Posted in Real Life

The Lure of Money

We got my dog about 9 years ago. He is a wonderful dog, and the whole experience of getting him was excellent. I found a breeder of mixed breed dogs, because I have allergies and couldn’t risk getting a shelter pup of questionable lineage. Her dogs were actually cross-breeds, so both parents were purebred. I spoke several times on the phone with the breeder about our needs, the kind of dog that would fit in best with my family. She had several litters of mixed breed pups brewing, and most types were only available 2 or 3 times a year at most. It was a small, family-run breeding business and the puppies spent a lot of time with her family, making them well-socialized.

I sent photos of Phantom to her and a few became part of the website. I would peek back on periodically, and a few years ago noticed she had a LOT more puppies available, in a LOT of new mixes. Like, a LOT. This bothered me, as I knew when we got my dog the litters were housed in an area attached to her home where she also did grooming. I should have given it more thought than I did, but I didn’t.

Yesterday I tried to pull up the site to look for a photo of a specific mix, and the site was unavailable. This morning I did some digging. There were complaints that she was running a puppy mill, dating back to 2011 or so. The large numbers of available puppies apparently were a concern. There wasn’t any record of an “aha!” Investigation into her business, it appears people where making claims and asking her to provide photos of the building where the puppies were housed, and a claim that the family no longer lived on the property.

There were no new mentions of her, the website, her business or anthing after 2012. It appears she sold the whole thing to someone who went out of business last year. It probably didn’t help that even if the new owner was on the up and up, the old domain was listed on the web as a puppy mill.

I feel things went off the rails when they started to make money, and just kept adding more and more dogs, built a separate building for them, etc. I’m not convinced they run it like one of those horrid mills with wire cages, etc., (because nothing I’ve read says that was the case) but the only photos I ever saw were the old days. When the dogs were happy and playing with the family. I hope.

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Posted in humor

Accident or Murder?

It is with heavy heart that Phantom Puppy LaFerriere announces the death and removal to a landfill of Baby, his beloved green dinosaur toy. Given to him by his human cousins for Christmas 2010, Baby was carried all over the house, one of the few toys to receive this level of love and attention. As ugly as the toy was, we had grown very attached to it simply because the dog loved it as much as he did.

Yesterday, Phantom’s mom made the horrifying misstep of mentioning how long the dinosaur had lasted, and within 10 minutes, the head was ripped open and fiberfill was flying.

We snuck it away from him and he actually spent 30 minutes HUNTING for the damned dino, and then actually seemed depressed about not finding it. Wouldn’t play fetch. We feel awful. Then again, we’re not the one who RIPPED IT’S HEAD OPEN WITH OUR SHARP DOG TEETH!

Due to Monday trash pickup, there are no calling hours.

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Posted in Uncategorized

A Video for Friday

I know I don’t really maintain the podcast any more (mostly because my mac.com site expired) so this would be turned into a podcast if I still had one. Which I don’t. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch this video to make the hit count go up which would make me feel pretty good about myself. I’m just saying.

Here we have Junior and Phantom, doing a bit of a duet.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=61761

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Posted in Uncategorized

Why Can’t We Harness the Power of the Dog?

I was looking at the dog this morning as I laced up my boots and looked for my hat, and I was annoyed because we can put a man on the moon but we can’t figure out a way to get a 20 pound dog to remove ten inches of snow from the driveway. I don’t think it is asking too much. Animals have worked for humans for a pretty long time now. The only two animals at my house are a hamster (who would not do well if we dropped her into even 3 inches of snow) and a cockapoo. Sure, it might not be easy, but he should be able to do something, don’t you think?

We’re off to go see our tax guy this morning. He’d better be in a good mood.

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Posted in Uncategorized

A New Home for Izzy

No, no, no, no, we didn’t give her away. (Are you daft? She was one of Junior’s 10th birthday presents. You can’t just give away a birthday present like that. If you could, Mike the Fish wouldn’t have lived with us for 3+ years.)

No, we had a lot of issues with her in the fancy hamster home we originally purchased for her, as I mentioned in my earlier post. So we took Karen’s advice and bought a 10 gallon aquarium, one of those grate thingies for the top, a new “silent” wheel [more on that later] and a little wooden 2-story house. She digs the house. We decided that the bedroom is on the first floor, though, so it’s a non-traditional layout. I assumed the kitchen and living room were on the first floor, but that’s where she naps.

This is a good move for all of us, because I have to tell you, it’s far easier to clean a big glass square than it was to clean that nightmare of a cage. Sure, it looked good, but Izzy is a pooping and peeing machine, I tell you, and if I have to clean it more than once a week, I need it to be easy to do.

Oh, and the silent wheel. Well, it is silent. The wheel part. But the base that holds the wheel? When she’s running at full speed the whole thing kind of shakes and now that she’s in a glass box, the metal base thingy was just banging against the bottom of the tank. It sounded like a construction site. So I put a piece of cardboard in the bottom of the tank (also good for chewing!) and put the wheel on top of that. I didn’t hear her ONCE last night, which was the first time since we got her that I didn’t. I think we’re on the right path now – we just need to get Phantom to understand that she’s not a snack food waiting to be eaten.

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