nancy

The sheep in the 3rd photo might be Swaledale-Border Leicester crosses. No horns, so not Swaledales. But they often cross them with Leicesters. The noses sure look Swaledale. I'll bet that, if you asked the farmer, that's a "stock dog".

I got my two border collie calendars for Christmas - one for the kitchen and one for my office. I have the Arizona Border Collie Rescue one and the Brown Trout one. Are there any pups I should recognize from these boards in either calendar? Hey, I'm old and forget stuff.

We can't figure out why various animals don't freeze their gazoongies off. Fergie can't understand why I can just come downstairs and go out on our morning walk in summer. But, in winter, I have to get extra socks, boots, coat, hat, gloves, heavy jacket. She wears the same fur every day. Don't her paws get cold? Especially when she stands in an icy puddle and laps? The muscovies waddle into the frozen (hey, down here, that means a thin crust) and swim around. Don't their bellies freeze? Do animals other than us have no temperature sense? I know that Fergie is friskier - and happier - when it's cold. But standing "bare-foot" in an icy stream is way beyond that.

Well, isn't that appropriate at Christmas? But does that mean that all her puppies are truely divine? Well I guess that each could be "the son of doG'?

Chuck gets them from www.theboc.bz on the computer. When we were collecting "Last of the Summer Wine" episodes (we now have every episode and every special ever aired), he was in contact with a bunch of other silly buggers doing the same. He made DVDs that were mailed out in a sort of round-robin affair.

Is anyone watching these trials? My DH has been downloading them from The Box each afternoon, and we have watched them with our evening cocktails. We saw the junior event, the singles, and the braces so far. Seems that tomorrow will be the Specials, and the finale. Man they are fantastic. And the logo sure looks a lot like the cookie-prizes at the Whistle For A Cure event Fergie and I enjoyed.

Fergie is a mix. We know that Mom was a border collie. Reports are that Dad was a lab. But only Mom knew, and she wasn't talking. So we assumed that her short hair was the lab's donation. Then we went to the West End bike criterium in Winston-Salem, when Ferg was about 1-1/4. We were both USCF racers (as was our son) and then officials, and I wrote for the national USCF magazine, so we were there to see all our old friends. And one of them is a Scotsman. He took one look at Ferg and said, "Lovely smooth-coated collie!" We'd never heard of such a thing. But he pointed out the almost ruff at her neck and her feathering. Which are not lab. Never know where you're going to learn what. So it pays to listen.

What a lucky puppy!

I can't believe it's been 3 years. I just knew that you and he were meant for each other. Good to hear from you again. And Fergie & I wish you two many many more years together.

Fergie gets between 3/4 and 1 cup of kibble (depending on whether cautious me or gracious DH feeds) twice a day. Once when we come in for our morning walk before the humans' breakfast. And one at exactly 5:30. Fergie and Maggie the Cat can tell time - and then tell us that it is time.

Fergie and I are so sorry. But now Flyboy is a happy young puppy, waiting to greet you. And you know, that the time for you may be long, but his sense of it will be just a sec.

nancy, How the heck did you know they were Racka? man. I did all my searches and couldn't find that. Sure looks like the right breed. nancyC

None of those show any horns. The closest breed I saw was a 4-horn breed. Vikki, did you take that photo? If so, where? If not, where did you get it?

Happy Thanksgiving from Fergie & me, in Durham, NC. I have the bread stuffing made - and it will get stuffed into the turkey, which I'm about to clean. I'll make gravy from giblet broth and pan drippings. And we'll have a big salad. And cranberry sauce. I have to open both ends of the can and slide it out whole onto a dish, so everyone can see the lines and be sure it's from a can. Because, one year, I worked really hard and made 3 different styles of cranberries. Which everyone disliked. I also made mincemeat-crumble bars to have with ice cream, after. Oh, we start with cheese, crackers, small empanadas (which DH made), grapes, nuts - and Manhattans. We're especially celebrating this year. There is a brand-new Lambert - my brother's grandson - Torsten Ryder Joseph Lambert, born late on Tuesday. So the Lambert line will continue!

There's got to be some mistyping in that url. I get addiction, badminton, and footwear sites.

You might try a much milder drug: doxepin. It's an older antidepressant. Humans often have those same reactions to the newer drugs, but tolerate the older ones just fine.

Ooky, you are so young. I hope things keep going this well for you. But I'm over twice your age. A man who stands up for what he knows is right is strong. A woman who does so is bitchy. Men are assertive,: women are aggressive. Women have to work at being cute. Yeah, we have to do twice the work in half the time. But we also have to be cute, and non-threatening. Too competent, and you're a bitch. Anything less, and you're there on some quota. I had a male contract manager tell the female writer and me, the female editor, that it was so sad that our company paid so little that only we women, with husbands earning "real" salaries, could take the jobs doing the documentation for his company. Otherwise, he'd get man, who would have done a much better job. And I couldn't kick him where he'd have noticed it because we did need the work. Geeze, I remember all the negative stuff about Hillary Clinton, including her wearing pant suits. Gee, what about men in kilts? But Sarah Palin was so feminine in - hey - what looked to me like pant suits. There may have been skirts, but I sure don't remember any cocktail dresses. Was "a pit bull with lipstick" OK because she had a bunch of kids? And Hillary's pant suits "too " aggressive" because she had only one child? I never got it. But, then again, that may be why I'm retired, instead of trying to walk that tightrope where I had to be cute and perky and professional and adult and competent but submissive.

No. BITCH is not ambivalent. To use it against a male is to say he's acting like a woman. Wow, how awful. Come on, maidens, mothers, and crones. Let us come up with a word that does not imply female attributes to males constitute an insult (personally, I think that might be a compliment), that does not cast slurs on their mothers, that does not refer to parts of their anatomy (because it is talent and not size that matters), and that does imply that their hormones are ruling what brains they have. I don't know enough Spanish. But I think something like "macho" would do. "He's such a macho today"?

Nope. Still refers to him as being like a woman. It's the female reference that's insulting. I don't think reference to body parts counts, either. We need something that refers to behavior. Something that is one's choice.

I do wish there were some derogatory name for a male person. My husband claims that "bastard" counts. But that is just a slur on a male's mother. Years ago, we had some "shall we say odd" next-door neighbors. The parent worked nights; there were six kids: two older teenage boys, a mid-teen girl, a pre-teen boy, and two elementary-school boys. If one was not in the daily police report, another was. And they all had family fights before the parents left for work - around midnight. Under our windows. In a small village where houses were close and open windows were our air-conditioning. One evening, Mom and second son had a major screaming fight. He took off down the sidewalk. She yelled after him, "You G**d*** son of a bitch. Lying in bed, having given up on sleeping, we looked at each other and said, in unison, "Well, she should know." That said, My daughter, granddaughter, step-granddaughter, Fergie, and I do the Komen Race for the Cure. I'm made purple T-shirts for us with our unofficial team name in pink : Maiden Mother Crone" (what we each are is in full caps0. You can guess which I am. And, no, it is not an insult. The original meaning, and the one we use, means the wise woman: the older and experienced person. I also have a purple ribbon that goes on Fergie's leash (she is a paid registered "runner") with pink writing that says BITCH. My daughter says I should make a new one that says bITch because Ferg has been spayed for 13 years.

We feed Fergie Authority - the PetsMart brand - lamb & rice. She gets ~!3/4 cup morning and evening. Has since she was a pup. On Wednesday & Thursday evenings, she gets ~1/3 can for moist food. We decrease her kibble then. She's been doing fine for almost 14 years. And her weight has remained constant, even though she ran 5Ks with us when she was younger and does only walks now.

Fergie and I are so sorry. It's so tough. A friend from church died this week. She had cancer that had metastasized to all her organs. She had told her husband that she didn't mind death; she didn't want pain. Luckily, that's what she got. You did what you needed to do. Not just now, but all along.

We try to keep her away from most of the persimmons. She loves them (so does the cat) and knows exactly where to run to sniff them out. I've started rushing over, too, and grabbing as many as I can find. Our local Muscovy ducks are also great fans of persimmons. The peck each other to get to me first to get them. It's mostly a few that are smooshed on the ground that she gets. A walk after dinner would be a good idea - for her and for me.

This is the second morning in a month that we woke up to find one large turd on the bedroom floor. Luckily, very solid, so I could pick it up with toilet paper and flush it. Fergie will be 14 in December. But she's in great shape. Is this because she's eating persimmons - and the seeds do mean she poops more often? She goes out to pee just before bed. Do I need to take her for one more walk between her dinner and bed? Or do we need to close her in the kitchen at night. At least during persimmon season?

We also started at the local baseball field. To have started Fergie off leash in the neighborhood would have been courting disaster. We have several women drivers who think our little curvy roads are a race track. So. once Ferg was good in the ball field, we started letting her off leash in our neighborhood fields. Finally, we started walking her off leash up at our end of the neighborhood. But I keep her on down the hill: we have leash laws in the city, but the folks up here are Ferg's buddies. I will never have her off leash in our state parks. It would be so embarrassing to have our son-in-law ticket us. He's superintendent of the big park near us. And he'd definitely ticket us if he caught us letting Ferg run loose. Our daughter attaches the leash of their dog to her waist when they go swimming in the quarry in the park. He'd ticket her! He's got to treat everyone the same. So we behave ourselves.