Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

Someone to watch over me

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This month’s NaBloPoMo theme is Haunted.

I prefer to think of it not as being haunted, but being visited and having someone to watch over me. I don’t know that I’ve ever been graced with a visit from any of my family on the other side. Or more likely, life and logic have caused me to lose the ability to see or feel anything from that side.

As the month goes on, I want to write something about each one of the people and animals that I hope are haunting me. Forgive me for not starting tonight. It has been a long day.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 6 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 228 of 274)

Dear charities that I sometimes donate to…

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I don’t want to sound like a giant jagoff, but I just want you to know that there is only so much I can donate each year to the various causes that I support, including yours, no matter how many times you phone me or mail me.

I don’t much like talking on the phone in general. I especially dislike talking to anyone trying to part me from my money, even for a good cause. When I ask to be taken off the phone list, please do it without trying to make me feel guilty about it.

Particularly if you are a nature or environmental charity, I am also not getting a good feeling from the huge amounts of paper you waste in the attempt to guilt me into donating more. Did you note that I donated online last time? As in no paper involved on my end except for the single sheet I printed out to reconcile my tax records? And that I gave you my email address as well as a postal address, so you could easily avoid sending me all that paper?

Please know that I believe in the power of individual giving, and that I will donate to my chosen causes to the best of my ability. But please. Make it easier for me to think you’re spending everyone’s donations wisely and not on overhead.

Thank you,
Your occasional donator

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 5 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 227 of 274)

Pet blessings

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The feast day of the patron saint of animals, St. Francis of Assisi, is today, October 4. Though several churches in our immediate area, and this year also one of our usual dog training schools as well, do a Pet Blessing ceremony every year, we’ve never taken any of our pets to one. I’ve often enjoyed seeing the news video clips or photos following the ceremonies, although I do wonder if it is absolutely necessary to sprinkle the cats with holy water (many of them don’t act very blessed about that). If that seems like a stupid observation, please remember that I wasn’t brought up Christian!

I know Rottweilers are not inherently evil, but after The Omen I cannot easily picture my crew standing inside any of the churches in our neighborhood. Plus it would set back the cause of anti-breed specific legislation a good dozen years when the holy water hits them and the smoke starts rising off their fur. Okay, just kidding. I think. Anyway, it is we humans that are truly blessed by sharing our lives with our dogs, cats and other animal and avian companions.

Random observations to round out the day:

  • We went to see the property that Dan’s sister Linda and her husband Casey are in the process of purchasing. The house needs some work, but not an overwhelming amount; it’s basically in good shape. It’s on five acres of land. Five acres is a LOT of land, and looks like even more if you have lived in the city all of your life and are used to postage-stamp sized lots where you are thisClose to people you would often not even want on the same planet with you, let alone thisClose to you.
  • If you are planning to buy a Suncast 7.5′ x 5.5′ Garden Shed, it will not fit in your Dodge Grand Caravan unless you have a roof rack for a couple of the panels. Even if you take it out of the really giant packing boxes. Just saying.
  • Linda will be at the Border Collie National Specialty this coming week; made me start thinking and you know, I have never been to my own breed’s national specialty? And I’m not even sure when the last time our specialty was in the Midwest. I have been to Medallion Rottweiler Club’s specialty (the one most local to us) many times and I will be there this year, but mostly just to drop off Axel for his hopeful championship road trip. I actually have until Wednesday morning to decide if I’m going to do one or more of the specialty’s rally trials with Freya, but right now I think we’re going to pass. She’s not really at her best at Rottweiler-only events, plus we’ve been concentrating on UKC rules rather than AKC rules.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 4 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 226 of 274)

Friday… I mean, Saturday… Freya

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When Freya was a puppy, we used to do a “Friday Freya” which was a photo of her with Dan and sometimes Oscar, too. I have sometimes wanted to find a Friday obedience class for her so I could have a weekly Friday Freya update post. But that would be a lot of inconvenience to play upon the fact that Friday is the day named for the Norse goddess Freya, if not the Rottweiler Freya, and of course the alliteration.

But I digress seriously from my real topic. So, anyway!

Saturday is group obedience class day. Since we’ve had a few big (read well-paying) projects at work that required working the weekend, we missed a couple of classes. Plus we had a week off due to Rosh Hashanah. So Freya and I were both eager to get back to class. Freya seems to work especially well after missing a class or two, and I’m not really sure why. If I could somehow use that fact for trials, I’d love it. But I would be very nervous about missing the extra practice close to a trial day, especially the practice in ignoring the distraction of other dogs in close quarters.

We also got the good news that our current instructor will be offering a class specifically for rally obedience soon. He incorporates quite a few rally exercises, such as the 360° and 270° circles, into the regular group obedience classes already to help improve heeling position and body awareness. Plus we learn and practice both left and right finishes. That actually helped us a lot for our first rally trial in July.

It probably won’t start in time to help us for Freya’s next trial (either later this month or in mid-November, or perhaps both of those dates) but definitely in time to help where we will need it most: for Rally Advanced and RO2 which are done off-leash.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 3 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 225 of 274)

And we’re outta there

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I never did talk here about Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. For the record, I was very much against Chicago hosting the Olympics. The city, and for that matter the state of Illinois, has far too many pressing problems to solve to reasonably take on the additional burdens of hosting a major international event. These problems are of the sort that negatively affect those who live here either by choice or necessity on a daily basis, and while not all of them are as horrendous as the recent beating death of a Fenger High School student, all of them are more important to people who actually live and work here than hosting the Olympics.

So it was with a great sigh of relief, as well as a small degree of shock that the “fix” wasn’t in, that I heard the news of Chicago getting knocked out of contention in the first round of voting this morning.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the promises of a bright and shiny Chicago could still be kept over the next few years for those of us who live here? Yeah, right… what am I thinking.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 2 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 224 of 274)