By the Way

There are wee Borzoi puppies at my house for the first time in 3 years. 9 of them, 7 boys, 2 girls, they are 6 days old today all doing well. While there were no surprises as to the colors I got, the distribution of colors is a surprise I expected an even mix of reds or red brindles and blacks or silvers and I got 7 dominant blacks in various patterns , 1 red or gold brindle and 1 that I think is tri with brindle. This is the "Z" litter skipping some of those letters where its hard to find a cool name

Fort Smith pictures

This is the HQ for old Fort Smith ( although not the oldest Fort Smith as all that is left of that is the foundation of some buildings.) In front of the building is/were the parade grounds. The Fort is in a lovely park on the river or perhaps I should say rivers as there is a confluence ( I think that is the term for joining of two rivers) on the banks below the grounds of the old Fort.

The town itself is pretty hopping on Saturday nights, downtown lots of old buildings, and jazz/blues bars with the doors propped open and "tavern crawlers". Next time I'm over there I think I'll have to explore that further, (for informational purposes only of course)
There is a huge Catholic church in town really impressive you almost have to hurt your neck to see the top of it. There is a LOT to see in Fort Smith. They also have a BIG historic district full of old homes with ornate woodwork, and amazing leaded and stained glass windows and doors some of them on cobblestone streets! This yellow house is only one of many I took photos of on Sunday morning before leaving. Now as previously mentioned I can't leave a good cemetery unexplored and as luck has it Fort Smith has two that I would like to have spent more time in. One is a US national military cemetery. Lovely grounds although not as spectacular as that beautiful one I came across in New Mexico back in February 08. The other cemetery and a real must see in Forth Smith is an OLD OLD cemetery called Oak Cemetery where the old US marshals, judges and the men they hung are buried along with lots of just regular law abiding folk I'm sure. The grounds of this cemetery are beautiful, wrought iron fence around it. Incredible monuments and statuary throughout. These are a few photos of some of the monuments there.
As best I can tell about the statue to the left the fellow was born in 1837 probably fought in Civil War ( the uniform he is wearing appears Confederate) and died in 1920. His wife was born in 1847 and died later in 1920. Could not figure out the other woman, maybe it's his mother but she didn't appear to be buried there.

Cemeteries are of course sombre, sad places to the right is the grave of a small child as I recall dead at 10 years of age. What a heartbreak for the parents. Life was truly difficult in the 1800s for everyone.
I have no idea about the Celtic Cross monument but it was very handsome and really wanted its photo taken and of course I am a fan of Celtic Crosses even named a dog ( one of my favorite) that once.

What cemetery would be complete without guardian angels? There are several in Oak Cemetery. I think my two favorite though were this kneeling one next to one of the roads in the cemetery and the very tall monument where the angel almost seems to float in the trees.

Bummer Man

Received an email back from my nurse at Vandy. Bummer, I am iron, vitamin D and vitamin A deficient despite taking a lot of supplements. So she is prescribing me more iron and D and told me to double my daily multivitamin dosage. OK. It's a bummer because I've felt so good I was shocked that I am low on iron especially. Oh well, deal with it.

Then I hear, read and see on the news our sales tax revenues are so deficient ( guess everyone in TN is JUST BUYING GASOLINE) that the governor is talking about 1600 -2000 LAYOFFS of state employees. Ugh. That is a lot. 20 years with them but you never know where you will fall on the food chain until they start laying folks off. Hmmm, maybe I'll be moving to NM or WY a lot sooner than I thought. I hope not, I really wanted to stick them for that 30 year retirement although it is pretty sad (47% of your highest 5 years average).

Still have to put some of those Fort Smith AR photos up here ah well maybe this weekend since I'll actually be home then for the first time ( and last time ) in a month.

Another in the long list

of things I wish I had not seen. Still photos of Eight Belles desperately trying to get up after breaking both her front legs in the Derby. It isn't like myself and most of America don't know what a fatally injured thoroughbred looks like. Almost every day there is racing you can read about it, and the big events have treated us to these horrific images burned into our brains forever. So pardon me if the only thing I can think of when I think of horse racing are horses breaking down and thrashing around to get up while track personnel try to calm them down and hold them down. Nothing excites those spectators like a big downed animal rolling around like its in pain and probably knows its life is short. Not anthropomorphizing, large quadrapeds are hard wired to depend on their legs for escape. When they don't work, they know there's trouble.

I don't understand WTF is wrong with thoroughbred race people, can they not give those horses one more damn year to get ready. Just one and that really wouldn't be the best but it would beat running immature but very fast horses too young and pushing them so hard. It would surely beat euthanizing so many, and bringing down eventually the wrath of the AR crowd because it is such a horrible and visual image they can use, and I can't effing argue with them about this at all.

So good bye to another great one Eight Belles. I just wish the last photo I'd looked at of you was sailing along on four good legs at over forty miles an hour instead of being held down in the dirt at the Derby with your two shattered legs splayed out before you.

They must think we all have had a lobotomy

Else how could gas companies pretend that there is an oil shortage and that oil is really costing them more too at the same time they post $30++ MILLION dollars in FREAKING PROFITS A QUARTER!!!

Else how could a presidential candidate claim he didn't realize or agree with his pastor's radical anti American views despite spending 20 FREAKING YEARS IN THE PEWS OF HIS CHURCH and calling him FAMILY only a few months ago??

Else how could they borrow BILLION from the Chinese to send a measly check to tax paying Americans? A check that will only fill our gas tanks at current prices a dozen times or so.

What in the HELL is going on. I realize that somehow King George came into power through hook and crook the first time, and due to the radical right convincing the US that Jesus was too a Republican the second time, but the dumbing down of this country surely has an end in sight?

It costs us over $600 a month just to drive back and forth to work. That isn't transportation cost that is a HOUSE PAYMENT or what one should be for crying out loud. It's a good thing we are not on any heavy duty meds because we'd have to choose gas or drugs, and we'd have to pick gas just so we could keep our insurance at work.

I can't watch the news because I can't stand to hear about how wonderful everything is in Iraq every day. Never mind all those roadside bombings, dead brown people and American servicemen and women sent back maimed, burned, crippled or in other serious need. Don't worry about them we can just shove them in some rat and roach infested Army /VA hospital while Halliburton and Exxon continue to shovel their billions of $$ in blood money into their pockets while standing on the backs of the dead and dying US Armed Forces.

It's been awhile

Dang as they say down South, it's been a "coon's age" (whatever that is) since I went to a dogshow and showed a dog , (well aside from the Rarities show two weeks after my bypass in January). So toodled up to Clarksville today to show Kozima for the first time since picking him up in TX back in February. WD, BOS for 1 pt so I was glad I made it there although I wasn't sure it was going to happen since I24 became a parking lot twice on my way up there and as I pulled in to park they were charging for parking, couldn't find cash had to write a freaking check in a hurry, drive down the hill, grab the dog, grab a showlead, pulled everything out of the show bag because apparently that lead was an integral part of the critical mass in that bag. Put leash on dog and literally had to run up the hill. Got there with less than 2 minutes to spare, the Salukis were already in the ring only two of them and then the Borzoi. Now while some may enjoy being fashionably late it really is not my cup of tea.

On a happy note my friend Rebecca was there with her monster camera so there will be many great photos of Kozima stacked and moving later on this week for his webpage.

Do as I say not as I do...

While this is a rant about dog breeders, it is certainly applicable in all areas of life. I certainly remember it applied to more than one of the Southern Baptist preachers I grew up with.

At any rate years ago I acquired a dog I thought ( and still do think) was fabulous. He had everything I wanted him for, type, speed, dentition, great running gear, topline, tail carriage, and his head on completely straight. I love the dog, he was a very successful competition dog for me, passed the health tests got a CHIC number and I used him several times in my breeding program, in addition to allowing him to be used by a couple of outside bitches. He produced number 1 dogs in racing and lure coursing and many dogs ranked in both in addition to producing ring champions and being a number 1 racing dog himself. He's been a lot of fun. Anyway, this one novice whackado jumped up and down saying I was going to cause some bottleneck in the performance dog gene pool with him and that I shouldn't breed him young (just under 3) even though he was health tested and cleared.
Years later ( and this person is still a novice due to their mindset and lack of animal husbandry skills) I have watched several debacles of this same person doing things they haranged others for either in person or online. Things like:
a. breeding young dogs with no "credentials" and no health testing
b. breeding dogs that had produced things like hip dysplasia without testing the parent who produced it for it before using them again
c. breeding litters and then placing all of the pups (I've never said there was anything wrong with it but this crackpot used to jump on people on lists for the same thing)
d. breeding litters when they don't have money or resources for keeping them all as long as necessary (this was the first thing my original mentor told me was required for breeding Borzoi ie. be able to keep them a long time as they are not always easy to find the correct placements for)
e. contacting people's puppy buyers and saying nasty things about the parents or the lines to try and prevent them getting a puppy
f. linebreeding on the same problems (hell the SAME DOGS) they are intent on giving other people a hard time about
g. selling puppies that aren't permanently identified (one of their puppy buyers told me to my face when she was picking up a puppy that it was not chipped or tattooed)

The list could go on but you get the idea, truly, "Do as I say not as I do". This kind of person really should be breeding Chi Poos or Puggles something they can sell quick, requiring no health testing and bail out of everytime they have a personal problem.

Camera Hog

Last post tonight I promise. Keelo is one of those dogs that ends up with lots of photos of him everywhere. These two taken in New Mexico in February are kind of like, look at the mountains or look at him? So a compromise was struck and I took a bunch of photos of him looking all self stacked and show doggy ( well except for having his rabbit hunting ears on) all over the desert countryside. Here are a couple of my favorites. Above Keelo looking back at me like "Hey, are you getting all this?"

and then "Hmmm, I know if I keep my ears up like this I will HEAR a rabbit."

Two very different Floridas

Last December I judged one of the ASFA trial in Northern Florida. LONG LONG drive for me around 600 miles, drove all night and made a minor wrong turn driving into the property so instead of immediately coming upon the field trial, instead I came upon this lovely little lake at sunrise. I parked on the dam and took this photo. If I ever have time again I'd love to paint it, I love these pastels.

Now this "Florida" ( pronounced I believe Flor EE da) is about as dry a place as the one above is water logged. This is the Florida Mts of Southwestern NM with a storm brewing over them in early February of this year. Love all those yucca or century plants or whatthehellever it is they are called in the foreground. I'm sure there are a bunch of jacks in the foreground too but they are hiding.

My first trip to Wyoming

Found these photos in the disaster area known as the computer room the other day, I have apparently forgotten to put them in an album for 2.5 years. AYEEEEEEEE. Anyway thought I'd scan a few of the more scenic ones from my October 2005 trip to Wyoming where I took the scenic Oregon/Mormon/Westward Ho FuddDucker trail leaving the Interstate at Ogallalla (Is that too many L's or not enough?) going up to Scottsbluff then cutting over to WY on county roads ending up North of Cheyenne on I25. Would scan the Scottsbluff picture but it is surrounded by a freaking golf course so not very "Western" looking to my eye.

The first picture is one of the landmarks of those emigrant trails known today as Chimney Rock (its a national park service place) but locals say the Indians there called it something that means deer penis rock. I don't know, I've never seen one.

Then there's jail and courthouse rocks also a landmark but unfortunately they are on private property so this is as close as you get, there's a marker there on the side of this little narrow county road explaining how they rise 400 feet from plains of the North Platte and can be seen for around 30 miles on the trail. I think the guy that owns the property offers wagon rides around them. Hey a farmer has to make a buck with diesel worth the price of gold.
One of my favorite trail landmarks is this little tree on Interstate 80, it is so unique (and was noted in several emigrants diaries on the Overland trail) that there is a pullout or pullin from both sides of the interstate so you can stop, take pictures etc. You can't go to the bathroom though, no facilities, just the tree.

And the first sign that I was in real cowboy country was this one for the Dead Horse Food and Spirits, 24 hr gas and diesel in LaGrange. Next time I'm through there I believe I will pop in for a bit. Maybe they have cool T shirts.