Black Doggerel

Just read a post in dogsintraining about excitement-play-biting, and replying to it reminded me how very very far Captain Sharkface has actually come. He's still the poster boy for imperfect bite inhibition, sure, but the post made me think back to three years ago. I literally couldn't move, speak or meet his eye without him leaping into my face, barking and trying to play tug with my arms. I was black and blue from wrists to shoulders and I had to wear long sleeves for several weeks - I know at least one friend wondered whether I'd got an abusive boyfriend.

( That was then - Spike and me, 2003 )

...I shouldn't let his badness and my still-painful thumb make me forget how good he really is. I love my 'splodey dog :)

in other news, I downloaded a new Firefox theme, and now my browser matches my LJ. Shiny!

For ghost07:

what's it like living with ferrets? Do they bite? I don't know very much about that animal, except how to follow their tracks in the woods...a number of people in the area have had ferrets, and have turned them loose when they got tired of them...so we now have quite a wild ferret community.

Really? That surprises me. I'd always heard that American ferrets (which are mostly from laboratory stock and VERY inbred) weren't able to survive in the wild. They can't often survive in the wild here, and in this country they're still bred from hunting stock; plus we have a better climate for them and no coyotes, raccoons or Great Horned Owls either.

What it's like living with them: Like short-legged kittens who've had way too much coffee. Like any animal, they're only liable to bite if they haven't been handled and socialised as kits.

What did you feed your ferrets?

I fed mine mostly on rabbit, day-old chicks and cat food.


Also, what time is it right now in your part of the world...:D

12.30am - well, 12.38 now...

Finally moved all my TrekBBS PM collection into my Yahoo account. It's actually easier to read them that way, because I filtered them into two folders - sent and received - and I can open them in separate tabs so I can flick between them and read the whole conversation as it happened. I spent an hour or so doing that tonight.

And oh, the nostalgia! Over a year's worth of fun, frolics and friendships. Swapping dog stories with orac_zen. Mud wrestling and lap dancing in the Flaptains' Lounge with kalenarcher and shamelessmcbund - being introduced to my precious Terran by captain_ice - huntingdon interrogating me about the Flaptains' mass avatar change (I think it was a road sign... frell knows how or why we picked that image, we just wanted something surreal and random). Some silliness and some angst that I'm mildly embarrassed to read again a year later, but it brought Kalen and I closer together and it all turned out well in the end - eventually. Herbie and the mock battles in the Captains' Lounge - and that friendship's still going strong, too, even though he can't get onto TrekBBS any longer. So many marvellous people.

I stumbled into TrekBBS at a time when all my friends, everyone who'd ever mattered in my life except for my family, were either dead or otherwise cut off from me. I don't know if any of you realised how alone I was then - that you were literally my only social contact apart from exchanging greetings with supermarket check-out staff. If I ever seemed to be a little intense about things, that was one reason why - although I'm inclined to get that way in any case. I can fall in love with six impossible people before breakfast on a good day, and that's always been true of me.

Was I leading up to a point here? Not really. Just that I still love every one of you. You have no idea what a difference you've made in my life. Thank you.

Strange and disjointed. Still in my slump, still in lurking-not-talking mode. But anyway... LJ free accounts don't let you search by region, so when I got curious as to how many people on LJ might live near me, I tried searching by interest instead. Well, I don't have my hometown listed as one of my interests myself (because frankly, I find the place pretty damn tedious) but a surprising number of people do.

And the second one I clicked on turns out to be someone I used to play AD&D and Runequest with something like twenty years ago - at least, I'm pretty damn sure it's him. If you read this, dear, I'd love you to get in touch. You were funny as hell and a bloody genius DM twenty years ago, and from a quick glance at your journal you're even more worth knowing now.

Bizarrely, I also discovered a whole bunch of Finnish people who list "Bournemouth" as an interest. It probably means something completely different in Finnish or something...

Other news from Black Dog HQ - we're babysitting Clyde the Demon Yorkie this week. Clyde is eight inches high, fifteen years old and completely toothless, but that never stops him putting the Black Pack (flawless teeth, ten times Clyde's size and a combined age of less than five) thoroughly in their places. I would show you pictures, but the cable to link the digital camera to the PC has disappeared. I'm particularly sorry to have missed the chance to photograph Spike sleeping wedged into Clyde's tiny dog-basket... I know Spike can fold himself up quite small, but that was just ridiculous...

Aaaand a meme. No one on my friends list had any today, so I had to go to the Quizilla site and dig this one up all by myself. Bloody hell, I work my fingers to the bone to amuse you lot and you make me find my own lame quizzes - it's not bloody good enough...


Bondage Bear


Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
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Edit: I did get a phone call from the TBBS meet-up in York. Wish I was there. Can't wait till May...