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Rants and Raves 11-25-12

So I’m laying in bed this morning, pondering what to put in the soup, and it occurred to me………..

Guess what you forgot to do yesterday? 😳

Rants

😦

Raves

🙂

Sorry folks.

So I guess my 😦

Is my poor memory.

And my  🙂

Is my much needed vacation.

35 thoughts on “Rants and Raves 11-25-12”

  2. 😦 R’s shenanigans surrounding Forrest’s (late) birthday party.

    😦 Brother & family are distancing themselves even more from us. They made plans with friends for Thanksgiving (instead of coming to our house as usual), & they also have plans with friends for our usual Christmas Eve family gathering, but are going to squeeze a little time in for us earlier in the day. And brother won’t be there.

    Neither will he be at Forrest’s party today, though SIL & niece will be here.

    Keep in mind, we are their only family & they are ours. This is quite sad.

    🙂 Thankful God has placed us in a loving church family. (Praying Emily & Forrest will soon be a part of it.)

    🙂 The best thing that happened this week – Forrest said “La lu, Mimi.” “La lu” is how he says “I love you”.

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  6. 🙂 Forrest

    🙂 Christmas tree and decorations up

    🙂 All but two strings of lights from last year still working

    🙂 The safe return to the U.S. of our pastor and his wife, after visiting their daughter who is teaching in China

    🙂 Sunday worship. Always uplifting.

    😦 Lingering mouth pain after dental work a week and a half ago. I went back four days ago to have them take a look, and everything’s healing up well on the outside, but there may be more going on internally. I’m hoping things don’t get too bad before January 1, as I’m out of dental insurance benefit until then. But if I need a root canal before then, which they say may be necessary if things get worse, then I won’t really have a choice. I’ll have to do what I have to do, whether it costs me more money or not.

    🙂 No more nightmares since decreasing the dosage on my melatonin

    🙂 Great family Thanksgiving with all eight of us. One of the highlights of this year.

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  7. 🙂 AJ, if you’d read yesterday’s thread, you’d have seen a hint from me about Rants and Raves (I “ranted” that there wasn’t one).

    🙂 Having all of us together for Thanksgiving, even the daughter who was “too far away” at college to get home. She surprised us by ringing the bell Wednesday morning.

    🙂 Having really good family times.

    🙂 Being able to comfort one another at “moments” that are less than holiday-perfect–I’m truly amazed at how comfortable we are at the “family” thing only a little more than a year in (and after a short courtship, too). God is so good.

    🙂 How much Misten loves my husband, and how happy she is to be a “family dog.” She always did think a one-person home was not her first choice. (She thrived when I had a housemate, or had company, and I knew that more people would be something she’d like better.)

    🙂 My Christmas shopping is finished.

    🙂 🙂 God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world.

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  9. kBells, I’ve tried to talk people out of choosing that breed, and the person I know who didn’t listen has her own regrets. (But she is very much NOT a dog person, nor is her husband, so honestly I wouldn’t have recommended any breed of dog.) What I hear about Labs is that they have “extended puppyhoods” lasting up to four years, and can be amazingly destructive while they’re puppies. After that they’re really good pets, but for me personally, I could never put up with it in the meantime. I’d get another breed or get an adult Lab. (I still wouldn’t choose a Lab, since I wouldn’t want the slobber or the water fixation, and I like a long coat.) But really, once you get through the puppyhood, you should have a really good dog. There have to be reasons they have been the number-one breed for twenty years in a row.

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  11. I’ve had great dogs that were mixed breed shelter mutts, difficult dogs that were pure bred.

    And visa versa.

    Some dogs can be more challenging than others, some easier than you ever would have thought. You can tell many things from the breed, but they’re not always true to breed form. There are, believe it or not, “low key” border collies and Aussies (Cowboy, who’s a mix of the two — and even Tess, a pure BC, is much lower key than many of her fellow breed members).

    Temperament to some degree can be unique in every dog, so it’s always something of a learning experience as you go.

    Until they make robot or fully programmable dogs, it’s part of the challenge.

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  12. A couple in our church currently are training an assistance dog who’s a lab — great dog, he’s about 6 months now and growing like a weed. I’m sure these puppies come from proven lines for working dogs, but he’s really so good (partly due to the intensive training, too, naturally).

    He let out a quiet woof once today in church which was so surprising (and it was a very “quiet” singular woof). That was a first. Every Sunday, he lies quiet as a mouse at his trainers’ feet, snoozing through the sermon. Maybe not the only one snoozing, either, or so we’ve teased our pastor.

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  13. About the dog, We have never been able to let her play with kids, though she is suppose to be our son’s dog. She gets too rough, knocks them down and tears their clothes. I try to keep her in when he is in the yard with friends, but I had thought she had outgrown it or that the Kid was big enough to handle it. Not so. She followed them out to the back yard and now he has a skinned elbow and torn pants.

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  15. Kare, I have come to the realization that I do not like puppies. I like dogs better. They are calmer, better behaved and you know what your going to get. Even better cats. As I have said before, living with a cat is like living with a buddy, living with a dog is like living with a relative.

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  18. That is why we keep our dogs separate from our children now. The big children walk them and the small ones help but we don’t leave the dogs alone with the children in the yard anymore. Not only do they kill the turkeys and chickens but they could well hurt the small ones. Not deliberately, they are very gentle dogs. But we had their mom put down because she snapped at the smallest one. After biting another dog deeply and some other infractions that led the vet to suggest it strongly.

    Dogs can be wonderful and I love mine, but the children come first.

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  20. I agree, children definitely come before dogs and should not be left alone with them even if the dog is gentle and never been a problem.

    I’m not so liking cats today. One of our kittens scratched and bit my finger quite deep this afternoon. 😦

    I never wanted a puppy before we got Keva. We’d always gotten an older rescue dog because I didn’t think I would be patient enough for a pup, but I guess it depends on the individual dog, because Keva was an awesome puppy. Didn’t chew too much other than his toys, only peed on the floor a few times and generally was just too cute.

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  21. Mumsee, the child she knocked down is one of the big ones. He is a 9- year-old, over a 100 pound athlete. She wasn’t being vicious. She’s never tried to bite. She just plays too rough, likes jump up on people and to tug on clothes. Of course, he has been told not to tease her, because if she bit him or even tried to bite him, she’s out of here.

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  22. kBells – You’d get rid of Chasey even if she was teased or provoked? That doesn’t seem fair to me. Both Heidi & Kane have growled & snapped at Forrest, but only after being seriously provoked. We usually stop him from doing things that provoke them, like poking them with things or such.

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  23. Karen O, I train my children not to tease or provoke a dog, but if they did and the dog reacted, the dog would be gone. Dogs can be wonderful but they can do things out of the ordinary. And often, once they start, they don’t stop.

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  24. Mumsee – If either of the dogs got into the habit of nipping him, then of course that dog would have to go (but I would be very sad about that). But so far, both dogs are usually fine with Forrest. We are trying to get through to him that dogs feel, too, & that certain things hurt them. Not sure how much he gets this, but when we ask him to show us how he can gently pet the particular dog, he does so very nicely.

    Writing this, I just remembered what my mom used to tell about the dog we had when I was little. I guess I bothered the dog by doing things little ones do, like trying to open his eyes when he was sleeping. When I would crawl by him, he’d bite or nip at my (diapered) behind.

    According to mom, we both outgrew that part of our “relationship”, & didn’t have problems after I stopped bugging him.

    (No, I’m not advocating letting a dog nip a baby’s behind.)

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  26. Karen, I would think that a dog might growl at a child for the same reason a bitch would growl at her puppy, to warn him “That isn’t appropriate behavior.” I was actually surprised when I had foster kids that Misten never once growled, even when kicked in the face hard. (I would put her outside for her own protection and for the kids’ discipline–they loved her and “losing” her company for the next few hours was punishment for them.) But snapping at a child? No, that seems too big a risk. If Forrest doesn’t live with you (I can’t remember the current details), or if it’s possible to keep them totally separate, then it’s possible to keep him safe. But I would absolutely not let them be together, even supervised, if the dogs have snapped at him. A dog can disfigure a baby’s face very quickly if the warning snap isn’t “heeded” or if the dog decides to make the snap count, and it wouldn’t help any child-custody issues, either, esp. if “prior snaps” are on the record.

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  27. And I wouldn’t put her down, unless it was a habitual problem. For a one time, provoked offense that drew blood I would find her another home.

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  28. Finding another home is good, if you specify your reason for moving the dog on. But again, in our case, the vet was certain that with her chow parts, our dog was only going to get worse. Very sad for us as we don’t generally get rid of animals, (unless we are going to eat them). And that particular dog was my favorite camping and working dog. She was a good dog out in the wilds when we camped. And she was good around the place, at helping herd animals, especially the pigs. But she was a bossy momma dog and bit both of her pups that we kept, enough to do some real damage, before nipping at our little person. Our little person was just out with the family and tripped and fell next to the dog. We did not put the dog down then, thinking it was just a one time thing. Then she bit another dog and we put it all together that she was progressing to dangerous. But she was very obedient around me. I did not want to take the risk.

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  29. Mumsee, if the vet recommended it, you did the right thing. We had to put a cat down once because he would not stop fighting and with a new baby we just couldn’t afford a new vet bill every time he escaped the house got himself beat up. This had happened about five times. We’d just about get him healed up and he’d do it again.

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  30. Tess is not good with kids mainly because they can be boisterous and tend to run. When they run — like sheep — she chases and tries to round them up. Then the kids get scared, of course, and run even more — as I’m telling them “don’t run!” (This is at the dog park and is one of the reasons that some dog parks don’t allow children under 8 to come is that not all parents are good about instructing children about appropriate behavior around dogs.)

    Kids need to be instructed to be very calm around dogs, especially active & reactive dogs. Older kids usually are fine, but younger ones find it hard, I realize. They’re kids, after all.

    Tess doesn’t go to the dog park anymore, BTW.

    While there was an occasional (2 times?) incident when she chased a child (to no bad end, thankfully), she began to not like other dogs so much, especially if they were rough-housing and looking like they needed someone to CONTROL THEM.

    It’s a border collie thing.

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  31. Oh, skateboards. I really have to keep her on a tight leash when skateboarders go by on our walks. Or if the kids are out playing football on the adjacent field at the city park where we have our dog classes. She can be easily stimulated by skateboards, running kids & balls.

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  33. 🙂 Grandchild #3 is on the way. Labor has begun. Mrs L and D3 went to be there to watch other two. (I told Mrs L not to wake me in the middle of the night with a phone call. Just text and I’ll see it in the morning.)

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  34. Congratulations (early) Peter. 🙂

    We had a good class/session in church tonight on the truthfulness of the Bible.

    And so many pretty lights in our neighborhood as I walked the dogs.

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