Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

So very ready.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

Fight them, without becoming them!

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

People are weird.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

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Open Thread

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Just now Max was doing his usual imitation of a throw rug when a light in the living room went out. He jumped up, banged his head on a coffee table and crawled onto the loveseat next to me. Dobermans truly are brave and noble beasts.

posing 2

Chat about whatever.

***Update***

Max is fat and I’m the queen of England.

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Reader Interactions

124Comments

  1. 1.

    Maude

    I was reading about Lewis Puller. He found that Dobies can’t be in war zones. They are gun shy and turn on their trainers because they get afraid.
    Were they Dobies used in The Omen?

  3. 3.

    BD of MN

    @Maude:

    Were they Dobies used in The Omen?

    I seem to recall they were Rottweilers, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen the movie…

  8. 8.

    Tim F.

    @Maude: The Marines would disagree with you about that. In WWII dobes served with distinction on both sides. The official WWII war dog memorial in Guam (and its replica in Tennessee) feature a Doberman.

    Max is a weiner, and a lot of domestic dobes are loving crybabies. It is equally true that a properly tempered doberman, with training, can do anything.

  9. 9.

    gogol's wife

    I wuv Max.

    I’ve been watching Alfred Hitchcock episodes on YouTube, and this one features a Paul Ryan lookalike as a sinister plumber:

    youtube.com/watch?v=nCX8PXHQM7U

    After the NY Times’s front-page article this morning touting Ryan as a great thinker (on the authority of W. Kristol and Niall Ferguson), I very much enjoyed seeing him here (in 1957) as a smarmy villain.

  10. 10.

    LanceThruster

    Watching “American Psycho” again. Seems as if it were a documentary on the current Rethuglican mindset.

    Just sayin’.

  12. 12.

    Steeplejack

    @lamh35:

    I keep looking to see when Person of Interest is going to start again.

    And you saw that Grimm started up again last week, right?

  16. 16.

    Nicole

    @BD of MN:

    I seem to recall they were Rottweilers, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen the movie…

    You’re right, it was a Rottie. According to IMDB, sales of them went up after the movie was released.

  19. 19.

    Steeplejack

    @Valdivia:

    Progress is being made. The last couple of days I have been leaving the bedroom door open so she can check out the rest of the apartment, but she is still leery. She’ll come out for a few minutes in skulk mode, look around and then go back to the bedroom to snooze under the bedcovers.

    But she is a lot more at ease than she was when she arrived a week ago. And she loves having me pet her for extended periods, especially at four in the morning. That’s the best time!

  21. 21.

    Yutsano

    @Tim F.: The mascot of the marines is the bulldog, but the official dog of the Marines is a Dobie. Although German shepherds are the dog of choice for most dog handlers now, there are still some working Dobies.

  22. 22.

    PurpleGirl

    @Tim F.: Two friends’ had a Dobie (Hugo) who could be a marshmallow with the humans he liked. At other times if he felt I or one of his humans was being threatened he did his Doberman guarding act. Other friends always wondered if I was crazy when I gave him various pills by putting my hand down his throat (I held his mouth open to do so). I never feared for my own safety with him. Although Hugo was a black Dobie, Max reminds me so much of Hugo.

    MAX!

  24. 24.

    YellowJournalism

    @Steeplejack: Grimm was excellent last week. Really looking forward to this week’s episode, but I have to admit that Maid Marian is throwing me off because I keep waiting for her to start screaming “Robin!” at the top of her lungs. Ooooo…wouldn’t a Robin Hood reunion on Grimm be awesome.

    And by reunion I mean only Alan Rickman. In tights.

  25. 25.

    Steeplejack

    @YellowJournalism:

    Grimm and Person of Interest are both shows that started off sluggishly and then picked up steam as the season went on. Really interested to see where both shows go.

  26. 26.

    Nicole

    @Yutsano:

    Although German shepherds are the dog of choice for most dog handlers now, there are still some working Dobies.

    Oh, German Shepherds. The villains of more than one Albert Payson Terhune story. Anything with “German” in it was eeeeeevil.

  27. 27.

    lamh35

    @Steeplejack: Oh yeah, I saw the promo for Grimm. I’ve still got to catch up to all of Season 1. I’ve actually got a lot of shows to catch up on. That’s what I planned to do for my summer, but thanks to my mom’s ill health, I’m behind on my DVR queue by at least 1 month and half.

    But I plan to still catch up before any of the new TV season starts!

  31. 31.

    RoonieRoo

    It is very hard for most people to see their dogs as overweight. Just 5lbs over is a big deal in dogs Max’s size. We fight that 5 lbs a lot in our 85 to 90 lb pup. But as my vet and my very blunt sister (also a vet) has taught me, if you can not see those ribs then he is over. So can you clearly feel his ribs without pressing when you run your hand down his side? If you have to put a slight pressure to feel them, than he is probably about 5 or so lbs over.

  32. 32.

    Corner Stone

    @YellowJournalism: Mary Elizabeth kind of boggled me too. She had some nasty ability to leap into a scene from out of nowhere.
    What really disturbed me was how freakin hot she was in Abyss and how grandmotherly she looked in this episode.
    I guess it comes to us all.

  34. 34.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack: IMO, Person of Interest did not start slowly but did slow down really quickly. And I love Jesus as the badass. I’ve missed some of the recent ones because I got a little tired of the inter-moralizing.
    Grimm has confused me. Does the main male lead know he’s being played, and is going along to see where it goes, or does he think those boogeymen are actually helping him?
    I also kind of like the introduction of a “next level” of bad guy monster into the mix.

  35. 35.

    karen marie

    @Joseph Nobles: So full of fail!

    When we make our motion for summary judgment on the paternity issue, we only ask for it against the Democratic Party. This way, if we win on this issue (wouldn’t that be nice), we still have a dispute with Obama on the place of birth issue, and we can proceed to get discovery on the original documents. In order to get out of proceeding on the remaining birth certificate issues, Obama would have to stipulate that he is not a natural born citizen by nature of his being born of foreign paternity and have the summary judgment we just got against the Democratic Party also be applicable to him. He probably won’t want to do that.

  36. 36.

    Steeplejack

    @Valdivia:

    Cat alert! Miss Thing just appeared beside me in the living room, possibly braced by the real tuna fish (not cat food) I gave her for dinner a little while ago. She is carefully checking things out, but not so much in skulk mode as before. She seems to like the combination that I am out here doing normal things but I’m not looking at her and making her feel self-conscious.

  40. 40.

    lamh35

    @Steeplejack: @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Mom’s doing great. Flew to Cincy last Wednesday and drove her back home to NOLA to stay we my sister for the foreseeable future. Right now we are waiting for decision on her Social Security Disability and hopefully Medicaid until she can get back on her feet. She met with her Cardiologist and her Diabetic doctors before she left Cincy and until she finds out about her Medicaid application, she’ll have to use the “free” Urgent Care clinics in NOLA, which you can imagine are backed-up. She has an appointment with the NOLA Cardiology clinic, but the earlier one she could get is in October. So it’s a waiting game, if Medicaid comes first, then she won’t have to wait, if not, then she’s gonna have to wait until October.

    At the very least, thanks to having so many RNs and people in the health industry in my extended family, her meds are easier to come by…i.e. we know some folks :-)

    So long story short, she’s doing as great as can be expected, if not greater.

    Thanks for asking.

  43. 43.

    dance around in your bones

    @TaMara (BHF): What’s the term for a male camel toe?

    A Weinerism?

    Umm, that’s why I like to watch football – all those lycra-clad menfolks. Heh.

  45. 45.

    TaMara (BHF)

    Max is purty. And I was thinking, in regards to the war issue, it could be over-breeding that has changed the temperament of the breed. If it has changed, that is what I would suspect.

    Great Danes the great boar hunters of Europe to big couch potatoes of the Americas. Just sayin’.

  47. 47.

    Steeplejack

    @TaMara (BHF):

    No pictures so far. I’ve got only one that isn’t a blur, and it looks like the cat equivalent of Nick Nolte’s mug shot. It was only yesterday or the day before that she would chill on the bed outside the covers in the meatloaf position. But she has come a long way since then. Right now she’s sitting beside me where I’m working on the laptop, looking up at me with that “And you’re not rubbing me why?” look. Very calm and collected.

    I’ll get a good picture in the next day or two and see if I can figure out how to revive my Flickr account.

    Awesome about the Aspire One! I want to hear all the details when you get it. After reminding myself of it again in that thread last night, I’m aflame with consumer lust. It’s good you got the one with 4 MB of RAM. That’s supposed to be a little screamer. If you really want to pimp it out, you can get a solid-state drive for about $100. (Not as big as the 500GB drive that came with it, but probably big enough.)

  49. 49.

    Corner Stone

    @TaMara (BHF): Shoot, mine too. He’s about 250 now with maybe 6% to 7% body fat.
    My good friend’s brother was a 6’2″ and 240 LB coming out of high school running a legit 4.4 40 yd dash. Just a freak of white boy nature. Tebow reminds me of that shit and it’s always freaky to see.

  51. 51.

    dance around in your bones

    @TaMara (BHF): Oh, hell, it’s all about the butts.

    Those lovely, lovely butts. I say that as a straight women…..well, ok, the chests and arms too.

    Oh fuck, it’s the whole package. DBL Heh.

  52. 52.

    TaMara (BHF)

    @Steeplejack: I’ll give you all the deets. I really needed something I could travel with. I have a wonderful 17″ laptop that is anything but portable. And the price was right.

    In my cat world, my little miss just got over a UTI. You’d think I saved her life or something, she’s been all over me since the vet called with the news she’s a-ok. Purring and rolling. Cute-E-pie.

    2 weeks of stuffing pills down her throat twice a day and not a scratch. She’s a trooper.

  54. 54.

    Corner Stone

    Oh, you dumb little blonde obviously going to “STATE” university. Your idiot dad suggesting you go to PCmatic.com is a douche and you deserve what happens next.

  57. 57.

    Yutsano

    @Steeplejack: A gormlet?

    @TaMara (BHF): I’m still of the opinion he’s gay. But as a good Christian he’ll never act on it. Rob Gronkowski however…he might just be an attention hoor but he’s had some, um, interesting statements shall we say.

  59. 59.

    alicia-logic

    @TaMara (BHF): It was not indiscriminate breeding that softened the American Doberman’s temperament but deliberate selection for softer dogs. The American public is not discriminating enough to be trusted with dogs with proper working temperaments, frankly. Every “tough” breed that gets fashionable stars in a streak of tragedies inevitably stemming from un-neutered, untrained, unsupervised animals with access to the public or some poor child.

    ETA: *not discriminating or disciplined enough

  61. 61.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    Oh, now I see what you did there. My bad. Actually, I’m so old that I remember when 4 MB was a big deal.

    The problem is that with your comments I’m always checking for hidden dickishness and sometimes miss the surface humor. My bad again.

  64. 64.

    TaMara (BHF)

    @alicia-logic: This is so true. Can you imagine? Look at the Dane, 150 lbs of pure muscle, even with the temperament they have now, I had to be diligent about being alpha in order to walk all three on leashes. And they’re smart and curious, needed constant direction to keep them out of trouble.

    I can’t imagine what I’d do with one who wanted to go out and hunt boar once a week.

    Border Collies are another good example – people get them without the discipline to work them the way they need to be to stay emotionally healthy. Then you get a bunch of neurotic dogs abandoned for “behavior” problems.

  68. 68.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @TaMara (BHF): Border Collies make me so sad. I badly want one, know i don’t have the dog experience or time to train it properly and make it happy, but am frequently in company with people who basically neglect theirs then complain about how much work they are and what bad dogs they are. SIGH.

    @Yutsano: I too get the vibes from Tebow, but haven’t seen much other than a bit of deeply vain posturing from Gronk. Links?

  69. 69.

    Corner Stone

    Sometimes you’re the “shish” and sometimes you’re the “kebob”.
    No, I have no fucking idea what that actually means. Except it means they’ll let just about anyone narrate a NFL pre-season game, apparently.

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack

    Miss Thing Thang is back in bed, exhausted after her big adventure. She always makes a funny croissant-shaped outline under the covers. And not much bigger than a croissant.

  71. 71.

    Corner Stone

    Man, if Michael Jordan showed up at my work and wanted to inspect my underwear…actually I’m not sure wtf I’d do next.
    Would I let him check my tags? Would I just be like, “Fuck off mate”. Or be like, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”. Or maybe call my ex-sis in law who is the biggest Ginger fan of MJ I have ever met.

  74. 74.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    He kind of creeps me out now with that middle-aged mustache. And the underwear ads have a slightly off vibe to them. Unintentional, I’m sure. Give me those big puffy fruit guys wandering around any day.

  78. 78.

    Yutsano

    @TaMara (BHF): I did know that, but I’ve never tried it. My parents refuse to raise them, although they’re excellent watchdogs plus good at pest control. They’re also very temperamental and LOUD!! Not to mention my mom’s female border collie thinks she’s a bird dog and would eat them instantly.

  79. 79.

    dance around in your bones

    @Steeplejack:

    Well, as long as one pronounces it correctly – Miss Thang just has a kind of resonance, a rang, if you will…..

    Really, you are saving a life there. She’ll come around. Gawd bless all those who save kittehs. Dawgs, too. (Ok Yutsano….)

  80. 80.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack: TRS-80. The beginning of my nefarious life of crime was when I convinced my dad to double the RAM. To 128KB.
    I sometimes wonder what kinds of stories my son will be able to tell one day. He’s 7 and we have an iPad, an iPod, a MacMini, a pc based server and three laptops. Not to mention other things like mobile gaming solutions, etc.
    Yeah, it’s overkill.
    But one day he’ll be using some AI holographic digital interface to tell his peers how he got his technology start with such archaic stone tablets.
    And they’ll laugh a little, shake their heads and wonder how anyone ever survived using actual physical inputs to work “computer” interfaces.

  82. 82.

    sfinny

    @Corner Stone: It is amazing that my first computer was a Compaq portable (the size of a carry on bag) that was considered state of the art at 286. Although I must admit that at the time the utility of the keyboard as bottom of the carrier was cool.

    Today I take a walk with my first Apple purchase, a shuffle that is about the size of a quarter and plays all my favorite workout albums.

    Freaky.

  84. 84.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    Yeah, they’ll be laughing over drinks on the holodeck.

    The companies had such funky names back then. CP/M was created by Digital Research, previously Intergalactic Digital Research, and you had to get a different flavor of CP/M depending on what computer you had. I remember that Pickles & Trout was the company that supplied CP/M for our “Trash-80’s.”

    Actually, we had a bit of a kerfuffle when someone let the configuration disk for one of our products go out showing “Trash-80” as an option, rather than “TRS-80.” Good times.

  89. 89.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    I wrote a program to make a choo choo move across the screen from right to left.

    “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” — Isaac Newton.

    I’m drawing a blank trying to remember the first program I wrote. Something really stupid in BASIC.

    I really hit my stride with dBASE II. That’s when I became unstoppable.

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, Miss Thang is getting a little overconfident. She’s back out of bed, and I heard the quiet dub-dub-dub of a kitchen cabinet door resettling after being prized open by an inquiring paw. This will not stand. I need to make sure she can’t find some other way to escape into the innards of the building, which was the highlight of her first day here.

  92. 92.

    Anne Laurie

    @TaMara (BHF): Just for you, TaMara: Great Dane service dogs!

    There was a Great Dane in a tree. We are not making this up….

    To be serious, the more time I spend around dogs, the more I appreciate the “soft”, easy-to-live-with types. I deliberately picked a breed (papillons) that would be easy for a fat, out-of-shape, inexperienced human to live with safely for both parties. And I figured even if I screwed up, how much harm could a 10lb lapdog do? For my sins, 25 years later, I’m living with three variously damaged rescues, one of them a 20lb “pap mix” who’s almost certainly part border collie, and she regularly terrifies me with her speed & intelligence. I greatly admire those individuals who are willing to commit to the effort to keep their beloved Dobermans, Border Collies, (English) Bull Terriers, and other “demanding” breeds true to their working roots… but there isn’t one American in a hundred who can give a dog like that the life they need to be safe & happy.

  93. 93.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack: I had a reply to this but when I read it, it sounded like dialogue from a Travis McGee novel. And I was reminded of why I stopped reading that series of books.
    Then I decided that staying up late waiting for someone from Honk Kong to answer my email was just stupid because they don’t give a shit about work like idiot pasty white boys do. It’s true, people in the US are the stupidest workers on the planet. Try and reach someone in Switzerland on Monday. Just try anybody, I dare you. You can’t freakin do it. The whole fucking country is on vacay until mid-September. Not just most of them, all of them. It’s mind boggling how everyone else in the “Western” world takes these 4 and 5 week vacations and I haven’t had 3 business days off in a row in 4 years.
    Just some crazy shit and I’m about to pull a Steepman any frackin day now.
    Bah! Fucking bah!!
    {insert Dean scream}

  94. 94.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steeplejack:

    I need to make sure she can’t find some other way to escape into the innards of the building, which was the highlight of her first day here.

    Google “childproof cabinet latches / locks”. They’re probably available at your local big-box hardware store, if you can’t deal with the ignominy of walking into a Babies-R-Us.

  96. 96.

    Steeplejack

    Now the cat is loitering around under my legs, all concerned for my welfare. “Shouldn’t you go to bed? Because you’re going to be really tired when I wake you up at 4:00 a.m. to rub me.”

  98. 98.

    Steeplejack

    @Anne Laurie:

    Since you’re up, can you demoderate me?

    The problem is not the cabinet doors–at least not that I’ve seen so far. There is a small hole under one of the cabinets that goes into a space between the cabinet and the wall, right at a place where the wall has a cutout into the building innards.

    My concern is more that she’s getting into exploratory mode, and I need to make sure I’m ahead of her on what she’s likely to find. I’ve got that original hole blocked up, but I need to make sure there aren’t any other surprises awaiting us.

  99. 99.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    I liked the Travis McGee novels. Pale Gray for Guilt is a bona fide masterpiece.

    If you liked those, try the Reacher novels by Lee Child. First one is Killing Floor Similar sensibility.

  100. 100.

    Yutsano

    @Steeplejack: Did you use a naughty word? :)

    My kitteh has separation anxiety. That and she started out life in the barn, so she’s used to being outside. When I was at the ranch recovering from the surgery, she got to go out whenever she wanted. Now back at the condo she stays inside all the time. She hasn’t forgiven me for oppressing her kitteh freedoms.

  101. 101.

    Anne Laurie

    @TaMara (BHF):

    And did anyone else know that people eat peacock? I had no idea and was shocked to see one on some cooking show I cruised by last night.

    Hah, you were never in the Society for Creative Anachronism, I see!…

    Actually, the SCAdians I knew could never afford actual peacocks at those mid1970s/80s Midwestern feasts, although at least one replication with guinea hens & peacock feathers was attempted. The only person I’ve met who’d actually eaten peacock in the flesh said it was only worth the trouble if it was the bird who’d been screaming outside your window every morning.

  103. 103.

    MikeJ

    @Steeplejack:

    I’m drawing a blank trying to remember the first program I wrote. Something really stupid in BASIC.

    I learned how to write my own by typing in programs from magazines. I loved my commie. Sprites, polyphonic sound (three voices on the SID chip) and 64k.

  104. 104.

    Steeplejack

    Damn, this cat may be a C++ programmer. She was circling around my legs, so I put her in my lap. Then she got on the desk, took two quick steps on the keyboard before I could snag her and managed to kill Firefox and shut down Windows. Damn, I don’t even know what two keys I could press that would accomplish the same thing in that order.

  107. 107.

    Steeplejack

    @MikeJ:

    I learned how to write my own by typing in programs from magazines.

    I did that. Then there was the epochal technological advance when you could dial into a dismally slow BBS and download the source code at 300 baud. ¡Caramba!

  108. 108.

    Steeplejack

    @MikeJ:

    Maybe, although the Firefox shutdown seemed like a separate, prior event. And I had other applications open–Word, Outlook and something else–that didn’t individually yelp before they went down.

  109. 109.

    Steeplejack

    Final cat report of the night: She has already learned, or is now deploying, that technique where she gets in front of me any time I move and walks ahead of me like a pilot fish to guide me where she wants to go. “Bedroom, right? We should really get some sleep. What, kitchen? No, no, I really think you meant to go to the bedroom. Now.”

  111. 111.

    Steeplejack

    @Yutsano:

    I think I got snagged because sometimes the YouTube hyperlink has an inadvertent bad word in it. Can’t think of anything else. The comments have been released now; you tell me if you can see anything amiss.

    I wonder if FYWP’s moderation queue gives any indication of the reason for sequestering a comment.

  113. 113.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, no late-night Cole post, and everything seems quiet, so I guess I can hand this off to the West Coasters and the early morning shift. Steep out!

  114. 114.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steeplejack:

    I wonder if FYWP’s moderation queue gives any indication of the reason for sequestering a comment.

    Not on my machine, it doesn’t. Like you, I was guessing three YouTube links might be too many… maybe it’s one YT link per comment? (That might even be a FYYT ‘upgrade’.)

  115. 115.

    karen marie

    @Steeplejack: Ugh. I grew to loathe Lee Childs very quickly.

    In addition to Pale Gray For Guilt, I’ve read four others by John D. MacDonald, all of them delightful. If you like MacDonald, try Peter Cheyney, a British detective writer who had a fairly short career, only publishing between 1936 and 1951. He didn’t type but instead dictated his novels to a secretary. The writing is very lively.

    Among more current crime/detective books, I like Ian Rankin’s Inspector John Rebus series, Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pasco series. I finally read one by John LeCarre last year and was surprised it was so good because so much popular crime fiction (like Lee Childs and Janet Evanovich) is so bad.

    If you enjoy crime capers you might try Eoin Colfer’s first crime caper, Plugged. I’m hoping he publishes another just as good and then another after that. Tim Dorsey writes pretty good silly crime capers. But Donald E. Westlake is my super-duper hero, writing brilliant crime capers, hard crime and non-crime novels.

    Why am I sitting here? I should be reading.

    @Anne Laurie: It’s been my experience that more than two links of any kind send you into moderation.

  117. 117.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @karen marie: i have a personal (and highly negative) connection to a person on whom a supporting character in one of Rankin’s novels is based. Ever since I got to that one (The Falls) I haven’t been able to read the rest. I enjoyed them before that though.

  118. 118.

    dance around in your bones

    In the future your computer will be injected under the skin at birth.

    Hence, like those people who talk out loud on the streets/subways/sidewalks (via their bluetooth/whatev)…….there will be people walking about gesticulating wildly (a la Tom Cruise in that movie…..what the hell was it {{{consults the googly machine}}} oh yeah, Minority Report!} and we will never know who is disturbed enough that we might want to cross to the other side of the street.

    It’ll be a Big Nuthin’ ;)

  119. 119.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Anne Laurie: There is an entire ecosystem of working dogs that most folks never encounter because they’re not pet-shop fodder or end up in shelters. Foxhounds, for example — there’s no such thing as a single foxhound, there’s only a pack which makes them go crazy when they are separated from the group mind in attempts to rehome them. Real gundogs, working Labs and retrievers are almost a separate species from the showdogs and pet breeds with the same name, ditto for drover’s dogs like Corgis and collies which are expected to fight off predators as well as herd.

    They’re not pets, they’re tools of the trade and they don’t get expensive vet treatment when they’re sick or injured, they get put down and replaced like a pickup truck with a bad engine gets sent to the scrapyard. This makes some folks squeamish but it’s business.

  121. 121.

    Steeplejack

    @Anne Laurie:

    I know there is a three-link limit in messages, including any “reply” link, but FYDWP does seem to have a special problem with YouTube occasionally.

  122. 122.

    Steeplejack

    @karen marie:

    I read all of Westlake’s (Richard Stark’s) Parker novels at the beginning of this year and liked them. Haven’t gotten into Dortmunder yet.

  123. 123.

    koalaholik

    I prefer to believe that Max was simply rushing to protect his Lord and Master from the danger of impending darkness. He has the heart of a noble warrior. And, he is too cute with those ears. Love that dog.

  124. 124.

    WaterGirl

    @Steeplejack: Grimm seemed too creepy for me – from the previews – so I haven’t watched the show. Is it creepy or gory?

    Edit: I see now that the thread is dead so I am unlikely to get an answer.

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