A long time ago, in a land not so far away as you might think, there lived a mostly happy and mostly functional family in an old house on 100 acres.  The little girl had a friend whose dog just had puppies.  She wanted a puppy SO much.  The parents weren’t too sure, because the older dog didn’t take too well to strangers, but the girl begged and begged and they gave in.  When they went to pick him out, she chose the little runt of the litter.  Off by himself, while his littermates played. The little girl thought “That one needs love”. So they brought him home, and the first thing he did was break the screen door trying to get in to be closer to the family.  The girl’s brother said they should name him Bart (after Bart Simpson) since he seemed determined to get in trouble. He was trained for Head of Ranch Security by the family’s older dog Fibber McGee.  The Head of Ranch Security is a very important job.  They warn the family of trouble or anything unusual happening outside.  They have a bark for a familiar car, a strange car, the mailman/UPS deliverpeople, snakes, coyotes… Read the Rest »

There are no bad dogs. Only bad owners.  Yes, certain breeds are bred with certain traits.  But dogs are pack animals.  They are family animals.  They want to love and be loved.  That’s it.  Eat, drink, play, love.  That is a dog’s interest.  They want an alpha to be in charge.  To tell them yes, no and set boundaries.  They are happy with that.  Dogs love being a part of a family, and they are naturally protective of children. Dogs are not people.  They do not think like people or react like people.  They are dogs.  Understand your dog, before you judge your dog, or anyone else’s dog. My rescue pup was given up by her first adopters for biting a kid.  They didn’t understand her, because they had a big family and a bunch of dogs and they didn’t have time to understand her issues.  I fell in love with her at first sight.  A 22 pound, three-legged dog who was clearly terrified. But instead of cowering, she barked, and snarled and said “If you take me down, I’m taking you down with me!!” Man.  I could respect that.  Fearless.  A fearless little three legged dog.  I had to… Read the Rest »

I had a few questions posed in my Ask box on Tumblr yesterday.  This one really struck me, and I wanted to share it here. Anonymous When you suffer a set back, Personal or work related, do you sometimes feel the need to hurt yourself? sometimes it gets my mind off of it & I can restart. I know it is frowned upon but I just need to do it. Has anyone else talked to you about it? I think everyone gets overloaded sometimes.  Some people more than others.  It can be really tough to deal with, and everyone has their own way. I don’t feel compelled to do that, myself, but I know that there are a lot of people who do. Which is to say that you definitely are not alone. It makes me sad that you hurt yourself.  I don’t place judgement, believe me.  I don’t deal with things well at all, personally. When I get overly stressed, I tend to have rage issues.  I have broken many an inanimate object or sat in my car and screamed.  That tends to be what I fall back on.  The flip side are the days when I lay in… Read the Rest »

My computer has died. Well, most likely the hard drive crashed. The hard drive I replaced last summer.   The good news is, I’m handling it much better than last time. Last time I cried in the Apple store. Two days in a row. In front of two, different, cute genius bar dudes. And not little tears in the eyes, or silent weeping. It was, like, face crumpled, red nose, heaving, sloppy, snotty, UGLY CRYING.   Of course, back then, the contents of my computer felt like my literal entire life. Now, that’s not so much true. Plus, I learned my lesson about backing shit up. Though I’ve probably lost most of my music, I rarely listen to a lot of it anyway. The good stuff I buy on CD…as a backup.  Or ITunes, but something in me just really likes having CDs. I don’t know what it is.   I tend to hoard them in little hidey places. One of my ex-boyfriends opened up my glove box to find 10 CDs scrunched in it and nearly had a heart attack.  My car has a CD player, ok? Sometimes I use it, OK?!   Anyway.   In a really odd… Read the Rest »

I grew up, and still spend time in, West Texas.  And when I say West Texas, I mean about five hours directly west of Dallas, and 100 miles from the nearest mall.  My hometown is the largest town in our county, at a whopping 10,000 people. I grew up on 100 acres of cactus, mesquite trees, wildflowers and various scrappy herbivores and even scrappier carnivores. As a kid, I was always fascinated by hawks, floating on the air currents like they hadn’t a care in the world.  An armadillo my brother cleverly named “Army the Armadillo” lived in the grove of Chinaberry trees.  Armadillos may carry leprosy, but they’re adorable.  Crafty jackrabbits were always an exciting spotting.  They’re fast as hell, and sometimes all you see are their giant ears, bounding through the tall grass.   At night, my brother and I would sit outside and listen to the coyote packs call to each other, from miles apart.  If we couldn’t hear them at first, we would call out ourselves.  Howling and giggling, until the coyotes called back.  They always do. When I was growing up, sunflowers grew to insane heights.  A child, on horseback, nose to nose with flowers as… Read the Rest »