Pet Channel

There are a lot of cool events involving dogs as well. But remember, this isn't the Westminster Dog Show. These dogs run state of the art obstacle courses and have many different physical challenges. Today, they had the "Big Air" contest where dogs squared off by sprinting down a small deck and as soon as they get to the ledge, the dog's owner tosses an object into the air and the dog is supposed to jump for it. Some of these dogs stayed airborne for an amazing amount of time.

Greyhound is a type of dog. They are very fast runners and are very gentle creatures. Unfortunately, they are bred for dog races, similar to horse races. When injured, in old age or when not fast enough to compete, i.e. when no use for races, these dogs are killed.

So, I thought that I would add an aquarium to my own virtual world, to create a sense of well-being and happiness. Do you feel the love yet?

Added more Grand Teton photos and a few from Badlands. There’s also more pics in the Miscellaneous section, including some of the World’s Only Corn Palace. Or, as the locals call it, The World’s Largest Bird Feeder. (All those murals are made out of corn. Really.)

Taylor lately has taken to chewing on the beer bottles we leave in the basement for future recycling. I can’t figure out if she’s in it for the residual beer flavor or for the fun of peeling off the labels. Probably a little of both. Really I’m just writing all this to have an excuse to post funny dog pictures. Look! That dog’s drinking a beer! More hilarity can be found at Flickr.

A half hour later, Freckles is trying to get Pepper to play with her, so she’s baring her teeth a little bit. She does this all the time, it’s really no big deal, so I went back to watching Battlestar. All of a sudden I hear Freckles bark loudly, then Pepper barking like she was going to kill Freckles. I whip around to the left and I see Freckles on her back trying to defend herself, and Pepper bearing down on her, going for her throat. I yell, break it up, but Pepper doesn’t calm down instantly, it’s kinda like a subsiding rage. I’m trying to separate the dogs, but Freckles thinks I’m mad at her, and now all of a sudden Pepper acts like nothing’s wrong.

On her first day home from the vet, she cruised around the house getting acquainted with the sights, sounds and smells. This naturally led her to the bird cages. I caught her looking at the birds, made a “PSSSSST!!” sound and she took off like I had lit her tail on fire. The strange thing is is that she hasn’t done it since. I caught her on the table, made the same noise and she hasn’t gotten back on the table since. The entertainment center? Same deal. The bathtub. The kids’ beds. My office chairs. Anyplace I don’t want her to be.

*sighs* Today, my 18-year-old siamese cat, Sylvi, passed away. I’m not feeling too good about that. During the past few years of her life, and especially last year, Sylvi’s health deteriorated significantly. Her asthma got worse and a sudden temporary paralysis in her legs after a visit to the vet had lasting effect on her walk - she could no longer lift her paws high nor jump up on anything. Walking became increasingly difficult for her. Her heart was swollen and overwhelmed and a previously undetected virus made her practically blind. Still, she lived quite comfortably (or so I believe) on medication until this month, when the pills finally stopped working. Today we (that is, mother and I) discovered her in a extremely bad condition-she could barely breathe and was unable to eat anything at all - she threw up even the little shreds of food she managed to eat. And the second I saw her, I knew this was it.

Growing up we spent a lot of time in the backyard. Throughout the years it’s changed and things have come and gone. One summer my dad and I built a deck for the pool and the next he painted the patio to match some bricks he laid somewhere else. One thing he has kept back there has been a bird feeder. In the last year, the normal upkeep of this item has been hindered by one of my Dad’s good friends. A squirrel who lives in the trees above our neighborhood has made it quite difficult to keep the bird feeder stocked.

Ultra disguise kits for dogs. Turn your doberman into a giant poodle. Apparently Qld are banning a number of 'dangerous' dog breeds of which the doberman is one. The owner of this dog is annoyed because, as he rightly points out, it's not the breed of dog that is the problem, but how it has been treated and socialised. Any dog can bite.

Generally, women seem to like cats, and boy, does this woman loves cats. In fact, she likes them both dead and alive. Police said that Ruth Knueven, 82, of Burke, Virgina had more than 100 dead cats, plus nearly 50 more live ones, in her house. She was previously arrested before after authorities removed more than 270 cats, both alive and dead, from another of her homes. It’s not just her, police found another 134 dead cats and 47 living ones in a Burke home belonging to her family. What’s with old women and cats?

She’s a funny cat, this one - a calico with beautiful markings and green eyes. Quite the curmudgeon in personality and also very smart - she’s taken over as the chief cat in our household since Pearl became senile. And now she’s sitting on me constantly. But not affectionately. Oh no, do not ever think that.

So finally we broke down and got some new binos. We’d been using my dad’s old Tasco 7×35 Porro binos that were at least 40 years old *ugh*. These new ones are great; very sharp, nice and bright, very good FOV of 341′ at 1000 yards (awesome for 10×42s) and the close focus distance is supposedly 7 feet but I find it closer; more like a tad over 6′ (great for sitting in your house and watching closely-mounted bird feeders, or checking out butterflies, etc). Here’s a blurb about them on Optics4Birding.com:

I think our cat Tigger can read, he was acting all jealous toward me today. I was reading a Cat Who series book and he is not the main character. All cats are vain that way, thinking things have to be about them all the time.

Oscar doesn't chase rabbits anymore, but he'll still go after cats. That's pretty amazing, because four years ago Oscar's rear legs were paralyzed. Oscar is a 7-year-old dachshund, owned by Dan Paulin of Boonville.

They are black-headed grosbeaks. It took me a bit to figure that out, even though their large and sturdy beak first suggested that I should start with a grosbeak. Fortunately the male spent a lot of time on the bird feeder yesterday and today, and the female joined him on the rail, where corn and sunflower seeds seemed to keep her content.

The Airborn Cats series at Flickr is priceless. And nearly unbelievable.

In other site news, if you have not visited The Dog lately to find out why cats will never rule the world you better go have a look. Because of it's size the little movie will not stay up for long.

For three years, my house became a marine biology lab, with sticky floors and home-made raw seasalt crystallizing on various surfaces. We have a 4-foot bullet tank which is meant for tropical fish systems but because I thought it would look nice in my living room, lesser informed then about how messy marine systems can get. It was an expensive mistake, we had to correct all shortcomings with more expensive mistakes. We tried from the Smithsonian style to the Berlin-style minus the external sump to combining every equipment we could get our hands on. Just because the bullet tank was not designed to support a marine tank and we did not have the diligence to constantly keep the water quality pristine enough, corals and fish could not live happily ever after.

We have a couple of bird feeders on our deck, and I’ve long know that the birds that feed at the feeder (sparrows, cardinals, mourning doves, blue jays, orioles, etc) often used the bushes as ‘rest stops.’ My fear was that any of these birds had built nests in those bushes.

In the mornings and evenings, I have to give Zeus medication (several pills) for his heart condition, which isn’t bad as I just have to mix them in some wet food. However, every evening, I have to give Tayo, who has colon cancer, three pills orally (through the mouth, thank god!). You know what Siamese cats are like - if you look at them the wrong way, they try to disembowel you with their claws. Well, I have to grab this cats’ head, pry it’s jaws apart, drop in a pill, and then sort of hold it’s jaw shut until it swallows. Then I have to do that two more times. Fortunately, this is a pretty easygoing cat, and he just wriggles a little and looks at me like I’m Satan, which is sort of how I feel.

We were awakened again a couple of nights ago, the dogs going bonkers. A big bear was at the front bird feeder, looking for a meal. I bring the feeders in at night, so he was disappointed. But we watched him for a bit before he wandered off. We think it was a bit smaller than the one that had been coming. At least this one didn’t come up onto the porch. If he does, there is a 12-guage shot gun waiting for him. I don’t like the idea of shooting a bear, especially a big one, but will if he becomes a threat.

My dear friend Thesaurus Rex (who no longer blogs, pity) asked me a while back to take some shots of his two wonderful siamese cats. I’ve decided, therefore, that they should be the stars of this week’s catblogging. Without further ado, here are Gus:

I stumbled across the funniest site. This is for all of those people who have a "dangerous" dog breed for a pet. Now, you can live without ridicule or fear.

Argh. I hate it when a loved pet gets sick and is clearly on its deathbed. I inherited two cats from my ex-girlfriend, both rather elderly. One of the cats died a year and a half ago of stomach cancer. The other one, Freckles, was diagnosed with heart disease about 3 months ago. She's been doing remarkably well with her medication, but this last week she's taken a serious turn for the worse. She's so adorable--follows us around in the house, purrs, but is really having trouble with anything more than walking a room length at a time. It's so sad. And you never get used to it. And even though I've dealt with the death of people (like my father when I was 15, and like the 8 year old son of a dearly loved friend), it just always feels awful. Whether it's sudden or slow.

So its official - Charlie does not like swimming. And I honestly DO NOT think he has a hearing problem, at all. I think he has some sort of mental problem. He acts like a dog that was abused severly. He has a lack of trust in other human beings and is afraid of ANYTHING that moves or touches him. Now I love him and would never be able to get rid of him but its really stressing me out. I am the only person he will come to and let him pet and stuff without freaking out. But.. ugh. I don’t know. With dogs who were abused, they flinch to raised hands and such. Charlie doesn’t do THAT. I don’t know. It’s weird.

The cats aren’t coming inside, though… but that all-grey kitten is fucking cute as hell. The picture here is of the little black kitten. His bother and sister scampered off when I opened the door to take this picture, and mama cat growled…

I played a few duets with the older daughter, the one who's been playing flute for awhile and is now taking up the piccolo. She had a fingering chart that included two notes at the top end of the flute's range, which I had never seen before. I tried them out, and got the C# out okay, but the D was a bit of a challenge. One of our cats (the Siamese) was sitting on the couch next to hubby, and she was very unhappy because high pitched sounds mean distress to cats. Siamese cats are loud anyway, and she was positively yelling. When I managed to get a piece of the high D out she turned and bit my husband. Not hard, just enough to get his attention. Probably meaning, "Make it stop! Make it stop!! Poor kitty. She was quite relieved when we stopped. Our other cat hid under our bed the entire time they were here, and didn't even come out for hours after they left. I felt bad for her, but other than bringing her food and water into the bedroom so she'd have access to it, there wasn't anything I could do.

I went to visit one of my rental properties. I convinced the previous tenant to move out after she decided to use the entire unit as a toilet for her and her cats. I found out today that removing the carpeting was a very good decision because it had maggots and fleas. She managed to take most of the drugs with her but left enough defiled crap to fill an entire 30 foot dumpster (rolloff) with no room to spare.

I ate cereal. There were about 7 Sparrow birds around the feeder in the back yard. I even seen a red Cardinal bird on the ground next to it with the Sparrows. I took a nap. When I got up I seen a cat laying under the bird feeder. It did not stay for to long but not birds came wile it was there.

On top of that my Aunt Margret lives there. She and my Uncle don’t have children, they have showdogs. There are three of them, and two three week old puppies. The barking never stopped. They also have this poor little cat who is alone in a house of dogs, who never gets paid attention to, so all she does is sit on the table and meow the most sad and depressing meow you have ever heard, over and over again.

However, the secret place for which i had successfully squeeze myself in shall not be disclosed here. it will remain confidential between me n my cats... i bet my cats were thinking that their master is going 'coo-koooo' in the head... haha.... well they're not exactly helpful though... they just sat there in a group n watching me...as though i'm putting on a freaking show for them... damn these lazy cats!!!!! eat sleep east sleep!!hhehehe but i still love them to death.... i mean if anything were to happen to me.... they'll be the last living things that i see n they're my sole witnesses over my stupendous act of stupidity!

One of the first things I have learned about life is that there are many people have very nice front porches or covered stoops and I have sat on a good number of them over the years. But recently I have also noticed that there are fewer and fewer homes with front porches. Regardless of whether you have a front porch or stoop I have started noticing something a little strange, at least it was to me at first. There are these peculiar glass containers hanging out there that are often filled with a pink liquid. My first thought was that this must be some tradition but I couldn't figure out exactly what kind. My first thought was why would anyone want to hang up pink cool aid on their front porch? I mean, I had never really seen anything like this. We didn't do this where I grew up. But soon I found out what they were and why people have them. They're humming bird feeders.

I have discovered that he likes company when he is eating. I have gotten him to eat his food when I sat with him on the floor. It gives us more together time, so I don’t mind. He likes to sleep under my side of the bed, and spends the evening on the pillow on the couch next to me. We go for out nightly walk, and if I am not ‘up to’ the walk, he at least wants me to stay outside with him. I have discovered that his secret cat name (don’t tell him I told you) is Kitten. He responds to it and seems to like it. So, we have had some days where my trying ‘new things’ has made him mad at me (the cat carrier and the harness). He generally forgives me quickly.

The series of “Cat Who” mystery novels by Lilian Jackson Braun follow the exploits of James Qwilleran and his Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum. For the first four books, the only thing exceptional about the little group was the uncanny mystery-solving skills of Koko.