Mattie is my wife’s Bichon Frise. We got him when he was about two and have had him for four years. He’s a great little dog but he’s been difficult to train. He has a mind of his own. He will sit but only if he’s sure he will be getting a treat for his effort.

My mother-in-law loves the little fellow. So does her husband. He gets free run of their house when we visit while Sammie does not. My step-father-in-law got caught sneaking him food from the table once. He said he was just pretending to feed him. My mother-in-law asked if that was the case what was Mattie chewing on. My father-in-law just stated, “He’s pretending to eat it.”

My friend, Dan, created a weblog tool about ten years ago that would allow him to publish articles to his website via email. I always thought that was probably the most effective way of updating websites but I’ve actually used that method few times.

I think that might be changing.
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My step mother is from Guatemala. She has a fantastic command of the
English language along with French, Italian and German. Regardless of the
fact that she speaks English fluently it is still her second language and
there are occasional misunderstandings that sometimes have comical results
and at others not so funny results. I have several co-workers from India
who grew up speaking Hindi. Their English is all good but still there are
miscommunications between us sometimes.

I have come to the conclusion that no matter how well one speaks a second
language there are some little subtleties that just don’t translate. Unless
one has lived for an extended period of time in a culture there are things
one just can not understand. Colloquialisms seem to be the heart of the
matter in fully understanding each other. Even people I have worked with
who came from other parts of the US have had trouble understanding me at
times and I them due to little things like how one phrases informal speech.

I just learned something a few minutes ago. Spam Karma has gone GPL. I’m not sure what this means for the future but I do know that by installing this plugin on this site I have had only minimal problem with comment spam. I hope that some competent coders pick up this project because it works.

I acquired Sammie about a year and a half ago. She’s about a five year old Boxer that I’m in love with. My wife has a Bichon Frise that I’m very fond of but Sammie is my dog and she sticks to me like glue.

There’s something about Boxers that have always attracted me to the breed. They are playful and energetic but they can also be comfortable just laying around. They demand that you be their master and they crave discipline. Give your Boxer a job to do and she will be happy dog.

Boxers are also clowns. They will play little games with you. It seems like they were breed to entertain. Actually they were breed for a much different job. These dogs were breed to be hunters and adapted to guard dog duty. The military used them for courier dogs.

Boxers, when well socialized, do well with other dogs. My Boxer isn’t aggressive toward other dogs at all except for when the other dog tries to exert dominance over her. At the dog park the only time I’ve had problems with her and other dogs is when another dog tries to dominate her. That happens rarely. She will run and run and run with the other dogs until they all give out.

If you are looking for a dog and can keep the dog inside I’d highly recommend the Boxer. They need to be kept inside because they have a very thin coat. They will get cold in the winter and they will get hot in the summer. Boxertown is a website that features rescued Boxers in Georgia. Take a look at the Boxers needing your help there. Maybe you’ll find a constant companion there.

I just finished upgrading the software running this weblog and I have mostly rebuilt my crashed photo gallery. I think I may have some photos in there that I didn’t have before from the past. I still have a few photos to upload to the gallery but I think I have the bulk of them back.

I have reorganized things a little bit. Links to the old gallery weren’t going to be any good with the new, rebuilt gallery so I took advantage of the fact that links were broken anyway to rearrange things some. I also added some software that will receive photos into the gallery through email. I’ll be uploading photos taken with my Blackberry there.

A friend of mine had two dogs, a female Doberman and a male Doberman/Great Dane mix. This past weeks, after fourteen years of companionship, she had to put her Doberman to sleep. A mix of old age and arthritis had just dropped her quality of life too low for my friend to bear any more.

The loss of the companion didn’t just affect my friend it also affected her other dog. She rushed the male to an emergency vet clinic with a case of canine bloat. Her dog’s stomach had dialated and rotated cutting off both entrance and exit to the stomach allowing gasses to build up with no place to go and cutting off blood supply to the stomach and spleen.

Her dog lost his spleen and it’s debatable that he will survive. There is a good bit of necropsy in the stomach. If this dog survives it will be a long road to recovery for him.

While my heart goes out to her and her dog I’m writing this in hopes that more people will become aware of what bloat, or gastric dilatation-volvulus, is and just how dangerous it is for a dog. Veterinarians aren’t sure exactly what causes it but appears to be brought on by stress. Heavy exercise on a full stomach also plays a factor in the onset of this malady.

Large and giant breeds with deep chests seem to be at greatest risk with Great Danes being most at risk. Symptoms to look for are excessive drooling, non-producting vomiting or wretching and a distended stomach. If your dog exhibits these symptoms get it to the vet immediately. This is not something that can be treated at home.

This incident with my friend has been heart wrenching for me. In relaying what happened to her dog to you I’m hoping that some good might come out of this. Even if my dogs never suffer from this exact ailment it has caused me to stop and think about the healthcare of my dog. I just added the local emergency animal hospital’s phone number and address to my cell phone address book. I also added the Pet Poison HELPLINE (800.213.6680) to my address book. The important thing is to at least know which symptoms mean to get your pet to the doctor immediately and know where to take your pet when such emergencies arise.

Update — My friends dog didn’t make it. C, I’m so sorry for your grief.

I lost my photo gallery. I have backups but not good enough backups that I can get everything back up and online easily. It started with a corrupt table in Gallery2’s database and got worse as I tried to fix things. Anyway, the database is gone but the pictures are in several other places offline. Rebuilding the gallery will take some time. Time I don’t really have.

This has me giving some thought about a lot of things that I have online and what I need to do to ensure that things like this don’t happen again. One option is to quit worrying about the stuff I have online. To be honest, that is looking like the preferred option at this point.

— Update:
I’ve got the gallery back online and a few pictures loaded into it. I doubt I just throw everthing back into the gallery. I think its time that I get a little more discerning over which photos I publish and which I just keep around on my own hard drive.

My oldest son, the one that has been in Iraq for the past year, moved into a house he and his best friend rented. They served together in Iraq and figured they could put up with each other as roommates now. I spent this weekend giving him a hand. He’s twenty-four and this is really the first lease he has signed that I wasn’t part of the negotiations. He signed a six month lease shortly after moving out of my house when he was eighteen and where he has been living with other people or with me and his mother since moving out.

 This was very interesting watching him fuss around his new abode. The landscaping is actually fairly nice there and he surprised me by showing some concern about his hydrangea needing watering. He seemed fairly excited about the prospect of keeping up this yard. I wish he had taken the same interest in landscaping when he lived with me.

When I got back home from being in Chattanooga for the weekend my youngest son informed me he had opened a checking account for himself.

 I guess they are both grown now.

Dan pointed me to a couple of videos on Google Video that I thought were of enough importance in what they said to spread around a little more. I found them on YouTube and I thought I would embed them here. I am not the type of person that the police talks to much but I am taking this advice to heart. Don’t talk to the police. Save these conversations for your lawyer. I’ll support the police as much as I can in curtailing and solving crime but I’ll not do it by answering questions without an attorney present. The personal risk is just too great.

Okay, last night I grilled some chicken breasts on my charcoal grill/smoker. This had a slight twist to it. I washed and coated each breast with olive oil and then added a tad of salt and fresh ground pepper then I sprinkled the chicken with Mrs. Dash. That wasn’t the twist.

While out on my patio I noticed my rosemary shrub needed a little heavier pruning to get one branch out of the way of my path across the patio. I cut the limb off, stripped off some leaves and crushed them then added that to the chicken. The chicken then was covered and placed in the refrigerator for about thirty minutes.

When I placed the chicken on the grill I also placed the rest of that rosemary branch on the back of the grill away from direct heat. The rosemary started smoking and things were smelling good. After taking the chicken off the grill and trying this I’ve decided I’m probably going to have to replace that rosemary shrub before next year.