Notes to Self

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UH OH: 4 dogs in the house tomorrow. Combined weight=280lbs. We don't have enough insurance for this.

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George is slowly loosing it. He came in quiet as a mouse, now he's a barking lunatic. Thank God he's still house broken.

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New favorite quick comfort food: hard boiled egg, spaghetti noodles, garlic granules, sun dried tomato, olive oil, salt, black pepper . . . could dress it up with: gratings of a dry smoked cheese, fresh basil or roasted peppers.

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About JenDeng. I think it's like this. We're all on a bus in Tampa and half the bus wants In-N-Out animal style burgers and the other half of the bus wants Maidrites with cheese, ketchup and mustard. The new bus driver is like all for In-N-Out, but he says we can pick up a bunch of Maidrites because Iowa is on the way to California. And the whole bus is like totally happy because they are going to get really good food soon . . . like if you call three days soon. But that's okay because all the old bus driver gave them was stale potato chips. That was kind of okay with the Maidrite crowd because thems like their food soft, but I think deep down everyone knew that those chips weren't really that good. Even kinda gross. And like everyone is hungry for change--you know, something new. But the thing is, even though the new bus driver knows about good food, he doesn't know how to use his GPS to get to the good food. He just keeps heading west. And there's like this one lady on the bus with one of those expensive GPS watches. She keeps telling him where to go to catch the freeway to the 80. But he tells her that he's the driver and it's not her job and that the road ahead is long and hard, but they'll get there eventually. And she should just trust him already. Because doesn't he know about good food? So he drives for like four years. And they end up in the ocean. The end.

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Must learn more about aggressive dogs and formulate a theory. Ideas of note:

1. City does not have breed-specific legislation, but if a dog has ever bitten or attacked another domesticated animal or a human the owner must carry a $100K insurance policy towards dog bites, have a special permit and muzzle the dog at all times while in public. Failure to comply will result in the dog being taken away and the owner barred from dog ownership for 5 years. A second offense will result in the owner being barred from dog ownership permanently or while they still live in the city.

2. Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev spent about 30 years breeding the least aggressive silver foxes that he could find in an attempt to prove that early man's goal in breeding domesticated dogs was based on temperamental attributes, rather than physical. The resulting "fox" retained volpe DNA but had much lower blood adrenaline levels around humans. As a result, they showed "doglike" behavior when caretakers were near: begging for belly rubs and licking human hands. These foxes were also physically different from wild foxes: their faces were more puppylike--almost like a chihuahua, their fur was not mottled nor as dense and their tails were not as fluffy and instead of hanging like a GSD, they curled like spites. Belyaev theorized it was the hormonal profile of the wild foxes that gave them their unique physical attributes and to change the hormonal profile resulted in a very different looking animal. That's amazing. But what really got me is the way a species can make a complete 180 in 30 years. Since female silver foxes are only fertile once a year, that's only about 30 generations. Probably less because DB started the research in the 1950's and died in 1985. His results were already published by the time he died. 10 years after he died there were 700 of these domesticated foxes. . . . . . . . I think this shows how different dogs can become over short amounts of time.

3. Laura Ingalls' brindle bulldog (probably a pit bull mix), Jack, may have been great with kids, a good swimmer and able to keep up with a wagon traveling cross country. But everyone seems to think that he's an Australian Shepherd because there's no way that a modern day "bulldog" would be up to any of this.

Below are links to a English Brindle Bulldog, an Australian Shepherd and a American Stafford shire Terrier aka pit bull. The Australian Shepherd is definitely the cutest, but doesn't fit the part.

http://www.desmoinesriverkennel.com/English_Bulldogs.html
http://www.catalinakennels.com/
http://www.bulldogbreeds.com/americanstaffordshireterrier.html

4. Why every big dog person doesn't want a GSD or a GSD mix is totally beyond me. I am totally prejudiced, though