the finest piece of mechanical equipment i have ever owned is the old gumball yuppy puppy....
it has been battered and banged on for some 300 great dane puppies... and as of 5 minutes ago mindy learned to use it and is now serving herself breakfast.... the new yuppys now sold on ebay and elsewhere are not bad... but inferior... smaller..plastic...and the treats do not fall as well... it is the treat falling that hits the metal dish and is it's own "clicker" type training device.
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we took bentley,mindy 2 little pups plus noel and one cleanly bathed black dog.... they "worked the crowd" at an ebsco luncheon .it was that black /washed dog that encourages .the educational question for this morning...
why do you need to put cardboards over the windows in a barn ?
megan had washed dog xxxx i forget his name.... and fluffed him dry... he had a slightly brown tinge.... which someone noticed...and said.. "he must have a brown dane in his family history" --- ouch.....never in the 30 years when i have owned all his relatives...(i have gone over the 3 colors of danes before on this DD.. harls-- browns and blues-- and personally... i would never mix the colors.... i like the harls..).
back to the cardboard---- and black dane hair does bleach to brownish in the sun, -- which is pretty un noticeable until the pure black of the next coat comes in . you then comb out all the bleached/brown dead hair... how to have that beautiful black shiney coat year round??
i remember.... horsey friend-- lyn cashman- a real quarterhorse person.. had a black QH mare which she kept totally covered in daylight... even her ears were covered -- only eyes and nostrils showed-- to keep her black for the "show ring"..
-next part of story.... i ended up buying a pair of black draft horses- percherons from a dairy farmer "earl" in upper new york--- duke and dick... black ... --earl had a "hitch" of 6 that he showed--and worked... and he only let them out to pasture at night, or to work them-- the rest of the time they stood in their stalls and he had all the light blocked with cardboard to keep them black...
earl was a horseman of the real kind... he drove the 6 to work them- i was fascinated to be in the wagon while he was breaking in a new youngster....i will never forget it-- we were pulling a huge manure spreader must have weighed several tons... and earl simply said-- "if he behaves we spread around the hill-- if he misbehaves we spread uphill"-- that was a life lesson to me...
i keep that in mind when kids come here to do community service... if it is because the need it for national honor society, they water dogs,.... if they have a court ordered 20 hours for misbehaving... they have to add and churn in lime to the manure pile.. or fix fences in the mosquito season...
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there is one other funny story about riding with earl- i had just jumped on the wagon without much thought, and he spun those 6 horses around at a right angle very quickly and i thought they were out of control--that he had not planned to do that....- i panic'd not realizing the wagon was "cut under"--i.e. the wheels fit under the seats so a right angle was possible... if it is not cut under the wagon tips over and people and horses get killed...
and another cut under story--- we were doing the kennedy and fitzgeralsd movie in boaton -- with horses and carriages- janine had a lot of horse exerience- but had never dirven a horse in harness... we harnessed up and hooked to a wagon much like the amish buggy in the arena and as janine pulled out into boston traffic by the state house- i yelled.." that buggy is not cut under" and off she went... she was gone -- for hours-- totally missing from the movie set... turns out they had intended to have her make a very sharp turn -- over 90 degrees right in front of teh state house-- but that wwas physically impossible so she had to go straight -- on into the financial and shopping district she wandered unable to fid a place to make a very wide "u-turn"
end of cut under stories... i think.
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time has apparently come to change all these wonderful mitubitusi temperture control devices from heat to air conditionaing... these are lovely..david #1 installed them being certified hivac or whatever -- during thier heat phase they have been spectaculr as perfect air fills teh rooms softly... to change them to a/c involves pushing one button on each remote-- sounds simple except it is the typical remote with buttons to have the machine match the temperture of sydney australia at 4am next thursday.. but i will try.
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when i hear of all these ads about how simple and wonderful it is to get credit cards and buy anything in the world you don't need.. i think of earl and pulling that credit card debt uphill for years.
