The Red Brick Times

Some of you may remember Tux, the black Great Dane I had. What a dog. Even though it's been almost twenty years I still miss him. After he died I didn't want another dog right away. Tux was too hard an act to follow. Then my work situation changed to where I was gone all day (12+ hours with commute and errands) and didn't think it right to get a pet only to make it spend most of its time alone. Now however that's not the case. My job is pretty flexible, so much so that sometimes I could even take a dog along with me, and the hours aren't consistently long. So.... I've been thinking about gettin' me a pooch. Wednesday evening I went to the Oasis Animal Shelter in Oberlin. I'd heard of the place so first Googled it and found they show some of their dogs on the web. Ginger and Niki caught my eye right away. Vera, the person in charge, met me there (you have to pre-arrange an appointment as the place is all volunteer and doesn't have regular hours) and let me pet/play with both dogs to my hearts content. Ginger, found abandoned close by the shelter, is an absolutely beautiful dog but pretty shy and a bit high strung. Maybe it's due to her present circumstances. No way to tell. Niki, taken from her owner after a neighbor complained to the cops of mistreatment, is pure mutt. No beauty contests in her future but you'll never find a sweeter or more loveable puppy. Decisions, decisions. I've done some other web browsing (specifically here) but I dunno. I've always said my next dog would be a rescue, not a purchase.
Posted 6:25 AM by whatley (6) comments

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Russ,
I'd suggest the younger of the two rescue dogs and enrollment in puppy training classes with professional trainers. (Mostly they train you to be consistent in your commands and responses to the dog and helps the dog get properly socialized with people and other dogs) We've done a number of classes with Duffy from intro puppy classes at about 6 mo. thru intro agility to formal obedience that we're doing now. With the rescue dog the younger they are the less ingrained the problems(and they will have some) caused by their previous situation are and hence the more easily resolved or eliminated. The training sessions can help identify any of these pretty quickly and the trainer can recommend solutions.
The Weimaraners are nice dogs if you get a well-bred one. Go to the AKC website and find the national club for Weimaraners and check out the sections on health. It should give a good rundown on things that the breed is susceptible to and how breeders minimize their occurance.
Cool, you're getting a dog! Good Luck. I like Niki (probably the Golden Retreiver look with a big dose of Puppy Factor)

# posted by  A. O. : August 20, 2005 10:50 AM
 
Turns out the contact person for the national Weimaraner organization lives about twenty minutes away from us.Here's the AKC link and the Weimaraner Club info.

American Kennel Club

Weimaraner Club of America
Corresponding Secretary : Ellen Dodge
Po Box 489
Wakefield, RI , 02880--048
Website: www.weimclubamerica.org
Email: wcadodge@netsense.net

# posted by  A. O. : August 20, 2005 11:08 AM
 
Those links are screwed up. Let me try again.

American Kennel Club

www.weimclubamerica.org

# posted by  A. O. : August 20, 2005 2:07 PM
 
Still having problems with your links eh? I can edit (fix) them if they're part of a post on the main page but not if they're within a comment. Feel free to email me with questions if you want.

Doggy Update: After making another visit to Oasis today I decided on Niki. I have to make one more business trip at the end of next week so couldn't bring her home with me. Bummer. I really wanted to. Both I and Vera (at Oasis) thought that it would be confusing to Niki to be here for a week then be back at Oasis (or another kennel) for 4 or 5 days. Vera was nice enough to agree to hold her for me until I'm back from that trip.

# posted by  whatley : August 21, 2005 3:27 PM
 
Good choice, Russ. Niki's gorgeous. Looking forward to meeting her.

# posted by  ralph : August 22, 2005 8:13 PM
 
Yeah, she's a cutie. The first time I saw her she was in the middle of losing her puppy coat. She had a mottled color and looked kind of ragged in general. By the second look (or as my boss said, during the final interviews) that was mostly over with and she looked a lot nicer. To be honest Ginger suited my taste more in the looks department but Niki's temperment, playful but very laid back, is so perfect. I don't know if she'll get as big as I'd like but whatever, it doesn't matter that much. Because of her size I was afraid she might have a yappy little bark but the second time I saw her she finally spoke up. Her bark was so deep I couldn't believe it came out of something so small. Cool.

# posted by  whatley : August 23, 2005 7:42 AM
 
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The Hidden Costs of Toll Roads.

"It is therefore no small irony that local governments in Colorado have agreed to deliberately impede traffic on existing highways near a toll road in order to protect the toll roads' investors."

Posted 3:51 PM by whatley (0) comments

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Blog Depression!
What everyone should know about this crippling disorder.
Posted 2:31 PM by whatley (0) comments

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The sun belt has stolen our population and jobs, now they want our water. Should we drain our greatest (and only) resource to provide swimming pools and five acre lawns in Arizona? I don't think so. FOWL people have been discussing this topic recently and seem to think it offers opportunities along with the obvious potential problems. I'm sure there'll be a newsletter article about it sooner or later.
Growth Stirs a Battle to Draw More Water From the Great Lakes - New York Times
Posted 6:17 AM by whatley (0) comments

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You gotta love an article that starts . . .

Losing Their Religion

The ratfucking operation in the GOP is getting awfully sloppy these days.

I actually linked to the post above it from the Huffington Post ( I've got an obsession going with following the demise of Karl Rove and the HuffPo is all over it even if ABC et al can't seem to find the story) and just kept reading when I hit this little gem.

Posted 12:02 AM by A. O. (2) comments

       Comments:

FYI: Your link didn't work. You had "http" in there twice instead of once. It was probably because Blogger puts it in the link box by default, then you pasted a previously coppied URL that also had it. That's my guess anyway as it's something I've done myself. I fixed it.

# posted by  whatley : August 05, 2005 6:29 AM
 
Thanks I went back and fixed some typos and created a link to The Huffigton Post just to see if I had the technique right.

# posted by  A. O. : August 05, 2005 12:42 PM
 
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Here comes our 15 minutes. I found this in my inbox this morning (it was sent after 11pm last night - this guy works late):

Hello - I'm working on a story on Elyria-based bloggers and came across your information on blogger. Hoping you have a few minutes to answer some questions. Thank you for your response.

Chris Powell, Reporter
The Chronicle-Telegram

I'm not sure how to respond. Most blogs/blogers would be overjoyed at the chance to increase readership/membership through the opportunity for free publicity, but we're not that type of blog (I feel like I just said something to the effect of "I'm not that kind of girl" - sheesh). tRBT has always been meant as a tool or convenience for a certain group of people who knew each other way back when. Membership is based on that tie making it kind of a closed thing. As far as readership goes I can't imagine how posts here would interest anyone outside of this group though Lord knows, we get our share of hits from all over. Any thoughts?
Posted 6:41 AM by whatley (2) comments

       Comments:

Maybe you should just tell him that. Its a private club where some actual live human interactions precede any cyber contact. Its a tool for people already known to each other not a media for creating a faux-society.

# posted by  A. O. : August 03, 2005 9:49 AM
 
Faux-society? Tony, you silver tongued devil you.

I've tried calling him a few times but, busy guy that he probably is, have only gotten voice mail. It's hard for me to figure how tRBT would fit into a local story about blogging so I asked him about that in an email. Here's most of it:

"Probably the first thing I would have asked is if 7393.org was really something that would lend itself to your story. Have you read any of it, especially the faq? It's a community blog, not a personal one. Though I do post a lot I don't exactly write it. I started it, registered the domain name, support it etc., but feel that the small group of friends using it are the owners. Should they lose interest it's history. Also, though that group did originate in Elyria many years ago, there isn't much posting about local issues.

Anyway, take a good look and let me know if you still want to talk."

We'll see.

# posted by  whatley : August 03, 2005 4:08 PM
 
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