I saw a story today about a Mother in California who witnessed her daughter being attacked by a Boxer dog and grabbed her handgun and shot and killed the dog.
I wanted to see what people had to say about this story and maybe post my own opinions about it. I assumed there was almost certainly a thread already started about this story so I used the search tool and used the “Advanced Search” and searched for “shoot dog” and “shoot dog California” but didn’t find anything.
So, I tried to identify in which forum this thread would most likely exist. The only forum that seemed likely to me was “In My Humble Opinion”. So I restricted the search to that forum. But still no success.
Can anyone suggest the procedure to use when searching for an existing thread on this topic? I really don’t want to start a thread only to learn there is already a thread started for that topic.
Also, can anyone tell me if I’m correct about the forum “In My Humble Opinion” being the only likely forum for this thread? Would this thread likely be found in any other forum?
We appreciate your efforts to avoid duplication. On the other hand, it’s not the end of the world if it happens. Do what you can, and then just go ahead and start a thread. If it’s a problem, we’ll fix it.
I had no idea the forum descriptions were as loose as they seem to be. I would never have figured that thread could fit within the definitions of so many different forums.
I still have an awful lot to learn about this board. Just earlier today I posted a reply into a thread that was seven years old. I guess I better check that from now on before posting to a thread.
The worst that happens if you do that is you see alot of bad “zombie” jokes after your post.
Which brings up an interesting, but probably useless idea. Mods perusing old threads, and closing any that might rise up out of the grave. Just a random thought…
MPSIMS: “Huh - here’s an interesting article about a mother who shot a dog who was attacking her child.”
BBQ PIT: “Damn these stupid pet owners who let their dogs out without a leash!!!”
Great Debates: “Who’s at fault: the mother or the pet owner?”
As for searching, I HIGHLY recommend using Google. It’s faster, there’s no timer, and it’s easy to use. Just plug “site:boards.straightdope.com” into your search box, along with any key words you want, and off you go. And if you start the search with the “site:boards.straightdope.com”, the next time you go to Google and start typing it, it should pop up automatically.
IMHO: “What breed of dog do you think is best with children?”
CS: “Does anyone have any good recipes for cooking the dog that attacked my kid?”
GQ: “What countries statistically have the most dog attacks per capita?”
Game Room: “Has anyone played the new ‘Dogs vs. Kids’ game on XBox?”
ATMB: “Why did the mods move my dog thread?”
Thank you both. Those two posts were very helpful to me. Mostly because I had been cursing at the two minute delay for searches ever since joining this board and just now realized that I could use Google to get around that.
I know that Gfactor had told me about that upthread but I guess I wasn’t smart enough to figure out what they meant until I read Munch’s post. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just not very bright.
So, I must apologize to GFactor about that.
Now, If only I could now find a way to edit posts beyond the five minute limit.
You wrote, “if you start the search with the “site:boards.straightdope.com”, the next time you go to Google and start typing it, it should pop up automatically.”
If this is a concern for you, I would guess that you don’t use any kind of Hotkey Manager. If you don’t, I would like to recommaned a package like Autohotkey to you. It is the very best freeware utility I have ever found for my PC. Among many other functions, it enables me to take any key combination and assign a text string to it. So when I enter a Search box, I could press - for example - ALT-CTL-J - and that would send the text, “site:boards.straightdope.com” automatically.
Describing the beauty of Autohotkey in one sentence is pretty much impossible. But you can get a quick look at it at their website: www.autohotkey.com.
It is freeware open source and you can download it from their website. It also has an excellent user document that will give you an overview of the features. Just download the document autohotkey.chm.
Good luck. If you need any help, I would be happy to help you.
I understand that in this case, using the automatic feature of having the text pop up automatically is better than using a hotkey. I’m just suggesting the use of this Hotkey Manager to you because it would seem to me that you don’t use one and using a Hotkey Manager makes my life at the PC so very much easier.
Your smile at the end of your post seems to indicate you were joking about something. If so, I’m sorry but I don’t get it. I would have expected you would get hits about people who box in CA.
My original post suggested searching for “shoot dog” or “shoot dog California”. If you are seriously interested in using the search tool, I think the key term to use in this search would be “shoot”.
If you are making a joke that I don’t understand, I’m not wanting to make any problem. I honestly just don’t understand.
After searching a few different ways, my conclusion is that no one has posted any thread that deals with this incident. I don’t want to start a thread until I figure out for sure that there does not exist any such thread.
The story was on Wed or Thurs Inside Edition and it’s probably on their website. One of the key factors that I shouild have mentioned was that this happened on the mother’s front lawn. When she shot the dog, it was on her front lawn. I don’t know whether the dog attack also took place on her property.
Here is the search string I tried: “inside edition dog attack shoot”
OK. I see. One of the senators from CA is named Boxer.
But I still don’t see any joke.
I suggested you search for “shoot dog” or “shoot dog California”.
You said,
“**If you plug “site:straightdope.com california boxer” into google, you’ll get a lot of hits about a dog (and few about canines)”
**
But you didn’t include the word “shoot” or any form of that verb. If you do include the word “shoot” in that search string, you won’t get hardly any references to the Senator. I tried it and didn’t get any in the first two pages.
