dog training and dog runs

I had dental surgery, which laid me pretty low for a week now. Not a lot of energy to do anything. Spent most of the time worrying needlessly, taking painkillers and reading dog training books.  I have learned that dog training is definitely a personal approach. It's amazing to see how animals are trained for film tricks.  Some of the trainers I researched use hand signals, sounds, voice cues, food .... there doesn't seem to be a lot of agreement, but the success rate makes me think there is no way to really get it wrong, as long as the dog is treated like a dog, not a person.

After training I started researching how to build a dog run - I often over estimate my ability to do handyman stuff, and I think reinforcing the fence will be one of the big mistakes I might get myself into. Internet shopping is risky - I always read customer reviews, but having posted a few myself I know that most satisfied customers wouldn't bother, so that makes the positive and negative reviews extremist - the bad ones definitely had bad experiences but ranting doesn't fix anything, and the positive ones were probably written by owners and family members to generate business. Hmm. Anyway, in the light of day I sincerely doubt I'll have the patience to string chain link fence, which means I have to look at pre-assembled panels - and the price range is really something! This dog  adventure is going to be an expensive one, no doubt about it.

Canadian Politics

I guess yesterday's post got eaten somehow....it was on concussions. I'll have to redo it sometime. Anyway, today I spent hours looking up Canadian politics - the parliament buildings, political scandals (yes, we have had a couple), roles of various parliamentarians etc. I ordered some kids - all this in aid of finding background material for Best Laid Plans, the novel I'm using this semester in Grade 11.

Zacharaeus, Caesar Milan and mushrooms

Still haven't been Idle, but I find the iPod and the school day requirmeents very distracting. I' m still working hard to learn something new everyday, but I haven't had the time to write it up. I've leaned how to get a dog to respond to Basic Commands, and the basic requirements to train a dog, I've been teaching kids a new bible story, one that I didn't know before, and I've been working on recipes that include cremini mushrooms, which are a kind I have't used before. I also went to a lesson today on the history of tea.

credit ratings

I haven't been idle, I've been looking into my financial literacy - beyond the "i don't have any" view that I had before. I learned how easy it was to get my credit report - I thought I was complicated, but no - and I was happy to see that mine is okay - considering my debt, and lack of savings. I was also looking into identify theft, which scares the pants off me. My goal this year is to stop shutting down whenever I hear math/money words. I need to make sure that I understand more of the stuff I've signed up for and will depend on in my old age.

Paro and Parkinson's

Well I learned about some very unhappy things today, but it had to be done

Why are there so many new "weather words"?

when I was a kid I swear there were far less words for weather than they are now. We didn't have meterologists, we had Dave Duvall, the weatherman, who had a glass screen and a piece of magic chalk. We had rain, snow, sun, partly cloudy (a catch all then and now) fog ...you get my point. I also never hear thunder in a snow storm when I was a kid. Now there are all sorts of weird weather words - Alberta Clipper, Colorado Low, tusnami, wind chill... fortunately I've found a great website where I can look up these words and determine if it's safe to go outside. I swear, they make a little rain and snow sound so dangerous now.
So, an Alberta clipper...now I know that snow storm with blowing snow....but when I was looking that up I found hundreds more scary weather words....

http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/general/glosswx.htm

What is a sadler teapot?

Well, I bought a teapot at a charity auction, and the fellow who donated it said "that's a real Sadler teapot". At the time I thought ...okay, whatever ...the money was for the United Way, and then I put it on a shelf and thought nothing more about it. Today though it caught my eye, and I thought I'd find out a little more about it.

Turns out I knew more about Sadler teapots than I thought, because I've been drinking out of brown betty teapots my whole life! I didn't realize that they were "special" - I just knew they made the best tea. The tea out of a brown betty is never bitter, and it stays hot much longer than other pots. My mother always said never to wash my brown betty, and I also wondered where that came from. A quick search on the internet revealed that some heretics apparently do wash and even bleach their tea pots -  heaven forbid.

http://www.tealaden.com/teaweb/choosing.htm

imagine my shock - when I tried to find an image of my litter tea pot, I found the estimated worth at one auction to be between $100 and $400!!! Not so on ebay though - on ebay it's currently going for $26.00 - still that's a lot more than I paid for it!

http://www.english-teapots.com/england/teapot_james_sadler.htm