"honestly ----if it ain't ants, it's fleas".....  was the  polite way the  last generation--- once removed said "GD#$%^&*"  and went on to talk about the male offspring of a female dog.

first topic.. fleas---- in my generation  i did not know a dog without fleas.... and often dog owners would spend a lazy  sunny afternoon with a dog in. their lap, flipping hair backwards to expose a flea which they could grab and squish.. then move on looking for the next one. my how times change.  good and bad..

 the bad--- is the  flea collars which have made the news  lately.... bella's mom said that  george ( the worlds greatest service dog) had been given a  flea collar.. and she noticed within a day that george was not himself--- no zoomies in the yard,. sleeping downstairs instead of bella's bed. Luckily she heard something about flea collars and removed his -----in 5 days---- and all of a sudden he was his old self... instead of just plain  old.  how quickly she could have assumed  "old".  which goes to prove a lot of things.. like jumping to conclusions.

I n the midst of late summer vacation schedules Upsetting the peace and tranquility, someone in their infinite wisdom decided that schools should start in August I don't know whatever happened to the fact that schools started after Labor Day.. what once was letting the kids off for the summer to help harvest whatever needed harvesting... Has now got all tangled with snow  days and minimum days and hours in the classroom and all of a sudden or August gets all discombobulated with the stores all selling notebooks and pencils while at the same time trying to sneak in all Halloween masks,,, With their usual Santa clauses. starting school after Labor Day once made the year quite regular even though in June you might go an extra day or two depending on the blizzards giving us snow days.

 

Oh dear now that reminds me----here we go---my favorite magazine story... I once had a job managing the distribution of the want ad magazine.. and if anyone could not go and do their route on a Tuesday. I had to go do it for them-----  which is why I know every small variety store north of the Charles River..

One snow day I was at a variety store in Lowell MA and the place was full of little  kids buying candy running around because school had been called off. the man behind the counter was very pleasant to them and helped  them pick out the green candy way down on the bottom or they Hershey bar over on the left whatever-----so when I finally got up to the register I said to him. “ Gee you're very nice to these children”. 

and he replied “ why shouldn't I be... maybe half of them are  mine”.

 

There are some new people lately who may not have heard that story before.. but it is one of my favorites.

Speaking of new people. I will be adding names to this e-mail list.. from the list of people who have bought chicken bricks..  if you don't want the e-mail there is a way of unsubscribing,,, but I get a report daily as to how many people read this foolish daily doggy and we are very close to having 1500 individual people open this on a daily basis.. which also means if I forget to mail it I get 1500 emails asking how my health is..  Every once in a while I do forget or get sidetracked.

 

for example....   in the last 24 hours. our entire staff was out running the neighborhood calling for Sloane... a lovely dog who's been in training.. he was not at his kennel and they feared the worst like hit by a car on route 95 or something..  at the same time one of our dogs who has not been well lately with a terribly upset tummy.. proceeded to produce black stool..  which usually indicates blood in the stool...  with that the phone rang and Camera Person .. schnauzer Mama I think it was called   to tell me that either the  baby horse had cut himself badly or had a piece of hay hanging down the front of his face.. all I could ask   “was is it spurting.?”   . which is my criteria forward absolute emergency like the barn is on fire

 

at any rate addressing these problems one at a time ----daughter Janine had picked up Sloan instead of Carl.  and left Sloan in carl's house two towns away.  because carl's owner was due back that evening and wanted his dog there... that meant Sloan figured he'd been moved to some super duper kennel with beds.  and chew toys the likes of which he'd never seen before... and it meant that our staff had to notify the animal control that we had a dog missing ----when Janine finally figured out she picked up the wrong dog ...  that worked its way out OK...

the black stool problem was transported to the vet hospital...    and the horse type doctor. came and had to stitch up the baby horses face

at which time the staff went back to “doing nothing” like sweeping the floor or picking poop.   Working here is a combination of having nothing to do or being so impossibly challenged that it's nerve wracking.  

 

My take?  August is always impossible  !!  so please go buy your chicken bricks if you can....  Sunday shatting  is this Sunday !!