Friday, August 31, 2007

2 dogs and a porcupine

Recommended:
By getting pet health insurance your pet will be protected against medical emergencies. The net will help you locate dog insurance and get the best insurance policy around. When you compare pet insurance your dog will have the medical care required to live out a good, long life.


Somehow I ended up back in Vermont, USA last week instead of in Montreal, Canada, like I planned. I have finally made it back to Montreal to start my new life, so regular posting is part of that life.

Three nights ago me and my partner drove from her Mum's house back to her foster parents house. It was about 11.30pm and as we drove into the drive way I saw that the garage was wide open and lights were on and somebody was sitting on the ground with a dog.

At first I thought somone was just playing with the dog but when we actually got out of the car my partners foster sister and foster Dad were sitting on the ground with the dog surrounded by porcupine quills. On first inspection it looked like the dog, her name is Shady, (unsurprisingly a Pitbull) was hit pretty bad in the side of the face but looking again the dog had aquired an entire beard of quills. My eyes rolled up and I nearly blacked out a few times from looking at it, it was truly one of the most horrific things I've ever seen happen to an animal.

Shady sat there letting these quills be pulled from her face with barely a cringe or a whimper but it was clear that she was in immense pain. I was surprised to see a dog let it's owners put it through that pain with no retaliation. About 100 quills were pulled before it was decided that the blood was getting too much and that the damage was too much. She must have had over 700 quills inside her and they were inside her mouth right up to the back of her throat.

She was rushed to the emergency vet and put to sleep for two hours to be operated on. The vet said it was the worst porcupine attack on a dog they had ever seen. Her body had started to shut down too from heat exhaustion and she had black urine. The poor dog is still at home recovering and even yesterday before I left I pulled another 3 quills that had obviously been inside her body and were working their way out. I pulled them tip first which means that they entered the body somewhere else and were coming right through.

Now Shady got hit horrendously bad but she always runs off with the other dog Jada who is a mut with lab in her. After Jada was rushed to the emergency room my partner and I took the charge of searching for Jada. When we found her she had also been hit by the porcupine. Luckily she had only had about 30 or 40 quills in her so we took the decision to remove them ourselves.

I tried to pull a few but she acted in a entirely different way to Shady. She cried and whimpered and pulled away. I simply could not do it by myself so we decided to try and find Jada's owner (my partner's foster brother). After trying to call him with no success we loaded Jada into the back of the Licoln wagon hoped that we could find him at his partner's house.

Luckily he was there! He managed to pull about 10 himself but the crying, whimpering and running away got worse so we took the sad decision to hold her down. It took all my weight on her front another person holding her back and one person on her head to hold her down for an excruciating 45mins or so while someone pulled the quills one by one with pliers and tweezers.

She cried, kicked, screamed and pee'd all over the floor but eventually we were finished and we knew it was all ok when she took her time to come round and lick us all.

It really was a crazy evening that I do not want to repeat.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Finally, I'm Back

Woo Hoo, I'm back.

I've been on holiday for a long while now but will post some pics very soon and start writing again.

I hope I have not set myself back too far by staying away so long.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Where have I been, Where will I be??

Sorry to all my regular viewers for an absense.

I've been very busy this week saying Goodbye's and everything preparing to leave Vermont.

I'm off to the UK for a flying visit with my partner (well 3 weeks) and will be all over the place so know my blogging will sadly suffer.

I'll be back blogging seriously by September I hope as I am moving to Montreal then but I wil make sure I get some posts in before then and reply to all my comments and visitors.

Until next time (very soon!), Forest!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Has The Random Forest lost it's fire?

Well I hope it hasn't lost it's fire yet, I guess I see it really as just warming up.

So why do I ask this question?

Yesterday I had 8 Feedburner readers. Almost reaching 10 made me greatly excited. The sky felt like an easy height to achieve, I was thinking that next week it will be 20, then 50, then 100 and then one day 1,00,000.

However today I saw that sadly my readers had dropped back down to 5. Oh dear! I felt mildly devastated and confused "what did I do wrong? Was it because I did not post yesterday? Was it because my tongue in cheek dig at the letter Z offended what is probably mostly a US audience? Did Feedburner have a glitch?"

Well I have no answer, I am having extreme trouble working out what I need to provide to get people reading but see this as an exciting journey and want to formulate a list of things to as I constantly read that people like lists. So here goes...

To Do by the end of the week.
1. Submit 2 articles to Blog Carnivals
2. Visit and if liked comment on at least 10 new blogs, subscribing if liked
3. Comment on all my liked blogs at least once
4. Read up and find out about good affiliate programs and which ones I should add to my blog
5. Find out how to change my template without affecting any added coding
6. Find a new template
7. Add one article to Helium and Associated Content (Same article is ok if allowed)
8. Learn to understand the Statcounter stats
9. Post at least 3 more times
10. Make sure I have enough items for my next list of 10

I guess that small set back has caused some concern to me and made me create a list of To Do's but the last week or so has been extremely positive. My traffic has slowly increased as you can see from the image below it's slowly getting better and today my on blog counter just reached 300 unique visits!



Hardly 100,000 a week yet but I'm excited.

Reading other people blogs had become a real inspiration. My attempt at starting a Meme hasn't really worked yet as there as so many around being started and pushed by the big guys (you know who you are) but I am making contacts and I have really started to find some voices I like.

I can't thank everyone enough for commenting on my blog. It really is a great feeling to know that somebody is actually reading and not just visiting for a brief second in fact I best be off very shortly to go on a reading lastest post rampage!

Before I head off I want to thank a few inspirational blogs and blogs I like. I now feel that an online work and some social life is achievable and I really want to work hard to achieve this for myself.

Bush Mackel - Bush started a great series for new bloggers and I have found his blog to be extremely helpful and informative as well as occassionally random and to boot he seems like a very friendly nice guy.

Bob Meets World - Bob again is very helpful and between this blog and his other one John Cow I have learnt the beginnings of the skills I need, also he is a great friendly helpful guy... do you see a pattern here?

Ugly Mail Boxes - This site basically gives me a pretty much daily laugh

Julie Anne Bonner - I'm not sure if she reads this blog but she was one of the first blogs that I came across when I first started my research and she sent me a very helpful email when I first started blogging with my original blog back in April. I always read her new posts and am always entertained.

Snoskred's Life In the Country Has been great and I may use the same template when I get round to changing. Snoskred came by my site and was very helpful when she added me to something came Stumble Upon and it caused that Tuesday hump in my traffic.

Twisted Sisters - This site can be very negative in tone but it's mostly just ranting and good humoured and I like it. Insanity Suits Me has been visiting and commenting on my site which is very encouraging!

I also want to mention Samir because I like his blog design and if you check out his latest post about conversing with urban Indians it is very funny. Christyz has always been a good place to stop by and same goes for Joanne's I'm Happy Fish and Aaron Cook. Sorry if I missed anyone who has been regularly stopping by.

Adios, gonna go find some fuel to help this blog burn brighter......

Sunday, July 22, 2007

The Problem with Z

Recently the letter Z has been rather annoying me.

I am British and grew up in London but for the last 5 weeks I have been over the pond in the grand old USA.

I have always pronounced Z as Zed but over here it's called Zee. Why? I should just accept it. I can accept different cultures beliefs and pretty much everything else except the pronunciation of the letter Z!

To my joy I discovered that Canada say Zed. Horray I thought, then somebody pointed out to me that like the USA they say Zeebra and not Zedbra like I'm used too.

I just don't know where to turn or what to do.

I have also always maintained that words such as Subsidised should be spelt with the S and not the Z but in recent weeks or blogging I have had to swallow my belief and use Z to appease the dreaded red underline of the spelling check.

I'll make it a point to just accept it from now. I may even start saying Zee for my short while left here!

Well I'm glad I got that off my chest :)

We invented Web 3.0

Recommended:
If your company is looking to get exposure online, check out this web design company that can help promote your site with custom magnets and business checks as well.

Please I need your help!

I'm typing this from a very secret location. In fact I have had to move 4 times and I have only reached the 30th word of this post.

This morning I was tinkering around with an old IBM 386 and I accidentally invented Web 3.0 whilst I was trying to remember the DOS command to load up Battle Chess.

I don't know how I did it and I'm very scared to release the application to anyone as I have not yet managed to understand what Web 2.0 is so have no idea how much of an affect my accidental stumble is going to cause on the workings of our crazy world. There may be a right time or place but I will have to keep my discovery secret until that time or place materializes.

So I have a plan.......

All I need is for everyone to post with the title "We Invented Web 3.0" then use this message or amend as you wish and add to the list any other bloggers who are to be named as accomplices (It does not matter how many, just keep adding and informing them that you have done so!). If you leave a comment here I will edit and add you to this post.

Hopefully if enough people get in on this I will stop having to look out for Black Mercedes and can no longer live in fear of people wearing sunglasses.... Please please help me, they can't get to all of us can they!!

Our Accomplices:
The Random Forest Subscribe here
Bush Mackel Subscribe here
Snoskred Subcribe here
I'm Happy Fish Subscribe here
Julie Ann Bonner Subscribe here
Bob Meets World Subscribe here
Samir Subscribe here
Twisted Sister Subscribe here

Sorry if I have missed anyone, I hope you get the message and help the cause..... Gotta go there is a man walking towards me with his hand inside his suit jacket. Bye.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Harry Potter and the motivational problems ***SPOILER***

I have just briefly hopped on a computer today to do a quick post and have been surfing around looking at others blogs and attempting to find a Harry Potter spoiler because I can't be bothered to read the book.


I decided I better write a post and I'm eluded by a subject so thought that I would use it as a tiny experiment instead.

By tagging Harry Potter in this post will it gain me any visitors as it is a HOT topic today I guess? Also of them readers will any of them stay for longer than a few seconds.


Oh and just so people who are looking for a Harry Potter Spoiler here one is:
Wow I bet you thought that was funny! I guess I could have a very least done a decent job on the retouching.

I'll report back if anything does happen :)

Bye bye for now.