I Am A Dog Owner...

This is going to be a wee bit of a rant.  I apologize in advance.

I live in a very rural area (perhaps you have figured this out already).  Yet, I live at the top of a housing development in a very rural area.  There are a small number of houses in this development, with most home owners owning 2 - 8 acres of land.  So we are not close to each other.  In fact, I can see only one other neighbor from where I live.  I can't see the rest of them until I drive down my access road and out into the development.

There are neighbors that live on the access road and neighbors who live down below in the main part of the development.  We are mostly friendly with the neighbors who live off of the access road and know very little about the rest of the neighbors down below, except that one time we found a dog that belonged to the son of one of our neighbors down below.  We didn't know it was their dog, but eventually, through my husband driving around and asking people, we found out that their son was visiting and the dog got away, so we were glad to be able to reunite them.  They brought us a lovely fruit basket as a thank you, which was unexpected.  We were just glad the dog was back home.

I know....I haven't ranted yet, but I have to set this up properly.  Give me a minute.

We have some neighbors who live on a dirt road behind our development.  One house in particular I always admire when I drive past.  It is picture perfect.  A redone farmhouse with a large wrap around porch, pool in the sideyard and well manicured lawn.  There was always a dog asleep on the porch in the shade of this house.  It was like a Norman Rockwell photo.

In fact, of the neighbors we have in and around our development, all but two that I know of, are dog owners in the sense that they have dogs.  Some of them are dog owners in the sense that they are responsible for the dogs and others just "have" them.  It's the latter that are a featured part of my rant.

Let's start with that Norman Rockwell photo.  One day last year, not unlike the heat we are experiencing now, we had a three day stint of high heat indeces and temps in the upper 90's.  I was driving out of our development, and had just made the turn from our main road to the rural route that adjoins it, when walking down the middle of the road I see a very haggard looking dog.  I look at the temp gauge in my car.  It is 94 degrees.  That asphalt had to be extremely hot.  The dog looked disoriented.  I stopped my car, got out, loaded the dog into the back seat and drove home.  I opened my garage, put the dog inside on the cold floor, got a small small water bowl and put some water in it, and dipped my fingers in the water and wet the dog's muzzle.  This dog looked elderly, but familiar.

My husband wasn't home and I had to be somewhere, so I called him on his cell and explained the situation.  I also said that the dog looked familiar and I was going to think on it as to where I'd seen this dog before, but in the meantime, when he got home, he was to check her and if she was no longer panting and quiet, he could give her a full bowl of water and some treats.

I went to my appointment.  On the way home it occurred to me that this dog looked alot like the Norman Rockwell dog on the picture perfect porch.  So I drove to the house, parked, and knocked on the door.  Nothing.  I saw a neighbor's door open across the way, so I walked over and asked if they knew if the folks were home.  "No," the neighbor replied, "They are on vacation."

"Well, you see," I said.  "I've found this dog that looks alot like the dog that I've seen on their porch."

"Oh MY GOD! Thank GOD!  You've found Holly???????????" screamed the neighbor.  Now I was really confused.

"Well, I don't know that I've found Holly, but I found a dog that reminds me of the dog I saw on this porch." I replied.

"They lost Holly the day they were leaving on vacation," the neighbor went on to say.   "She just wandered away from their house.  We told them we would try to find her and we've been looking for her."

"Well," I said.  "She was in plain view this morning, walking down the middle of the hot road, tongue to the ground, disoriented and already showing signs of heat exhaustion."  Pffft....I think that went right over the neighbor's head....you could almost see it whizzing off into the distance.

"Can I come and get her?" asked the neighbor.
"You can come and verify it's her," I said.  "And if it is, you can bring her back.  Would you be keeping her in your house?"
"Oh good, because they are coming home tomorrow and they will be so relieved.  Yes, she can stay in our house until they get home."

Turns out the dog WAS Holly.  Holly was 19 years old....19 YEARS OLD!!!!!  Maybe it's me, but I don't think I would have headed on vacation if my 19 year old dog was missing.  I don't think I'd leave my 19 year old dog laying on the porch day after day, because disorientation occurs in older dogs and they can wander, not knowing where they are.

Holly went home, and I saw her on the porch for another year.  Then I never saw her again, so I assumed she had passed on.  A younger dog was soon on the porch, and I realized something.  These folks never let the dog in.  No wonder their house was picture perfect.  I am a dog owner and that means when I get a dog, it can come into my house and live with me.



Dog owners who use these should be made
to sleep in them for a week and
experience first hand igloo living.

 Next scenario...neighbors down the road in our development had two dogs who inhabited two igloos in the back section of their yard.  I never saw them walk the dogs, but then again, I was not around all day watching to see if it would happen.  The woman would often tell folks she "rescued" both dogs.  Uh huh....so that's why they are living in igloos....because they are "rescued."  Soon, they moved the igloos from behind their house to the front area of their driveway, one under each of two shade trees.  I cooked up schemes in my head about throwing the dogs treats until they recognized me and spiriting them away...but these were just pipe dreams because I'm really a law abiding citizen.  Instead I contacted Animal Friends and had them send them one of their letters about dogs chained outside.  I know they must have received the letter, because for about a week after that I understand they allowed the dogs to live in their garage.  But then they were back outside again.  Then the igloos disappeared and so did the dogs.  I am a dog owner and my dogs will never have to live in igloos because I know that when I rescue a dog, I am rescuing them from a life of loneliness and solitude and I want them to be a part of my life.  A dog in an igloo is not rescued.  It needs to be rescued.



Horses can become very angry and agitated by dogs
and ultimately will go after them.  The horse will
always win this battle.

 Finally, there are my favorite neighbors.  The ones whose house I can see.  They have three dogs.  One is a bird dog, two are small yappy dogs.  All are very cute.  Their dogs live with them in their house and share in their lives.  The smaller yappy dogs are happily ensconsed in hair bows.  One of them has been known to actually come into our horse pasture and have a bark fest at our horse Parker, who looks unperturbed and munches his hay.  Horses can kill dogs.  One mighty uplift of that front hoof or kick with a back hoof, and a dog's back can be broken.  We alerted our neighbor's to this fact.  It seemed for a while the small yappy dog did not appear, but then the bird dog started to invade.  We turned our electric fence on in the lower pasture--where the bird dog gained access--and listened for the first howl.  We hated to do it, but it was for the dog's safety.  That first howl came.  A few days went by, and then a second howl.  Since then the bird dog has learned not to enter the horse field.  It normally only takes one shock.  Our own loving dog, Ollie, our Golden Retriever, was shocked by the fence early in his life with us.  It only took one time and he gave it a wide berth.  Same with our lab, Ike.  Since then our physical fence has saved any of our other dogs from experiencing the shock.

We love dogs, but we don't let ours run wild.  Even when we didn't have a physical fence, we didn't let our dogs run.  We walked them on leashes.  Ollie and Ike were the only two dogs we allowed off leash because they stayed within range and came on call.  Daisy, Moe and Bethy were walked on leash.  When Burton came, our first deaf dog, the physical fence went in.  Yes, it cost alot of money to put that fence in.  But I'm a dog owner and I'm responsible for the lives of my dogs.  I don't want them infringing on anyone else's property, especially if they may be harmed.

I take owning dogs very seriously. 



Too bad this dog doesn't live next door.

 I may not be winning any hospitality awards soon, because I may have to go have some talks with some neighbors.  A week ago, the igloo people put their igloos back out and they have two new dogs inhabiting them.  This past week I caught the bird dog going to attack our chickens (who stay diligently in their 100 yards of farm near the barn).  Even after my husband had a serious talk with the owner, the dog was running wild tonight again down our access road.  Some people need to come with a warning label.

Aaarrrrooooo!

Snippets of Life in the Not-So-Fast Lane

It's been the kind of week where I know 168 hours went by but I have no real knowledge of what occurred because so much occurred I couldn't keep track.  During the week several times I had things pop into my brain about certain happenings or whatever I was doing at the time, and thought "I should blog about this for sure."  Unfortunately, my brain has a time stamp on it.  Like a piece of liverwurst left in the sun, it goes bad after just an hour.  So I've mostly forgotten the things I wanted to tell you about.  I didn't take that course you see on television that improves your memory or uses association to guide you through remembering 265 names of people you just met in a room.

However, I do remember some things that happened, and my feelings about them at the time, so I thought I'd drudge those snippets forward and see if I could salvage at least some of my thoughts.

First, while driving to the grocery store the other day, I marveled at the fact that some of the roads I was driving on were actually being held together by a string of tar that the road crew had poured over the cracks and erosion over the course of the last 7 months.  I'm not quite sure what our township does, but I can tell you unabashedly, it isn't road work.  Some of our roads are governed by PennDot and some are handled by the local township crew.  If you ask or complain about a certain road at the township building, you'll get "oh, that's a PennDot road."  If you complain to PennDot they will tell you "oh, that's the township's responsibility."  I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this sounds fishy to me.



Typical road repair in my area.

 Recently our own development road was repaved completely.  This came after numerous complaints by neighbors and dwellers on the road that the crevices finally had to be filled because they were swallowing trees, cars and people.  Prior to the mass phone calling campaign, the township would send a road crew which involved one truck with that crumbly black road asphalt and one man with a shovel.  He simply drove to a crevice, threw the crumbly black road asphalt into it and drove to the next kink in the armour.  He didn't even drive over the crumbly black road asphalt stuff himself.  He left it for us....unsuspecting people coming home from shopping at the grocery store who suddenly heard the bottom of the car explode in little popping sounds, which was all the crumbly black road asphalt jumping out of the hole and sticking to the bottom of the car. 

As long as I'm talking about roads, let me jump right into my next thought--how bad the drivers are in our area.  Relative to Florida, Pennsylvania may be the next largest state with a proportionately large older population.  Now, I don't want to pick on older folks, because I'm one of them, but I'm going to tell you, I get stuck behind at least 2 to 4 elderly, slow drivers on every trip I make from my house.  Directly opposite this factoid is the unfortunate reality that we also have alot of young people--new drivers--on the road who feel it necessary to "peel out," as they say, from red lights, stop signs and parking lots.  They like to make and see those "cool" black marks on the road.  We had a pair of teenagers doing wheelies with their car in our cul-de-sac once.  I remember finding them and they told me some sad excuse of a story that they couldn't get their car to stop so they just kept going round and round (they actually shouted this out of their window while going round and round).  My head was going round and round with that story, and I informed them that a state trooper lived on our road and I would go get him to help them, and suddenly their car was fixed and it went straight and right down the hill and out of our development.  I wasn't lying.  We have a neighbor who is a state trooper.  I've never seen them on our hill again.

Drivers aside and back to shopping, I visited the K-Mart from Hell this past week to buy a plastic pool for our dogs to swim in since we are going to have the heatwave of the century this entire week coming up.  This K-Mart is in an obscure little burg that I don't visit very often, but happened to be taking my mother somewhere and needed to buy her some Elmer's Glue.  (I know...my life is so exciting...)

First, I would have expected the Elmer's Glue to be in a spot where paper supplies are located.  Pens, pencils, paper, glue, you know, the regular stuff.  So I went there.  Nothing.  I looked for someone to ask, but I do believe that every single employee of this K-Mart is trained to hide from anyone who looks like they might want to ask something.  I finally cornered a person, literally, who was emptying HTH pool chemicals in a corner near the restroom signs.  "Sir," I started, "Can you tell me where I might find glue?"  One deer-in-headlights expression later, he responded "try paper supplies in aisle blah blah."  Been there done that...nothing.

So I almost gave up, except that as I was giving up and going to exit the store, there sat the Elmer's Glue in a small counter near the check out line.  Ooookkkkkkaaaayyyyy then, let's NOT make this logical.  I grabbed a container and then realized that there were only two lines, and both had every consumer in this burg in them, and they didn't seem to be rushing to open any more check out counters.  Back to the end of line number one.

Approximately 15 minutes later I had the glue paid for and then needed to pull my car to the outside garden center location to buy the plastic pool.  Thankfully, they have a checker outside and you don't have to wait in one of the two lines with 100 other people.  I walked up to the young man working this section and said, "If that pool fits in the back of my Ford Explorer, and you help me put it in there, I will buy it."  He obliged and helped me fit it into my Explorer.  I then went back to pay.

Remember the Florida/Pennyslvania comparison?  Well, it kicks in again NOW.  There at the counter is an older woman buying a plant.  "How much is this?" she asks.  The young man is about to sputter that he is helping me and will be with her in a minute, but I knew that he was making a grievous error in judgement here and that he would never win any battle he started. "Ninety-nine cents," he replies.  She plops a dollar on the counter and he then turns to me again.  I give him the "I feel sorry for you and please help this woman first" look and so he rings her up.  He hands her a receipt.  She queries, "Did you not give me my change?" (That would be ONE cent folks.)  He responds, "no Maam, I didn't, because the purchase is really $1.05 with tax, but you don't have to worry about the $.05."  Nice young man.  You would think the woman would have thanked him and called it a day.  OHHHHH NOOOOOOOO, this is Northeastern Pennsylvania, at a K-Mart in an obscure burg, and me in a hurry. 

"Oh no," she says.  I have the rest.  I wouldn't want anyone to say I don't pay my bills." And with that she pulls out a nickel and he takes it because by this time he knows MUCH more about this situation than he did in the beginning and KNOWS he won't ever win this battle no matter what he does.  "Okay, thank you Maam," is all he replies.



"Do you always throw trees at people's hair?"

 In the meantime, an elderly gentleman is carrying a large hibiscus bush to the counter and he, without looking or thinking, lifts it up and plops it on the counter.  In the process a branch snatches the older woman's hair.  (Listen, you can't make this stuff up!)  Can you see where this is going?  I could, and all I wanted to do was pay the $12.00 for my plastic pool and get the heck out of dodge before the gun fight.  I think the clerk saw the panic in my eyes because he hurridly rang me up and threw the receipt at me, and I ran as fast as I could back to my car but not without first hearing the older woman say to the man in a loud voice, "Do you always throw trees at people's hair?"  My guess is the police were called and they had to open up another line to handle the buyers after the crowd dispersed into that K-Mart to shop....and that the older woman won.

Finally, I'm happy to report that all of the recent hen acquistions we made have now settled in and are getting along with our other chickens.  Again, such excitement may be too much for some readers, and I probably should have put a warning on this.  In an effort to acclimate everyone to our flock, I actually made a video the other day.  If you made it this far, you may want to bug out now.....unless you truly are interested in piranhas and the Blair Witch video photography aspects of this film.

Aaarrrooooo!

Android Phones Need Age Limit Warnings

You've got to admit...these
are sleek pieces of equipment!

For years I was content and happy to use an outdated cell phone.  It was a Samsung.  You know the kind...you just flip it up to answer and you can text, but not much else.  You could phone folks, have a list of contacts, say hello and goodbye...this is all I really needed to do. 

I'm not by nature a "phone" person.  I don't like to talk for long periods of time on the phone.  I come from a long line and deep deep history of "talkers" who LOVED to spend countless moments talking to family and friends via any mode of phone they could find.  As far back as when your phone number started with GL7 (yes this really dates me) my grandmother would spend over an hour sometimes on the phone with her Polish friends, spouting loads of Polish phrases that I'm sure were peppered with obsceneties that she didn't want us kids to hear.

Even as a teenager, I'd rather see my friends in person and talk to them, than speak with them for long periods over the phone.  Quite frankly, holding that phone up to my ear beyond 10 minutes is just a chore, and my ear starts to hurt.  I know we are in speaker mode option status now, but I still have an aversion to "phone talk."

Despite this, I thought that I would finally come out of the dark ages and get a new phone.  When my contract was up with my company, as I retired in January, I took on my own contract from the same phone provider, and my chance to change my phone came looming in front of me, dangling some kind of invisible phone carrot.

I read up on and checked into nearly 20 phones before finally deciding to go the Android route and get an LG Vortex.  I read all the complaints, all the reviews, all the obscure people-mad-at-the-world and people-happy-with-life-in-general notes to be found on-line.  You know the type...it's such a wide disparity in the comments and reviews section.  You will have a post with "I ABSOLUTELY HATE THIS PHONE!  I THREW IT UP AGAINST A WALL YESTERDAY!" and in the very next post in the queue you'll see "WHAT A LOVELY PIECE OF EQUIPMENT THIS IS! SO EASY TO USE AND I JUST LOVE IT TO DEATH!! FIVE STARS!!!!"  So helpful...

So in the end I relied on my decision making capacity and a piece of paper with the names of cell phones on it which I poked with my index finger after closing my eyes and spinning it three times.  My finger landed on LG Vortex.  So be it.  Sometimes fate is better than knowledge anyway.



My recommendation for a new
warning label on android phones.



I've now spent almost six months with my Vortex and I have to tell you that I really think there should be age warnings on android phones.  You figure they just upped the warning levels on a number of products we see on the market, most notably the visuals on cigarette packages.  I think I'd like to recommend a few photos they can use for people over 50 who decide to buy an android phone.  The photo to the right could be one.

It's not that I don't like my phone.  I do like it.  It's just that no one really seems to know how to write a user-friendly, over-50 instruction manual to go with these things.  Believe me, I do have some reading comprehension skills.  I do understand the written word.  But techno-lingo written for people who have a degree in electronics is beyond my knowledge base.

There is another problem.  Let me give you an example.  Here are the instructions for how to delete a message, from a list of messages on the phone, taken directly from the instruction manual. (Music playing....on hold....music playing....on hold....music playing.....on hold.)  Sorry for the delay.  THERE ARE NO INSTRUCTIONS IN THE MANUAL FOR DELETING A MESSAGE FROM YOUR PHONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  So how does one figure this out?  Well, how I figured it out was purely accidental.  I happened to be looking at a message that was in the list and held my finger on it too long and up popped a menu that actually had the word DELETE on it!

For the other 90% of my problems, I google my question and find 50 million other people asking the same question and find some techno-speak person who understands the instruction manual who has explained the answer.  Or some 12 year old.  I find that if you have access to a young person, someone between the ages of 12 and 16, that has an android, they are a vast and infinite source of knowledge on how to use these phones.

So here is my recommendation for warning label verbage on android phones.  "STOP!  IF YOU ARE 50 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER, YOU MAY WANT TO THINK ABOUT BUYING THIS PHONE.  IT COULD CAUSE AN INCREASE IN BLOOD PRESSURE, HEART PALPITATIONS, AND STRESS.  IF YOUR EYE SIGHT IS NOT 20-20 DO NOT EXPECT TO READ ANYTHING YOU SEE ON THIS PHONE!"

And, recently I found that Finland has a wonderful way to take out your anger on cell phones in general.  This could be my next vacation!

Aaarrroooooooo!!!!