I have just been going through the website attempting to unravel the shenanigans of your borough council-- it will take me more time to decipher some of the nonsense-- parts of it are reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch, except that when I leave I am NOT laughing . . .
Buddy and Farley recommend secession as your course of action. They think that Venator should become its own Peaceable Kingdom. Unfortunately, secession generally involves a certain amount of warfare and that type of skirmishing, and though you have an army of OES, they are: 1) not 'at your command' in the strict sense of the word (being OES), and 2) certainly unfit for combat (being OES). Therefore you will have to continue waging the war of wits with the council, which is difficult also because they are wielding the tremendously forceful blunt weapon of stupidity.
Is there anything that Venator fans here in the US can do?? It seems a certainty that a council which will not listen to its own residents will have no ear for the input of people 8,000 miles away. Tell us what will help that can be done from across the ocean, and we will do it!
Julian, condolences on your Birmingham sojourn. It can't have been pleasant, no wonder you've come down with a bug! I'm sure Birmingham would lower anyone's immune system! Have you finished the course-- was it one of those super-intense ones where they cram 6 months of material into 3 weeks?
Wendy, I am still a non-smoker (4 months, a little over) with no desire whatever for a cigarette! Very pleased about that. Afraid of gaining the post-smoking weight that lurks, I joined a gym and exercise every day now, whatever the weather. Plus living with Sander The Health Nut has caused me to take vitamins again and try to eat properly (well, a few days a week, anyway). I hope your daughter's doing well this summer!
I have been following accounts of the dispute in the UK about genetically-altered crops. Over here people are far more apathetic about it and tend to think it's 'no big deal'-- Americans are (as a nation) oblivious to cause and effect unless the effect IMMEDIATELY follows the cause. So if eating this food doesn't give me cancer next week, there's no threat. A shortsighted view at best but it's behind our total desecration of this continent. . .
Sander celebrated his 11-month anniversary the other day: eleven months ago that fatheaded vet said that Sander had at most six weeks to live. The only flea in the ointment for us this summer has been the fleas. Since I won't use drugs or chemicals, but rely on herbal sprays, Sander has gotten some nasty bites and will have to have more frequent baths (NOT his favorite activity). Oh well, the first frost will put an end to that travail, and better some flea bites than another dose or two of poison in the system, I feel!
Do PLEASE let your fans in the US know what they can do in this borough council fiasco. Feeling helpless in the face of idiocy is not pleasant!
Connie Sander, your Sheltie Pal Sundance and Pippi, the Hooligans
Hello Furgie--
I have been taking in the flap you all are having with the borough council but I must say I was too appalled at the following statement to be able to continue: "Can you put the dogs away while we talk" the inspector said when she visited the premises. Put the dogs away?!?! I would think that someone there to inspect your facilities would want the very opposite-- to see the dogs, and close up at that! And to see ALL the dogs.
If these inspector people don't know that OES are very prone to mud and muck and bits of mess about them, then they haven't been properly trained for their jobs, in my opinion. Goodness, after a month with my OES friends Buddy and Farley I knew that to get too close to them sometimes was to invite a bath of my own, particularly when Farley had been rolling in things-- but that's another subject.
Anyway, the dogs must be looked at! A dog's appearance will tell more about the conditions in which the dog is kept, than looking at things like pens and stalls that might have been tidied up at the last minute (the way my human cleans the house when company is coming). If a dog has healthy clean ears and teeth, and clear eyes and no bad smell to their fur (allowing for having rolled previous to the inspector's arrival) and the nails aren't like claws and the pads on the feet aren't all matted with tar and excess hair, then the dog is being kept in good conditions! It's that simple!
Then the inspector could take a quick look round the kennels, to make sure that none of you has got his own TV, for instance-- television being very bad for dogs, as has been proven in experiments on humans-- and that someone is scooping the poop in a timely manner-- and that's it!
Oh, and the inspectors should also ask to see the vet records from the last year, to see who's been to the doctor and for what. A dog who has to go to the vet a lot may have some problems at home, if you know what I mean. And maybe check to see that all the hip records are up to date, but I do feel rather more strongly about that than most because I happen to have hip dysplasia, and I know it is an unpleasant condition and painful.
As for dogs living in plastic and metal rooms, which I gather was mentioned, I think that is awful! Whatever accomodations the inspectors choose for themselves is their business, but no dog ever enjoyed being kept in such a synthetic environment. My OES friend Buddy often sleeps on the front porch in the summer months. He likes being able to greet the newspaper-delivery man at 5 a.m. (I don't know that the newspaper fellow enjoys it quite so much.)
Pippi, one of the Shelties in my family, does still sleep in her crate which is made of plastic, but she wants to sleep in there, she says it soothes her nerves. (Pip is rather high-strung.) I myself sleep on the bathroom floor in the summer months, as the ceramic tile is quite cooling; and in the winter I sleep on the couch in the living-room, which my human kindly keeps covered with a clean towel for me.
The bit about the gate being shut was very silly too. When Buddy was quite young, he would go for strolls on his own round the neighborhood. He particularly liked to go at about dinner-time, and investigate what different people were fixing for their meals. He never went any farther than his own neighborhood, for goodness sake-- why would he leave his family? Don't these inspector people go for walks? And they come back to their homes, I assume? Or maybe they are in a fenced yard all day themselves.
Actually, Farley had to be put behind the gate because he kept jumping out of the shrubbery at passers-by. Buddy was the best at that, though-- he once took a sandwich out of the hand of someone who was walking along minding his own business! Buddy ate the sandwich as quick as anything, and the fellow started shouting-- Buddy's humans had to come out and give him some money (the man, not Buddy. Nobody ever gives Buddy money)!
Anyway, if you don't have people walking past Venator eating sandwiches, or United Parcel men trying to deliver packages, then why do you need a gate?
Those inspectors ought to come over to this country and do some inspecting. We have places called 'puppy mills' that are so horribly bad that if I described them to you, you would cry. Dogs are being mistreated in dreadful ways and the US Department of Agriculture, which ought to be regulating this, turns a blind eye because they are overworked and understaffed and some of the staff they do have is being paid off by the evil people running the 'mills'.
And in Oswestry, those silly people are on about trivial things. I expect the inspectors were just afraid of you OES-- goodness knows you are a frightening lot! Especially that Dodi, who looks so fierce on this month's cover page. This is all too silly for words. We Shelties send you moral support from across the ocean.
The very best to you all from Sander, your Sheltie pal Sundance and Pippi, the young and the restless
. . . the stuff of novels. But more like a horror story with the Oswestry Borough Council! Very interesting, when the details are filled in there is quite a bit going on there, isn't there? I am working my way slowly through the website and trying to keep the players and the details straight-- they aren't the dear familiar neighbors to me that they are to you all! Mostly I find the pomposity and officiousness so annoying that I have to quit periodically and go to something else, it is too much indignation otherwise.
It is some sort of Law of Human Nature, and I am far from the first to note it, that the less a bureaucrat knows about something the more he (or she) will attempt to regulate it! And if he knows nothing at all about it, that's when the rules become the most precise and finicking. As with all the council members who have NO experience at all raising dogs, running a kennel, or even rural living.
It's the same mentality that so frustrates me when I encounter it in: the agility training place that would not let Sundance into class because he hadn't had his rabies shot yet (he was 6 months old); the vets who routinely dispense drugs for every symptom a dog has and by supressing the symptoms ensure the breakdown of the animal later in life; the people who delight in telling me that if I let my dogs go about off-leash they will be killed by cars, and if I feed my dogs raw chicken bones they will have their intestines punctured and die horrible deaths.
I had thought of Sander doing some therapy work and it took me several months to find a program that will let him participate without having been vaccinated in the last 12 months. My exasperation was intense as I tried to explain to the people that Sander has cancer, which precludes his being vaccinated, and anyway from having been vaccinated for the last 7 years (my fault) he has plenty of immunities! No, if they couldn't check the box on the form that said 'current on all shots' then by gosh they weren't going to have Sander on the premises!
Well, after I found a place that would accept blood titers, I had a talk with Sander's chiropractor who gave his opinion that Sander is too sensitive a dog for that sort of work and having cancer does not need to be in a depressed environment. I agreed with him and dropped the idea of therapy-work for Sander. So I sympathize with your frustration which at times must reach extreme proportions. Do keep the information out there, though, it makes such fun reading and if there is any chance that the councillors will be even the slightest bit embarrassed by seeing their ridiculous shenanigans and fatuous pronouncements aired to the world, it is well worth it!
Goodness, Dodi is 18?! She looks marvellous! I hope someday to have old dogs too. I am determined that by keeping my dogs out of the clutches of the multinational corporations (drug companies, dog-food manufacturing concerns and the like) I will one day have some wonderful elderly dogs who have had long full healthy lives. When I got Sundance from his breeder, I met his great-great-grandmother, who is 16. Very grey at the muzzle and the eyesight is failing, but she was still there barking her comments with the rest of the crowd!
Hope your flu bugs have gone on their way. Sander is coming out of a tired week and is quite 'up' just now. It's a fascinating process to see him go through: he will get tired and rather withdrawn for a few days, less interested in things in general. Also at this time he poops more, it is as if his body is trying to clean itself. Then he bounces back and it very bright-eyed and plays with Pippi again and is generally more involved. I hope what I am seeing are cycles of detoxification! Best to you all as you hack your way through the thicket of nonsense, I am glad that you are not in danger of being choked by it-- keep chopping!!
Connie and Sander the Wonder-Pup
Subj: sander to furgie: I have a new job!
Hi Furgie, We are getting cooler fall days here, and I find this weather quite invigorating. I am feeling pretty good these days. And I have a really exciting new job to do: I am being trained to 'track' things. I have to laugh here, because only a human would think that a dog needs to be taught to follow a scent with its nose! And then rewarded when it does so-- why, it's like being praised for growing hair!
All dogs follow their noses, and always have! But my human is taking me to something called 'tracking lessons' where we go out to an open meadow, and she lays down a track by walking in a line through the grass. In order to induce me to follow the track, she puts little pieces of food into each footstep. This is like winning the lottery! I just follow the track, snuffling along with my nose, and pick up all the bits of food and eat them. At the end of the track there is a little bag and when I get to that I can eat the food that is in it. My goodness, this is a great job.
Soon the tracks will be longer, and against the wind, and more complicated-- but being a dog, with a dog's nose, I don't expect any difficulty at all. My human says if I like it we can go tracking a lot and maybe later on I can pass the tracking test and get another title after my name. Well, I would rather have the food, but the titles do come in handy, for instance when I am trying to lay down the law to the younger Shelties; and I am proud of my titles because my human and I worked on them together.
Some Sheltie news: Sundance (who is all of 14 months old now) has been taken back to obedience school and is training for his Canine Good Citizen test. You may recall that both Pippi, our other Sheltie, and Farley, my OES friend, passed the test this summer. I have to say I have grave doubts that Sundance will be able to pass it. He is simply dreadful in obedience class. He pretends that he can't hold a sit-stay for more than a few seconds, and his rear end slides out and his elbows buckle, and he is all over the floor like melted ice cream.
On the down-stays he has actually dozed off once or twice. I would be embarrassed if I were him, but he is not. I have told him that he has an obligation, being a member of a 'clever, observant and trainable' breed [referring to your March pages with the classifications of breeds] to perform well in obedience. He replied flippantly that he doesn't care about obedience! Well, you know the saying: don't care was made care.
Honestly, I think this younger generation has gone to the cats in a big way! Speaking of cats, we may be getting a cat to come live with us. Our last cat died last winter, when she was 19 years old. Now there is a young cat who is not being treated well by the people who have him, and he might come to our house. He will get some exercise, with 3 Shelties around, I guarantee! Sundance is very fresh with our outdoor cat, Pal, and has gotten his nose slapped on more than one occasion. He's very thick-- it doesn't deter him at all.
I hope you all are well and enjoying yourselves! Farley is grumbly today, he has had another bath. Buddy is still not using his ramp to get up into the car, and having his humans hoist him in instead. I do admire Buddy, he is so clever!
Best regards from Sander, your Sheltie pal
Hi Wendy and Julian-- I've just looked at your Farmers Market and Garden Diary pages-- how lovely! And what a huge lot of work, too, but it is truly spectacular. Goodness, you have not been idle this summer! It is true, as you mention, that whole foods and herbs fetch high prices these days. Organic produce in the markets near my house is two and three times the price of the other fruits and vegetables. But a bowl full of organically-grown apples will scent the kitchen, and the other apples are so waxy they have no smell at all and barely any taste. Sander sends greetings and would like to help you with the garden; he is an excellent judge of things like the shade factor and the depth of the mulch. Most of his testing is done by reclining on the spot in question!
Best to all-- Connie
Subj: A milestone for Sander and congratulations to Julian Date: 23/09/99
Hi Furgie-- It's me, your Sheltie pal in Chicago (wherever that is!) and I am writing to say that it has now been one year since my human saw that funny lump in my mouth and took me to the vet and we found out I have something called 'cancer' which means I get a lot of pills every day (wrapped up in meat, I hasten to add, or else I spit them right out again!). Goodness, a whole year and personally I don't think I look a day older!
My human says we have 'beaten the odds'-- sometimes I have a hard time understanding what she's talking about. She says that my tumor is just going to be part of me for however long I want it to, which I think is a very sensible attitude! We are going to keep on building up my immune system (which I think is located in my stomach, because that's what I like to build up) and if my immune system wants to get rid of the tumor, then it will. If not, then the tumor stays-- really, it's no trouble to me. Sometimes it makes my mouth taste bad, but I go and get a drink of water then. And since it stopped giving me headaches, I hardly notice it.
My human found a pill called 'MSM' that I take now and my, it adds some zip to my step! I feel spry enough to chase squirrels again, which is good because there are a lot of them about. The fleas are almost gone, thank goodness-- they were awful this summer! My human says they won't bother me so much next summer because my immune system will be stronger then. That itch is so annoying. If you know anyone who is bothered by fleas and doesn't want to use chemicals to get rid of them, here is something that works and is not unpleasant to the dog: take one lemon, peel and all, slice thin add slices to one pint near-boiling water let steep overnight Then take a soft cloth and rub the lemon-water all over the dog! It relieves itch and gets rid of the fleas. You have to do it every day, and flea-comb too, but I don't mind it at all.
Congratulations to Julian for getting such a high score in school! Does he get some letters to put after his name, like we dogs do when we pass something? I hope you all are well there and that the weather is fine. Buddy and Farley, my OES friends, send their regards. Pippi and Sundance, the young Shelties in my family, have no regards yet, nor manners either! But they say hello.
Your Sheltie pal, Sander