09:49 – It was 68.8F (20.5C) when I took Colin out at 0715, bright and breezy. More work on science kits today.
We watched series one of Dalziel & Pascoe on Britbox last night. Excellent cast, and at least the early seasons tend to hew pretty closely to Reginald Hill’s books. The resident cutie is the excellent Susannah Corbett as Ellie Pascoe. There are 12 series, totaling 61 episodes. We’ve seen maybe the first dozen, back 15 years ago, and (as Barbara pointed out), we re-watched at least the first few episodes back in 2012.
Colin turned six back in February, and he’s starting to show some signs of being a middle-aged dog. He still loves to run, and pesters us constantly to play outside ball with him, but he doesn’t run for quite as long as he used to. A couple days ago, for the first time ever, he decided he’d played enough and took the ball up to the porch, where he waited at the front door to be let in. Until now, we’ve had to tell him when play time was over, and he’d reluctantly bring the ball up on the porch and wait to be let in.
Lately, I’ve noticed that he sometimes hesitates about jumping up on the bed. It used to be that he could stand on the floor at the side or end of the bed and simply levitate straight up, without so much as a step to get moving forward. He can still do that, but it’s obvious at times that he’s thinking about it, unsure if he can do it.
Last night, Barbara gave him a 50 mg tramadol. He slept well all night, and did jump up and down several times without hesitating. That tells me his rear end was troubling him at least a bit. Of course, the downside to painkillers is that pain is nature’s way of telling you to stop doing whatever causes the pain. Without that feedback, you can injure yourself badly because you don’t realize there’s damage being done.
Any thoughts of getting a friend for Colin?
Barbara says Colin is an only dog. We topped out at three dogs, then two, then one, then zero for a short time before we adopted Colin. And I don’t think I could handle a BC pup. I tried to convince Barbara that we should get a Yorkshire Terrier or other small, intelligent breed, but she says no more dogs while Colin is still with us, and that afterward she wants another BC.
There isn’t a sheep or goat farm nearby where Colin could “work” once a week?
And for the ‘not like us’ file, some not-urban yutes,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4679632/One-dead-eight-injured-shooting-gender-reveal-party.html
Looking at the boyfriend/ father, all the markers are there for gang/crime/drugs.
Hat, tats, fashion choices, tat at corner of eye….
NOT random violence.
n
ADDED- yep,
“A nearby resident, Shawn Fee, said there is a fair amount of drug dealing in and around the area.
“There’s a lot of drugs in this neighborhood,” Fee said, adding the area has changed significantly in the last several years.
No motive for the crime has been revealed.”
There aren’t any nearby Mohammadans that the sheep and goats need protection from.
People who own sheep or goats generally don’t want an untrained Border Collie working them.
Besides which, Colin has his cattle to keep an eye on. He won’t let them get too close to fence on our back property line. I haven’t been able to decide how close is too close. I think it varies with the size of the cow. Little ones he allows to approach more closely. As a matter of fact, the other day he was standing literally snout to snout with a calf. I’m pretty sure their snouts were touching. Then for some reason the calf made a sudden move. Colin went into his ferocious growl/bounce/bark routine and the calf scampered back over to its mom.
Fence or not, your neighbor could start getting uptight about your dog harassing his cattle. Some might laugh it off, but I would not bet on it.
People who have pets never seem to acknowledge the impacts their pets have on the rest of the world.
Of course, it’s also illegal for me to come to the rescue of native songbirds…
I once had a neighbor jump my shit about his dog(s) barking at me as I was minding my own business, rather quietly at some distance from the property line, and behind dense vegetation. I laughed it off, since it had been going on (all the dog noise) for long enough that it had become ridiculous to me, and I guess the issue eventually blew over.
Yep, been there. Asshole started yelling at me because he was tired of his dogs barking because I was raking leaves or something. I was young enough that I couldn’t pull off the glare which anyone with sense backs off from, but I did tell him that if someone killed his dogs they wouldn’t bark anymore.
When this guy started yelling at me, I just went “Hey [his name] how ya doin’?” like it was nothing, all cheerful-like. I shoulda learned the lesson to do that in a lot of situations. It just left him stoopified !!
Colin is on his own property. The fence is on the property line.
Noise and threats cross the border…
Anybody want to shift this topic to the Korean peninsula?
I don’t think Judge Doughton is going to worry any more about Colin growling at his cows than we worry about his cows mooing at Colin.
I do have to acknowledge that I find cows pretty scary !
Back yesterday evening from two very long and stressful and very sad days down in Glens Falls, NY, “Gateway to the Adirondacks.”
The lone New England Yankee of mostly English descent, and only a Catholic convert since 1996, among five Irish-American clans of cradle Catholics. The deceased was a big man in the area, successful construction and property management companies, and owner of extensive and valuable commercial properties all over the place. Having started out with an old pickup truck and wheelbarrow. He was a LOT to a whole bunch of people, and to me he was a friend, fellow right-wing nut, and lover of military history. Also a Korean War army vet. Also a dad to my wife, whose own dad died of a rare disease when she was a baby. So it’s been a hard week up here at Lake Woebegone.
Funeral ran like a well-oiled machine for two hours, with various grandsons, nieces, et. al. doing the readings and eulogies, including wife.
Princess played her harp for the clans at the country club reception afterward, and son Dan had flown in on the red-eye from SF; he is now an inch taller than me and around 300 pounds. You wouldn’t want him pissed at you. But like most big guys, he’s very low-key and calm and has a great sense of humor, nasty, like mine.
Three hours of driving each way, and on the ride down on Friday we hit a major monsoon in the mountain town of Lewis, NY, for a solid hour. Blinding rain with wipers on full blast to little effect but we couldn’t stop or we’d be crunched by some Quebecois tractor-trailer from behind. They passed us, along with some other maniacs, at 80-90 in the fast lane when we couldn’t see more than maybe ten yards ahead of us. That was on the Northland Parkway or whatever it’s called, so we took the slowpoke Vermont route back up on the other side of Lake Champlain.
Wife has now left for Manchester, NH, for this week’s gig; back Friday night and home for two weeks. Pending another two weeks with MIL up at the cottage in Noveau Brunswick.
I have more unpleasant chit to discuss with the VA this week concerning my disability checks, plus I gotta finish the voc rehab paperwork and the 2015 taxes. About all I CAN do, as my back and legs are shot from hauling luggage around for two days and standing a lot for those same two days.
Tonight is sod-off time for OFD, however; eating normally again, drinking plenty of fluids, loading up on drugs, reading and listening to the radio, and seeing if there’s anything decent on Netflix.
I thought about getting in contact and seeing if we could meet for lunch or something, but figured you had other things on your mind. See, I’m not always oblivious to others’ feelings.
@Mr. SteveF; Thanks much; there was really no time for anything like that with or without other stuff on my mind; a solid two days with barely time to pee. I got one cheese cube to eat yesterday (don’t care for country golf club standard-issue snacks and appetizers) until we got home and I grilled us turkey burgers. I’m managing OK lately with eating less and continuing to lose weight, I hope.
We may get down there again fairly soon to help out w/stuff for the latest widow among the clans; now all four matriarchs are widows. As my wife keeps repeating, the latest widow used to say “We marry ’em and bury ’em.” For some reason I do not find that comforting.
If so, I’ll give ya a heads-up accordingly.
Sounds like Colin is approaching middle age. For today.
I have decided the Vienna Sausages are the equivalent of Boost for dogs. Lots of fat, protein, and a nice gravy to liven up the kibble. Lady approves of this policy 100% and thinks that it is much better to go out fat and happy rather than thin and mean.
As my wife keeps repeating, the latest widow used to say “We marry ’em and bury ’em.” For some reason I do not find that comforting.
Maybe that is just for the first husband ?
People who own sheep or goats generally don’t want an untrained Border Collie working them.
I heard of farms offering time with the herding animals to city dogs when we lived on the Left Coast. We have a city cat so I never inquired further.
Australian Shepherd dogs were trendy for a while out west, but a lot of people bought them unprepared for the responsibilities that come with owning the breed.
“I heard of farms offering time with the herding animals to city dogs when we lived on the Left Coast.”
Yeah, there are people around here who do that as well. I’ll never forget one BC Rescue event we went to. It was hosted on a farm outside Winston. They didn’t have sheep, but they imported a truckload of them just for the event. There were something like 200 Border Collies at the event. Those poor sheep coming off the trucks must have been terrified. One BC is a sheep’s worst nightmare. Two hundred of them must have been like Night of the Living Dead for the sheep.
Even with 200 BC’s in one large field, we had no trouble keeping track of Duncan, because he stood four inches (10 cm) taller than any of the other BC’s except for one that was his size. He’d never seen a sheep before, but as soon as we turned him loose, he ran out, circled them, and gathered them into a tight little cluster. Someone opened the gate to the collection area, and Duncan instinctively forced the sheep into that pen. He would have been a great working dog.
http://fritchman.com/images/duncan-herding2.jpg
Bummer for the sheep. Wasn’t Night of the Living Dead one of the “everyone dies” movies? If only it had been Evil Dead, the sheep could have hoped to be saved by an ovine Ash Williams.
I’m still trying to work out how much of what Duncan did was instinct and how much was because he’d re-watched All Creatures, Great and Small with us. That had a lot of scenes of BC’s working sheep, so perhaps Duncan picked it up by watching TV.
Duncan was our smartest-ever BC before we got Colin, who makes even Duncan look slow. Colin has watched and re-watched Heartland with me. When Amy coos, “Good Boy!” to one of the horses, Colin thinks she’s talking to him.
We had two border collies on the farm. Never trained. Never watched TV. But they knew how to herd cattle. We would open a gate point the dogs at the cows and the dogs would get the cows. The dogs worked together communicating with their barks. Smart dogs who cringed and tried to hide at the sight of a camera.
This isn’t news to those here: NYC sucks rocks. We’re staying at the Empire Hotel. Last night while sleeping, the A/C went out. Now in a new room. The security latch is ripped right off the door and frame. lol! NYC security. The Uber ride from JFK revealed the the true “residents” of NYC. Most of you here would probably have the jitters and bailed back to JFK to bug out. What a shitty way to live in cracker box apartments. Leaving tomorrow thank God.
Yeah, people who have never been around BC’s don’t have any clue how smart they are. They not only herd livestock, they know them as individuals by name. And they can count. If they take 43 sheep out to graze, they count them and remember. If they bring in the sheep that evening and there are only 42, they know one is missing.
I am not making this up. Ask anyone who actually uses them to herd.
“…the A/C went out. Now in a new room. The security latch is ripped right off the door and frame.”
Very nice! I thought our hotel experience down in Glens Falls sucked (hey, it’s still in NY!). Haul the luggage in from the parking lot and two sets of doors that you have to pull open yourself, not automatic. Then down a long hallway past an indoor pool reeking of chlorine to the front desk. Can’t hear anything they’re saying because they have a jazz trio blasting away in the lobby (at noon) with lousy booming acoustics. Some peeps are lounging around and looking smug and jazzy and tipsy all at once, having a swell time on the chairs and couches there.
Then we haul the luggage again down another long hallway to the elevators and up to the third floor; down two more long hallways to the room. And this was all after the wake, where I was on my feet a large part of the time. Morning shower; five minutes to get even a bit of warm water, which kept reverting to cold. Narrow tub that wife sprained something in when she slipped. Checking out she grabbed a coffee and then immediately had to toss it because it was so bad.
All of that at 07:30 or so while having to then go and find decent coffee for her (local Starbucks, though she would have settled for the Golden Arches) and then more hours and hours and hours of the funeral home again, procession to the church, the main funeral, and the country club, where the deceased had been president. (avid golfer his whole life). More standing around for me, and the total six or seven hours of driving, some of it pretty tense during the hour-long monsoon in the Adirondacks, and it’s no wonder I got back yesterday essentially crippled.
” Most of you here would probably have the jitters and bailed back to JFK to bug out. What a shitty way to live in cracker box apartments.”
LOL. I probably will never go anywhere near that place the rest of my life. As for jitters, I got to see Phnom Penh as it was being encircled by Khmer Rouge forces and the streets littered with bodies in 100-degree heat and more piles of them burning. And yes, I did have the urge to get back to the aircraft and bail but that was not an option at the time.
A possible vision of a future Big Apple?
I have zero desire to event visit the cesspool called New York City. Expensive, crowded, rude people, reeks of urine. The airport was enough to convince me the place is not fit for normal people.
Yah, if I were inclined to have flashbacks, the pile of week-dead bodies and the ransacked town would be numbers 2 and 3 on the list. #1 would be the dead kids.
As for the hotel in GF, this is prime tourist season up there. They don’t have to care about customer satisfaction because every hotel and campground is near capacity with a line waiting to get in.
“…the place is not fit for normal people.”
And they’ve had a succession of commie mayors and administrations to exacerbate the situation, too.
“… every hotel and campground is near capacity with a line waiting to get in.”
We noticed the traffic along the main drags around town sucked, bumper to bumper, and the stupid amusement park there (four times the size of when wife was a kid) was packed with lemmings. Ditto all the campgrounds we saw. Wife showed me the ‘hood where she and her mom had grown up; houses still there but previous green spaces and wetlands nearby long since drained, paved over and developed. I pointed out that the country now has more than twice the population it had when we were kids in NY and MA, respectively, and there are just TMFP in the greater Megalopolis now, with services and infrastructure really stretched out. She said the place does nothing for her now and has zero interest in ever going back, unless necessary. Her mom was waxing all nostalgic, though; the hotel had only been built five years before her parents moved with her there in 1931. Center of the town’s events, like weddings, school graduations, proms, etc.
I’d taken wifey around the small MA town where I’d grown up as a young kid back in the late 1950s and it’s the same way; built up, built over and built out. TMFP. I did note, however, that the large swampy area in back of our old house is still there and still known on the map as “The Badlands.”
That’s what I like about where we live now. Not TMFP.
This just in to cheer everyone up:
Hillary Clinton is still NOT President!
Thanks, MrAtoz!
And will NEVER BE National Administrator!
But we keep hearing rumors about her angling for the mayoralty of NYC, and angling for other “leadership” positions. Just never gonna shut up and never gonna stop until she’s dead, I guess. A prime example of what Ann Barnhardt calls “diabolical narcissists.”
The only BC I’ve ever known well, Barkley, didn’t seem especially bright. He simply couldn’t sit still for more than two seconds. He was chocolate coloured – the first I’d seen.