I have two Bassets, both from rescue. While they can be couch potatoes, they actually need some exercise every day. You also need a yard with a secure fence, since they are smart enough to learn to open the gate, or exploit a weak area in the fence. The reputation they have for being unintelligent is wrong; if they don’t do what you want them to, they are saying “no, I’m not doing that”, not “I don’t get it”. And they are stubborn. They shed a lot, all year long. But, they are some of the sweetest dogs you will ever know; nearly all of them are good around kids, and most are tolerant of cats. They are bigger dogs than most people realize; think Labrador Retriever on half length legs. My girls are 55 and 60 pounds as of their last vet visit in August; males are bigger! If you want additional information, including contact information for a rescue in your area (or Bill’s!), I suggest visiting www.dailydrool.com for more about these wonderful dogs!
I pit whoever the fuck left our yard gate open yesterday, thereby letting our dog get loose. We can’t see the gate from our back door because it’s up the side of the house. Thank God my husband was doing his usual pace-while-talking-on-the-phone because suddenly he was all “How did she get out front?!” He was able to catch her and found the gate wide open. She’s a Blue Tick Coon Hound and the fastest dog next to a greyhound so she would have been *gone *if she’d caught a scent.
Best case scenario - the meter-reading guys screwed up.
Worst case scenario - someone was creeping around our house. 
My husband resigned his position working in Libya. Yesterday a Brit recruiter called him an offered him the same job. The recruiter said all things are cool in Libya now that Ghadaffi is gone. WTF what about the killing of Amb. Stevens and navy seals?? Oh the guy said there was that!!!
Yes he is! He’d pay without a qualm or any bargaining (we don’t do much for Valentine’s anyway). I’m sure if I said that I wanted that for my birthday present he’d be all cool, but I’m even cheap when it comes to people buying things for me as I don’t want to feel obligated or them resentful for buying stuff when I can’t always reciprocate in the same manner.
One of my hang ups.
We probably will go, I’m just aghast at the price.
Is the price…frightening? Scary? Horrifying, even?
In other news… overly-bright headlights. Normal headlights are getting much brighter - since the dawn of cars, driving with your brights on has been taboo/very bad form, so why are normal headlights that are so much brighter okay? Not to mention that so many vehicles have headlights that are just at eye level for people driving smaller cars. This seems like another example of the, “I got mine, to hell with the rest of you” world we live in.
Although this is a micro (or even pico) rant, I pit myself for being an idiot.
Last night, after completing a rather impressive and ingenious repair to our oven hinge, I forgot that I’d set my cordless drill on the broiler rack while working on the hinge.
Fast forward an hour or so… my wife fires up the oven to bake some tortillas for chips, and says “The oven smells funny- did you do something when you fixed it to make it smell this way?”
Yes, as you can imagine, she’d basically broiled my cordless drill for 3-4 minutes before I got it out.
It looks like it was caught in a nuclear blast on one side, but it still works like a champ, so I guess I’m lucky. Still an idiot, but lucky.
First world problem time.
Bought a couple of drawers for storing Keurig style coffee pods off Amazon. So now Amazon is sending me emails recommending other racks, stands, and things for storing the pods.
Really? You think I want to start a collection or something? Buy them for all my friends for Christmas?
If you’re going to recommend something, let me know about the different coffee and tea selections you have.
Don’t ever buy a car from Ford then. Bought a new 2012 Fiesta in March and I’m getting crap bugging me to buy a new 2013 vehicle from them. It was bad enough when they started bugging me to buy new tires and get the oil changed after about the first month.
I guess I’m scared enough, I don’t need to go!
I bought a used truck from a local dealer within a couple of months I started getting offers every week from the saleman telling me if I was ready for another vehicle to see him first for the great deals he could provide. this was after he jerked me around about making repairs and paperwork he had put in writing they would do. so, no dude, you would be the last person I would go see or recommend to anyone else.
So are these salesdudes implying that their vehicles are pieces of crap, so you probably need another one by now?
That’s the way I read it.
I go to the shelters every so often and get my kitten fix there. I’m hoping that PK lives to be 21 and it’s a long time before I can have a kitten in my house!
Those would work, but what would be easier to find is an ex-racing Greyhound - there’s tons of them in rescue. I’m sure there must be a rescue org near Bill - talk to them about your upcoming lifestyle and see what they think! Greys don’t tend to drool or snore too.
Why can’t I find banana bread in any of the grocery stores? I’ve been to 4 separate chains in the last couple of weeks. No banana bread. This makes me sad.
Also, to the driver in a hurry tonight on the way home: dude, you are an accident looking for a place to happen:
[ul][li]You pass me on the left on a two-lane residential street, driving through a group of playing children and turning left in front of me across the nose of an oncoming car because I didn’t make that same left fast enough for you. (I was waiting to make sure it was safe to drive through said group of children playing, plus the car across from me had the freaking right of way!) [/li]
[li]You speed (had to be doing 40 mph in a 25 mph zone) down that street and make a left without bothering to stop at the stop sign. [/li]
[li]At the end of THAT street, you pull around (on the left!) the car in front of you in order to make the *same *right-hand turn that the car in front of you was waiting to make safely, pretty much at the same moment that car was starting to make its turn.[/ul][/li]After that I lost sight of you, and I am profoundly grateful that you apparently turned off before causing an accident on any part of the road I was traveling.
I’ve no idea what your hurry was. I doubt it was worth putting the lives of all those other drivers (and those kids!) in danger. When you meet your accident, I hope it’s somewhere isolated and involves no other living thing.
I honestly don’t mind it when people knock on my door and ask for help. Heck, they can find my phone number on PetFinders. Rescue is what I do. But…if there are unwanted offspring from a pet, BRING ME THE MAMA TOO!!! Don’t just leave a box of kittens on my porch, I’m gone 10-12 hours a day, those poor kittens could have died. If Tony hadn’t found those puppies, the coyotes would have. Those sort of people just tick me off something fierce.
Tony isn’t going to come with me. Bill has a townhouse in a different neighborhood that he didn’t bother to sell when he bought this house, so I thought we could put my feral human there. Tony refuses to even think about it. When I suggested it, he got so offended that he just walked away and wouldn’t talk to me for a week.
The Bassets I’ve met have had have been from the dog rescue group that works at the same place my rescue group did. Wonderful, sweet dogs. They were good on the leash and liked everyone. Thank you so much for the link.
I hope that your PK lives at least as long as my Fred did and that when its time, that she goes as peacefully as Fred.
There was a third vote for a Greyhound, but I didn’t see it when I was posting this. Thanks so much for the suggestions! I honestly didn’t think about a Greyhound because I thought they were so high energy that it would be cruel to keep one indoors all day. The ones I’ve met are very elegant and polite. Their fur feels like silk.
I did a little research online and have learned that retired racers are already trained to an inch of their life.
There is a Greyhound rescue group that does adoptions at the other PetPlace, I’ll go there after kitty adoptions on Saturday and talk to them.
What a wonderful idea, I learn so much here. We would still have to go to dog training classes, but mostly so Bill and I would learn how to not ruin a good dog with our bad handleing. Hopes that made sense.
Adopting a dog is something that we need to do together, so we will probably do it after I move. This is a big decision and we both need to be fully invested.
Thanks again!
Not a rant, just something funny that happened at the library today. I have a Cthulhu fish on my trunk. When I got to the library at lunch I deliberatly parked a car away from the person who had a Jesus fish on their trunk. I’m a bitch sometimes, yes, I know that. When I got back out, the car parked between us had a Darwin fish.
I almost peed my pants laughing and wanted to go back in and find the Darwin fish person and give him or her a high-five.
My tummy hurts. pout
flatlined, I’ve seen rescue/retired greyhounds around and they were all perfectly well-behaved. When they got permission to run they ran like only they can, but they didn’t pull at the leash (well, maybe the tiniest bit, just enough to attract their handler’s attention); they’d look at the handlers to see if permission to run would be granted. In Vigo we saw/overheard someone who had a couple of hounds and who’d meet this owner of a terrier every day and their dogs would race. They were laughing about how the terrier didn’t stand a chance but loved the racing anyway. I think that terrier’s yips greeting the hounds were some of the happiest dog-noises I’ve heard.
I used to live in a house full of mad vegans, with far too many utterly untrained dogs (batshit housemate refused to teach them even not to run out in the road, as it was ‘unnatural’, and 'againts their natural instincts- stupid bitch).
There was one dog in the bunch, who actually belonged to a less batshit neighbour and just got dog-sat there occasionally (I don’t think his owners knew how bad the house had got) that stopped me from hating all things canine while I lived there- which was a utter sweetie greyhound. Get a greyhound flatlined, they’re nice.
Anyway… Finally caught a mouse in the live trap today, and relocated him to the park! Yay! Except… it was clearly a just weaned baby. They’re definitely breeding. Fuck.
I’m thieving the neighbour’s cat for the afternoon, see if the kitty smell will put them off. I really don’t want to use poison; they’re living in the walls, and I just know they’d die in there and stink. Plus I have pet mice, and it just feels wrong to pamper some mice and kill the others…
My brother had two ex racers and one ex breeding bitch. All of them were as sweet as can be, and I’ve met other retired Greys, also very sweet. However, one of my brother’s dogs was notorious for his farts. Now, my brother fed the dogs a high quality dog food, but Mo, well, Mo could cut loose a fart which was even deadlier than a dead skunk. Sorry for the earworm again.
This thread makes me really want a doggy. But the Maine Coon and her pal Enormous Cat would pick on any dog mercilessly so it’s probably not a good idea. Greyhounds are so gorgeous, though! I saw a mini Italian one in Home Depot last week and practically literally swooned because he was so amazingly beautiful. He licked the baby’s hand gently and charmed eldest. Maybe one day.