07:50 – Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month.
Spain is now on the precipice of complete economic collapse. Its banks must redeem about €600 billion this year, and those banks are already zombies. In March, Spanish banks borrowed €316.3 billion and redeemed €88.7 billion, for net borrowing of €227.6 billion, almost a 50% increase in net borrowing over the €152.4 billion they borrowed in February. The trend is obvious to anyone who looks at the data. Without a huge bailout, which simply isn’t in the cards, Spain will default catastrophically sooner rather than later. Portugal is in similarly horrible shape, as is Italy. Meanwhile, the second Greek bailout is already heading for the rocks, with a third bailout or outright default inevitable. And the markets have begun to sit up and take notice. As Jeremy Warner says, it’s time to put the doomed euro out of its misery.
11:38 – Colin is now officially a Fearsome Predator. As I was walking him just now, he started sniffing around the base of a small tree. An apparently-oblivious squirrel came around the trunk and hopped to the ground about a foot (30 cm) from Colin’s snout. He pounced and the squirrel screamed. (Seriously; they do scream.) The squirrel tried to take off running, but Colin had its tail in his mouth. Rather than simply hold onto it, though, Colin let it run, with him following behind it with its tail still in his mouth. They ran around a big bush into the next yard. When I got there, the squirrel was up a tree, with Colin pacing around the trunk. I told him he was a good dog, and we headed for home, with him prancing all the way. Fearsome predator, indeed.
Actually, that was Colin’s second victory. He caught a bird when he was a young pup. He didn’t hurt it, either. Border Collies almost never harm something they catch. They have all the chase-and-capture instinct of their wild ancestors, but all of the kill instinct has been bred out of them. Of the many, many times over the years that our BCs have caught prey–ranging from birds to squirrels to frogs to possums to, on one memorable occasion, a feral cat–the only times any prey have been harmed were the feral cat that Duncan bit in half after it tried to claw him and the squirrel that Duncan killed after it bit him in the snout. Duncan, justifiably annoyed with the squirrel, struck faster than a rattlesnake, grabbed it, and gave it one deadly shake.
Ah, you euro naysayers. Europe knows what their problems are–which is a lack of Federalism, and they know what they have to do. EVERYBODY in the process knows Greece will have to get at least a third bailout, maybe more. It’s going to happen. The euro is going nowhere. I have been reading here of the euro’s projected demise for a couple years–most of the time predicting just a matter of weeks before a spectacular collapse. Here we are YEARS later, and the Euro keeps holding its own.
I’m curious where you saw that. As best I remember, the first time that I predicted the breakup and eventual collapse of the euro was less than one year ago, maybe around June of 2011.
And, yes, the euro would have broken up by the end of 2011 and probably collapsed entirely if it were not for the eurocrats taking extremely expensive and often illegal measures to stave off that collapse for a short while longer. And every one of those steps has made the inevitable collapse even worse than it would have otherwise been. Basically, the eurocrats have been buying weeks to months at the cost of years of suffering for their citizens.
Chuck, everyone other than you and the eurocrats knows that the euro is doomed, and has been since its inception. And if you really believe that the wealthier northern-tier countries, Germany in particular, will be willing to accept a permanent transfer union whereby their taxpayers pay huge subsidies to the southern-tier every year for decades if not longer, you are living in a dream world. I have many German correspondents, and all of them tell me the same thing: that Merkel is treading a very fine line and if she attempts anything resembling a permanent transfer union she’ll be out on her ass and whoever replaces her will not be inclined to go even as far as she has. In any event, it doesn’t matter. Germany, even if it beggars itself, doesn’t have the resources to to put more than a small dent in the problem. The eurozone will collapse, and we’ll go back to the way things were and have to be: the southern-tier nations being very poor. They’ve had a decade or more of enjoying a northern-tier standard of living on borrowed money. There is no more money for them to borrow, and they’re going to pay the price for that 10-year party, now and for the foreseeable future. Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain are not first-world countries, and the only way they can pretend to be is on borrowed money that no one, and I mean no one, is any longer willing to lend.
I’m wondering how good a watchdog our mutt will be. My dad walked in our front door while I was upstairs changing my daughter’s diaper. The dog let him walk in and barked until my dad sat down. I’m guessing the mutt’s barking will scare off all but the most determined burglar, and that no burglar would think to sit down for a few minutes after breaking in before proceeding to steal our stuff, but I’m not sure.
Here’s a very bizarre case showing just what a dog can do.
http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/Police-use-of-force-questioned-after-sheriffs-wife-mauled-by-K-9-147258225.html
http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.com/local/x1538236063/Attorney-Sheriffs-estranged-wife-mauled-by-BPD-K-9
I’ve got a 9 mo old German Shepard and wondered what he’d do if I let loose on the feral cats around here. Very tempting.
Burglars hate noise, any noise. Even a small yapper is enough to worry them.
I may have commented before that I used to know a guy who was a career burglar. Nice enough guy, totally non-violent. He told me that the one noise a burglar never, ever wants to hear is a shotgun slide being racked, and the one sight a burglar never, ever wants to see is a frightened woman holding a shotgun.
And I know I’ve mentioned another guy I used to know. He had two large trained Dobermans, and moved in with his girlfriend, who had a little yapper. The yapper yapped anytime it heard something, but the Dobies had been trained not to bark. I still sometimes laugh when I think about a burglar breaking into that house, deciding that the little yapper is no real threat. And then seeing the two Dobies just looking at him. Before they attacked.
Incidentally, for those who aren’t aware, there are several classes of dog training. The company I used to run operations for up in Pittsburgh use attack-on-command dogs, which are very expensive (we were paying $20,000 to $30,000 each in 1979) because only about 1% of dogs can be trained that way at all, and doing so is extremely time-consuming. We bought our AoC dogs, all of which were qualified as Schutzhund III (protection dog) und Ferretenhund (tracking dog) from a trainer in Germany who formerly trained dogs for the SS. In addition to the cost of the dog itself, we also had to pay for the handler to spend three weeks in Germany working with the dog before they’d let us take the dog back to the US.
An AoC dog will do just what it’s called: if their handler orders them to attack, they’ll attack and attempt to kill the person they’re told to attack, even if that person is a 3-year-old little girl. Most dogs can’t be trained to do that. Personal protection dogs will protect their handler, but they won’t attack someone who presents no threat (in the dog’s opinion). That threat may be posturing by the person, or the dog may sense a weapon. Guard dogs will attack anyone they can, including the handler. They’re literally tortured as puppies and taught never to trust any human. They are just purely vicious. We didn’t use those, but many dog companies did and do. The handler drops off the dog in the evening in an empty factory or whatever, and then (very carefully) retrieves the dog in the morning.
Do you have any advice on training personal protection dogs, and more importantly, how to make him think a toddler is his handler?
Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that. Dogs are pack animals, and children of the household are pack members. Any dog will instinctively protect its own pack members. In particular, as is fitting given their natural role, dogs are typically more protective than bitches, and they tend to be more protective of women than men. Once you understand how dogs think, you won’t have any problems.
One thing to watch out for is a dog when a baby comes home. Dogs instinctively understand their place in the pack hierarchy. From their point of view, a baby and sometimes even a child is a very low-ranking pack member. That junior pack member should show submissiveness to a more senior pack member, like the dog. If it doesn’t, the dog may assert itself, not with any intent to harm, but simply to put the junior pack member in its place. That may result in nips. If that doesn’t work, the dog may escalate. So it’s important to let the dog know in no uncertain terms that the baby or child is not junior to the dog. Dogs hate that. It’s so unfair.
We’re going through the same thing with Colin right now that we’ve gone through with all our BCs. As a puppy, he was naturally submissive to Barbara and me because we were adult pack members. Now that he’s a young adult dog, he’s trying it on, being more assertive in an attempt to find his new place in the hierarchy. At this point, he knows he’s the junior pack member, but he wants to establish dominance over Barbara, me, or both. Many people allow that to happen, particularly with very dominant and stubborn breeds like BCs. If we allowed Colin to have his way, life would be hard for us. So, as he’ll eventually figure out, he’s doomed to junior status forever.
The AOC dogs Robert mentions were like unto our USAF Security Police sentry dogs on the perimeters of various air bases around the world, esp. southeast Asia. One handler, period, and they were used where I was for defense against NVA and VC sappers, mainly.
“…the one sight a burglar never, ever wants to see is a frightened woman holding a shotgun.”
I am not a burglar, but that is also one sight I hope never, ever to confront, esp. if the shotgun is aimed in my general direction.
The interesting thing is that AoC dogs understand the concept of being on- or off-duty. I remember the first time Dave, who ran our dog operation, found Steve rough-housing on the floor with Bonzo, who was a 120-pound German Shepherd. (Well, actually, an Alsatian; they’re not quite the same.) They were fanging each other and wrestling, but all in good fun. Bonzo knew that Steve was one of our guys. Steve was our accountant, which might give people the wrong impression if they didn’t know he was a Green Beret who’d done two tours.
RBT wrote:
“If we allowed Colin to have his way, life would be hard for us. So, as he’ll eventually figure out, he’s doomed to junior status forever.”
You could get some cats. That way he wouldn’t be the most junior, and he could take out his frustrations on the moggies, rather than you.
Well, none of my family nor any of our friends that I am still in touch with in Germany, agree with that assessment of Germany’s position–except for my radically conservative stepson. Germany is not a conservative haven. In fact, Merkel is not representative of the country, IMO, and it is a fluke she even got elected in the first place. The SPD had a stranglehold on politics there until some in-fighting caused them not to be able to come up with a big enough coalition partnership, and Merkel sneaked in the back door as a result. Just like Republicans who cannot come up with acceptable candidates, no one has yet succeeded in being a contender against her. Nevertheless, there is no one I know there (aside from stepson) who agrees with how Merkel has handled things.
Germany is a socialist country. They are happy to be one, cheer Clinton and Obama, and boo’d G.W. They WILL end up contributing heavily to continuation of the EU–just watch. But, as I have noted before, they do not have to pay off all the debts of Europe; all they have to do is guarantee against default–and they do not have to do that alone, nor will they. It is by now stark-ravingly apparent that the austerity demanded of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and–to a lesser extent–Ireland, have killed all growth in those countries, and there is going to have to be a let-up in that. Even influential economists in the US are pointing out that has been the exact wrong path. The demands on those countries were in error, and the ones calling for them are now going to have to pony up. And they will, because they are socialists. NONE of my German friends are saying that the southern tier should not share in any of Germany’s success to help them out.
We will see what actually happens.
but the Dobies had been trained not to bark.
I used to know a guy who grew up in a less than ideal section of Chicago. The family had a German Shepard to keep an eye on things. There were multiple attempted burglaries. The dog, for whatever reason, never made a sound until he could sink his teeth in some part of an intruder, typically a hand or arm reaching in a broken window. The dog was shot once, but recovered.