It is the night wind
It crackles and pops with
Electric doom
Like fury
As quiet as air
Searing winds blow from
my heart
The heavens speak to me
But
I cannot say I know them
Any better

To the Virgins To Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.
~Robert Herrick

Flappy Anyone?

Who, me?

She doesn’t look deadly does she? Those big brown eyes staring up at you and the soft fur. Yet, to a dog toy she’s certain death. It doesn’t really matter which toy, either. She’s equally destructive with an expensive boutique pull toy as with a dollar store stuffed toy. That’s why when I heard about the Flappy from the guys at Who’s Your Dachshund I knew I had to give it a shot. There are two other dogs in the house who would like to have a toy, too. When Chloe, the guilty party shown there, gets done with her toys, she moves on to theirs. We find the stuffing and squeaky parts all over the house. Occasionally they are found in the middle of the night, too when it’s dark and you can’t be sure what you just stepped in. Ahh, the joys of the dachsie.
So, once I found out about the Flappy a trip to Petsmart was on. I know I have issues with Petsmart too. I always check to see if the little rats and hamsters have water. I do think their efforts to have adoptions at the stores are good though. In my area though they were the only place to find the Flappy, so I headed out.
They have five kinds of Flappys in four sizes: The Ruffy, Fleecie, Floatie, Flossy and Fluffy Floppies. (Wow! That’s a mouthful!) As you can imagine the Floatie one floats. It’s perfect for water play. They have squeakers and rope in the case of the Flossy or flappy ends for the rest of them. The website does say no toy is indestructible, but in all honesty I have never had a toy hold up the way this one has. We got the Ruffy in a medium. Although Chloe is a mini, she’s a chewer and always up for a game of tug of war. It’s made of this canvas weave that seems to not let her teeth punch through quite as easily. It also doesn’t seem to get too slobbery when playing with her. I don’t know about you but the plastic toys get so slobbery so fast they get gross to play with. When it does get gross you can wash it. Oh yeah, it made it through the washer and dryer a time or two now, already. Out of the many toys we have tried from the Kong to the old standard pull toys to Nylabones, this has been a keeper. Ben and the guys at Who’s You’re Dachshund were right about this.

Chloe celebrates her Tug of War win.

The poor dog, in life the the firmest friend,

The first to welcome, foremost to defend,

Whose honest heart is still the master’s own,

Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,

Unhonour’d falls, unnoticed all his worth,

Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth,

While man, vain insect hopes to be forgiven,

And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Lord Byron

Inscription on the monument of his

Newfoundland dog, 1808

The "you woke me up for this?" look.

Amanda Jones Portraits

Amanda Jones began photographing dogs in Maine after her best friend brought home Ruby, a yellow Labrador Retriever puppy. Amada’s images grace greeting cards, posters, calendars and books. She travels the country extensively, photographing dogs, cats, and the occasional horse. Amanda Jones, Inc. is headquartered on the campus of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts. “We strive to provide our clients with simple, beautiful, lasting imagery through hard work, devotion to quality, and a very simple style.”

Weiners on the loose!

Dachshund Molly, right, cuts in front of last year's winner Longfellow to take one of the top three spots in a run off during the Annual Savannah Weiner Dawg Race on historic River Street, Saturday Oct. 4, 2008 in Savannah, Ga. (AP Photo/Stephen Morton)

Iam’s Home For the Holidays pet adoption drive

A lucky puppy finds her home:

Tucker hams it up with his adopted mom Felicity

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Iam’s Home 4 The Holidays is among the world’s most successful pet adoption programs and includes nearly 3,000 worldwide partner animal organizations that are dedicated to helping place orphaned dogs and cats into happy, loving, forever homes. The Home 4 the Holidays drive has helped more than 1,047,000 Dogs, 962,000 cats and 66,000 other animals, such as rabbits, reptiles, birds and more, find homes over the past nine years. This year, the goal is to place 1 million orphaned animals from October 1, 2008 to January 5, 2009. If you can’t adopt please visit www.iamshome4theholidays.com to find other ways to help.

Did you know?

• There are 8 million homeless pets looking for a home in our country?

• As many as 4 million orphaned dogs and cats will be euthanized this year due to shelter overcrowding and lack of awareness about these homeless pets

• More than a quarter of all dogs in animal shelters are purebreds

If you were thinking of getting a pet, please adopt.

America Wins Big

Réunion, a Salute to Greg, and a lesson?

Réunion, the French-controlled Island off the coast of Africa feeds live puppies to sharks. That’s right, folks. A report by National Geographic confirms that dogs and cats are being used as shark bait by fishermen. A film crew rescued a few back in ’05 when they went to get evidence of the truth of the horrid allegations. The claim is that they have too many strays. I doubt that is the real reason for this barbarism. The 6-month old pup the story discusses was someone’s pet and luckily made it back home after treatment for the large fishhook through its snout. A John Claude Clair had a 7 month old with three hooks in its paws and snout. I don’t really think the $5982 fine was enough.

Let me be very clear about this. These animals are not just treated with indifference. They are treated with extreme cruelty. They are hooked through their tender snouts or paws a day or so before “so they can bleed sufficiently.”

Contrast this complete disregard for life with Mr. Greg LeNoir whose love for his dog prompted him to fight a shark. Jake, his beloved 14lb. rat terrier was going for his daily swim when a shark grabbed him. Putting his own fear and well-being aside Greg drove his fist into the shark hard enough to make it let go of Jake, who then popped up to the surface, bloody but intact. Vet Suzanne Sigel says he’s, “…one lucky dog. He looks great and is recuperating well,” she went on to say, there is “no evidence of infection or pneumonia.”

Violence to animals often precedes violence to humans. Examples include: Patrick Sherrill, who killed 14

Jake the dog is recovering after his owner dove into the water to save him from a shark.

coworkers at a post office and then shot himself, had a history of stealing local pets and allowing his own dog to attack and mutilate them. Earl Kenneth Shriner, who raped, stabbed, and mutilated a 7-year-old boy, had been widely known in his neighborhood as the man who put firecrackers in dogs’ rectums and strung up cats. Brenda Spencer, who opened fire at a San Diego school, killing two children and injuring nine others, had repeatedly abused cats and dogs, often by setting their tails on fire. Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler” who killed 13 women, trapped dogs and cats in orange crates and shot arrows through the boxes in his youth. Carroll Edward Cole, executed for five of 35 murders of which he was accused, said his first act of violence as a child was to strangle a puppy. In 1987, three Missouri high school students were charged with the beating death of a classmate. They had histories of repeated acts of animal mutilation starting several years earlier. One confessed he had killed so many cats he’d lost count. Two brothers who murdered their parents had previously told classmates they had decapitated a cat. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer had impaled dogs’ heads, frogs, and cats on sticks. Sadly, many criminals’ animal violence goes unexamined—until it’s directed at humans. Wonder what the treatment of animals on the island of Réunion says about them?