How much dog training is too much?

This article says I never have to feel guilty again when I only find the time to train my dogs once per week!

My review is up

My review of Heidi W. Durrow's The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is up at Bookslut.

Fascinating article re: Agility training vs. Search and Rescue Training

This fascinates me! Enjoy the read!

funniest dog agility video ever!

The 2nd half of this video, at about 1 min 10 secs, the part with Lily the Dog, is just about the funniest dog agility footage I've ever seen!

GoD and DoG does just about explain it for me

Don't know if I've posted this youtube video here before or not, but the "GoD and DoG" video and song explain my feelings about dogs [and faith] about as well as anything! Enjoy!

The Jane Goodall Method for Creative Writing?

This author's description of her Jane Goodall writing process helped me squeeze out 1000 words today. The words were hard to come by today, but at least they did come by... This gal's novel, Heroic Measures, btw, was a good one. Another DOG NOVEL! Don't we need more good dog novels? (tee hee... so blogs the gal trying to write a dog novel)...

Dog Fiction

What's your favorite canine-centric novel? I'm compiling a list!

Dog People Care about People too

Okay, I did it too. My mostly-dog-related blog just featured a post completely removed from the tragedy going on in Haiti right now in the aftermath of the earthquake two days ago...

But then I just moseyed around my favorite agility blogs and didn't see a single post related to raising awareness of where we all can donate, if we so choose.

I'm hoping that's only because it's a given that we care about the tragedy and it's a given that we've already donated and it's a given that, of course, dog people care about people too.

I'm sure that's it. But just in case there's somebody reading this blog (hi Mom!) who is inclined to donate to help Haitian relief but who isn't sure of a great place to donate, I recommend Partners in Health. Partners in Health is the organization started by Dr. Paul Farmer decades ago in Haiti that has been on the ground in Haiti since then and that is vital for the health of Haitians. You can donate at www.pih.org. You can read more about Haitian history and the unique position of Partners in Health to help now in this New York Times op-ed and you can read the amazing book about Dr. Paul Farmer and Partners in Health by Pulitzer-winner Tracy Kidder called Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Yay Dog People! Yay Dogs! Yay People!

Dog Training Business?

I've been noticing a lot of folks lately mulling the prospect of starting a dog business. Teaching agility. Owning a training facility. Hosting seminars or trials at said-but-yet-unbuilt-and-unpaid-for training facility.

My advice?

Keep mulling.

To be honest, the thought has even crossed my mind, but when I really begin to calculate the cost and the commitment, the idea looks less and less rosy.

But seriously, folks seems to be coming out of the woodwork lately all mentioning the same desire to own a dog training business. Either that, or they're writing a novel.

And like the novel-writing, I think some this mulling is a response to the shaky economic times we're in now and that's not all bad. When we can't count on the American Dream of the 30-year-mortgage and the house and the garage and the kids and the blah, blah, blah, then maybe we start looking past the blah, blah, blah to what really matters, whatever that is.

But I do come back, often, to the thought that our generation and our time isn't as original as we think it is. There are folks on the planet right now who lived through The Great Depression. They had dreams and goals and they mulled just like we do. They lived on ground as shaky as ours. What did they do?

Some of them struck out and "followed their dreams" or whatever, and some of them found a way to outwardly look, I guess, not like they'd changed that much, like maybe they still had the same partner, the same house, the same day job, but they found their purpose in hobbies, clubs, communities, faith communities. I mean, if not, they why were there all those Shriners and Elks Club members in the 50s? And what about the weird hobbyists who started their gazillion-strong collection of reamers or oven mitts or whatever?

They, too, were clamoring for more than the blah, blah, blah.

We're not so original, those of us today. So, I keep mulling...