Mixed Musings

Still some final tweaking to do, but today the new site replaced the old. Thanks to all who previewed and critiqued the site and those who provided pictures that have greatly enhanced the site.  Last but definitely not least, a special thanks to my son Jeremy who has shown extreme patience during the past 6 months. Animal aggression and anal glands I can do. But Internet technology? That’s a different story.

I spent the weekend at a vet emergency and critical care seminar and, aside from happily learning that even at that level they’re advocating keeping the animal and environment calm for the sake of the dog instead of emergency doc-jock reactivity, I discovered that the speaker hates to see excited dogs (especially Labs and goldens) engaged in fetch and barking marathons in public parks. In their most benign form, these displays upset me because these animals are so obviously stressed in that environment and their owners so oblivious to this fact. These dogs aren’t frantically going after that ball

Every holiday season I tell myself I should decorate more than I do, which is minimal. This discussion invariably includes the more practical me listing all the reasons why I shouldn’t: a small house heated by wood tree-friendly; the cat will be alone for a few days over Christmas and any decorations might be too tempting to ignore. That sort of thing. Even so, the longing remains. This morning for some reason it hit me especially hard as I went out with the dogs. Apparently the Christmas spirit took notice of my mood because while the dogs were doing

I’ve known for years that I have bears wandering through if not actually living on my property.  Once a young black bear veered off toward my place after loping down the road beside my car for a while as I was driving home from the dump. Other times, I watched them destroy bird feeders less than 15’ from the front and back doors of my house, effectively ending my bird-feeding days. And I’ve felt them watching me from the woods above the house. At first that used to bother me, but more because I had no idea what the

who has responded to these podcasts and blogs. Of all the net-related activities that get foiled by my dial-up, this one is especially slow. That’s saying a lot considering how slow everything else is! But I do want you all to know that I greatly appreciate your comments and read every one of them. and often feel greatly depressed when  I can’t respond as I’d like to. Some day…

Apparently the cybergods think play is an important subject too, because this link just showed up in a veterinary news service I receive. Enjoy. Play. Smile. 🙂

I receive a fair number of video links, but living in the a dead zone with a dial-up connection prevents me from opening most of them. Either I can’t open a clip at all, or my connection crashes half-way through the download process. Because what others may consider a short clip can take me several hours to download, this is all very discouraging. But evidently the universe wanted me to see this one, because it survived its early morning download ordeal intact. The Poop Detective’s CSI spin made me laugh for 2 reasons. One is because I’ve felt the