Happy Dog

Brac had another visit to the vets this morning. This time for his annual booster jabs. While he was there the vet took another look at his foot. She was so happy with the speed it appeared to be healing she gave me the all clear to take him out for GENTLE walks. Provided his foot was booted up of course. After my initial relief I suddenly started to feel paranoid. I live in North Kent where flints are everywhere and I am now worrying that he will go straight out and do it again. "Come on, this is silly." I say to myself but it's a nagging thought. I eventually settle for the most boring piece of playing field where the grass is well kept and very flat to take him for his first taste of freedom in nearly two weeks. Brac didn't seem to mind the lack of scenery and simply couldn't wait to take flight. His disappointment at the end of the walk when I told him to get back in the car though was palpable. I'm sure he thought he might have to wait another 2 weeks before the next one.

Love 2 Lead Question 16

The Question - Is Commercialism Destroying The Blogosphere?

My answer - You Can’t Stop Evolution

If commercialism is destroying the blogshere then it is only because there is a ready market for it. If bloggers really wanted to keep blogs personal and non commercial they would not include AdSense on their pages. OK so I know a lot of blogs don’t carry Google Ads but there are tons that do. Myself included.

As for whether the blogshere is being destroyed by it that depends on your point of view. I agree that overly commercial blogs are not worth bothering with so I just ignore them but if blogging is to survive it has to evolve. Blogging is evolving very fast, just as the internet did in the first place, and still is. That should be seen as a healthy sign. If it didn’t evolve it would destroy itself by becoming obsolete.

Ok, so maybe we could control it’s evolution in some way by banning commercialism? Yes, that might work but the most likely effect would be to simply slow its evolution down. That could even turn it into something that too few people want and so once again, destroy it. Evolution is most effective when it is not artificially tampered with.

If there is enough support for purely personal blogs it could be that the blogshere simply splits. Who knows, anything could happen. I actually find that quite exciting, don’t you?

So to sum up…Watch this space!

Adendum....this is the final question from the Love to Lead team and so my last chance to win a lap top. If you have found my responses interesting over the last few months please vote for me here at the Love to Lead site.

Brac - A Long Road but We're Heading in the Right Direction

Brac went for a check-up at the vets this morning to make sure his paw was healing properly and the infection was in check. Unlike most dogs, Brac loves the vets. He want to make friends with every vet and nurse and if possible, lick their ears out. Smart dog, he knows who he needs to keep on his side. Just as you and I should never seek to make a enemy of our dentist Brac knows to keep in with the veterinary staff.

He got a big thumbs up from the vet and I was told it was healing better than expected. Great, I'm thinking, another few days and we can start going for walks again. Wrong. Despite it's progress we will still need to wait between 2-3 weeks before I can take him for a walk. Poor dog, he lives to run and have fun, and he having to be turned into a couch potato. I must say though, he has been extremely good about it. I thought he would have been climbing the walls with frustration by now but instead he is turning into a complete sook, lapping up as much pampering as he can get.

PS. Little tip for anyone else dealing with a foot wound on a dog. Cotton baby mittens make excellent dressings, once the wound has stopped bleeding, held in place around the cuff with a small amount of cohesive bandage. They keep the wound clean while still allowing the air to circulate. As they are cotton you can boil wash then in a saucepan. Primark sell packets of 4 mittens for 50p. Of course, if your dog goes outside you will need a waterproof covering so I use a Mikki boot which is a specially made dog boot but you could probably improvise on this too.

Safe Haven for Donkeys

In this country donkeys generally have it lucky. OK there are always some sad cases to be found but by and large they lead a cushy life...that is, at least when you compare them to many donkeys living in countries such as Israel. I won't go into too much detail here because the web site says it all and I would urge you to click on the link above or the image to visit it. I warn you, you won't want to believe the stories.
There is a positive side to all this, a lady called Lucy Fensom has set up a charity to rescue and look after some of these animals but she needs our support. The web site lists a variety of ways in which anyone can help and it's not just about cash.
Take a look at the web site and meet some of the donkeys...they would certainly love to meet you.

Brac Update

Well today is the day of the Newham show and as expected 'hope-along' and I are at home.
I mentioned he was being really good at not chewing his bandage. Well he is but this is a border collie we are talking about here and no body ever told him he couldn't lick it! Thursday I gave him that hide chew he has in his mouth in the photo thinking it would help prevent him getting bored. Small hide chews he eats no problem but big ones are worth hanging on to so he wouldn't eat it, just kept walking around the house with it in his mouth. Not quite what I was hoping for. Yesterday he lays down with it on the front door mat. I put some honey on it to start him licking it with a hope that he will then start to chew it and sure enough he gets really into the honey. Satisfied I go to my study to do some work. The licking noises continue and I feel pleased with myself for my small success. 2 hours later I go to get a cup of coffee. He is dosing on the mat not doing anything. I leave him be. Lunchtime arrives, he follows me into the lounge, I don't notice anything different. After lunch I go to bathe and redress his foot only to discover his bandage is soaking. I look at the chew, it's untouched. He had been laying there licking his foot and spent all morning in a sodden bandage which was otherwise undisturbed. On inspection of the cut I notice the beginnings of some puss showing. Signs of infection. Hey Ho...off to the vets, where I am told that a few hours in a sodden bandage would indeed have been enough to allow unwanted bacteria to take hold. He's now on antibiotics and under strict instructions not to so much as sniff his foot. He has now started eating his chew instead.

Love 2 Lead Question 15

Question - Should Gay Couples Be Allowed To Adopt?

My answer - The needs of the child outweigh the rights of the potential parents.

Let’s get this clear from the outset. I’m not a homophobe although I’m sure there will be people who will disagree. Once again, I have to speak as I feel which will no doubt ruffle a few feathers. I’m not out to upset anyone but the question has been asked.

I do not think it is right for gay couple to adopt. There, I’ve said it. Now for my reasons.

Initially it won’t make any difference to the child but how will things be for them once they start school? Chances are once the other kids understands about their parents they will use it as an excuse to pick on them. Kids can be cruel and anything that makes one kid especially different from the rest is likely to be a trigger for teasing or worse.

I never fitted in at school because my parents thought that pop music was bad for us kids so we were fed a diet of classical music. Nothing wrong with the classics but it meant I couldn’t join in with the conversations my piers were having and so I became branded as being different. That led to teasing and later relatively mild bullying.

If something so minor can prevent a child fitting in how much more would having gay parents cause problems? I accept that this, with time and it becoming more common, would eventually be less of an issue but why should any kid be placed in that position? Do we really want our children to play the martyr now so that future kids will accept gay parents as normal? We must remember that the babies placed with gay couple won’t have had any say in the matter.

My other reason is more old fashioned. All primates, including humans, learn their parenting skills from their parents. In a similar way we also learn our family and relationship skills from our parents too. If we agree that you are either born heterosexual or homosexual how will this effect the child’s understanding of how to make a relationship work if the child is heterosexual?

You could argue that the same applies to heterosexual couples who go through a divorce when the kids are small or that have a violent relationship. Children do go on to repeat the lives of their parents in a high number of cases. Some situations, such as a break-up of a marriage, cannot always be avoided but when a situation can be avoided I think we owe it to the children to do just that. For this reason it’s not just gay couple who I feel should not adopt but single people as well. The adoptive family should be as near normal as it is reasonable to expect even though, I accept, there is no guarantee it will stay that way.

I do understand that some gay couples desire children just as much as non gay couples but the needs of the children do need to be put first even though this may be a very hard thing to do.

Bad News for Brac

For most, the obedience season is well under way and Brac and I are entered in our first show of the season at Newham this Saturday. His training over the winter months has really come on and he is as enthusiastic as ever. Everything was looking good for this weekend until yesterday. I took him for a walk as usual and just as we were on our return home he cut his paw on a flint.
The cut was right on his main pad on a back leg and about 1.5cm long. It bled quite a bit but at the time he was not particularly bothered by it and quite happy to finish the walk home without the slightest limp. Having cleaned and dressed it he then decided he was only going to walk on 3 legs as if I had amputated his back leg at the hock! This morning I changed the dressing and the cut has stopped bleeding but was weeping a little. I think it is unlikely to heal sufficiently for the show and it will certainly be a few weeks before I can allow him to continue with his agility training that he loves. Still, he's a good patient, he's quite happy for me to treat his foot and he doesn't chew his bandage so I don't have to make him wear a lampshade!

Our next show isn't until the 12th May so he's got plenty of time to recover...fingers crossed!

The Sun No Longer Shines For BlueSoleil

Being a Nokia phone owner I have come to rely on being able to synchronise my phone with my PC as an easy way of keeping my contacts and calendar up-to-date. When I got my first bluetooth phone this job was made even easier once I purchased and installed a bluetooth adapter or dongle on my PC. The dongle came with BlueSoleil software which I installed (I didn't know it at the time but with Windows xp I didn't require this driver as it has it's own but hey, hindsight is great). All worked well and every so often the Bluesoleil software would prompt me that there was a newer driver that I should upgrade to. Nothing strange about that and the upgrades were easy enough until last week. Once again I had a prompt when I turned on my PC that there was a newer version of the Bluesoliel driver available that I should download. I did. So far nothing different from before until I go to run the software. I get a pop-up window that tells me that the licence cannot be verified so the software will only run in evaluation mode with a limit of 5mb of data transfer. Initially I ignore it thinking it will go away next time I start my PC. It didn't and the pop-up returns each time I log on. I hate anything not working properly on my PC and I especially hate unhelpful pop-ups. I go to the web site which initially appears to be accusing me of using a counterfeit dongle. Digging further reveals my dongle insn't counterfeit (I knew that) so I send the company an e-mail asking what the problem is. The reply in a nutshell was that this upgrade isn't free but has to be purchased! There was nothing to warn me of this when I upgraded. I was then told that I could simply go back to the old version if I didn't want to pay £14 to upgrade so that's what I did. The result...everytime I logged on I got prompted to upgrade! There was no obvious way to stop this pop-up. As I said, I hate unhelpful pop-ups. This is my PC and I want to be in control of it. So enough was enough. I have now removed Bluesoleil completely and have re-installed the dongle using the Windows driver which works fine. No pop-ups and no fees! "BluSoleil...you may have been considered to have had the best bluetooth software but you've shot yourself in the foot on this one as I'm sure I won't be alone."

Full of the Joys of Spring

Isn't this just a fantastic time of year? I love the spring. Everything seems so fresh. I get up in the mornings and look out on my garden that seems to change daily as the plants push into new life. My cherry trees are in full bloom and the wisteria will soon follow. Birds are singing and sorting out territories. I even have a pair of collared doves nesting in one of my trees right opposite my bedroom window. I hope they stay but they are facing quite a bit of hassle from a pair of magpies who originally were nesting in the neighbouring tree but were chased of by the collared doves!

Blue tits, starlings and sparrows are also nesting in my garden and I am waiting to see if the blackbirds return to a bush they nested in last year. Like the doves, the starlings nest site is also under contention. Not from magpies but squirrels who occupied the nest box over the winter and have been reluctant to give it up. Starlings are quite tenacious though and are quick to move in once the squirrels leave to forage. Arguments between them are common but my money is on the starlings.

I'll let you know who wins.

Original Photographic Art & Photography by Sally Jane

Looking for something to brighten up a wall? Something that is a little different from the normal run of the mill prints you find in high street shops but that won't cost the earth? Visit my web site at www.sally-jane.com and see my photographic art gallery. All prints are signed by me, the artist and sent out mounted and ready to frame. The gallery subjects include landscapes, flowers, architecture and animals. There is also a monochrome gallery for black and white or sepia images. Prices vary depending on size but start from as little as £18 plus postage and packing. Mount sizes are cut to fit standard size frames but special sizes can be catered for if required.

Love to Lead Question 14

Question - Does The World Need Disease To Control Overpopulation?

My answer - Well if it does it’s not working.

Disease and predation are the two factors that normally prevent a species becoming over populated. If they fail then there is a third and final control point…starvation. Humans are not predated on and medical advances are getting ever better at preventing premature deaths. The result is that we have over populated the world. So does this mean we will eventually starve?

I was once quoted by one of my uni lecturers that there are more people alive today than have ever lived! By that he meant that if you add up all the people on this planet who have ever lived but now deceased they would not outnumber those that are currently living. When you think about this it is really quite frightening. The lecture was on environmental sustainability. China got tough with its people by restricting couples to just one baby. This seems harsh to the West but even with this system having been in place many decades now their population is still growing.

Bird flu threatened to become a global pandemic and it would not be unreasonable to expect we were due for something like that but the risk of this appears (touch wood) to have subsided. In the past plague has hit the human population hard but it has not been seen for hundreds of years. Strangely enough Scientists still do not know what the plague was or why it hasn’t been seen in modern times so perhaps that will remain a mystery.

I think the question is a little behind the times. The world is overpopulated as disease has largely lost its grip on us. Any pandemic that kills enough humans to restore the balance would knock out so much of our infrastructure that the world economy would crash. Many otherwise healthy people would then probably starve anyway because food supplies would suffer. The great plague of 17thC killed a 1/3 of the population of the UK, that’s 20million by today’s standards. Now imagine that occurring across the entire world.

We all want to live, and we are doing that very well. Those who are able want to have children and we consider it our right. We all know the world is over populated but which one of us will volunteer to do anything about it? Disease is unlikely to provide the answer and we wouldn’t want it to. There are no acceptable answers. Perhaps the Chinese have come closest to the right idea after all.