Owner: Border Wars: A Border Collie Blog URL:http://borderwars.blogspot.com Join Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 06:04:57 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Analysis of hot topics in the dog world, especially border collies. Critique of movies, books, politics, religion, language, music from a libertarian perspective. Agility, Frisbee, Obedience, Conformation, Sheep Herding, Flyball, and more. Site statistics:Click here
I have to buy WHAT? 2008-02-12 14:11:00 Here's a post that I wrote up a few months ago that I neglected to publish at the time.Breeding and not-breeding dogs has made for some classic conversations at the check out line when I'm buying stuff for the pups.I thought I had it bad in college, when I was the Financial Manager for a 50 person house and the Kitchen Manager (a woman) and I would make trips to Costco to buy several hundred dollars worth of junk food once or twice a month to stock the kitchen. We'd get looks and comments from people in line, as we pulled up three flat bed carts, piled high with every sort of trans fat vector imaginable. We'd hear everything from, "No wonder he's fat," to "They must be Mormons with six kids." And it wasn't much better telling people you were buying for 50 people.... they'd usually respond,
Signs of the Apocalypse I 2008-02-11 01:48:00 Do you know what incompetent educators do when they utterly fail to teach children English in an English speaking country, children of parents who speak no other language? They decide that they'll elevate the garbage those children do speak to language level and declare victory. Give it a catchy name like "ebonics" and give it no more thought. Problem solved.Oh but we'd be myopic if we thought ebonics was the first time. The same process degraded Latin into Italian over a few hundred years and when someone with an IQ above room temperature wrote something decent in the new mongrel dialect, Italian's place was secured as a language in history. Word. ...err...Parola!If you don't like test results, you can either raise the level of performance or you can lower expectations. At every step our Read more:Apocalypse
On Parvo, Patents, and Press Releases 2008-02-10 12:03:00 A self serving press release from Oklahoma State University has the dogblogosphere all aflutter at the "new" killer strain of Parvo.(the press release has been yanked from the OSU site, but Christie over at PetConnection was kind enough to repost it)Turns out that the CPV 2c strain is nothing new, your dogs are as safe as they ever were, and the vague and misleading language of the press release is to blame for the hysteria.The press release has one real purpose, to brag about the filing of a patent on the "characteristics" of CPV 2c. Patents
on such things are used by universities to make money off of any drugs or products that are developed by themselves or others. It's part of an intellectual property land grab where you file patents on anything that you think will be more valuable than Read more:Press
On Thin Ice, Again 2008-02-07 22:42:00 I'm saying this again, because obviously the message didn't get through the first time. Don't go out on to the ice after your dog.Only days after my first post, a woman ran after her dog, fell in, and had to be rescued. They both survived no thanks to the owner.Now, just yesterday, another owner who "knew better" went out on the ice, fell in, screamed her head off like a "little girl," and had to be rescued by a teenaged boy, Jared Vigil, who was going home sick from school (apparently not sick enough to hinder his heroic rescue).Guess what, the dog, "Willow," is just fine despite the owner, Connie Oswald, almost killing herself and getting a young man to go out onto the ice after her risking his own well being. She didn't have a leash, she didn't have a cell phone, and she didn't call for Read more:Again
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600 Dead Puppies 2008-02-07 15:18:00 Oklahoma State University has discovered over inflated reports old observations that a nasty strain of Parvo has recently jumped the Atlantic Ocean and is now being found unremarkably widespread in the United States.Unlike local strains of Parvo, the Canine Parvo Virus type 2C (CPV-2c) strain can effect adult dogs, even those previously vaccinated against Parvo as the strain is not included in current vaccines. That means that every dog in the United States is a potential victim of this nasty virus that attacks the dog's heart and digestive tract.A patent has been filed on the characteristics of the U.S. CPV-2c. The team reports that 500 samples were submitted from locations in south California to south Florida. The published paper has been presented at national level meetings and internat
Rabies: Blame Canada 2008-01-25 01:43:00 Mere months after Canine Rabies has been declared defeated in America, the Canadians have to crash the Rabies Epidemic After-Party.Officials believe at least 60 people came into contact with a rabid dog on Jan. 3. The infected puppy was being held with 10 to 12 other dogs. They have all been sold and health officials believe they have all been infected with rabies. At least three different breeds are involved. The infected puppy and one other dog in the group have died, Susan Sperling, spokesperson with Toronto Public Health confirmed to CTV.ca....Officials are looking for three border collies, one yorkie cross, a maltese and an unknown breed.And what could be worse for a Border Collie, famed for their unsurpassed gray matter, than to be infected with Rabies? Not much. And what's with the Read more:Blame
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Heath Ledger, Human Border Collie, Dead 2008-01-22 17:09:00 Australian actor (in America) Heath
Ledger was found dead today in Mary-Kate Olsen's New York apartment. And why, you ask, would a blog about BorderCollie
controversy and news be covering the death of an actor?Well, because Heath Ledger is a border collie, of course. Well, at least according to the book Men are Dogs: In the Best Possible Sense by Molly Hewitt.In addition to having a "fairly broad skull, soft flowing mane that frames the face, gentle eyes that see more than they let on, and broad muscular hindquarters," I suspect that Ledger's role as a bisexual cowboy who spent a summer herding sheep in Wyoming played a large part in his selection as "Famous [Human] Border Collie."Sheeple will note that since Ledger is a pretty boy, was from Australia, and was only acting at herding shee
Grizzly Man Mockumentary 2008-01-21 00:18:00 Animal Planet ran a marathon of the Werner Herzog documentary “Grizzly
Man” today against the AFC and NFC championship games. I assume most of you watched football. So did I. But seeing the movie on the small screen once again was a sign that I should repost a little rant I did on the film that caused quite a stir on the IMDB message boards (a producer of the film even contacted me, mostly in agreement). The rant is a bit long, but rants are a quick read since you don’t have to think too hard and just go with the flow… kind of like Timothy Treadwell. Here’s a snippet from the first salvo where I ask the question, who was the worst actor in the documentary (there aren’t supposed to be actors in documentaries, by the way). There’s a bit near the end where I note the similaritie
Anarchists of Puppy-dom 2008-01-15 05:28:00 Raising a Border Collie puppy is a true joy, or perhaps a true terror, depending on your perspective. Chuck Terzella of Unconfirmed Sources falls into the later camp:I know, I know, the first thing people think when they see a little puppy, Border Collies included, romping and playing is, "Oh, how adorable!" Right. That's just what they want you to think. It's all part of their nefarious plot. You see, Border Collies are the anarchists of Puppy
-dom, dedicated to the total destruction of all you hold dear... antique furniture, sleep, shoes, Persian carpets, you name it. Their weapons are varied and unexpected. Of course there are teeth and claws, the usual implements of destruction. Add to that IED's (Improvised Excretory Devices) and biological urine based sneak attacks that make body armo
Photo of the Day: Me at Three 2008-01-15 00:15:00 Here's a shot of me at three years old, giving authority all the respect it deserves, while strawberry popsicle runs down my chin onto my turtleneck shirt.
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PeTA Desperate for Attention 2008-01-14 23:35:00 In an attempt to deflect attention from recent news reports that they kill over 97% of the pet animals they get their hands on, PeTA is floundering around trying to make other news by latching on to any and every story that is making headlines.They're like sleaze bag attorney Mark Geragos, or quack pop psychologist Dr. Phil chasing after celebrities trying to get their name in the headlines by offering unwanted and ineffectual "expert" advice.What the hell does PeTA have to do with Roger Clemens? Nothing relevant except Roger is in the headlines over possible steroid use and PeTA wants a piece of that action, so they've sent him a letter (one of those open letters where you don't give a crap if the person reads it, you're just trying to get attention).The author, PeTA Assistant Director Da Read more:Desperate
Purina Incredible Dog Challenge 2007 2008-01-13 15:33:00 The finals of the PurinaIncredible
Dog Challenge
is on TV today and tomorrow. ABC is airing it at 3:00 Mountain in a few minutes and ESPN 2 has it tomorrow at Noon.Scheduled Air TimesIf you miss the full program, Purina as some select videos of the event on their website.Be sure to tune in for Frisbee, Agility, Dock Diving, and more. The best canine athletes in the country go head to head, the pride of the third estate.
PeTA's Deadliest Year 2008-01-11 03:05:00 I told you before about Adopt A PeTA Pet = Kill 9 More, and that was only a month ago based upon then current data documenting PeTA killings up through 2005. Now I'd have to revise that title to read "Adopt A PeTA Pet = Kill 248 More" based upon the release of PeTA's 2006 death toll.In all of 2006, PeTA only rescued 12 .... TWELVE... pets. One pet per month.In that same time, they killed 2,981 companion animals of the 3,061 they took in. That's an adoption rate that is LESS THAN HALF OF ONE PERCENT, and a kill rate that is OVER 97%. It also makes 2006 PeTA's deadliest year yet. They killed 248 pets for every 1 they adopted.This is a horrible update to PeTA's continued pattern of companion animal slaughter, and the only way it could be worse is if PeTA got their hands on more dogs since alm Read more:Deadliest
The Myth of Christmas Puppies 2008-01-09 01:09:00 The second most popular Christmas
meme in the dogblogosphere was discussing Saturnalia and the pagan roots of the holiday celebration; I wrote one, Terrierman wrote two, and Christie kicked off the trend last year with hers. The common message was to expose the weak foundations of popularly held beliefs and shed some light on under-appreciated facts. And Christmas is the holiday of under-appreciated facts (Santa isn't real and it's not Jesus' birthday, sorry).The most popular Christmas meme was "Don't buy Christmas Puppies!" Pet Connection ran a slew of posts on the topic: Holiday shopping season begins, and the puppy-millers are ready!, A pet is not a toy. A pet is not a toy. Rinse. Repeat., As another storm moves in, remember the puppy-mill dogs …, Christmas puppies: Testing my own adv
Ultimate Dog Lover 2008-03-16 04:55:00 Gina at Pet Connection has been hard at work on her next book, The Ultimate
Dog Lover, along with two other books on lesser animals. The publishers have graciously opened the pages of the book to submissions of prose and photos from the masses.Seeing that I'm right in the middle of a crusade against corruption, I'm really in the wrong state of mind to write something feel-good and uplifting for inclusion in the book; although if my efforts and the efforts of those I'm working for and with are successful, more than 30 people will have a chance at rebuilding their lives. If that day comes, it sure will be uplifting and feel-good, but the road there involves a lot of hard work, legal strategy, and a good dose of luck.So I submitted a few photos instead.I've had a lot of luck with photo contes
Poison Prevention 2008-03-17 20:47:00 The third week in March (funny timing, this, considering all the people getting bombed today for St. Patty's) is Poison
Prevention Week. This is for humans, and animals alike.Since my dogs always find a way to be topical (today is Dublin's adoption day after all), little three-month-old Mercury decided to remind me last week about the upcoming Poison Prevention week by sticking his nose in the mop bucket and getting Pine Sol smell on his muzzle.The second he came up and gave me a wet kiss on the face I was momentarily transported to a high mountain meadow on a crisp spring morning, a meadow that had been polluted by toxic nasty smelling waste. I am not fond of strong smells, especially artificial fragrances. Pine Sol is among the worst of them.So I immediately freaked out, ran Merc into t
Pacifist Hypocrite Shopping List 2008-03-20 01:50:00 I was out running some errands today and there were a handful of protesters at a busy intersection waving home-made signs like "honk for peace" and "no war for oil." I laugh at the naieve banality of such idealists. First, that waving signs makes any difference, and second the sheer amount of hypocrisy it takes to bring about such a half-assed roadside protest.Every component of that sign is made from oil. The foam core, the plastic handle, the paints, the glues: all petroleum based products. The price of any one of those doubles and you won't see too many out of work "students" waving those signs.The fact that the protesters' umbrella awning was made from oil, their ice chest was made from oil, the ice in the ice chest was created using refrigerants made from oil, the plastic bottles hold Read more:Shopping
Pat is Wrong, Wright is Evil 2008-03-21 11:05:00 Patrick Burns over on Terrierman has been on a several month long Obamathon, writing more often and more passionately about politics than about dogs.His response to the racist Reverend Wright
scandal is to give us a self-admitted "lazy" lecture on what Jeremiads are, noting that Wright's first name is Jeremiah. Deep insight there.The name-as-destiny angle is pretty weak, especially since Patrick reminded us that Obama's middle name of Hussein isn't evidence of his deceitfully rumored crypto-Muslim status. If anything, our 'Christian' names make for more irony than destiny. After all, Patrick is from the Latin for "aristocrat," and Mr. Burns is a penny pinching advocate for all things working class. Christopher is Greek for "bearer of Christ" and I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus and Read more:Wrong
On "Hallelujah" 2008-03-24 02:07:00 For the first post in the "Texutal Analysis 101" series, I'd like to start with a song that is particularly vulnerable to shallow and hasty interpretations. The ironic and jaded lament for a lost and broken love, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah
.The casual reader might want to listen to the song by playing the embedded video, enjoy it, and move on. But if you'd like to delve into the lyrics, their allusions, and the deeper themes of the song, please, enjoy the rest and feel free to disagree and tell me about it.Despite the tortured and dark themes in the lyrics, the hauntingly beautiful melody and religious references of Hallelujah fool many people into believing that the song is a spiritual paean the likes of which you'd play at a wedding. I'd recommend adding it to your playlist of "Songs To B
Out of 100 2008-03-24 02:30:00 70% of Americans don't know that Plastic is made from Oil. Stupid hippies; No Wars, No Oil.76% of American adults believe that Jesus rose from the dead. And then disappeared for 2,000 years? What's the point of rising from the dead if you just ascend to Heaven anyway? Isn't that kind of like, well, being dead?8% of Americans think Elvis is still alive and 11% are not sure. Why does it matter if he's not making music or terrible movies?11% of Women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime IF THEY LIVE TO 85! This is only if you live past the life expectancy of 79 and your breasts have lost much of their appeal. Look, you don't even pass a 1% risk until your mid 40s:Breast Cancer Risk in women by AgeBy age 30: 1 in 2,525By age 35: 1 in 622By age 40: 1 in 217By age 50: 1 in 50By age 60: 1
Border Collie Who? Are You? 2008-04-02 04:18:00 The people at Dogster have no clue about BorderCollie
s.In one of those "answer some questions about yourself and we'll tell you what cliché you are (replete with photo and code so you can advertise our website for us on your page)" quizzes, they decided that the Border Collies of the human world are: Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, and Barbara Walters.GAG! Not a single one of those people says Border Collie to me.Bill Gates is super smart and a workaholic, certainly Border Collie traits. But he's awkward, anti-social, and a nerd. While Border Collies will certainly turn down playing with other dogs at the dog park should you present them with the "job" of playing fetch, they're hardly anti-social. Nor are they in any way awkward or weak or nerdy.Bill Gates made his fame by ridi
American Idolatry 2008-04-13 15:21:00 If you consider "America" to mean twelve year old girls who can text message on a cell phone faster than you can type on a keyboard and who can hit a high C sharp when they wail like banshees, then American
Idol is a fitting name for the show.Such mindless, conformist, shallow teeny boppers are prone to idol worship and if it weren't for 10 year old boys, pedophiles who like them a little old, and their immense spending power, no one would care what 12 year old girls think.American Idol has not gone away any more than obnoxious 12 year old girls will go away, and as long as they possess the power to make the cheeze fest that was Titanic the #1 selling movie of all time and shows like High School Musical one of the highest rated, those of us who deplore just about everything regarding 12 ye
War Kitten, Armed and Ballistic 2008-04-23 02:15:00 And now for an important message from the galactic empire:..I love the concept of "war kittens." I mean, just sit and think about it for a while. W-a-r K-i-t-t-e-n-s. Ahhhhh.And on this middle of the week Wednesday, the hump day, the I don't want to get any work done day, what could be more fun than thinking about armed and ballistic kittens? Well, getting to be one, of course. You aren't going to get any work done after you play this awesome and addicting war kitten flash game:Cat with Bow GolfYes, that's right, you are the deadly ballistic kitten, armed with (and tied to) your Rambo bow of death, unleashed on a gravity challenged 18 hole golf course. Loose your arrow and watch as the kitteh is flung across the screen in tow. Cat lovers will relish the notion of a well armed cat militia, Read more:Kitten
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Embrace Cloning 2008-09-20 01:01:00 It's been ten years since Dolly the Sheep was cloned and it amazes me that many a dog breeder believes in inbreeding (and line breeding, if you must differentiate, but realize that it's still drunk driving with the gene pool, just at a slightly slower speed), but in general "cloning" in animals triggers all of the "ewww" factor that inbreeding in animals fails to do.Besides the current imperfectio Read more:Cloning
A Breed Apart II 2008-09-19 01:35:00 The culmination of the previous post is this statement:Our phylogenetic, clustering, and principal components analyses all suggest a genetic split within the breed between working and show Border Collies that is probably as large as the genetic distances between some breeds.Is this true? Is this significant? Is this a problem?(1) Is there a "genetic split" in Border Collies?No. But there is most c Read more:Breed
A Breed Apart I 2008-09-18 17:31:00 Those of us in Border Collies have long known that they're in a class by themselves in the arenas of intelligence, agility, drive, and trainability. They're different than other dogs and that difference is often wide. And we know that the difference is in their genes.When you map the genome you can start to measure the evolutionary distance between these genes just like you can measure the distanc Read more:Breed
A Hero's Welcome 2008-10-06 01:27:00 Fourteen months serving your nation and the greater good of mankind in a desolate, sandy hellhole half way across the world; putting your life on the line every day, all day, making decisions most others couldn't or wouldn't make; a freely chosen commitment of sacrifice and service; and only one thing can bring you to tears: your two Border Collies.Welcome
home, Airman, welcome home.
Pissing Off Patrick 2008-09-30 10:52:00 It seems that calling out Patrick
Burns (a.k.a. Terrierman) over his apologist whitewashing of the bigot Jeremiah Wright is still a sore spot for my fellow dog blogger. Not only did Pat immediately remove his link to my blog from his blogroll, he deleted several of my comments on that post and others and has since vetoed all new comments on his blog and removed my comments on the Bark Obama site
War Puppy, Armed and Dangerous 2008-09-26 13:39:00 It seems that a Border Collie puppy on the outskirts of Glasgow, Scotland didn't get the message that those War Kittens are just a gimmick to sell credit cards or that the Border Collie war is one of words and deeds and not bullets.Little "Charlie" (an apropos name for a budding guerrilla warrior) turned an aerosol can into an improvised explosive device and tried to burn his owner's house down. C Read more:Puppy
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A Sense for Words 2008-09-26 00:15:00 One of the tried, true, and now extinct tests of language acuity on the SAT is the analogy. I mourn its passing. Analogies bring out relationships between words and concepts that I find fascinating.The short hand for analogies compares two words, presents you with a third word and asks you to find a final fourth word that shares the same relationship with word 3 as the first two words share.puppy: Read more:Sense
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