Dogster's GOFA Contest Over

We sponsored the prize for 8th place in the Annual Go Orange For Animals photo contest on Dogster! We are pleased to present our prize to Luckee who won 8th place with a really groovy photo. Congratulations Luckee.

Flyball at Home

We've stopped going to flyball classes for several reasons, and now we are doing this great dog sport only at home. It's going VERY well! The dogs will completely do it all on their own - including triggering the box. At classes, they wouldn't even do a dead retrieve, which they do marvelously at home. Merlin, because he was terrified of everything, Popper, because he is a bit ADD and was constantly worried about where Merlin was. We tried having Merlin and Mickey both leaving the room, but then Popper ran over to the door and would not focus on anything.

So we've been doing it at home, with just three jumps because of the room issue, and they love it. If it can stay dry for more than a day at a time we will move all the jumps outside and do it there. Our backyard is a big mud pit when it rains (and sometimes a pond!) so I CURSE THIS BAD WEATHER!

Happy Adoption Day!

Which just happens to also be April Fool's Day. :) Six years ago I brought Blossom home from the Capital Area Humane Society. She had been waiting for someone for two months, passed over for younger dogs (she was seven at the time) and many were wary of her dalmatian side. I, however, enjoy the company of older dogs, have no problem handling bad doggie behaviors, and brought her home with me.
She's now 13, almost totally deaf, but still as active and spry as she was those years ago. I found her on PetFinder.com, so if you are looking for a dog, purebred or not, look there first! They even have puppies. One might be waiting there for you!
So Happy Adoption Day Blossom! She has a bully spring waiting for her to celebrate. :D

Flyball Box Training

Well, thanks to the good folks over at Dogster.com, I've gotten a few ideas on how to get my dogs to use the box. They were doing great, and then we set the trigger so that they'd actually get the ball sprung if they stepped on it right (which they do). The noise scared them senseless and they didn't want to have anything to do with it again.

Essentially, we're desensitizing them to the noise. We've been working on it in short spurts and it's been great so far. It helps to have three other dogs that aren't bothered by it at all. A person with a lot of treats slowly moves closer and closer to the box, which the other person triggers repeatedly. Treats are constantly given, and no human reacts to the box noise or to the dog's reaction. We've managed to work to within a couple feet with no reaction at all!

We're also putting duck jerky and treats like that all over the box so the dogs get back into the "flyball box is goooood" mode. One has no problem with that at all - the other is still iffish. Our class instructor told us to just not use the box - how silly is that? Can't get used to using something that you never use!

The progress is pretty amazing considering the corgi is a HUGE wimp. Any little noise sets him scurrying away. He has adapted the best to the sound of the trigger mechanism, and yet he's the same one that won't touch the box anymore. Oh well, we're working on it. It's only been two days!

Yay for Squidoo!

I just started using Squidoo, and here is my very first lens: http://www.squidoo.com/flyingsheepdogs

it's all about Old English Sheepdog disc dogs. For all I know, Roofus is the only one, but I figured in case any one else was interested, there you go. I also have an OES Disc Dog design in my online store, which I also wear all the time.

Annual Go Orange For Animals Photo Contest (GOFA)

Menagerie Mayhem is proud to sponsor one of the prizes in the third annual GOFA photo contest. You may submit up to two photos PER DOG, and they must have the dog, you, and orange somewhere in it. You can photoshop them or not. For more details, head over to Dogster.com and sign up your dog for an account. Check out the forums under "Other Barks and Woofs" for a complete list of prizes. Add your dog's pictures to his account using the tag GOFA 08 to be entered. You must submit your photo(s) by April 8th, prizes will be announced April 10th.

Matchbox dog tees and Flyball Updates

In my travels I found a website that takes old matchbox covers and turns them into t-shirts - a very novel idea! I have one on the way for myself, called "The Dog" matchbox label. If you're looking for a cool retro tee you might want to have a look. There are other animals available too, a giraffe, panda, tiger, seal, elephant... basically a bunch of neat stuff. Check it out, the place is called Dream Dogs Art.

In flyball news, Mickey's been working on a flyball box so we can run flyball properly. To buy one online costs between $300-600, which is just obscene since we do this sport for fun, not competition. Right now we use a bucket with a notch and just set the ball on top of the bucket (which we have to weight at the bottom so it doesn't go flying). The dogs run down, grab the ball, and run back. I just introduced my old english sheepdog to it yesterday and he did it correctly on the very first run! Well, he had trouble finding the ball... I need to cut his bangs again. And he's not the brightest animal either. If you're interested in the box plans, we found them at Chakotay's Flyball Equipment Page. We did make a few modifications but it's a good starting point. I don't advise using PVC pipe jumps... there are plans out there for the real wooden ones and they aren't hard to make.

School Defies Agency Order to Admit Service Dog

I'm curious to know how a service animal poses a safety risk to students. I could see where the dog's paws might get stepped on during a class change, but considering service animals have been used in public for decades, I think these school officials are just on a power trip - and it's going to come back to bite them in the butt.

Read on:

BY CARL MACGOWAN |carl.macgowan@newsday.com

March 12, 2008

Defying a state agency's order to comply with New York's human rights laws, a Westbury principal yesterday refused to allow a deaf student to bring his service dog to school.

Principal Timothy Voels stood outside the main entrance of W. Tresper Clarke High School yesterday morning when John Cave, 15, of Westbury, arrived with his hearing dog, Simba. Voels and a sign language translator spoke to the teenager, his mother, Nancy Cave, and family attorney Paul Margiotta as reporters watched from a distance.

John Cave left and did not attend classes yesterday. The minute-long confrontation was the latest salvo in the yearlong battle between Cave and East Meadow school district officials, who have said the Labrador retriever, trained to alert Cave to noises and oncoming vehicles, poses a safety threat to students.

The school's refusal to let Simba attend classes with Cave sets up a possible showdown with the state Division of Human Rights, which on Monday told the district to change its policy on service animals.

"I don't think they know what they're doing," John Cave said of district officials. "I think they're going to be in big trouble with the state."

The human rights agency yesterday did not immediately seek a court order forcing the district to allow the dog into school. "At this point, we are not ready to comment on what, if anything, we may do," spokesman Thomas Shanahan said. Generally, the agency's orders are carried out without having to resort to a court order, state Human Rights Commissioner Kumiki Gibson has said.

On Monday, Gibson said the district's refusal to allow Cave to bring Simba to school constitutes discrimination. East Meadow Superintendent Leon Campo said the district would appeal.

Campo said yesterday the district would allow the dog inside the school if a court orders it to do so. "Whatever the state courts decide, how they rule on this matter, we will abide by," Campo said. "We'll continue to make the arguments that we're not only acting in the best interest of John Cave ... but all the 8,000 students that we are responsible for."

Cave, a sophomore, has hearing implants but doesn't always wear them because he says they are uncomfortable. During the long-running conflict, he has been attending school without Simba, though his family believes separating the two during school hours will cause the retriever to forget his training.

"This has been a terrible, stressful year-and-a-half for our family," Nancy Cave said. "I'm tired of people discriminating against my son."

With Simba lying at his feet, John Cave told reporters he was nervous before school yesterday. "I didn't get enough sleep last night, so I'm going to go home and rest," he said.

New Website Up!

It's not quite done, but I want to get it crawled by google ASAP so it's mostly up. :) It's called Corgi Chaos. It's essentially the same store I have on Cafepress, but I found a lot of other peoples' designs i wanted to offer as well. I didn't get the domain name I wanted, which technically I COULD get since I've had a store called corgi chaos for years... but I'll just wait for this guy's domain to expire and then buy it as it's not worth the trouble at this point.

Fun week!

February 10th (Sunday) we had a gas leak... the gas company came out and turned our gas off. It was about 4 degrees outside. After a quick trip to wal-mart and lots of towels around all the aquariums, we managed okay. It never got below 62 in the house. I took the cold sensitive dogs to my parents' house. Roofus, the sheepdog, was in sheer bliss. He loves cold. I had to move all the birds into the kitchen near a big space heater.

The next day when I got an emergency plumber to fix the problem, the gas company said they wouldn't turn it back on until the following day. Mickey called them back and they were out ninety minutes later. :) You don't appreciate things like heat and hot water until you've been without them! My hot shower that night was absolute heaven.

My Cladiella coral (aka colt or blushing coral) came out fully two days ago. I was pretty happy about that. I haven't seen it fully expanded in what seems like a couple weeks, at least. My duncan coral, though, has taken to not being fully extended. That just started yesterday, not sure what it's deal is. I want to take a photo of it for a photo contest, and I'd rather he was out completely. I've been fiddling with macro mode and I got a few neat shots.

Popper starts flyball tonight! I'm excited. We have jumps and stuff at home, but we don't have the room to put all four out at the same time, and it's too cold to do it outside. He's really wimpy about cold weather (he has dingo fur after all, very thin) so I worry about him at the place... it's not heated at all.

Here's a cool photo of Merlin I got last week. Isn't he cute? I wish he would bring the ball back. He's a very nervous dog, I'm not sure how successful we'll be, but at lessons the woman doesn't even try to get him to get the ball. He's already a pro at coming and going over the jumps, so really it's kind of a waste of our time if we're not going to introduce the ball. He gets the ball every time at home, so he needs to be exposed to it in class as well.

I've been adding flyball designs like crazy, some breed specific. Go look! Buy stuff. :) Keep my pooches in flyball class!

Moving Corals Around

Aside from being harassed by five stir-crazy dogs all day (it's been POURING rain for several days now), I moved a lot of my photosynthetic corals from my seven gallon nano to my ten gallon nano. I recently got an awesome Current USA Orbit fixture with lunar lights that blows away my piddly lighting on the bowfront. I left the pulsing xenia in the seven for now; I want to see how the other corals react to a 4x more wattage light. Normal tanks have 4-5 watts per gallon - my tank has 8! They're chilling on the bottom right now, I'll see how the are tomorrow.

I can't wait till flyball friday... Mickey is going to run Merlin so he gets used to be handled by him, and I'm going to take some photos and videos. If I get some good ones I'll post them. I am a fairly decent photographer so I think we can assume I will get some nice shots. ;) Popper starts flyball the following friday. I feel bad for Roofus but he's a giant breed dog, in addition to being clumsy, and I just see flyball as being very bad for him! I definitely need to walk him a lot that day so he isn't so depressed when the other boys leave.

I bought two Honeywell air filters after my last bird filter bit the dust. It wasn't working well anyway - with all my critters, I could dust, and two days later, it would look like I hadn't dusted in a week. How obnoxious! God knows what was going on in our lungs. After I plugged them in it took about fifteen minutes and I felt WONDERFUL. If anyone is interested, they are the Silent Comfort, model 18155 I believe.

I've been working on the store a lot. Sometimes it feels like it's an uphill battle. :(

New year, new stuff!

I hope everybody had a great holiday season! We added a bunch new designs and many new dog breeds, like the finnish lapphund, catahoula leopard dog, carolina dog (american dingo), estrela mountain dog, and a couple others. We also have a new cartoon dog design that you can find an example of in the catahoula breed section. It's absolutely adorable, if I do say so myself.

We also opened a new store just for bird lovers, Feathered Frenzy! It's got even more designs and more species than our Menagerie Mayhem store.

Our corgi is taking flyball lessons right now at Dogwood Agility. It's a blast! We weren't really wanting to do agility, and he is absolutely obsessed with tennis balls so we figured it was a good alternative. Unfortunately, hardly anyone in Columbus does flyball unless you take hundreds of dollars of THEIR obedience classes! Merlin is already fairly obedient so I don't see the need in wasting my time and money doing that. He is enjoying flyball (though he was really scared at first, being a timid dog) and next session we're going to take Popper too! It's a great way to exercise your dog and bond even closer, and I highly recommend it. Yes, you can probably expect some new designs for flyball! I want to post some photos of merlin doing flyball, but I have to ask the instructor if we are allowed to take pictures first.

Crazy couple of days!

It's been a little nuts around here the past few days... one of my eyes had a corneal abrasion, which i think was from me scratching it all the time (I have really bad eye allergies), and then i had a funky lens which tore the crap outta my eye. So I had to be one-eyed for a couple of days, which set me back on the store and other tasks, because i'm pretty much blind without my contacts.

I had my Christmas present delivered yesterday, Mickey bought me a Story and Clark piano. I thought I had gotten really terrible, but now that I can see again I am pretty good :) I LOVE my new piano.

And my Pandora, (whiteface lutino cockatiel) has yet ANOTHER feather cyst! It's getting obnoxious and expensive to have these things surgically removed every time. Sigh. But that's the price of having pets!

Almost holiday time!!

Well gang, I quit my job at the pet store and now I am an online employee FULL TIME with my own business. Scary? You bet. I compared it to going skiing, riding up the ski lift, and then having to glide off on your own. You might fall and make an ass of yourself as you get off, you might go a little while and then crash, or you might have the time of your life skiing down the mountain.

I've been super busy getting the site ready for Christmas. For me, Christmas prep starts in July. Right now, it's crunch time trying to get everything up. I added some more stuff to the rarer breeds, like the Ibizan Hound. Lots more anime designs since those are just so friggen cute!! Hope you enjoy. If you have a specific breed request, just email me, it's not a problem at all... a lot of the stuff on there is because someone asked for it. :)

Don't forget as you get ready for thanksgiving to keep an eye on those pooches! With lots of people and food around, it's easy for the little guys AND the big ones to get into trouble! Some considerations: getting stepped on, helping themselves to food off the counter (HUGE no-no!), licking the hot oven (yes mine have done that before), escaping out the front door with so many comings and goings.... the best thing you could do is put the dog(s) in a secure room (baby gates are great!) with a nice doggie bone or other chew treat.

It's been a while!

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted in here! I've been so busy with the store, I haven't had much time for typing. Well, I've definitely gotten a lot of things accomplished. Right now I'm getting ready for Christmas on the store -yes, you heard me right! I'm adding lots more ornaments and greeting cards. Now we offer single pack cards - so you don't have to get ten of something you might only need one of!

I just wanted to take a second to tell you about a new pricing structure that our printer has thrust upon us... from now on, double sided t-shirt prints will cost more. That sucks. We are trying to delete all double sided shirts from our website, but it's quite likely we will miss a few. Please let me know if you come across any so we can take care of it. It's entirely possible we may decide to keep a couple up - but these are going to be few and far between!

A Sad Day

I had a woman come in today that was in a month or two ago with this situation... She said her canary was very sick, sitting on the bottom of the cage with its feathers ruffled. I said, get it to the avian vet asap. Then I had to hear a line about how last time it cost her $90, he treated the bird for something it didn't have, when it wasn't really sick, it was just lonely, yadda yadda. Whatever. I've heard it all before. She said she could actually take the bird out, snuggle him, and put him back. This is a canary we're talking about. I told her to stop talking to me and get the bird to the avian vet now, if it was that bad it was in dire need. She told me it couldn't be that bad because he had been like that for THREE WEEKS!

Needless to say, she elected to try a store bought remedy. I explained to her that it would not help her pet, that instead, it would make it more difficult to treat the bird when she finally did wise up and get it to the vet. Nobody listens to me. They all know better. And now a poor defenseless little bird is dead because she was too cheap to get it to the avian vet.
Sadly, this woman has other birds. She says she doesn't want any more, and I hope to God she never does get any more. Because they will all die slow, miserable deaths. I don't understand how someone can proclaim to love something dearly and then not provide a basic need, to watch it slowly suffer in agony, which could be prevented, but still professing that they love the animal.

This is one reason why I hate working at a pet store. If you can't afford the pet - give it to someone that can. If your pet is sick and you don't "feel like" taking it to the vet or have "other things to do," do us all a favor and jump off a cliff.

Not the merriest time of year

Everyone can yak on about how this is a time of sharing, giving, brotherly love, yadda yadda yadda... all I can say is, you must not work, nor have ever worked, in retail. Christmas is possibly the nastiest season of them all. People are hurried, rushed, and it's your fault. They tend to be snappier, ruder, more impatient, and it's all your fault. I get more grinches this time of year than all the other months combined. Sometimes people insult you personally, sometimes people act like you have personally wronged them. But I can assure you that customers can be HUGE jerks... and when you're dealing with hundreds of people a day, it really starts to wear you down.

Parrots DO argue with each other

Havoc, my severe macaw, is just learning to talk, and lives in my great room. Pickle, my quaker, lives in the bird room, which is adjacent to the great room. If no birds are out for fly-time, I leave the bird room door open. The coversation between Havoc and Pickle went like this:

Pickle: "Pickle, Pickle, Pickle!"
Havoc: "TICK-LE. TIIIICK-LE."
Pickle: "PICKLE PICKLE PICKLE!!!"
Havoc: "What? TICKLE."

Proof that birds do argue. I hope she didn't convice Pickle his name is Tickle.

The answer to the age-old question....

.... do birds burp?

Yes, they do. And it smells like rancid seed.

OSU Stomps Michigan

Ok, really, it was a very close game. OSU gets kinda weird sometimes when it plays Michigan, the whole psychological thing and all.... But Tressel was hired for one thing and one thing only - BEAT MICHIGAN!!

I took the day off work because 1) I'm an alumni and I shouldn't have to ever miss a televised game 2) uhh it's MICHIGAN 3) no way was I driving to work on campus during a home Michigan game 4) it's MICHIGAN.

Personally, I think all the stores around campus should close the day of the Michigan game. Really, they aren't even justifying staying open with the piddly amount of business they do. Hopefully I'll never work a Michigan game again... think it's too early to put in for a personal day for next year?