faroe Islands. Why is that now? Is it because nobody really cares about a lot of blood? They only care about white coats and really big eyes with beautiful eyelashes? I wonder. hhhmmm..... I wonder.

I also have to say that at this point - and to me, it would seem obvious - as I am an animal lover, and anybody who reads this blog would also be an animal lover - that I love seals, my dogs love seals - I also love whales, and I love cows, and pigs, and chickens - and I love cats, and rats, and mice - I love every kind of animal.

I love harp seals, I love grey seal - but the thing is, the seal industry is an abattoir without walls. It's no different than the cow industry, or the chicken industry - or the dogs as food industry over in Asia.

But because it's done on pristine white ice - and photographers can get in close - and the organizations saying they are trying to shut it down know they can make a lot of money off the advertising of the killing - then you have the organizations of PETA and HSUS we have today. Very rich organizations. Targetted at places like my part of the world - and not at places that make them no money.

I'm not saying that the seal hunt is okay - it's as wrong as the cow killing industry is - it's all bad. Just like killing dogs for food is bad - they are ALL THE SAME. One is no worse than the other. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Organizations like PETA cannot cherry pick their money making ventures because of the cuteness of the meat, and easy access to the abbattoir.

That is the ridiculousness of what this situation shows.

Duelling Cuteness

So tonight I had both Bobby and Buttercup being unbearably cute at the same time
I didn't know where to put the camera, because Buttercup was being cute on the couch and Bobby was being cute on the floor.
Buttercup was doing her schtick where she rolls around with a toy and sticks her arms up in the air and wrestles with me and just goes crazy and acts like a puppy instead of a 13 year old dog









And Bobby was on the floor throwing his toys around, play growling and looking at me, being just so cute





I don't think it's possible to decide who is cuter than who.





Jack spent the time at my side trying to keep either one of them from coming too close





And Charlie is never too fussy about all the hub-bub of dogs being cute - he could take it or leave it





A close up of Jackie keeping his good eye on the cuteness action





2 last shots of Bobby with his favourite at the moment teddy bear










Buttercup telling me that she should be the victor on this night





And Bobby telling me that since he's the new one - it should be him! I think it's going to have to be a tie....

Legal off leash spaces I didn't know about!

It always helps to surf the HRM's website, I guess - I thought I knew where all the legal off leash spaces were in the city - but I have realized that I didn't.

I had an email from a reader of my website asking if I knew of any completely fenced in areas where she could run her dog, and I sent her a couple spots - but I went to the HRM's website to have a look around - which by the way, is becoming very outdated, because everything is from 2007 and 2008 - so hopefully nothing has changed - because nothing's been updated it seems in almost a year - and for some reason I've never clicked on the "Summer Off leash Sports Fields" section.

There's seven of them - and they're quite well spread out around the HRM, and one of them is even hear where I live - so if I wanted I wouldn't even have to break the law on a daily basis! haha!

The most emails I get are people asking me about fenced in places to take their dogs off leash - and Robert Drive Park in Dartmouth is probably becoming the best known and best used park for offleash dogs that I know of - it's completely fenced in, and the users of it have even created their own facebook groupRobert Drive Park

Hammond's Plains also has been given their own off-leash space

with the green space between 2 ball fields on Kingswood Drive

In Clayton Park there is Glenbourne Field on Parkland Drive


Cole Harbour has George Bissett Field


Lower Sackville has the Eddie LebLanc Field on First Lake Drive


The field that's where I live by is on the Crown Field off the North West Arm Drive - I had no idea it was off leash!


And last is Conrose Field right off of Jubilee Road in South end Halifax - another field I had no idea was off leash.

So that has totally added to my retinue of places to go off leash - none of them are sniff and pass type places - but they're all great for finding other dogs to wrestle with or play with balls or to practice obedience or just hang out and have fun off leash. And they're applicable 5am to 10pm from May 1st to November 1st - with the exception of Conrose, which the website says is only available between 5am and 10am, which sucks.

Another thing I wanted to talk about which started up recently is a new message board/online presence for local people - and it's called "Halifax blogger" - and it has a section for dog friendly postings. The dog friendly section is at http://halifaxblogger.com/blog/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=19 - the board is open to suggestions for what's going to be there - but posting of dog friendly events, your experience with dog friendly Halifax - and conversations about creating a dog friendly Halifax are all ideas about what we could talk about there. The main site is at http://halifaxblogger.com/ - so go check it out!

Animal League Defence Fund Thinks We're Okay

Almost a month ago I wrote a post about the Animal League Defence Fund publishing a book about animal protection laws across North America and the fact that they had a report ranking animal laws across Canada and how Nova Scotia had rated pretty high.

This week the Chronicle Herald and the CBC caught up and both did stories about the report, which is interesting.

The Chronicle Herald said that "The report said Nova Scotia ranked high because its laws allow judges to order abusers to reimburse the costs of care for an impounded animal, place restrictions on the abuser’s ability to own animals in the future and imposes increasing fines on repeat offenders."

For the story, the Chronicle Herald interviewed Mary Hill - secretary for the NS SPCA - and she said - "Upon closer reflection you have to bear in mind this is comparative and it says a lot more about the ranking of the other provinces that are lower on the list than it does about our legislation. It just means the other provinces have worse legislation."

I don't know if I quite agree with this - maybe we DO have good legislation in this province - but maybe what we have in Nova Scotia is a really shitty Justice department. Has that occurred to anyone? I know that anytime animal abuse cases have come up - it seems that the crown attorney's office has always come up short - saying that they can't do anything, they can't provide a burden of proof, they can't do this, they can't do that - when there's all this glaring evidence that the person has very obviously abused animals. It makes no sense. I'm no lawyer, but common sense has to come into play somewhere.

Today was the Metro Shelter SPCA's Open House!

So today was the long awaited open house and yard sale for the Metro SPCA shelter - and by all accounts it was a great success - the barbecue that was going on made a good chunk of change, and I'm sure the yard sale did a good job too. Bobby had a good time - he was very well behaved and got along with all the dogs he met which was great. He was just loving the attention, I think. As you can tell - the turnout was great - lots of happy people, and happy animals - hopefully some great applications got put in today as well. But it was super that we all got to see all the great new spaces at the shelter - I am sure that everyone was really impressed with the new rooms and how everything looks - all the small touches are also great - like instead of pieces of paper on the wall as signs - they have great bulletin boards inside beautiful frames - really nice touches like that - that will make a big difference over time when there aren't holes in the wall and tape tears in the paint.

I only went in as far as the entrance way since I had Bobby with me - but I did get a nice look at this litter of very cute kittens playing - they didn't even seem to notice all the hull-a-baloo going on around them!

A long shot of the crowd
After me and Bobby left the open house, we went for a drive and thought we'd check out the Frenchy's on the corner of Tacoma and Hartlen in Dartmouth. Here's a tip for all you dog lovers who like to spend your money in dog friendly stores. DO NOT GO TO GUY'S FRENCHY'S ON THE CORNER OF TACOMA AND HARTLEN!

I was in there for about 45 minutes with no problems, minding my own business, Bobby's feet never touched the ground, probably about 5 people approached me because he was so cute and 2 people came up to me because they thought he was a stuffed animal - one person was at me for about 10 minutes and insisted I take her email address because Bobby was exactly what she was looking for and she wants me to email her if I ever see anything come through rescue that's like him - so it was a good educating time for rescue stuff - and about 45 minutes into my shopping this person comes up to me and says - "you can't be in here - there's no pets allowed" - and I say "why?" - and the woman says - "people in here might have allergies" - and I look at my hypoallergenic toy poodle and say to her "do you allow people in here who wear perfume?" - and the womans says "yes" - and I say to her "then that excuse is not good enough, you're going to have to think of a better one".

That person walks away - and another one comes up and we go through the same routine and I say - "I've been in her for like 45 minutes, what's the problem?" - and the woman says "I just came on the floor now" - so I say "well, I'm almost done shopping anyway", so I keep walking - which is pissing off this girl royally (which isn't bothering me at all and I'm trying to draw out for as long as I can) - and she's staring at me, and I say to her - "are you going to let me buy the things I'm carrying around?" and she says "yes" - so I start ambling over towards the cash register and she follows me there and rings me up and I say to her "you should let people bring their dogs in her with them, you'd get a lot more customers". And I take my ill-gotten gains and leave.

So that was the first and last time I'll be going to Guy's Frenchies on the corner of Tacoma and Hartlen in Dartmouth - I wish I would've noticed the Salvation Army just around the corner - they probably would've been a lot more friendly. I was originally going to go back to the Value Village on Portland but thought it was too far to drive to - but I know better now.

Some of us got together and made a video in appreciation of what the staff and volunteers do everyday at the Dartmouth shelter - we went downtown last weekend and video'd some people saying thank-you for what everyone does, and we went to the shelter and video'd the animals saying thank-you - and this is the video we came up with - I originally uploaded it to You Tube, but You Tube has gone nuts with disabling audio because of the music you put on with the video's - so I'm going to try and see if it works just attaching it to this blog post - hopefully the audio won't be disabled by blogger - we'll see how it goes - enjoy!

Some cute stuff and some gooey stuff

Shall I start with the cute stuff? Bobby is turning out to be a dog who can play by himself and love it.
He loves to grab a toy and then run at top speed around in circles - through the back yard, around the back yard, and then he'll drop the toy and keep running - and up into the house and he'll tear through the house and out the back steps and through the back yard and on through again.
It has got to be just about the cutest thing you've ever seen - until you see Buttercup - and then you'll agree that Buttercup is the cutest thing you've ever seen.
But this little guy is coming in a pretty close second, I've got to say.
I was out mowing the lawn when he was doing this and he wasn't taking any notice of the lawn mower - he wasn't letting that dampen his mood at all. He was determined that he was going to have a good time.
He should be pretty tired out tonight, because he did a lot of running around, that's for sure.
2 year old dogs are a lot different than 13 year old dogs - it's been about 8 years since I last had a 2 year old dog - and back then there were 2 of me, so it was easier then.


So now on to the gooey stuff - last night there seemed to be something "off" about Buttercup's left eye, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. Today when I got home from work her left eye was just covered in yellow puss - it was totally gross - something was very wrong, so we went right over to the vet - I was worried that she has torn her cornea like Jack did last summer - and I didn't want that to happen to Buttercup - but Dr. Lindsay at Carnegy's did a stain test on her eye and there's no tear - so hopefully her eye is okay. I never like to screw with dog's eyes when something goes wrong. She's got antibiotic ointment and hopefully it'll just get better - whatever it is that went wrong.

While we were at Carnegy's we met with big black great dane named Ruper - he was a very nice dog, only about a year old - and very large! Although I have yet to meet a small great dane - they always come in size large!