Parker

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Pathetic Parker at the Lenawee Humane Society


To continue from last week’s blog, here is how Dave got her name. I always wanted a “dog named Dave.” I think it may have come from Laverne & Shirley, because Shirley would talk about wanting to marry a doctor, have a boy & girl, a house with a white picket fence, and a dog named Dave. I also always knew I wanted a girl dog, because that is what I was used to. In high school, I decided someday I would have a dog named Dave D. Canine, because it sounds like a real name & then I could scam credit card companies into giving a dog a credit card. I never knew what the D stood for until we got her. She looked like a dingo (australian wild dog), so that is what the D came to stand for. We started calling her Daveweena. So her real full name is Daveweena Dingo Canine.

After we had Dave for a little over a year and gotten her reasonably trained, my husband was itching to get a dog of his own. Unlike myself, he made weekly trips to the Lenawee Humane Society before finding the dog that was right for him. He found a noisy, jumpy German Shorthair Pointer named Archer. Archer had been a stray, so the Humane Society had held him for a week. My husband spotted him the first day he was available for adoption. I infamously said,”You like THAT dog?” I stand by that statement to this day. We took Archer in the room to play with him. He was overly friendly, trying to sit in my lap the whole time. My husband was sure that was the dog for him, so we took him home. He was renamed Parker.

Parker on duty

Once home, Dave walked around plastered next to Parker’s side for a week, trying to dominate him & get him to play with her. He is not a very playful dog. We have hardwood floors, and Parker did not lay down on them for over a year. We took him camping. He refused to lay down. However, he was very fond of the couch. It is interesting how the couch was a doggy no-no zone until Parker came along. As we couldn’t keep him off of it, Dave was then allowed to lay on it as well. (The rule of the house is that animals have to move if humans want to sit on it, though. Dave is the guard dog of the house. I always say that Parker’s job is to hold down the couch, because gravity is very weak right there:) Parker only got a month of dog obedience training, whereas Dave got 16 months. It shows.

We learned that Parker is actually very cat-like. He can go lay on the bed & sleep for hours & you won’t even know he is there. But if it is dinner time, watch out. He will start begging & whining like 2 hours before feeding time. He also goes out to the bathroom more than any dog I have ever met. Part of that is due to the fact that he can drink an entire bowl of water at one time. But I really wish he wouldn’t. He is so whiny, that our best friends who used to dog sit for us, have said they will only continue to watch him if they can freely complain about him. Needless to say, he is going to be boarded on our next out-of-town adventure.

Parker is a giant flight risk. I can’t count the number of times he has runaway. He finds an open gate or he skinnies out between the fence & the house. I find it truly unbelievable that I have a nicely fenced backyard & I still have to tie my dogs up on leads, because otherwise they will escape. Once Dave broke her lead & jumped over the fence, all in the time it took me to take a wizz in the bathroom. Parker usually runs away in the middle of winter during an ice storm. But he once ran away on the first hot day of summer & was found after swimming in a lake. (Ew, stinky dog). Once, that we know of, he has crossed the busiest road near our house. Just the thought of that scares me. I think one time his running away could be partially blamed on my friend who threw a Pure Romance sex toy party at my house. She was making everyone sample lotions & perfumes with pheromones in them. Parker was shut in the other room, but making a God-awful wailing. Shortly after I think he escaped & went looking for love. His dog identification tag is the best investment we ever made. We now have him microchipped as well.

Oh, and as soon as we got Parker & he leaped into the back seat of the SUV with no problem, that is when Dave said,”Well, hell. If he can do that, so can I.” We never had to lift her up into the backseat of the car again.

Parker’s full name is Parker Jo Buhdoo. “Buhdoo” is a great word that I believe my friend invented. You want the definition of buhdoo? Look at Parker’s picture from the Humane Society.

Parker today

Dave, My Little Girl

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Dave's picture from the Lenawee Humane Society


I can’t believe I have been writing this blog for several months now, and have yet to tell you about my dogs. Dave, a Lab-Chow (and possibly Shepherd) mix and Parker, a German Shorthair Pointer.

I wanted a dog for 20 years. Since I was eight & my mom got rid of Ginger, the dog we had as I was growing up. My mom wouldn’t let me have a dog in the trailer. She said there wasn’t enough room. (It would have been crowded, but we could have done it!) I had a goldfish for a short time. Like, I think it lasted all of 3 months. Then I was in an apartment that did not allow dogs. Although my now-husband & I had a hamster & a hedgehog while we lived there.

Then, in 2004, we bought our own house! Ya! (It was happy-time then. We didn’t know that our house would be worth $20,000 less in just 7 years.) That meant we could have a dog! The plan was always that I would get a dog first, then my husband would get one. I think we agreed on that because he had had a dog more recently than I. So, I waited as long as I could to get a dog. I wanted to have the house cleaned & unpacked & organized.

So, 3 weeks after we moved into the house, we went to the Humane Society. Now, I had spotted a dog on the Internet I was in love with at the Monroe County Humane Society. It was an orange/tan shepherd-lab mix named Chloe. Or Zoey. I don’t remember. Anyway, my husband was too lazy to drive that far, so we went to the Lenawee Humane Society that was only five minutes from our house first. There I saw a very pathetic dog named “Sunny.” She was orange & a mutt. That fit all my criteria. All my pets had always been orange. And I really wanted a mutt. She just laid there on the concrete floor, looking so sad. She was the only dog that didn’t bark at me. She did come get a treat from me when I offered her one. She had been fixed just 2 days before. So, my husband & I took her into a room to play with her. She looked out the window a lot & peed on the floor. That was our first glimpse at her playful personality. Also, what should have been our first clue that she wasn’t really housebroken, even though she was a year and a half old.

We ended up taking “Sunny” home. Because she had just been fixed, she was still sore, and my husband had to lift her hind end up to get into the SUV. (We would have to continue to lift her into the back of the Aztek for the next year.) I turned around to look at her in the backseat of the car, before we even left the parking lot, and said,”Oh no. You are not a Sunny. You are a Dave.” About a week later, we discovered that Dave did indeed have a bark. Or rather, a howl. My husband & I were being goofy, and she howled at us. I looked at my husband & said,”Is that good or bad?” He said,” I think she is happy.” My husband was very happy because he had always wanted a dog that could howl.

We had a rough start with Dave. My sister-in-law told me that she had seen Dave with LHS in April. We didn’t adopt her til Friday, August 13th. I think with the combination of being at the Humane Society so long & having surgery, she probably felt like no one loved her & was very depressed. She is a dominant dog. Once she realized she had a home, she proceeded to try to run the house. We took her to Dog Obedience classes, and now she is a dream dog (After years of work, of course). We went to Kate Cook, who I highly recommend, but I don’t think she trains dogs anymore:( I still have to hold her leash ultra-tight if we pass another dog on a walk. Dave is dominant & wants to go hump them. And she can’t be in the backyard unsupervised, because she has been known to climb over our 4ft chain link fence to get at another dog.

Later I found the picture of the Zoey dog in Monroe I wanted to adopt. She looks VERY similar to Dave. My Dave is my dream puppy. I wouldn’t want to give her up for anything.

To find out why a girl dog got named Dave, you will just have to come back for my post next week:)

Dave today

Dead Dad Movies

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You may wonder what a “Dead Dad” movie is. It is a movie where the father dies or is dead, then somehow is magically brought back to life to share more time with their offspring. (And we are talking “quality” movies here. Not Dad coming back as a ghost or as a Golden Retriever.) I didn’t realize this theme at first. I was just drawn to these movies and wasn’t sure why. After I realized they had a common theme, I could realize I was probably subconsciously drawn to them because my Dad died before I was born. There are four main dead dad movies I regularly watch. Feel free to leave a comment & let me know of some others.

Field of Dreams — Son almost runs out of money & loses his house building a baseball field, only to realize it is so that he could play catch with his dead father again. Stars Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Amy Madagan.

Late for Dinner — Father & his brother-in-law are accidentally cryogenically frozen & then thawed out in the future. Late for Dinner came out at the same time as Mel Gibson’s Forever Young. But Late for Dinner is a much better movie. The father is reunited with his grown daughter. Stars Brian Wimmer, Peter Berg, Marcia Gay Harden.
One Magic Christmas — Father is shot in a bank hold-up on Christmas Eve. His daughter must travel to the North Pole, where dead people work in Santa’s Workshop (is that Heaven or Hell?!!), to ask Santa to make her “Dad not dead anymore.” I feel so bad for Mary Steenburgen’s character in this movie. At one point her husband & kids are dead, leaving her all alone, just because she doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. Believe…or else.

Frequency — Father from the past who is dead in the present talks to his grown son through a magical CB radio with the help of solar flares. Father finds a way to survive into the future to be reunited with his troubled son. I would like this movie better if someone else besides Jim Caviezel was cast as the son. I find him very creepy. Plot heavy. Also stars Dennis Quaid.

So, if you have a Dad who is still alive, celebrate him not just on Father’s Day, but every day. And if you don’t, watch one of these movies to make your “Dad not dead anymore”.

For more on Dead Dad movies, please visit:

Dead Dad Movie (Non-Feature Film Edition) https://imnotstalkingyou.com/2012/08/09/dead-dad-movie-non-feature-film-edition/

Why is it that everyone is always complaining about the high cost of health insurance?

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The proper thing to complain about is the high cost of health care. Or rather, the outrageous prices that doctors & medical facilities bill us and/or the insurance companies. If the medical industry did not charge so much, the insurance companies would not need to pay so much, and we would all be happier people. It is my belief that we should be able to pay for reasonable health needs ourselves, without insurance or declaring bankruptcy. That is how it used to be done, before employers offered health insurance as a benefit. And soon, I believe, they will no longer be offering this benefit.

I’m sure some would argue that doctors have all those years of schooling to pay for. You know what? That was their choice. Don’t make me pay your student loans. I had my own & I paid them myself. Some would say that we need to pay for all the technology now involved in the medical profession. Really. All industries have had an increase in technology. If the grocery store started passing on to you their overhead charges in gastronomical amounts, I think we would all complain. Doctors order tons of tests, just because they can. (Sorry, I was raised not to trust doctors.)

As times get harder & harder economically, I believe employers are going to stop offering medical insurance, or make it only available to their top executives. As it is now, insurance is so expensive, I’m sure many families can no longer afford it. And while most states have some sort of insurance to put your kids on, if you have too much in savings, you will be denied. Punished for trying to prepare & be responsible.

Who are the losers? All of us, in our insurance premiums & copays & deductables. Who are the biggest losers? Those without any insurance. When you have insurance, there is a portion of your bill that the insurance company just says “Oh, I don’t think so. We will knock a few thousand right off the top of that….”, and then they pay the remaining agreed amount. If you do not have insurance, you better bet the hospital/doctor will just bill you for the whole darn stinking thing.

Casey Anthony Trial

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I could never serve on the jury of the Casey Anthony trial. I have believed she was guilty from the beginning. I have followed this case from the beginning. I used to hear about it on the CNN.com Live webcast (I miss you Reggie, Naamua, and the rest…..), as I live in Michigan, not Florida, & do not have CNN on my cable plan. They used to show clips from the Nancy Grace show (I still am not clear on her motives). And I was watching CNN.com Live live when they found Caylee’s remains in the swamp in Florida. Heart-breaking.

I watch parts of the trial daily on CNN.com, from the jury selection up til today’s testimony by Casey’s brother. So far, everything I heard on the news is what I am hearing as testimony in court. Over & over, you hear what seems like proof of Casey’s lying. I loved Tuesday when they asked the mom about people/things Casey talked about all the time–the nanny, friends, boyfriends, jobs–who under police investigation have been proved to never have existed.

Casey seems like a smart girl, if most likely an habitual liar. So, why, if her daughter went missing, would she “conduct her own investigation”? And just when was she conducting this search, if she was busy living at her boyfriend’s apartment & going out to clubs. Oh right, maybe the 8hrs a day that she lied & said she was at work. If you were really conducting such a search, even if you didn’t tell people, wouldn’t you search like 16 hours a day? The people near Casey at the time have testified that she seemed happy, not worried or scared, never said anything about her daughter being missing. She told everyone Caylee was at the nanny’s. The question everyone forgot to ask was: How does a party girl in her early 20’s afford a nanny?

All the phone calls I have heard between Casey & her mother sound like me & my mother. A strained relationship. I believe that Casey felt that her mother loved Caylee more than her. Which, could very possibly have been true. It seems really easy for me to believe that Casey wanted to party, wanted her mother off her back, wanted her mother to love her more than Caylee, and did something about it. If it isn’t the true story, it sure makes for a very obvious one. Unlike….

The Defense, where she was molested as a child & it scarred her so bad now that when her daughter dies in a drowning accident, she tells no one? Anything is possible, but I can’t bring myself to believe that one. During the month Caylee was missing & only Casey knew, she said Caylee was happily with the nanny. Then the story was that the nanny kidnapped her. Now she drowned in a pool? Being proven in court as a liar, it makes it very hard to believe any of her stories.

To watch daily yourself, go to http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream1

Or

http://www.cnn.com/video/ then click on Live on CNN.com

I can’t wait to see how this one comes out. Actually, I can. If Casey Anthony gets off, I will be one p*ssed puppy.

It is also good to watch the trail to see how court actually is conducted, unlike on Law & Order or Judge Judy.

Oh, and I frickin’ love this judge! He is a jolly African-American fellow with a southern drawl. He really makes the trial!