Three Bee Nucs Installed

Thirty thousand bothered bees rehomed this morning.  

I will power wash some old bee equipment later today, and install feeders on two of the Nucs.  Candy installed already installed on all three of the new renters.

The Death of a Castle Rat

Thanks to Margaret N-J for forwarding this.

Do It Once, And They Never Forget

 True story. See >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_de_Witt

Eagles Off the Nest

 Liberty Road Bald Eagle this morning.  Both eagles were off the nest and the temperature was about 57 degrees Fahrenheit (13.89 celsius).  

Oat Milk Ice Cream for the Win

Breyer’s Oat Milk Vanilla Ice Cream is the best vanilla ice cream I’ve ever had, while oat cream and oat milk are the very best additions to coffee — far better than dairy.

But are oat milk products environmentally better than dairy milk, and if so, by how much?

It turns out the answer is YES, and by a WHOLE LOT.

Oat milk requires roughly 90–99% less land to produce the same volume of cow’s milk. To put it another way, dairy uses 10 to 11.5 times more land than oat milk to produce the same volume of milk

Beyond land, oat milk production is far more sustainable, using significantly less water, producing less waste, and bypassing all kinds of public health and animal welfare cautions, from antibiotic loads to the pain and suffering of lame and sick animals.

How about calories?  Oat milk and dairy milk have comparable calories, typically ranging from 100–130 per cup for oat milk and 90–150 for dairy. While similar in calories, oat milk is generally higher in carbohydrates and lower in protein and fat compared to whole cow's milk.  Looking for a lower calorie substitute fir dairy milk?  Try almond milk, which is available at just 30 calories a cup, and which is a perfect substitute in most cases.

When You Fight, You Become Legends

Jane Fonda and Joan Baez

No Kings - March 28, 2026

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."

— G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man 

Fascism Never Sleeps

IN 1942, THE THREAT WAS ALREADY THERE, because war profiteers and exploitive capitalism have always found common ground in division, hate, and cruelty.

Trump is just Hitler and Mussolini reconstituted.  

A vast array of detention centers — far too many for immigration detainees — is already being built to incarcerate and “disappear” American protestors. 

A massive army of nameless, faceless, masked thugs, accountable to no one, has already been recruited. 

Extra-judicial killings have already started, both overseas and here at home.  

Right-wing corporate overlords already own most of the news outlets, from radio to television, and from legacy newspapers to new online media. 

Crony capitalism and billion dollar bribes now drive all political decisions from the invasions of Iran and Venezuela to the genocide in Gaza, from pardons of mass murderers and serial rapists to deregulation leading to massive frauds and the looting of public systems built over generations.

The real threat to America has always been from within, and its roots have always been apathy, greed, cowardice, and racism.

We were warned by our founders in 1776, and by Lincoln in 1863.  We were warned in 1942 and we continue to be warned by everyone who thinks.

Something wicked this way walks.

The Gravestone of the Dog Catcher

I’m always interested in both dogs and history, and sometimes the two intersect.

One morning I decided to roll up the street to see if I could find the nearly 95-year old gravestone of a local dog catcher, one William F. Hopwood.

Mission accomplished!

The cemetery in question is old and filled with a dizzying number of stones, some predating the Civil War. 

Dozens of graves had been undermined by over a hundred years worth of groundhog dens.  

The terriers were with me on this journey, but there was no letting them off-leash!

William F. Hopwood, known to all as “Billy,” was the father of five and was born in Frederick, Maryland on May 19th, 1870.

Before landing a job as the local dog catcher in September of 1914, he held a janitorial job at the Frederick City Hall.  

In his first year on the job as City Dog Catcher, Billy Hopwood caught 102 dogs, of which 20 were reclaimed by their owners, and 82 were killed by chloroform after their two-day holding period was up.

In July of 1916, the local dog and cat killing business changed as a Society to Prevent Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) shelter was created. Pound dogs were now moved to the shelter after two days, and from there they could be adopted.  

Things seem to have settled into a quiet routine for Billy Hopwood until April 5th, 1928, when he made the local news after a Collie bit him in the face, resulting in a wound that required a half dozen stitches to close up.

Billy Hopwood was struck and killed by an out-of town car while walking to work in late October of 1929.  

He was 59 years old.

Come As You Are :: Playing for Change

Spring is Kicking Off

500 daffodils are up, and the plum trees are in bloom.  The peach trees are about to bloom, and leaves are coming out on the apple, cherry, and pear trees.  The viburnums and dog woods should leaf out in the next week or so.

Liberty Road Bald Eagle Nest

Dan Tyminski With :: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn

The great Jerry Douglas on dobro.

John Prine :: Hello In There

The Young Longhorn is Back

The beef cattle across the road and at the other end of the cul de sac are back, and I’m thrilled, as they have been missing since December, and I was afraid they’d been sent away to freezer camp. 

In the evening and early morning, I can sometimes hear the cattle mooing, mixed in with the call of Red-shouldered Hawks, Barred Owls, Wood Thrushes, Cardinals, and Carolina Wrens.  

Trust me — none of it is noise pollution.

The Monsters in the River

A slightly modified tale:

One summer in the village, the people gathered for a picnic. As they shared food and conversation, someone noticed a deformed  bulldog in the river, struggling and barking. The dog was going to drown!

Someone rushed to save the dog. Then, they noticed another yowling monstrous dog in the river, and they rushed in to pull that dog out. Soon, more deformed monstrous bulldogs  were seen drowning in the river, and the townspeople were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the severely deformed dogs as they came down the river. As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the dogs, two of the townspeople started to run up the shore of the river.

“Where are you going?” shouted one of the rescuers. “We need you here to help us save these dogs!”

“We are going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!”

I recount this story because of the great irony associated with a putative act of kindness being done by well-meaning people.

The short story here is that a group of people in the UK decided to “rescue” dogs from the Chinese meat dog trade.

Breeding dogs to be eaten is, of course, horrible and someone had to do something, and so "let's raise money," said someone, and things spiraled up and out from there.

But wait a minute.  No one’s breeding mutant bulldogs for the meat trade.  After all, most of these dogs are so morphologically wrecked they cannot breed on their own, and cannot whelp on their own.

So why are these dogs being bred?  Why to sell to the “meat dog rescue” people, of course.

The very same thing has happened here in the US, where “rescues” would swoop in at Amish puppy mill auctions to buy Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.  Thanks to thick bankrolls provided by Facebook “Good Samaritans,” the legend of the “$10,000 Cavalier” sale of a kennel of  aged bitches became legend — and fueled more Amish farmers breeding Cavaliers. 

In fact, what occurred here is a classic story right out of the Bible. 

In the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), Jesus says that the way to heaven is to come to the aid of those who are battered, hungry, and destitute. 

The set up to this story, however, is generally lost due to poor translation. 

The Pharisee is not asking Jesus what he should do in any specific situation -- he asking what is good policy?  

The distinction is not a small one. 

Yes, if you come across a person who is bleeding in a ditch, bind up their wounds and invite them in for a hot meal. 

But what are we to do with scores of thousands of people bleeding in ditches? Who has the bandages, the iodine, and the rooms to accommodate them all?  What do we do in that situation?

And so we come back to a first movement question:  How is it that deformed Pug X English Bulldogs are being sold in China to a foreign“dog meat rescue” group on Facebook?

And what could that possibly have to do with so many of these very same people now riding in to play "Rescue Ranger?"

Al Lewis :: Make a Little Room

The Essential Nature of a Glass

Some people see the glass half full.

Others see it half empty.

I see a glass that's twice as big

as it needs to be. 

     --- George Carlin

George Carlin missed the essential nature of a glass:  it’s refillable and will hold whatever you want — just like the human mind.

Dorothy Parker :: Her Truth Keeps Marching On

Over on Threads, Joanne Tum writes:

Dorothy Parker died alone in a hotel room in 1967 with almost nothing left. No family. No career. No money. When her will was read, everyone was stunned. She had left her entire estate to Martin Luther King Jr.

To understand why, you have to go back to when she was eight years old.

She was standing at a window during a blizzard, watching men dig through the snow with bare, purple hands. Their feet were wrapped in burlap rags because they had no boots.

Behind her, her wealthy aunt smiled and said: "Isn't it wonderful? All those men have work."

Dorothy said nothing. But she never forgot.

Some people had to suffer so others could feel generous about it. That realization became the engine of her entire life.

By thirty, she was one of the most celebrated writers in America.

The sharpest voice at New York's legendary Algonquin Round Table. A poetry bestseller. Short stories in The New Yorker. Two Academy Award nominations.

Hollywood paid her a fortune.

Then in 1936, she sat with journalists and refugees who had escaped Nazi Germany. They described what they had seen — the arrests, the disappearances, the systematic violence.

“This is only the beginning," one told her. “Another war is coming."

Parker cancelled her social calendarand got to work.

Within months she helped co-found the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, uniting thousands of actors, writers, and directors with one goal: warn America before it was too late.

Hollywood didn't want to hear it.

Studio executives dismissed her. When she described Nazi atrocities at meetings, some suggested she must be drinking. A woman this emotional, this insistent — surely she was being hysterical.

She kept speaking anyway.

In 1937 she boarded a ship to Spain, where fascist forces backed by Hitler and Mussolini were crushing a democratic republic while the world looked away. She walked through bombed villages. Sat in refugee camps. Broadcast on Madrid Radio. Sent dispatches from the rubble pleading for the world to pay attention.

When she came home she wrote: "I know that there are things that never have been funny, and never will be."

The woman whose entire reputation was built on devastating wit had found the one subjectshe couldn't joke about.

The FBI opened a file on her.

Then another. Then another.

By the time they were done: over a thousand pages documenting her meetings, her donations, her speeches, the names of everyone she'd spoken to. The government was carefully recording the woman who had tried to warn it about fascism.

After Pearl Harbor finally brought America into the war she'd predicted for five years, Parker applied for a passport to cover the conflict as a journalist.

She was refused. The government now considered her a security risk.

The blacklist arrived in 1950.

Her name appeared in Red Channels — a publication listing suspected Communists in entertainment. No trial. No evidence. No opportunity to respond.

Just her name on a page.

The woman who co-wrote A Star Is Born, who collaborated with Hitchcock, who had been twice nominated for the Academy Award — was suddenly unemployable.

The very studio heads who had ignored her warnings about Hitler now used those same warnings as proof she was dangerous.

She had been right. That was her crime.

For the next seventeen years, Dorothy Parker lived quietly in a hotel room in New York. Career finished. Money gone.

The brilliant circle of friends from the Algonquin days scattered or dead.

She wrote when she could. She drank more than she should.

On June 7, 1967, she died alone in her room at the Hotel Volney. She was 73.

Then her will was read.

She had left her entire estate to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Not to a literary foundation. Not to a university. Not to a theatre that would put her name on a wall.

To the leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

Because Dorothy Parker had understood something for sixty years that took the rest of the world much longer to grasp.

The men with purple hands in the blizzard. The refugees in the Spanish camps. The Black Americans marching in the streets.

It was one fight, wearing different faces.

Less than a year after her death, Dr. King was assassinated. Under the terms of her will, her estate passed directly to the NAACP.

In 2026, the NAACP still receives royalties from Dorothy Parker's work.

Every time someone reads her poetry, buys her short stories, or watches a film she wrote — the money flows to the organization fighting for civil rights.

A woman who died nearly sixty years ago, dismissed as hysterical and un-American, is still funding justice from the grave.

She was right too early, again and again and again.

The world punished her for it every single time.

She kept being right anyway.

And even now — she's still fighting.

Tommy Edwards :: It’s All In the Game

 The music to this tune was written by Charles Dawes, who was not only a Brigadier General, AND Vice President of the United States under Calvin Coolidge, but ALSO a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Beat that!!!

When the Kennel Club Chose Sickness and Death

The portrait of Kate Edith and Grace Maud Hoare, is by John Everett Millais, who was an English painter and illustrator who, after about 1850, developed a powerful form of realism that can be seen in this painting of two twins born into the peerage.

And what of the deerhound?

This picture was painted in 1876, three years after the Kennel Club was created.

Just 20 years later, the Kennel Club was presented with serious questions about the health consequence of inbreeding in Scottish Deerhounds.

And what did the Kennel Club do?

The opposite of what they should have done.

In a 1905 publication entitled “The Kennel Club: Its History and Record of Its Work,” Edward William Jaquet, secretary of the Kennel Club, writes about the 1897 debate about Scottish Deerhounds that resulted in all the Kennel Club registries being slammed shut:

“At the same meeting of the roth July letters were read from Mrs. E. Maude Everitt and Mr. R. Hood Wright relative to the registration by Mr. Wood Wright of a dog. a cross between a Borzoi and a Deerhound.

“Mrs. Everittcomplained that as Secretary to the Borzoi Club, and a prominent breeder and exhibitor of Deer- hounds, Mr. Hood Wright ought, as a matter of duty, to use every endeavour to keep up purity of breed.

“Mr. Hood Wright, in his reply, asserted that, in his opinion, it was absolutely necessary to introduce fresh blood into the particular breed, asDeerhound were rapidly becoming so inbred that a large proportion of the pups died at birth, being too weak to suck, were difficult to rear, and when reared even the best seem especially liable to various diseases, and this entirely owing to the practice of inbreeding.

“The question having been fully discussed, the Committee decided that it cannot be permitted to register a cross-bred dog as belonging to a breed already recognised in the Kennel Club's classification of breeds.”

Right.  

Health or purity? 

Purity of course!  

A dead dog is not a liability, after all; it's an opportunity for dog dealers to sell more dogs, and for wannabe rosette winners to try again with new stock. 

Perfect!

Of course, it should be pointed out that Scottish Deerhounds ARE living longer now than they did only a few years ago.

Excellent!

So did the Kennel Club change its tune and decide to embrace a little outcrossing?

No, of course not!

Instead, they now suggest that all RKC and AKC dog owners buy veterinary insurance, which comes in so very handy when it comes time to pay for the chemotherapy!

———-

To read the 1905 publication entitled “The Kennel Club: Its History and Record of Its Work” by Edward William Jaquet, secretary of the Kennel Club, see >>

www.terrierman.com/Kennel-Club-history.pdf

The Farm Vs the Kennel Club

One of the first stud books to document the breeding of animals was created for Shorthorn Cattle in 1822.

It was also the first studbook to illuminate the deleterious impact of inbreeding too much and for too long

What was different with farmers, than with dog owners, was that down on the farm there was a clear axis of production, while in the Kennel Club there was nothing but the sniffing pretension of ego, exclusivity, and conspicuous consumption.

Farmers inbreeding animals for improvement began to notice that fertility rates began to drop after a few generations. In some lines disease popped up, or defects such as weak hocks appeared.  A breed was not “better” or “improved” if it cost more, produced less, or died sooner.

Because farm herds are large and often kept by families for generations, farmers were able to "tease out" data indicating drops in production, increases in mortality, declining fecundity, and a steady rise in disease and illness.

Inbreeding, which had initially boosted production, now appeared to be reducing it.

Because farmers had a clear "steak and eggs" axis for evaluation of stock, they were ready and willing to outcross to achieve the best results for their needs and their land. Consumers, after all, do not much care what breed of chicken their eggs come from, or what "champion" bull sired their steak.

Through experimentation, farmers discovered that outcrosses and hybrids of two "pure" types produce as well or better, while remaining more disease resistant, more fecund, and longer-lived than deeply homogeneous stock.

What may appear to be a pure Angus (the most common breed of beef cattle in the world) is likely to have a wide variety of cattle genes coursing through its system. In fact, entire breeds of cattle are now kept solely for their outcross potential. On today's farms the cattle in the field may be Brangus (Brahman-Angus crosses), Braford (Brahmam-Hereford crosses), Beefmasters (a cross of Hereford, Shorthorn and Brahman), or any other combination or mix.

If you go to any farm or garden center today, you will find nearly everything is hybrid, from hybrid Pioneer seed corn to hybrid roses.

In the food marketplace, we find hybrid tomatoes and potatoes, as well as apples and cucumbers. Entire types, such as Broccoli, Kale, and Brussels Sprouts are, in fact, hybrids of the same plant.

In the poultry section, every chicken is a man-made crossbreed, whether it’s egg-producing ISA Browns, Bovans Goldline, or California Whites, and whether it’s meat chickens like Freedom Rangers or Cornish Crosses.

Dog breeds are also a product of outcrossing, whether to achieve performance success or aesthetic satisfaction.  

The difference with dogs, however, is that owners and breeders are mostly divorced from each other, are divorced from work and performance metrics, and are operating in a very small numerical pool.  

A “big breeder” of dogs might have a kennel of just ten dogs, have pedigree records going back only five generations, have health testing on very few dogs and for very few issues, and have no track record at all on the health, fecundity, and mortality of their get.  

Is it any wonder that dogs are not being improved in the Kennel Clubs at that same speed that farm stock (both plant and animal) has been improved on the farm?

Maxwell, Epstein, Trump and Trafficked Women

A Sunday Mirror article from November 23, 1997, describes Donald Trump taking Ghislaine Maxwell and a 20-year-old woman to Mar-a-Lago. The young woman, Anouska De Georgiou, had been trafficked for years by Epstein and Maxwell by this point. 

See "How a British teen model was lured into Jeffrey Epstein's web" >> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-british-teen-model-was-lured-jeffrey-epstein-s-web-n1056901

Rights, Responsibilities, and Incentives

At about dawn, I called one of my neighbors and said “Your cows have eaten my lettuce, they’re shitting on my porch, and I’m going to kill every one of the bastards if you don’t get them out of here in 10 minutes.”

At that point in my killing rage, I was advised that the laws of Colorado make it mandatory for a landowner to fence his land against the entrance of cattle—rather than requiring the owner of the cattle to fence them in.

In other words, the burden is on the afflicted … at which point I said that I really wanted the cows in my yard, because it gave me an opportunity to practice random high-speed patterns on my motorcycle—running the cows hither and yon across the landscape, burning off valuable pounds of market meat in the process, and chasing the bastards till they foam at the mouth and fall in their tracks. (The bulls are tricky; they don’t always run, and when they charge you have to be very fast and cool with the gear-changes—or they’ll crush you.)

— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America, 1968

A Four Path Nexus

My relaxation chair where four paths come together, and where I feed the deer below the house. Filling up the water pan results in increased wildlife attraction.

Nina Simone :: Feeling Good

Dougie MacLean :: Caledonia

Adding a New Path In the Yard

Got in a new path going down to the lower forest, starting up near the bee hives. 

The path is edged with dead or downed tree branches and the trunk sections that I split with sledge and wedges earlier this week. The path base is wood chips. Where there’s a gap in the edging is where it crosses a wider path.  This is also where another path comes in, rising up towards the fenced dog yard, and skirting the small orchard section, where 500 daffodils are coming up and waiting to bloom.

The Epstein-Trump Distraction War In Iran

 

A Market Driven Solution for Dogs?

When it comes to cars, we sensibly require driver’s licenses, vehicle inspections, and liability insurance to cover the predictable costs of traffic collisions and liability arising from accidents and incidents related to vehicle operation.

Car insurance rates vary by age of the driver, type of car, and an individual car owner’s driving record.  

The insurance cost for a 67-year old with no moving violations who is driving a 13-year old  4-cylinder Ford, is going to be substantially less than the insurance costs of a 20-year old with three moving violations, and two wrecks, who is driving a 2026 Porsche 9-11 Turbo.

Car insurance and health insurance are commonly understood financial products, but as George Mason University economist Tyler Cowan has noted, there are insurance markets in almost everything.  

A few examples:

▪️Hole In One Golf Insurance:  In Japan, golfers who hit a hole-in-one are expected to throw parties “comparable to a small wedding,” including live music, food, drinks, and commemorative tree plantings.  In response, a hole-in-one insurance industry has been created, with approximately 30% of all Japanese golfers shelling out $50-$70 a year to insure themselves against up to $3,500 in hole-in-one party expenses.

▪️Foreign Student Enrollment Insurance:

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has paid over $424,000 a year to insure itself against a significant drop in tuition revenue from Chinese students.  The university’s three-year contract with an insurance broker provides coverage of up to $60 million in lost revenue should there be a tightening of exit or entry visas.

▪️In the news at the moment is the high and rising cost of operating oil tankers in war zones, whether that’s Russian ships in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, or American and European ships in the Straits of Hormuz or Bab al-Mandab. No ship owner will sail without insurance, and just two or three ships sunk or on fire in a broadly-defined war zone has a ripple effect across the globe. 

I bring up insurance to broach a new idea.  

What if every dog breeder was required to purchase a four-year nose-to-tail health insurance policy for every puppy sold?  

The insurance costs would, of course, be passed on to puppy buyers and would, of course, change from breed to breed.

Why would breeders be required to buy the insurance, rather than consumers?  

Simple:  breeders are the creators of the puppies, and the party most familiar with the predictable health problems associated with their breed.  If you want more healthy dogs, and fewer unhealthy ones, you park the costs at the point of production, same as you do for hygiene, health, and ingredient inspections at a bakery.

In addition, breeders are a logical point of enforcement.  Breeding dogs is either a business or a hobby, and either way income is taxed.  If breeding dogs is a for-profit business, expenses of all kinds can be written off against profits.  If four years of nose-to-tail pet health insurance was required, however, even hobby breeders would be able to write off the cost of insurance and health testing.

Insurance companies, of course, could lower premium costs for breeders with low inbreeding by descent numbers (aka genetic COI), and those who health-test their dogs.

What might be the result of such a scheme?  

Well, for one thing dogs would benefit as there would be a financial incentive for breeders to reduce inbreeding and to a conduct more health tests.  

On the consumer end, there would be an up-front financial incentive to stay away from famously unhealthy breeds, as the issue would no longer be kicked down the road by willfully ignorant consumers. 

Insurance markets are not perfect regulatory mechanisms, but they are generally better than no regulatory mechanism at all, which is where we are now in the world of dogs. 

There is no question that insurance pressures drive a lot of production and consumption decisions, from house location to roofing types, from career paths to hobby choices.  

If fewer people bought famously unhealthy breeds, and the creators of those breeds were less enamored with inbreeding and morphological deformity, would that be a bad thing?  

I think not.

And what about the dogs?  Would they not benefit from more testing and more corrective intervention in their first four years of life?

I think so.

What about breeders of non-pedigree crosses and mutts?  Would they be required to purchase insurance as well?  

Of course, but you can expect that insurance to be less costly than for morphologically extreme and inbred dogs. 

And what about Kennel Clubs?  

They are already in the business of selling pet insurance. To push this scheme into hyper-drive would require no new legislation; it would only require the Kennel Clubs to mandate the purchase of a four-year health insurance policy for every registered dog. 

Kennel Club breeders like to tell themselves they exist to improve dogs and showcase “ethical breeders”.  Here’s how they can match their actions with their rhetoric.  If they won’t do it, we’ll learn a lot about what *really* drives their decision process.  I suspect it’s not dogs, but I would be *very* pleased to be proven wrong.

The High Cost of Shouldering Actuarial Risk

Owning guns, cars, swimming pools, and certain animals predictably leads to an increased risk of bad outcomes and jaw-dropping levels of potential liability.

Should the social costs of voluntary ownership decisions be communized or privatized?

And if we agree that they should be privatized in the form of mandatory liability insurance, as we do with cars, what’s it say if no insurance company will underwrite the risk?

FROM I-NEWS IN THE U.K.:

“Bully dog owners have been left in a panic over the future of their pets after a leading charity announced it is pulling the Government-mandated insurance.

“The Dogs Trust was the only organisation willing to provide the type of insurance needed by XL Bully owners, but from July it will no longer be available.

This does not mean the dogs are set to be totally banned as ministers have pledged to find an alternative insurance solution. 

“But owners and animal rescue centres fear the uncertainty will mean some dogs are dumped or destroyed in the “panic” over the looming insurance void.

“‘Owners feel the rug has been pulled out from under us,’ one said.

“Conservative ministers banned the sale and breeding of XL Bullies in February 2024. But they allowed the dogs to be kept so long as owners met a set of strict requirements.

“The controversial breed had been ‘disproportionally involved’ in a sharp rise in fatal dog attacks leading up to the ban, according to Government statistics.

“More than 55,000 XL Bully dog owners across the UK got a legal exemption before the ban came into force in February 2024.

“Their pets must be microchipped, neutered, kept on a lead and muzzled when in public. Owners must also have third-party liability insurance, which costs £25 a year with the Dogs Trust.

“Decision to pull insurance ‘not taken lightly’

“The charity said it had never intended to act as an insurer in the long-term, explaining that the role was “leading to a significant increase in our costs”.

“It said it was ‘incredibly disappointed’ to have made the ‘difficult decision’, adding: ‘It is not one we have taken lightly’.

The Best Hitler Is a Dead Hitler

Beware.  Or at least be aware. 

Today is March 15th -- International Kill a Tyrant Day. 

Don’t understand?  Ask a friend who has read Shakespeare.

Reality 101

I would love to teach a class called REALITY 101. It would teach high school kids how to sew on a button, change a tire, buy a car, train a dog, wash clothes, cook an egg, split wood, hang a picture, save and invest for retirement, get a job, make 10 decent cheap meals, write a thank you letter, give a short speech, handle a traffic stop, ask a girl (or guy) on a date, do laundry, figure out the tip, go to the vet, shop for groceries, top off an engine with oil, repair a lawn mower, tell a joke, inflate car tires, start a conversation, ask for help, polish shoes, take a decent snapshot, and snake a drain.

Greenland Defense Forces

The dogs of the arctic are more than pets; they are an essential lifeline necessary for communication and transportation, and as a consequence any weakening of the gene pool is a threat to life itself.

And so it is that Greenland, which is under the control of Denmark, has special laws to protect the native sled dog population.

In Greenland, no snowmobiles are allowed in the north of the country, nor are any imported sled dogs allowed -- a way of making sure that gasoline and degenerate dogs from the Kennel Club do not wreck the native canine gene pool which has been 5,000 years in the making.

In order to enforce the law , Greenland has the "Sirius Dog Sled Patrol,"">a special forces team that moves by native sled dog. The Sirius patrols are pairs of men, with 11-15 sled dogs, operating in true wilderness for four months at a time, and often without additional human contact. There are six patrol teams, and regular hazards include polar bears.

Fatwa Never Sleeps

Iran will NEVER forget. 

The Order of Assassins was a Persian Shia Islamic military order founded by Hasan-i Sabbah in 1090. The Assassins are believed to have killed hundreds of people who were deemed enemies of their state over the course of 200 years.

Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka, Tiffany, Barron, Jared Kushner, Melania, Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio will all have a bullseye painted on them for the rest of their lives.

Donald Trump Rapes Children

The most famously litigious man in history hasn't tried to sue anybody for saying he rapes children.

Why? Because it’s TRUE, and he fears discovery.

Judaism is Not Zionism

JUDAISM as a noble 4,000-year old religion whose tenets and lessons are foundational to the rule of law.

ZIONISM is a 150-year old political cult forged in theft and in opposition to the rule of law.

A Sledges and Wedges Day

Knocked out the dry pine rounds, which will be used to edge a forest path tomorrow. This was easy splitting. The big green pine rounds are going to have to get rolled to age in place. I tried splitting one, and it gushed sap.  It’s simply not a hand splitting job when it’s that green.

A Small Stumble in Hamnet

Hamnet was playing on the bedroom TV last night.  It’s a fictionalized semi-autobiographical representation of Shakespeare and his immediate family life.

The first scene opens with Agnes (Shakespeare’s love interest) asleep below an enormous tree next to a mysterious cave. She wakes up, slips on a hawker’s gauntlet, and summons a hawk to hand. The hawk is out of time and place, as it’s a Harris Hawk, native to the American Southwest, Mexico, and South America, and unused in falconry until the early 1970s.

Another common movie irritant:  the hawk’s vocalization is also out of time and place, as it’s the cry of a Red-tail Hawk — another American bird unused in Elizabethan falconry.

Agnes is said to be the daughter of a forest witch who knows herbal lore, a plot device which helps weave together a story board rooted in nature, mysticism, illness and grief.

Hamnet is a very good film; forgive it its small (and all too common) avian trespasses.

Rotten From the Head Down

Can it get worse for Crufts?

I thought they’d hit bottom with the photoshopping of the 2026 Best In Show winner, but no, it’s now worse, as the head of the FCI, who was the Best In Show judge, has said there is no exaggeration in the same eye-wrecked, ponderously fat dog that the Royal Kennel Club was caught photoshopping to lessen the extent of its eye entropion and ectropion. And to cap it off the judge of the Gundog group agrees. Is there any wonder now why some think there is nothing worth saving in the world of show dogs?

Twenty years ago, I said the core problem in the Kennel Clubs was both a failed intellectual construct and a failed inbred culture, and every day they prove that analysis correct.

Mens Rea: When It’s the Thought That Counts

THE ROYAL KENNEL CLUB has been caught photoshopping away severe morphological defects in their 2024 photo of the dog that later won “Best In Show” in 2026.

The story here is from Jemima Harrison at CRUFFA >> 

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Arqzh3zjj/?mibextid=wwXIfr

READ the whole thing.

Vidkun Quisling Hopes You Forget

Omar Akkad has observed, “One day, everyone will have always been against this.”

Yes indeed.

Is this that day?  

Who can say?  

But yes, the calculus is slowly shifting.

And yet…..

And yet, there are always those who are anxious to be part of the system.  They will tell you it’s better to be “inside the system,” working to temper the worst excesses, rather than outside criticizing the obvious cruelty.

It’s a convenient rationalization, isn’t it?  You get to position yourself as a whistleblower, even as you preen under the spotlight and do nothing to threaten your income stream.

How convenient.  

Yes, I’m looking straight at you Miles Taylor.

In the movie “Inglorious Basterds,” Aldo Raines knew the type. 

After the war, all the Nazis would take off their uniforms and pass for citizens.  Once the Allies won, every Vichy frenchman and woman would tell you they had always been part of The Resistance.

Aldo’s solution was to pull out a bowie knife and carve a swastika into the forehead of every Nazi he and his men let live.

Will they let us do that today?

Probably not.

That said, remember where people stood, and not just at the end of the war, but at the beginning and middle of the war too.

Is this about politics or dogs?

Yes.  Yes it is.

Stowaway Fox

FROM THE GUARDIAN

A sly fox slipped on to a cargo ship and travelled from Southampton to New York, according to officials at Bronx Zoo.

The zoo, which is looking after the animal, said it appears healthy after early examinations.

It is unclear how the male red fox boarded the ship, which had been transporting cars, to make the 3,400 mile journey to the east coast of the US.

It left Southampton, Hampshire, on 4 February, and the vessel docked at the Port of New York and New Jersey on 18 February.

Diane J Sabatino, executive assistant commissioner at the US Customs and Border Protection Department, wrote on X that port officers had found the ‘sly stowaway’, and agriculture specialists had coordinated with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service and New Jersey Fish and Wildlife to find the fox a new home at Bronx Zoo

Officials brought the fox to the zoo the next day. He is estimated to be two years old and weighs 5kg (11lbs).

Keith Lovett, the zoo’s director of animal programmes, said: ‘He seems to be settling in well. It’s gone through a lot.’

A long-term home for the mammal will be found after he undergoes additional health checks.

The omnivore has a diet of produce, proteins and some biscuit-like items at the zoo’s veterinary centre.

The species, formally named Vulpes vulpes, is widespread in Europe, Asia, North America and parts of Africa.

The Contraction of Small Towns

The complaint and observation is global.

Small towns everywhere are dying as capital spools up to create ever-larger factories designed to make and ship more and more goods farther and farther away, as small farms fall to increased mechanization and distribution efficiency, and as television and automobiles show people more opportunities and more paths to escape.

Small town shops are falling to big box retailers, Amazon, and other on-line retailers and distributors, while increased wealth has driven an increase in holiday home Airbnbs.

Meanwhile, international competition, television, improved education, and the Internet have driven the spread of English as a global language, and the rapid decline in local or regional languages.

The phenomenon can be seen in Tuscany and rural Algeria, in Chiapas and Wales, in Kansas and Korea.

And the result?  A lot of nostalgia bemoaning change, increased suspicion of “foreigners,” and a general anger that cultural totems are slipping away as the world is becoming more and more homogenized.

Which reminds me of the time Tom Bradbury wrote: 

“The most perfect thing I have ever seen just happened on the replacement train bus service between Newport and Cwmbran: White man sat in front of a mother and her son. Mother was wearing a niqab. After about 5 minutes of the mother talking to her son in another language the man, for whatever reason, feels the need to tell the woman ‘When you're in the UK you should really be speaking English.’ At which point, an old woman in front of him turns around and says, ‘She's in Wales, and she’s speaking Welsh.’”