Someone Actually Reads This Blog!!

I was googling when I discovered, by happenstance, that I was mentioned in a dog book.

I was?  Uh oh! Best to brace myself!

The book was What's a Dog For? by John Homans, and it had excellent reviews:

"[An] engaging, informative book that is both a survey of the latest research on canine cognition and a memoir of [Homans's] years with his Lab mix, Stella... perfect and poignant."
—The New York Times Book Review

"[An] artful exploration of human-canine relations... Homans travels around the country, exploring various dog cultures and speaking to scientists, aid workers, lawyers, and breeders to discover how dogs have achieved this 'honorary personhood.'"
—The New Yorker

“A remarkable chronicle of the domestic dog's journey across thousands of years and straight into our hearts, written with equal parts tenderness and scientific rigor… Beautifully written and absolutely engrossing, What's a Dog For? goes on to examine such fascinating fringes of canine culture as how dogs served as Darwin's muse, why they were instrumental in the birth of empathy, and what they might reveal about the future of evolution.”
—The Atlantic

"Through careful observation and analysis, New York executive editor Homans opens the door into the world of dogs, from the scientific to the humorous... illuminating nuggets of information on the ever-changing and complex world of people and their pets."
—Kirkus

"Retraces [the] journey from Darwin's study of canine emotions to puppy mills to a canine-science conclave in Vienna... covers doggie consciousness and evolution... Homans hits his stride on topics like the read-state (pro)/blue state (con) divide over euthanasia and the aristocratic origins of canine pedigree. Sprinkled throughout are charming anecdotes that will delight dog lover and even likely appeal to die-hard cat people."
—Mother Jones

Wow. That actually sounded pretty good. And so, while sipping on a cup of coffee last week, I ordered a copy off of Amazon, and it arrived on Sunday.

I would like to say you I'm not so vain as to first turn to my own name in the index first, but that would be a lie. That said, what I found was rather flattering, which was not expected:

Patrick Burns of the popular blog Terrierman.... wants to tear down the Potemkin village of the AKC and repopulate the world with real working dogs, dogs that can dig up farm varmints, like his own terriers that he sets after woodchucks on the farm fields around his Virginia home. His deep, scoffing contempt for his adversaries makes him a great blogger. He's forged a cross-Atlantic alliance with Jemima Harrison, creating a two front war. In some ways, he's also an ideological ally of journalist Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivores Dilemma, as well as all the sheep farmers heirloom vegetable growers and locavores who are trying to imagine a new relation with the natural world. But he's far from sentimental about the past – he knows what the modern world is, knows that the Wendell Berrys are not about to feed Chicago anytime soon.

And he knows that in some ways the natural world is in better shape than it was, say 30 years ago: there are more eagles, more deer, and more varmints, which is where his terriers come in. Terrierman uses them for the purpose they were originally bred for; digging for varmints. Their chests have to be narrow enough to squeeze down fox and groundhog burrows, and part of his issue with the AKC is that the dogs it certifies don't have these dimensions.

Burns's cosmology is idiosyncratic, a world entire, woven from skeins of history and philosophy and science. He writes about what your life might be like and what equipment you'd need if the electricity was turned off; why the AKC won't listen to Charles Darwin; why the golden bear hasn't return to California. His hunting is a practice that leads to all sorts of corollaries. He's a truth seeker and a truth teller. His dogs anchor his thinking to what's happening to nature in the modern world.

Burns's passion reminds us that to have a relationship to the natural world, we must imagine it, then believe in it, and then live it. One of the main intellectual threads of the last decade has been our need to take ethical responsibility for our food choices and for our carnivorousness. Despite their element of moral playacting, these ethics raise an important truth, which is that we're not on the farm anymore. And getting back there involves, as much as anything else, imagination.

Dogs, as always, are players in this drama – side players, a parallel story. The Victorian era's field-and-farmyard uses for dogs – "hunting in a field of high turnips" - no longer exist in our world. But then what uses are appropriate for dogs today? The dog world is alive with such anxieties, hand-wringing about the future of the dog. Which can seem a little silly, as dogs are patently not going anywhere.

That's as far as I have gotten so far, but will I read the whole book?  You bet! And you can too!

Why Your Safety Does Not Depend on the AKC

Rep. Gary Palmer, R-AL., a member of the conservative "Freedom Caucus" wanted to know why the TSA bought foreign dogs for security work rather than follow Donald Trump's "Buy American, Hire American" (other than wives, of course) executive order.

Over at the CDR Salamander blog they got right down to it:

Here is the executive summary Congressman; we foreign source our dogs because on balance American breeders in general, and the AKC specifically, are the worst thing to happen to dogs since the Yulin Dog Meat Festival.

Our problem is twofold, vanity and greed.

Let me give you an example. The worse national election of the last year was not Clinton-v-Trump, it was the German Shepard Dog winning the Westminster Kennel Club following the equally horrid disgrace at Crufts last year where the Mother Country picked up our bad ideas. The American GSD is the poster child for systemic animal abuse in the guise of “love” of a breed.

As they have with so many breeds, the “Bench” conformation crowd created a crippled, unhealthy, and generally useless line of GSD that come from the USA. See that sloping back? You do not see that deformity in German, Dutch, and Belgian lines of those dogs. Untold hundreds of puppies are born each year in conformation kennels who spend their lives in pain and misery just to get that look from a few.

As all they are concerned with is superficial conformity to an artificial standard created by people with no care for what the dogs actually are designed to do, nothing else matters. Hips, EIC, cancer, allergies, intelligence, drive, instinct – non of these things matter to the Bench people in the USA - and increasingly elsewhere as our bad habits spread.

The poor puppers have had their purpose bred out of them. Herding dogs can’t herd, retrievers cannot retrieve, pointers can’t point, guards can’t guard, terriers can’t terrorize, and hounds are scared of their own shadows.

Read the whole thingl; it's pretty good.  Thanks for the link Chas!

A Battle Between Coyote and Cat

This cat and coyote seems to get along famously, but would that hold true every time and all the time?

A dog is not a coyote or a wolf, which is why you do not see these animals at the circus

Yes, things can work out, but it's not the way to bet if you are a cat, no matter how many lives you have been promised.

And what happens when this coyote kills the cat, or bites his owner?  What then?

Yes, it may work out fine, but it's a game of  "Bet Your Life," and the odds of these two friends making it to old age together are not terrific.

The Leader of the Pack is a Loser

The Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in the U.K. reports that the French Bulldog is expected to become the most registered dog in 2017, overtaking the Labrador Retrievers’ 27-year reign.

Kennel Club figures reveal registrations for the breed in the UK increased by 47 per cent from 14,607 in 2015 to 21,470 in 2016 - up from just 670 in 2007.

The British Veterinary Association warns that the French bulldog craze is producing seriously ill puppies:

The celebrity craze for French bulldogs is helping fuel the dangerous overbreeding of one of the country’s favourite canines, resulting in agonising deformities and birth defects, Britain’s leading veterinary experts warn.

Rather than being “cute and wrinkly”, experts claim that intensively bred "Frenchies" struggle to breathe due to their exaggerated features - with even short bouts of exercise triggering serious respiratory problems.

Bottom line:  There is nothing cute about a lifetime of respiratory distress. Think before you fuel a market in misery, deformity, disease, and dysfunction. Dogs deserve better.

The Robot Apple Pickers of the Future

This apple-picking robot is from Abundant Robotics in California, and it uses a vacuum system to suck the fruit straight off the trees.

I am all for this.  Why?  Simple:  I want more fruits and vegetable grown in the U.S., fewer non-immigrant workers, and less illegal labor.

In short, I want good food and no slavery; call me a radical if you must.

Fruit and nut farms employ 41 percent of the nation’s agricultural work force, and one-sixth of this work force are migrants, many of them illegal immigrants or workers on H-2 visas.

To put it another way, fruit and tree nut farms employ about 200,000 people, with about 40,000 of these working in apple orchards, many of them in Virginia, New York, Oregon, and Washington state.

Put in robotic apple pickers and we may get cheaper apples and more jobs that pay the kind of wages that American workers deserve.

Go ahead and plant heirloom apples in your yard, and raise tomatoes and sweet corn too.  When push come to shove, however, the farms of the future will be bigger and more automated, and they will have to produce food not for a nation of of 180 million (when I was born) or 324 million (today), but for 500 million people or more.  Achieving that miracle will depend on CRISPR and GMO technology, drones, and artificial intelligence linked to targeted applications of fertilizer, water, insecticide, and fungicide.

Shovels and Rope :: Birmingham

A Very Small Dog in a Very Tight Pipe

Moxie bolted a groundhog top side, which was caught by Misto.

These Dogs Have Your Back

Order your custom dog or horse bench here.

He Who Made Kittens

He who made kittens made snakes in the grass.

I think this is the biggest garter snake I've seen. I left it undisturbed, but I'm pretty sure there was a mouse in the bulge under his head.

The Real Jack Russell Terrier

From The Shooting Times in the U.K.:

What then, exactly, is a real Jack Russell terrier? I asked Eddie Chapman, renowned in the hunting and working terrier world for his expertise, not only as a terrierman — having worked for some 15 packs of hounds — but also for his determined efforts to retain the essence of the genuine working Jack Russell. ...

To answer my question Eddie cupped his hands to the size, as he saw it, of a vixen’s chest. “The real Jack Russell must have a shallow, narrow chest similar in size to that of a vixen,” he said. “Most working Jack Russells are 12in and under in height. Above that height means that they are restricted to where they can work. The dog should weigh a pound to an inch.”

The Parson Russell terrier is bred for showing, not working. It is taller than a Jack Russell, has a longer head and larger chest and is adapted to the show bench rather than the hunting field. As such it does not, in my opinion, deserve to be associated with Parson John Russell. The West Country terrier that was bred to work with hounds and bolt foxes is now eligible to sit on the benches at Crufts and to be preened, polished and shampooed for the show ring.

• Related Links:
  ** Cracking Tired Chestnuts About Form and Function
  ** Never Too Small a Chest
  ** The Limits of Flexibile Chests
  ** Form for Function: Span Quarry, Not Just Dogs
  ** The Good Stuff
  ** A Wrench that Doesn't Fit
  ** Out of the Ring and Into the Den
  ** Artificial Dens, Big Dogs and Fair Chase
  ** The Measured Size of Red Fox
  ** Measurement Informs, Exaggeration Deforms
  ** What Flint Can Tell Us About Working Terriers

Not All That's Gold Glitters

This pretty little box turtle was found on the edge of a corn field today.

In Memoriam

For the last 43 years, the U.S. has not had a military draft. It has not fought an existential war since the Civil War. This Memorial Day, the folks who need to give thanks to U.S. troops are the people of Europe, who were bailed out twice, and the people of Korea who still live in a war zone protected by an American shield.

I myself will give thanks, as I always do, to the men and woman who chose service other than killing people they did not know in a country they had never even visited before.

I thank the civil rights workers, the union organizers, the school teachers and, the hardware store clerks, the folks who repair our roads and plow our fields, who drive the trucks and mine the coal, who wash the dishes and fix the roofs. I thank those who pay taxes without hate for those who need a helping hand.

The job of the military is to kill people and break things. They will tell you that themselves. I understand that there is a place for that, but my honor is for those who raise things and make things. I offer no disrespect for the military dead, but surely there is a place to remember and celebrate those who fight to improve themselves and others? Surely there is a place to honor those who pay taxes rather than just those who killed and destroyed while on the government dole? Where is their flag and their monument? This Memorial Day let at least a few of us remember those who built this nation, and not just those who destroyed others.

Ten Legs on Two Wheels

Yertle the Turtle

Joy and Sadness on the Towpath

This baby Canada Goose was the solo survivor of what had no doubt been a large clutch of eggs laid by his parents.

What got the others? Flood, fox, raccoon, turtle, snake, dog, coyote, hawk?

We are groaning with wildlife and the circle is unbroken, but it drips red in tooth and claw. Spring is a time for new life, but it is also the cruelest season.

Rolling Thunder, Puppy Edition

The Rolling Thunder motorcycle madness is back in town as it is every Memorial Day. This is an event that has lost the plot, and now it's just old fat men and their aged tarts rolling into town with more and more three-wheeled contraptions. What's next, people tough on their mobility scooters?

The dogs and I were rolling on the C & O Canal by 6 am and after two hours of exploring I tucked into a coffee shop with most of the day still ahead.

Hunting the Canal

Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

The AKC Dog Show is Dying

Back in September American Kennel Club Chairman Ron Menaker wrote a piece entitled "The Show Must Go On" but his numbers were less than optimistic:

The sport of Conformation is the flagship AKC event, and is the sport that is at the very foundation of our Registry....

[T]he trends over the past ten years show us that Conformation is in a tenuous position. “The graying of the Sport” has become something of a buzzword in recent years, but we know that the issue is far more complex than the simple fact of an aging population.

... The numbers show a pretty clear picture.

All-breed and conformation entries have been falling over the past ten years.

Fewer conformation championships have been earned.

Every year, fewer dogs are exhibited in conformation.

Lack of Self-Awareness Is a Disease

Coffee and Provocation

A Surprising Bit of Bird Taxonomy
Falcons are more closely related to parrots than they are to hawks and eagles.

Oldest Tree Was Killed to Determine Its Age
A 5,200 year old bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) now known as Prometheus once lived on Mount Wheeler in Nevada. It was chopped down in 1963 by a geologist studying the age of trees.

Floating Solar Panels Over a Coal Mine
In China, a 40 megawatt solar farm is floating on top of a reservoir that is actually flooded coal mining land. Floating solar panels keeps valuable land free, reduces evaporation from reservoirs and, because the water cools the surrounding air, reduces solar module degradation and increase efficiency of production.

Was the First Human European?
European fossils may belong to the earliest known hominid.

Indian Dog Breeds are Going Extinct
The westernization of India is pushing endemic breeds such as the Chippiparai, Jonangi, Rajapalayams, and Kombai, over the edge.

Dogs of Amazon
Amazon has 4,000 registered canines — 500 of which on average come to the offices everyday with their employee owners.

Birth Control Recommended
The new Apple campus has a 100,000 sqft gym and no daycare.

Freecycle
Freecycle is like Craig's list, but of folks giving stuff away for free.

Televisor
Put in the name of a TV show you like, and this web site will tell you of something similar and where to watch it.

Not Bird Brained
Chickens are remarkably intelligent and may even display empathy. And they certainly have routines.\

The Perfect Cold Brew Coffee?
The folks at Popular Science say that the Toddy Cold Brew Coffee Maker is the ticket.

The Andromeda Strain?
Suppose there are diseases hidden in the ice and they are waking up due to permafrost melting?

An Idiot Actor?
When Hugh Jackman was cast as the X-Men character Wolverine, he researched wolves, not knowing that wolverines were a very real, and entirely different, animal.

A World Without Ice
What would the world look like if all the ice melted? A bit different, but I would still be dry it looks like.

Feed Me Like a Zoo Wolf

There is nothing more amusing than dog food debates among the counter thumping ignorants that engage in them.

As I have noted a hundred times, though dog food is a multi-billion dollar a year business, no evidence exists that any dog food is better than another. None. Zero. Nyet. Empty set.

My favorite brand of idiots are those who start dog food debates with "But wolves eat...."

Right. Wolves are not dogs. You know that right? You know that a dog vocalizes differently, marks differently, and has a different estrus cycle, right? You know that dogs and wolves also digest food differently right? No? You don't know that? OK, let me fill you in. From the good folks at LiveScience:

Axelsson and his colleagues analyzed the entire genetic codes of 12 wolves from across the globe, as well as the genomes of 60 individual domestic dogs from 14 different breeds. They pooled the domestic pups' results so that the genetic traits of individual breeds wouldn't skew the findings and then compared the pet dogs to the wolves, looking for places where the genomes diverged.

This game of "spot the differences" led the scientists to focus on 36 different regions. They found that 19 of these regions contained genes crucial for brain functioning, including eight important for the development of the nervous system.

It was no surprise to see differences in brain genetics, Axelsson said, given that dogs had to modify their behavior to fit into human society. What did surprise the researchers, however, were 10 regions held genes involved with diet, specifically the breakdown of starches. Humans are well-equipped for starchy diets: Human saliva contains an enzyme called amylase, which starts breaking down starches as soon as food hits the mouth. Dog drool doesn't have this advantage, but dogs do excrete amylase from their pancreases, allowing for the digestion of starches in the gut.

The researchers found that dogs have more copies of a gene called AMY2B, crucial for amylase production, than wolves. And in dogs, this gene is 28 times more active in the pancreas than in wolves.

Dogs also showed changes in specific genes that allow for the breakdown of maltose into glucose, another key starch digestion step, and in genes allowing for the body to make use of this glucose.

So wolves are not dogs. Similar, in some respects, but different.

You will find dogs and lions and tigers and bears at the circus leaping through hoops, but not true wolves.

You will find dogs pulling sleds and carts, but not wolves.

Wolves are not dogs.

But are they similar? Oh sure.

Both are pack animals with pecking orders. But so are chickens.

Both are opportunistic feeders. But so are chickens.

If a wolf is lucky enough to bring down a deer or an elk, they will tend to rip at the carcass starting with the easy access at the anus and burrow inward and upward to eat the stomach, liver, belly fat, and heart.

Wolves, like dogs and people, crave fats. If a wolf catches a familiar rabbit, it will probably eat it whole, same as a large dog, but if a fresh rabbit is found dead on the ground next to something as strange as a big lump of whale fat, it will eat the whale fat first. Fat is rare, and you take it when you can in as large an amount as you can.

And what of the wolf that catches neither rabbit nor deer nor elk? They will eat whatever they can, from acorns and grass to wild berries and trash. Ever watch a dog? They will do the same thing.

Wolf biologist David Mech notes that:

In parts of Eurasia, wolves live in areas with relatively little wild prey, but subsist nevertheless on a wide variety of foods provided indirectly by humans. Foraging in garbage dumps, wolves eat meat scraps and various fruits, as well as inadvertently consuming non-food debris. In Israel, the following items were found in wolf scat: human hair, plastic, tinfoil, cigarettes, matches, and egg shells. In Minnesota, long sharp shards of glass were found in Scott's of garbage dump feeding wolves."

So, bottom line: Wolves are not picky eaters nor are they pure carnivores.

Now, we get to the fun part. Do you know what they feed wolves in zoos? Dog food!

The Association of Zoos & Aquariums Nutrition Advisory Group offers the following advice on the feeding of red wolves:

Feeding requirements of red wolves have generally not been a problem in the RWSSP, as long as good quality commercial (dry) dog food is provided. Because of the number of commercial foods made, their availability, and cost it is difficult to recommend a specific brand. Wolves maintained in Tacoma have done well on food with label guarantees ranging from 22-28% protein, 8-18% fat, and 2-4% fiber. Vitamin supplements for red wolves are normally not required. Adding commercial carnivore log to dry chow may be needed to encourage some wolves to eat, although should not be the primary component of their feed.

So what do they feed wolves in zoos? Dog food. And what kind? It does not really matter (though Purina ProPlan gets a shout-out here) And how long do these zoo wolves live? A hell of a lot longer than those in the wild (and with better teeth too).

So feed your dog like a wild wolf (with the diseased rectum of a downer cow) or feed it like a zoo wolf (with Purina), but either way it will be fine.

Shifting Fertility Rates Across the Globe

St. Paul & The Broken Bones

Fish on Friday

Norway’s central bank is celebrating a new currency note which bears the image of one of the nation’s most important natural resources – the cod.

Wisdom of Animals is Living in the NOW

Not Quite Twisted Enough

Breeding Beyond the Bottleneck

How could Black-footed Ferrets survive despite having such a narrow gene pool?

It all has to do with the marvelous fecundity and relatively short life span of some species which allows them to breed through the destruction caused by a small gene pool, same as mice, rats, and cats do when they are introduced onto islands.

Why Do Dogs Eat Grass?

Why do dogs eat grass?

It's a common question, but in asking the question, an assumption is revealed.

The assumption is that dogs are not supposed to eat grass.

After all, no one asks why we humans eat chicken, corn on the cob, fish, or strawberries.

The short answer is that dogs eat grass because it tastes good and it provides some nutrition.

It is not a sign of worms, an upset stomach, or any kind of nutritional deficit.

That's the short answer.

Now let's look at the question a bit deeper.

Do wolves, fox, coyotes, and dingoes, also eat vegetable matter?

The answer is "yes."

Wolf biologist David Mech notes that grass appears in 14-43% of all wolf scat found in North America and Eurasia. Plant material in fox and coyote scat, including grass, is so common as to be unremarkable.

Leopards, jaguars, mountain lions, and bobcats also eat surprising amounts of grass. A sample of 215 leopard scats collected in the Tai National Forest of the Ivory Coast, for example, found 17% had a considerable amount of grassy vegetable matter.

Bears too eat a lot of plant material. Though classified as the largest carnivores in the world, bears eat more vegetable matter in their diet than flesh, and grass is a major food source.

So why do "carnivores" so often eat grass?

For the same reason you and I eat most of the foods we eat; it tastes good.

Of course the other answer is that it is maladaptive for them not to do so.

Let's explore that idea a bit more.

Specialization in food sources is a terrific idea so long as the world stays exactly the same, day in and day out, season after season, year in and year out.

But, the world is both temperamental and unreliable.

Crippling winters, blistering summers, and poorly timed rains can decimate populations of prey species.

Disease can wipe out herds, migration routes can change without warming, and new species can invade.

Water holes may dry up, salt licks may disappear, and predators can injure themselves in the chase.

And yet every few days, a predator must eat.

And that's the problem: The chain of life is so easily snapped.

For a meat-eating predator, the weakest link is the absence of ready prey, easily caught, day in and day out, in good health and bad, dry season and wet, winter and summer, year after year.

And so wolves, coyotes, dingoes, bears, lions, bobcats and jaguars have all evolved to eat plants, as well as flesh -- a way of "hedging the bet" for a few days against the vicissitudes of life.

Yes these animals will try to bring down a deer- or rabbit-sized meal if they can. But if they cannot, then they will try to catch a few rats or mice, a lizard or a snake, a frog or a turtle.

And if push comes to shove, there's always grasshoppers, crickets, and verdant grass along the creek. And it does not hurt at all that some of that grass actually tastes pretty good!
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Sound Down the Hole

Moxie cocks her head, ready to go back into the dark.

Terrierman Terrarium... With Underground Pets

After watching the development of this Hercules Beetle from larvae to adult on YouTube (a very cool video, check it out), and after catching a few Eastern Hercules Beetles that have flown into my own house over the years, I decided to order off for two Eastern Hercules Beetle larvae (Dynastes tityus) to raise up in a home terrarium. 

The larvae were very easy to order from Bugs In Cyberspace, and since I already had an empty and BIG glass terrarium, and an open bag of rotting hardwood wood mulch, the cost and effort was low.  

The larvae are now safely housed in a deep bed of well-watered mulch, and there is not much to do now but make sure they don't dry out (the terrarium has a glass lid), and wait a year or so.  I will plant something small on top of the larva, with maybe a little sign saying "future site of Hercules Plantation".

I do not know the sex ratio of Hercules Beetles, but  assuming it's even, the two larvae I have now should give me a 75% chance of getting at least one male.

We Shall Not Be Defined by a Pride of Hate

New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu does what should have been done long ago: he removes local monuments to treason, hate, terror, and racism.  The speech he gave as the last monument was craned away, is truly exceptional. Listen to the whole thing !

Now, when will Virginia do the same?  When will Richmond tear down the statues of confederate traitors and terrorists that line Monument Avenue?

Back in 2015, I wrote on this blog about True Southern Pride and Real Southern Shame. I repost that entire blog below.

____________________________________________________

True Southern Pride and Real Southern Shame

____________________________________________________

There are things to be proud of if you're from the South.

We can be proud of a dozen kinds of barbecue that are variously rubbed, soaked, basted, and slathered.

We know pig and we know chicken.

We can be proud that we have a long history of running coon hounds at night, and foxhounds during the day.

We know dogs.

We can be proud of our wildlife: turkey, deer, duck, geese, and bear. We hunt and fish, and we make no apologies for it.

We know forest, field and fen.

We are proud of our music. We invented Jazz, Blues, Bluegrass, Rhythm and Blues, and Southern Rock.

We glory in fireflies and snapping turtles, bluegills and bucket-mouthed bass, cane poles and bank lines for catfish.

There are things to eat in the South:  corn bread and grits, biscuits and gravy, coleslaw and lemon meringue pie, watermelon pickles and fried green tomatoes.

There are things to drink in the South:  RC Cola and sweet tea, lemonade and Cheerwine. I am told we make pretty good liquor, taxed and untaxed.

And let us not ever forget that we are tough.  It took hard men to mine soft coal, to follow a plow, to bring in the hay, to run lumber through a mill, and to bring in the shrimp. It took smart men to give the world Coca-cola and CNN.

There's no shortage of things to be proud of if you are from the South.

But there's one thing to be ashamed of.

I don't need to say what that is, because there are still fools and pretenders who remind us of why we are ashamed every single day.

Some of these folks are true sister-fucking, knuckle-dragging racists.

Most, however, are just pretenders and wannabes.  

These are the people who embrace the confederate flag as a right-wing political act.

These are the folks who follow the crowd, and who think aping "the cause" of the moment, as directed by Fox News, might suggest they have deep cultural roots and bonafides they actually don't have.

Most of these pretenders cannot even name their great, great grandfather and grandmother.

Roots? Chickweed has deeper roots!

Here's the thing: the Confederate flag that you see being waved about today has no real historical roots at all.

At best, it is a corrupted and historically inaccurate bastardization of the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, the area where I am from.

This fake "Confederate flag" was invented whole cloth in the 1950s when the Ku Klux Klan and racist segregationists wanted a symbol to wave during their televised hate campaigns.

As the folks over at Vox note, this Confederate flag has always symbolized white supremacy — and it has never symbolized anything else:

The Confederate flag began enjoying unprecedented national popularity and became a cultural symbol after World War II, just as the federal government began trying to make good on its Reconstruction-era civil rights promises....

... [I]t's not a coincidence that white Southerners were embracing the Confederate battle flag just as the South's system of violently enforced white supremacy was under its first real threat since Reconstruction. President Truman had vowed to do more to promote civil rights, integrating the military and telling the NAACP that civil rights could not wait.

In response, the Ku Klux Klan surged. Southern politicians displayed the Confederate battle flag when they railed against Truman. College students who supported Strom Thurmond's segregationist presidential campaign in 1948 waved Confederate flags at campaign events.

And so it started, and so it remains.

So if you think waiving a fake Confederate flag makes you a Southerner or shows your "pride in the South" and your "roots," I have only one thing to say to you: Fuck You.

Fuck you if you are so dumb, ignorant, lazy, and uncreative that the only way you can show Southern pride is to wave a Chinese-made flag.

Fuck you if, instead of showing true Southern hospitality, you work overtime to make others feel unwelcome and uncomfortable.

Fuck you if you do not want to celebrate the best of the South, but to remind people of the worst.

Fuck you, you fucking fucker.

The South is a great place, and those of us who love it will NOT be defined by four years of treason and failed insurrection ginned up by preening peacocks, hot heads, and terrified slave holders too lazy to actually work their own land more than 150 years ago.

I am sorry that you are such a loser that blaming others for your inadequacies is the only way you can wake up in the morning and not slit your own throat.

I am sorry you are so rootless that you have no positive cultural traditions to share with others.

I am truly sorry the only way you can show your "Southern pride" is to wave the most visible symbol of the South's historical and moral shame.

You are the worst the South has to offer.  And for that, you should be ashamed.  The nation already is.

Happy Birthday Bob Dylan!

Now With Interchangeable Body Parts

A Bentley for Falconry

Bentley introduced a falconry-themed Bentayga model car earlier this month. From the Bentley website comes this description:

“The Bentayga Falconry is just one expression of our capabilities, showcasing how our skilled craftspeople can devise and execute elegant bespoke solutions to compliment any lifestyle or hobby — from falconry and fly fishing to anything that you are passionate about.”

The Bentayga Falconry comes with two removable perches for your bird of prey; one in the trunk, and another between the front seats.





Terrierman believes Bentley need a Benayga Terrier Work, and I am even willing to write hysterically funny copy for it, as I have old-school Bentley experience.

The picture, below, is myself as a child, with family, in Morocco with our 1937 Bentley 4 1/4 Litre H-J. Mulliner Pillarless Saloon, Chassis Number B163JY.  And yes, that's a terrier.

Every Article by Stanley Coren

Dog Training Your Children

Old School Locator Collars

I don't think too many people are still digging with these old school Deben locator collars, but I am. The trick with the old school "knocker" collars is to understand that they were made defective, with a wire nearly exposed on the outer casing. These collars were, literally, designed to short out after a year or two. By taking brand new collars and covering them with JB Weld Epoxy to bury that wire, and by putting a rubber compression gasket on the cap, and by taping the collars well, I have managed to get a thousand digs out of these collars. I have slide tags on all the collars in  case a dog gets lost and found (that's not happened yet), and the small red collars are more collars with slide tags that I make all visiting dogs wear (an entirely different kind of locator collar).

Hunting Out of a Ford C-Max Hybird

When I traded in the 15-mpg Ford Explorer for the 40 mpg C-Max hybrid, I wondered if the dogs and gear would fit all right.

It's not a bit too roomy, but I can get the dogs, tools, and even a folding bike inside for a day in the field. All good!

Documenting Trump's Failing Brain

From StatNews comes this alarming investigative look into Donald Trump's collapsing cognition:

Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain.

In interviews Trump gave in the 1980s and 1990s (with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, and others), he spoke articulately, used sophisticated vocabulary, inserted dependent clauses into his sentences without losing his train of thought, and strung together sentences into a polished paragraph, which — and this is no mean feat — would have scanned just fine in print. This was so even when reporters asked tough questions about, for instance, his divorce, his brush with bankruptcy, and why he doesn’t build housing for working-class Americans.

Trump fluently peppered his answers with words and phrases such as “subsided,” “inclination,” “discredited,” “sparring session,” and “a certain innate intelligence.” He tossed off well-turned sentences such as, “It could have been a contentious route,” and, “These are the only casinos in the United States that are so rated.” He even offered thoughtful, articulate aphorisms: “If you get into what’s missing, you don’t appreciate what you have,” and, “Adversity is a very funny thing.”

Now, Trump’s vocabulary is simpler. He repeats himself over and over, and lurches from one subject to an unrelated one, as in this answer during an interview with the Associated Press last month:

“People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”

For decades, studies have found that deterioration in the fluency, complexity, and vocabulary level of spontaneous speech can indicate slipping brain function due to normal aging or neurodegenerative disease. STAT and the experts therefore considered only unscripted utterances, not planned speeches and statements, since only the former tap the neural networks that offer a window into brain function.

...The reason linguistic and cognitive decline often go hand in hand, studies show, is that fluency reflects the performance of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the seat of higher-order cognitive functions such as working memory, judgment, understanding, and planning, as well as the temporal lobe, which searches for and retrieves the right words from memory. Neurologists therefore use tests of verbal fluency, and especially how it has changed over time, to assess cognitive status.

Dirt in the Eyes

Washing dirt out of a working terrier's eyes is essential when they look like this. A squirt bottle with water that is a few days old is easy on the eyes, as the chlorine will have aged out.

The End of a Horror?

The Yulin Dog Festival in China is not an ancient or traditional festival; it was invented in 2009 as a way for dog meat traders to make more money. For the last 7 years, thousands of dogs have been beaten and tortured before being skinned alive for restaurant meals.

Not this year.

The government of China has temporarily banned the sale of dog meat at restaurants, markets, and street vendors. Those who don’t obey will be facing a fine of up to 100,000 yuan (nearly $15,000) and arrested.

The ban comes into effect on June 15th, one week before what was to be the start of the Yulin Dog Meat Festival which has now been cancelled after 11 million people around the world protested.

Cat meat, however, is still currently allowed at the Yulin festival