Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Heart Like A Dog

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As most of you know, I’ve been looking to take the next step with my blog.  For me that means moving it from the free WordPress account to a self-hosted blog.  My struggle has been what to name the new blog.

The problem is that the wordpress account was www.jodistone.wordpress.com.  Normally speaking you wouldn’t want to change the blog name, just remove the wordpress and make the account a dot.com.

As I’ve mentioned here, there are already at least two authors using the name Jodi Stone, one of which has the website with the dot.com, which meant that I can’t use my name.

I could have gone with, Life With Sampson and Delilah but my plan is to have an official website for all my writings, and some of those writings may not be about Sampson and Delilah.

For months I’ve been popping around your blogs saying, “Just Be The Dog.”

I really did love that saying, but as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts there is already a website with a similar name.

After months of agonizing and indecision, I saw a saying posted on facebook one day and it ended with Heart Like A Dog.  I knew immediately that was the perfect name for my blog.

When I think of a dog’s heart, I think of courage, faith, determination, persistence, generosity, wisdom, devotion, strength and love.  These are just some of the traits I admire in my dogs.

To give of myself to others like my dogs give to me, is a worthy goal in my opinion.

Yes, it’s true, I really want to be more like my dogs.

Great!  I found a blog name.  Then the real agonizing began, I didn’t want to ‘launch’ it until it was perfect. The problem is I know very little about marketing and designing websites and that’s where some of my amazing blog friends came to my rescue.

Without these incredible women, this blog would not be here today.

So I’d like to say a huge thank you to:

Jodi Chick from Kol’s Notes who spent a rainy (at least it was rainy here) Sunday afternoon listening to me whine chatting with me on facebook and who was the one who came up with the tagline, The Life, Loves and Writings of Jodi Stone.  (I think it’s something in the name.) 😉

Julie Melfi (yes, Cali’s mom) from The Daily Dog Blog, who transferred the blog from the free wordpress account to the bluehost server, and has answered many ‘how do I do this’ e-mails.  Maybe you didn’t know this about Julie, but besides writing a daily blog, she’s also a website designer.  You can check her out at legupcreative.com.

And last, but certainly not least Kari Pike from Houndgirl who designed the entire website.  That header, she whipped it up one afternoon.  I can tell you here and now, her child is extremely lucky because Kari has the patience of a saint.  I’m a bit of a perfectionist and she never said a bad thing or told me to shut my pie hole and stop e-mailing her.

These ladies all come highly recommended by me.

Jodi, Julie and Kari, thank you from the bottom of my heart. xoxo

(If I did this right, you were re-directed to this site automatically.  I’m not sure how it works as far as subscribing to the blog or how it is affected in your blog readers.  Please take a moment to add my feed to your readers.  I’ll be working on the subscribe button this week.)

Please bear with me as I figure out the social media buttons and how to subscribe features. 🙂

Has The World Gone Crazy?

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I JUST FOUND OUT THAT WHAT IS PRESENTED HERE IS NOT THE TOTAL FACTS.  I WILL BE UPDATING THIS POST TONIGHT SO PLEASE WAIT BEFORE YOU TAKE ANY ACTION.

I know the Aztec calendar stops in 2012 and Doomsday predictors say the world will end, but did any of them mention the world would go crazy in the meantime?

Last week I wrote about Justice For Putz, you may remember Putz, he was the pitbull that was euthanized in Michigan for biting a man who was going to harm his mistress.  Rather than choose a number of other options, the town decided to go with their original plan and euthanized poor Putz.

As I posted about Putz, 2 Brown Dawgs left me a comment making me aware of another pitbull euthanized in Michigan.  Ace was picked up in an Ace Hardware store, and due to liability issues, the City of Detroit will not release pitbulls to anyone but their owner.   While several people came forwarding claiming ownership of Ace, none could provide proof.  Rescue groups rallied and petitioned for Ace, but in the end the city of Detroit euthanized the dog.

Hot on the paws of Ace’s death, comes the tragedy of Heidi.  I found this information courtesy of The Elka Almanac’s post on facebook, I then went to her page and read the story.

Heidi is a Doberman Pinscher in (dut dut duh) Michigan who has been ordered put to death.  Heidi and her owner were out walking when a stranger approached and asked if he could pet Heidi, as he bent to pet her apparently Heidi jumped up.  The man claims that Heidi broke his nose and reported the incident to the police.  The police in the City of Royal Oaks is prosecuting this as a dog bite/attack and will only drop the charges if Heidi is destroyed or removed from her family of four years.

Her family has started a petition requesting the city allow them to keep Heidi  restricted to her family’s private yard.  Would you take a minute and sign the petition?  If you tweet or blog, could you include a link?

I’d like to think if it was one of us, that people would help.  We couldn’t save Putz or Ace, but maybe if we all work together we can save Heidi.

Book update:  Still the same. 🙁

Charitable Acts

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Do you trim your dog’s nails yourself?

I used to.  My attempts at nail clipping, ear cleaning and teeth cleaning use lots of treats.  And lots of coaxing.

There was a time when I always clipped Sampson and Delilah’s nails myself.  Sampson really doesn’t care for it and hides his head with his paw or hides his head in the sofa when the time comes.  When you call him to you he will come, but very reluctantly.  I think it is because there have been a couple of times when either Hubby or myself have cut the nail too short and made it bleed. 🙁

Delilah on the other hand knows there is food involved and she will shove her way into you, completely pushing Sampson out-of-the-way.  She’s a big goof ball.

One time after our Thursday night obedience class I noticed Sara cutting someone’s nails.  I noticed she had a really nice, big clipper and she clipped even skittish dogs with no problem.

That’s when I asked her to clip Sampson and Delilah.

Keep in mind the Mellow Mutt is a doggie daycare and training facility,with a lovely little retail section.  There is a groomer at the Mellow Mutt, but she rents the space, and technically is her own boss.

Not that Sara can’t (and doesn’t do) grooming, bathing and trimming.  But her passion is training and daycare.

One day when I was dropping the dogs off for daycare, Murphy’s mom asked for Murphy to have a bath and a nail clip.  She asked how much the nail clipping was.

Imagine both our surprises when we were told by Sue, “Sara doesn’t charge for nail clipping, she asks that you make a donation to a dog related cause.”

How freaking nice is that?

Sara also still has her food donation box out so if you don’t want write out a check for a donation, you can drop off a bag of food.

After I dropped S & D off this morning I got to thinking about their nails and how long it has been since they were clipped.  So I called Sara up and asked if she would mind clipping them.

Here’s the answer I got.

“I was just laying on the floor making out with Sampson and I mentioned that his nails were looking pretty long.  He hid his paw and said, “Don’t look at them Auntie Sara.”  🙂

They both had their nails clipped today and I told Sara I would pick up a back of food and add it to the donation box.

I think what Sara is doing is really awesome and I think it’s awesome she chooses to provide this service to animals in need.

Book update:  My book has 1,646 words

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