Consuela - not Paul? He's the one that had a sheepdog! Hee.

I'm one of those people, when given a choice between the men's/unisex and the "designed for women!" I'll generally go for the former.

Why do my polo work shirt color choices have to be pink, baby blue, turquise, purple, or white? Why can't I have sage green, tan, rustic orange, and brown?

The "four-year journey" seems just sad.

What? Wow. What's a conformation champion, though?

Conformation is the type of dog show they parodied in Best in Show; it's basically a beauty contest. As compared with obedience, rally, agility, drafting, herding, and the other kinds of dog competitions where the dog and owner actually have to do something other than look pretty. (I have some issues with conformation: it's restricted to breedable dogs for the most part, and can result in breeding for looks rather than temperment or health.)

So this new dog is a fairly attractive and slightly overweight good-natured male, with no obedience training at all. Even the kind that 99% of pet owners would require, like sitting on command. Oh, wait, no, he can walk on a leash quite well. Yay.

My parents' dog was like that! He's an English cocker who was shown briefly, and then his elderly owner had some health issues when he was four and needed to rehome him.

I expected a "show dog" to be perfectly trained, and he was ... not. He would sort of sit, but he never learned to walk on a leash properly, and he's a barker and a jumper, and all that. And my dad just spoiled him rotten, so now he's 13, completely neurotic, blind, deaf, and will knock over garbage cans and steal food off the table whenever he can.

But he is sweet!

Our dogs were fucking brilliant. They came when called specifically or general "all dogs ahoy!", looked up when you used their names (Lucky was worse off that way than Prince), they attacked on command whoever you pointed at, and most times they sit when you asked them to. That's all a ten year old needs out of a dog. Which isn't the criterion to use, since the jumping stuff was fun. Except for Joanne Fletcher. She never found it amusing.

Leash is not much of a usual Jamaican issue. If dogs are leaving their homes, it's usually without an owner anyway. But ours were very good with boundaries (would not come into the house either, unless we lured them with food, and even then we all knew rules were being broken), and accepting of two of the canine visitors that could get in, but we never ever found out that they'd left by the same access. They never really got the hang of the cat, but since the dogs next door had a more...final way of not dealing with it, that was just a brief confusion.

So I'm here at the hospital again. My sister may be getting discharged today, today or tomorrow.

Fingers crossed firmly for you, Burrell.

Geez. I know I spoil Charlie, both because that's who I am and because of his back story, but even he knows the sit command, and I am working on the barking.

Speaking of Charlie, even though he really does like the doggie day care I take him to, in order to get into the premises, he has to go through this little chain link corridor, where there is usually a man standing, and then I leave him, so every morning I have to put on my excited voice to make it a happy happy joy joy thing instead of a fear thing, and I just keep thinking that I really need someone like that to get me into work.

I suspect they would get punched a lot though.

Fingers crossed for your sister, Burrell.

~Ma for your sister, Burrell, and for you.

We never got Lucy to stop barking, either, but she definitely knew how to sit and all that.

This is a really dog-friendly town, and I see so many really well-behaved and trained dogs in town, as well as people bringing puppies out to properly socialize them.