This is Dobby, aka Marmadork. We got him a year ago next week. My previous dog was mine alone, I had him before I met my hubby, and it took years to get over his passing before I thought I was ready for another dog, and this one would be ours together. We picked him out of the shelter because he was the one dog there who *wasn’t* barking and whining, and they told us he’d been there for several weeks already – his ribs were showing and we thought we could do him some good (and vice versa).
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We named him Dobby (his shelter name was “Snickers”) after the elf in Harry Potter – ’cause we freed him from the shelter – and for two or three days he didn’t even make a sound. After that he started to come out of his shell and be a little more of a frisky (and destructive – oh! the destruction!) puppy, we started puppy classes, and were well on our way to normal dog ownership.
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After a while, my husband started noticing breathing problems, and I’ll just skip to the part where we ended up in the ER. Hubby has a personal and family history of heart problems, so anything like this sends up red flags. It turned out he’s allergic to the dog. We knew he was horribly allergic to cats, but he’d never had a problem with my old dog, but sure enough, years of not having a dog in close contact meant it was a problem now to have one in the house.
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We went back and forth for weeks over what to do. Because of Hubby’s heart condition, the shots people often take to deal with animal allergies were not an option. I had managed to line up possibilities for adopting him out to people we knew, but my husband literally cried that he didn’t want to give the dog up, that he’d never had one of his own, and that we had to find a way to keep Dobby.
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So after a lot of research and patience, we seem to have found a balance that works for us. We have very strong air purifiers in the house, pulled up most of the carpet, the dog doesn’t come in the bedroom or get on any furniture, and for the most part my husband can’t ride in my car, which is the ‘dog car,’ for taking him to the park, vet visits, training class, etc.
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It’s worked out okay so far, though Dobby has gotten much bigger than the previous dog, and is, personality-wise, a total brat who will behave like an angel if you’re holding a treat, then go chew on a rug. But he’s funny and still puppyish, and despite all the stress he causes, I’m hoping that all those statistics about people with pets having longer lifespans is still true!
Open Thread
Figured we could use one.
I find it kind of alarming how addicted I have become to tea now that I have had the real stuff. I was always exclusively a coffee drinker, and I still am in the morning. I need those two cups to get me going, and tea just doesn’t have the same kick for me for some reason. But throughout the day, I’ve been drinking a good deal of tea, and I’ve been drinking it by the gallon it seems. I had a sampled of ginger/peach that I thought was spectacular, but I really also like the Taylors Gold Tea.
Open thread
Choices: past and future
100 years ago, America was a Galtian paradise. Those in pursuit of capital could do anything they wished and the theft of labor was easy and supported by local, state and federal governments. Lots and lots of very bad things happened. One was the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. 146 workers–women, mostly recent immigrants–died when a fire broke out in the sweatshop. It was the Union movement that forced changes and still fights to keep them in place. Unions interfere with Galtian fantasies and that is why the wingnuts are so manic about destroying them and the right to organize.
This week the SEIU blog put up an interactive guide to safty changes that Unions have delivered for all Americans as a result of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire:
By following the link and mousing over the numbers you’ll learn about some of the benefits we all have thanks to organized labor. This is important to remember as our Galtian Overlords and their pet politicians are busy trying to overturn the last 100 years of progress and return to that time when capital could steal any labor, damage any environment and take any action in the pursuit of profit–without any restrictions or oversight.
As a Country we have a choice to move back to a Gilded Age or to move forward. That choice is driving almost all of our current politics.
Cheers
Some Football Notes
First off some congratulations are in order:
- Congratulations to Clint Dempsey. If he continues to score like this, one wonders if he’ll stay with Fulham.
- Congratulations to Rogerio Ceni, I suppose. At least it makes us forget about José Luis Chilavert.
In the final eight of the Champions League, if there’s any team that could surprise I believe it’s Shakhtar Donetsk. I’m not certain if they can get past Barcelona, but I believe that they can make Pep Guardiola uneasy.
I’m loathe to lavish praise on someone prematurely (e.g. Freddy Adu), but the recent play of Juan Agudelo both at the club level and as a sub in last night’s game against Argentina, is most impressive. He has skill, strength, maturity beyond his years and a good mind for the game. Let’s hope he keeps it up.
If his performance on Tuesday’s game against Paraguay is as good as his second half substitute performance against Argentina, Timmy Chandler may put an end to Steve Cherundolo’s international career and leave Jonathan Spector on the bench. I can leave with that. I have nothing against Cherundolo, but he’s 32. As for Spector, he’s always made me nervous.
Was it just me or did Javier Mascherano seem to flop a lot in yesterday’s game?
Note to Ian Darke and other British commentators: Mascherano is Argentinean, not French. Accordingly, his name is pronounced more less like this: Ha vee AIR, not Ha vee A.
Note to Bob Bradley: please stop using the lone striker. It’s useless with this squad.
Winning in this case is the best revenge, but it’s sad that this sort of nonsense takes place.
A little more of the red mist from Zlatan Ibrahimovic. One wonders if he is really going to lose it some day.
KY-UNC Open Thread
I clearly have too much time on my hands.
I’m supposed to be going to a fundraiser at a bar (yay! bars!) for a children’s literacy program that I helped launch at my old law firm. Two of my closest friends are on the board and have spent a lot of time planning this thing. Nonetheless, I told them I can’t go until after the Carolina game. I mean, what do I care about childrenses literasee? THE BASKETBALLS ARE ON!!!!11one
P.S. It’s mango.
Stenographer Banished to Closet
There is a whole lot of fail here:
“Scott – You have our sincere apologies for the lack of a better hold room today,” wrote Vice President Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander last Wednesday to Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers.
“Lack of a better hold room” is an interesting way of putting it. In order to keep Powers from mingling with guests at a Democratic fundraiser last Wednesday, Powers was escorted into a storage closet by a Biden staffer.
Powers was the designated pool reporter, there to record the proceedings for the press corps in general.
He told ABC News that he showed up at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday to cover Vice President Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., attending a $500-a-head fundraiser at the Winter Park manse of developer Alan Ginsburg.
A young female staffer met him at the door and brought him to the storage closet.
“You’re going to have to wait in here until the VP gets here,” he says she told him.
“You’re kidding me,” he recalls responding.
I have absolutely NO idea what the Biden team was thinking. I saw a picture of the mansion, and I know there has to be at least one room that he could have been in other than a storage closet. This is just disastrous work from Biden’s staff, and you can expect a lot of catty pieces from the Beltway boys about this.
But the bigger question to me is why does the press allow itself to be locked in a holding room in the first place? What kid of reporting is that? What self-respecting “reporter” would agree to those terms? It’s absurd. You’re a reporter, not a stenographer, you should have full access or refuse to cover it. If they just want you to print about Biden’s speech, tell them to send you a copy via email, that you have better things to do. And then savage them in the press until they realize not giving you access is worse than giving you unrestricted access. Hell, the media in Libya have better access.
Powers says the situation was never “rectified.” Any time he stuck his head out he’d been shooed back inside. He said he was held for more than an hour in the closet, was allowed out for 35 minutes of remarks by Biden and Nelson, after which it was back into the closet until the VP left.
The proper response to being “shooed back inside” a closet buy some staffer is to tell them to go fuck themselves, walk out with your head up, and then proceed to make their lives miserable in your paper. Not to whine about it after accepting the treatment. They have to be hiding something, right? Otherwise why do they want you in a holding room? And why do you call yourself a reporter and let them treat you that way?