So, I have about ten million emails in my inbox which I am slowly slogging through (in between reading and responding to list mail and playing games of animated solitaire – procrastination, thy name is… eh, I’ll type it in later), when I get a phone call.
Caller: Do you have puppies?
This video was created by the Banned Aid coalition as a sort of ‘thank you’ to all the breeds who offered their help during their recent “$1 a dog” fund raising drive.
The Examiner newspaper ran a story on popular French Bulldog breeder Bill Schaefer, of “RB” French Bulldogs. Bill, who is from Kentucky, sold French Bulldogs Oliver and Rocky to owner Stanley Zirlin, of New York City, where they lead dual lives as pampered house pets and competitive show dogs.
Bill traveled to NYC to be present for Rocky and Oliver’s debut at the Westminster Kennel Club show at Madison Square Gardens.
Tessa gets lost outside the double doors sometimes. One of them, as she well knows, is merely decorative – it doesn’t even open. Right now, there’s a bucket of fireplace ashes in front of it, and a big, yellow snow shovel. Still, Tessa wedges herself in behind them both, barking at me through the glass, furious that I do not come and let her in right this minute.
I am, in fact, standing in the other door, the one that does open, shivering in bare feet and a t shirt. I step outside, into the snow, and gently poke her with my foot, saying “hey, psst. Old lady. The door is over here”. She startles when I touch her, shakes her head, comes over to the proper door and stomps past me, clearly pissed beyond belief at the shoddy service she gets around here lately. She places herself in front of the couch, and barks a short, angry, imperious bark at me, code for “Put me up on the freakin’ couch, and make it snappy!”.
I am too lazy to write a new post today, because:
a) I suck
b) I have a cold
c) I am out of coffee, and too lazy to go get more, which is grounds for justifiable homicide in my universe
So, I’m just going to answer a great big bunch of questions left in the comments:
Hope writes —
So – I’ll be bringing a puppy home from the Jamboree! Wonderful news!
Well, since there’s almost no one else I’d rather send a puppy home with than Hope, I’d be tempted to agree, if not for the fact that:
– the puppies, if they manage to get here, will be barely sentient little one month old Hamster-ish fat lumps at that stage
– should I mention the almost certainly black masked fawn litter I have planned for later this year?
Zoe’s mom Says:
I have a question (which probably has a complicated answer): can any two brindles produce pied pups, or is it just because you know Dexter and Delilah’s pedigree that you can predict potential offspring colors? What if you breed a pied to a brindle?
Color inheritance in Frenchies is a tricky thing, and pied inheritance is possibly the most complex of all. I’ll try to simplify it for you, if you’ll be willing to bear in mind that I’m a hack layperson, and not a geneticist:
Brindle is a dominant marking pattern (and NOT a color). A brindle dog is a fawn dog with a series of black stripes over top of it, ranging from thin stripes (Dexter) to stripes so thick the dog looks black (Delilah).
Because brindle is dominant, a dog only needs one brindle gene to ‘look’ brindle.
Pied is a recessive marking pattern (and NOT a color). A pied dog is a dog which has various colored areas, on a predominantly white background. You can have a brindle pied, a fawn pied, or any other basic color of pied. Because pied is recessive, a dog has to have two pied genes (one from each parent) to ‘look’ pied. A dog can be recessive for pied, which means that while it doesn’t look pied, it still carries the pied gene.
Delilah and Dexter both have a pied parent. Bunny, Dexter’s mom, is a fawn pied, and Versace, Delilah’s dad, is a brindle pied. Therefore, we know that both Delilah and Dexter carry the pied gene. Bred together, there is a less than 50/50 chance they will produce pieds. It’s like spinning the wheel… Now, if I bred Delilah (a pied carrier) to Elliott (a pied), we’d have a better than 50/50 chance.
Hope that helps! Although somehow, I doubt it does…
Vivianne Says:
I cannot STAND joomla. It’s like it’s in our way and it wants to make things harder. TextPattern, hmm, I may give this a try.
For dumb-simple stuff, I’ve been using cushy cms, clients love how easy it is. And I came across a new one called “light cms” the other day, and it was advertised as “the friendly CMS for web designers”, so I’m dying to test that too.
Thank God it’s not just me – I was starting to get a complex, because everyone else I know is all “Oooh, Joomla is sooo cool” and “Oh, my clients all luuuuurve Joomla”. I feel like Joomla is web design written by programmers, with their ever too often programmer-esque disregard for aesthetics. I’m going to do a sign up for Light CMS and give it a go.
Jenniferj Says:
Query. One short faced breeder to another, how do you screen for airway obstruction?
Well, right now I use a simple criteria — if the dog has had any form of surgical correction on its airways or breathing systems, I don’t use them. This means no palate clips, no nares correction, no obviously labored breathing. Lack of certification means that I am reduced to relying on the kindness of strangers, for the most part – taking their word that their dog hasn’t had surgery. Luckily for me, my choice of dog is usually limited to a small pool of breeders I trust implicitly to be honest with me. This does not mean that none of their dogs have been altered, just that they would tell me the truth about it, and allow me to decide on my own. If I went outside that ‘pool’, it would be to the breeders I know of who have prioritized health above other factors.
Also, I sort of scare people — I have a reputation for being a kind of ‘tell all’ breeder, mostly I suppose due to this blog, and other writing I’ve done. I think that people assume that, if they deal with me and I get screwed over, I am going to broadcast it to the entire world (which is, of course, pretty much true).
I always tell people that I don’t always have to like what you’re telling me, just so long as what you’re telling me is the truth.
Some day, I’d like to see a system of vet certified airway certifications, but until then, we’ll muddle through.
On last thing — this is in answer to another comment left a few days ago, by someone who objected to my ‘frivolous’ writing about stupid dog breeder comments:
petdefense Says:
the time spent on this could be spent in educating the public on HSUS misleading the public.i think if we are to find fault, it should be against those making anti pet laws. or against those already taking our rights.
Look, obviously you are laboring under the illusion that this is a blog with a cause, when in actual fact, what it is is a place for me to write down stupid stuff that occurs to me from time to time. If I write about Peta, it’s because Peta pisses me off, not because I believe that my writing about Peta will make them suddenly toss in the towel and eat a steak. Ditto HSUS and the rest of those morons – I write about them when they annoy me, personally, on a personal level. This is similar to the way that I write about coffee makers that annoy me, bad driving that annoys me, or my dogs that annoy me (Sailor, I’m looking at you).
As I said in my reply:
You can feel free to get out there and educate as much as you’d like. Personally, I’m going to feel free to waste my time in any ways I find amusing. It’s this funny thing called ‘free will’ that some of us enjoy from time to time.
Email Carol@BullmarketFrogs.com
Located in Ontario, Canada