I don’t know if it was a seasonal thing. Maybe something about the cooling temperatures that softened my resolve. Maybe the glut of puppies after paw-paws and babymamas got it on in the summer heat. Whatever the reason, I adopted Porter and Rosie almost a year apart from each other.

Happy adopt-a-versary, little Rosie. You’re not the youngest gal in the house any more, but you’re still the princess.

Please don’t let the giant eat me.

I wrote a post about Sergeant’s SentryPro XFC topical flea and tick product almost a year and a half ago. The treatment threw Porter and Rosie into an allergic reaction that consisted of trembling, panting, scratching, and “air licking.” I made the post because I was upset. I was upset at Sergeant’s for putting the product out. I followed the directions and BOTH of my dogs has an adverse reaction. I was also upset at myself for not using my usual Frontline (which I’ve never had a problem with before or since the SentryPro incident).

So, I made the post in May of 2007. I had no idea that thousands of people would read the post, hundreds would comment, dozens would email me personally, and the post would be the number one Google search result for “SentryPro XFC.” I got mentioned on The Consumerist. Some of my readers started a class action lawsuit.

It took all of that an sixteen months, but Sergeant’s finally responded.

People who have posted a comment in the past are automatically emailed when someone makes a new comment, so hundreds of people got an email tonight with Sergeant’s reply. A few people have already started to reply …. I have a feeling this isn’t over by a long shot.

Today is officially Rosie’s birthday. She’s my only dog that I know when her birthday is; I think the best you can usually hope for with rescues is a birth week. For example, I only know that Porter was born about the first week of September, and that Pearl is sometime the last week of April.

I can’t believe Rosie is three! I remember when I adopted her, she was about the size of a potato. I held her in the palm of my hand.

Love you, little girl!

Every good horror film (and most bad ones) gets a sequel. Less than a year after the first installment, my dogs are somehow killing birds in the yard again.
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I buy a lot of stuff, and sometimes my highest hopes turn out to be the biggest disappointments. I’ve evaluated the things I’ve purchased last year, with an eye to what I use on a regular basis that Gibberish readers may use often as well. Sure, I “use” my Keltec PF-9 every day when I carry it, but most of you don’t have carry permits and its appeal is not as universal as this year’s winner. Here’s a look back at the best and worst gadgets covered on Gibberish in 2007.
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I’m going to take a job that puts me back in the Washington, D.C. area. I’m not 100% sure I’ll be moving, but chances are very high. Having three dogs makes searching for a place to live more difficult, especially when most of the places nearest to where I’ll be working are high-rise apartments. I searched properties for about two hours and walked downstairs to find this:

No matter how big of a pain in the ass it is to find a rental that will allow three dogs, or to find a home with a fenced in yard, damn they are worth it.

Two years ago today, Lady Jaye and I brought home a little potato of a dog (sorry, some of the pictures have been corrupted on imageShack). She may have been the runt of the litter, but Rosie has always been lionhearted. We knew she was ours the second she leaped fearlessly off of a tall garden bed to come play with us. We brought her home two years ago today, and I have never regretted it.
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Last Saturday we hosted the second annual reunion for Rosie and her litter mates. Last year the reunion was at a public dog park, and it was way too hot for everyone. This year we had the benefit of shady oak trees, a doggie pool, and air conditioning. As a big improvement over the year before, there was dog cake. More on that in a second.
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Three weeks after her adoption, Pearl has fit into the family quite nicely. After being afraid of her for the first week or so, Rosie has taken to Pearl like a true big sister. The two are mostly inseparable now. They cuddle together, run outside together, and do chores together, such as digging a bomb shelter in the backyard for mommy and daddy. Pearl now weighs in at 24.4 pounds, up over six pounds since we got her.

Pictures after the jump.
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It first started about a month ago. Porter brought a stick up to the porch when I called to him. As normal, he dropped the stick before trotting inside the house, except it wasn’t a stick. It was a dead bird. No big deal, I thought, and scooped the bird in a doubled-up plastic bag. I may have mentioned it to Lady Jaye but we didn’t give the incident much attention. Fast forward to today. I picked up another dead bird, again dropped from Porter’s jaws. This brings our known casualty total to five or six in a month. I think we either have some sort of bird epidemic on our hands, or Porter and Rosie are waging a campaign of terror on the local avian population.

Before we begin, let me clarify a few things and set the stage. Rosie is about thirty five pounds. Porter has lost weight, but is still probably lower fifties/upper forties. Rosie is super fast, and Porter has good burst speed, but he’s no greyhound. Plus he doesn’t bend his knees when he runs. I can’t imagine either one of them running down a bird and killing it, let alone five or six of them. The dogs certainly don’t jump, although Porter and Rosie are about two and a half feet tall or so when they stand up on something. Porter can stand up like a bear indefinitely, but his coordination doesn’t seem good enough to actually, you know, snatch a bird mid-flight.

So what the hell is going on? At first Lady Jaye and I thought a bird was sick, or died in some less-fantastic fashion, and dropped to the ground. We also considered that a young bird was testing his wings and failed. But when the bodies starting piling up, I had no option but to consider that my two furry children were bird-killers. I really can’t imagine the dogs charging down a bird. However, I seem to recall from my hunting days that when ducks “set” their wings to coast in for a landing, they must land before flapping off again. Perhaps the mongrels are pouncing at this moment, giving them enough time to strike before the birds fly off again. Or maybe Porter distracts them while Rosie ambushes them from behind? Seems unlikely, but the idea of Rosie in a Ghillie suit is just too humorous to ignore.

To our knowledge, the body count and prey composition is thus:
1 blue jay
3 (perhaps) juvenile or female American Robins
1 or 2 “others,” it was too, uh, well-handled for identification. Possibly a juvenile sparrow, although the bird was taller than what I would consider a sparrow.

Not to put a super serious spin on this post, but I am worried about them picking up some disease from the birds (or bringing it to us). Both dogs have had decreased appetites last week, which has only returned to normal two days ago. Every time I fetch a “stick” from Porter I think, “if this was an H5N1 situation, we would be dead.” If we get the Avian Flu in the US, it looks like the dogs are going to be on attended leashes when we go outside.