Tomorrow's Good Friday

[conuly]

So I guess it's more or less been a year since we've had Finn for good!

He runs now! Like, all four feet off the floor! And he plays sometimes! And he doesn't growl (except very rarely) if you touch his back end! Obvious improvements in his behavior and demeanor are farther apart now, and more subtle, but that just shows the huge progress he's made since he came to us. Truly, I will never forgive those people.

Now, when Moonpie plays with a toy, her goal is to utterly destroy it. She chomps it and shakes it and chomps it and attacks it with her front paws and then she chomps some more. Finn chases it, chomps it a bit, and drops it again. Then he comes back for his snuggles. At first, Jenn and I thought maybe he just wasn't as interested as Moonpie is, that he was more interested in pleasing us than in play for its own sake. Then I realized we're very silly. Finn is a poodle. Poodles are water dogs. Water dogs are retrievers, specifically, they retrieve fowl from the water. He's not bored - he's playing fetch!

*********

The Controversial Process of Redesigning the Wheelchair Symbol

Scientists Still Don't Know Exactly Why Knuckles Crack

How Baseball Has Strengthened the Relationship Between the United States and Japan

Things That Are Bigger On The Inside

This Comic From 1919 Imagines What It’s Like to Have a Phone in Your Pocket

Ice age throwback: 13,000-year-old footprints found off Canadian coast

Discovery of MRSA-busting antibiotic gives hope against resistant superbugs

Misestimating travel times may stop people from walking or biking to work (Anecdotally, it's not just travel times but distances. A trip of a mile suddenly becomes three or four miles when you suggest walking it to a person who is used to driving.)

It's official: The U.S. government will no longer fund painting oil portraits (If the US government wants to cut back on expenses, I can think of a few better targets....)

Can a club for women legally exclude men? NYC launches probe

U.S. judge dismisses Exxon lawsuit to stop climate change probes

How Chinese Immigrants Built—and Lost—a Shellfish Industry

How Famine Under the Nazis Revealed the Cause of Celiac Disease

U.S. ends presumed freedom for pregnant immigrants

The U.S. Government Is Finally Scrambling to Regulate Facebook

The U.S. and Russia Are Caught in a Downward Spiral

NRA Is Pulling In Big Bucks After The Parkland Mass Shooting (You know, if there's a conspiracy afoot involving mass shootings, I don't think it's gun control advocates who are behind it....)

Mass violence in the U.S. usually follows warning signs from attackers, report finds

When the Innocent Go to Prison, How Many Guilty Go Free?

Comments

Knuckle Crack Corn

[nodrog]

It's weird, what scientists don't actually know.  Look up ‘catnip’ on Wikipedia, and notice all the “seems to operate on the same principle” / “appears to be equivalent to” &c., &c.  The simple fact is, we don't know why catnip does what it does.

Re: Knuckle Crack Corn

[conuly]

There are so many things like that also like the icon.

[peristaltor]

In his book Gun Guys, author Dan Baum pointed out that both "sides" of the gun control fight take in contributions after every shooting.

The many reasons to do nothing go both ways, and are both related to cold, hard cash.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yay, happy Finn; glad to hear he's doing so well! LOL, Moonpie trashing her toys - yeah, it's a 'poodle thing'; my bro's little poodle Coco does the same. Poodles are technically water retrievers, but they're also highly efficient rabbit-hunters, and that chomp-and-shake technique is how they do it.

'Things That Are Bigger on The Inside' forgot Snoopy's doghouse.

[conuly]

Psst, Moonpie's the chihuahua. I don't know how chihuahuas mangle their prey, much less whatever her "mix" is.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. I would surmise that if chihuahuas have prey, it's likely to be rats and other hole-dwelling rodents, so chomp-and-shake would be an effective method.

[conuly]

I have no idea what chihuahuas were even originally bred for, though I haven't given up my dream of getting a whole pack of them and purchasing a dog cart....

Ah, google suggests you're right - they're ratters. Also, the Aztecs are reported to have raised them as food. Well, it's a human eat dog world out there.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

They definitely seem built for ratting. They don't seem built to pull a cart - you'd need a lot of them, and then you'd look like Peter Jackson's insane version of Radagast the Brown, with his rabbit sled (https://youtu.be/3A01_ef_mtM). Never give up the dream!

[conuly]

Yes, but if you could get them to cooperate it'd be so amazing. At least until somebody bolts after a squirrel or somebody else calls the ASPCA.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, you could train them to pull a cart as a team; why not? You'd need at least six, probably more like eight, to pull you without strain, and I doubt they make dog-sledding harnesses that small, but they wouldn't be too hard to make by hand. I don't see why anyone would call the ASPCA if the doggies were trotting along smartly, having a good time.

The thing I'd worry about wouldn't be squirrels, but other, larger dogs - eight chihuahuas harnessed to a cart would be way too vulnerable in the park or whatever; you'd need a safe, fenced area for the training.