March 28th

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP...

Dog doo. I do have this nice rose blooming in my yard though.

WHY PEOPLE DON'T USE THE USPS MUCH ANYMORE

I ordered some stuff from dog.com. Mostly some slip leads (the kind that slip over the dogs head and are a collar too) for emergencies. Here is the tracking information on my package as of this morning:

Shipping Method: SmartPost
Carrier ID: 02113004068101917446 Manifest ID: 2585576

Status: Sortation Center Arrival

Est. in Home 03/24/2008
March 20, 2008
1:07 PM
Sortation Center Arrival
LOS ANGELES, CA
March 19, 2008
7:35 AM
Sortation Center Departure
DALLAS, TX
March 17, 2008
11:40 AM
Sortation Center Arrival
DALLAS, TX
March 15, 2008
8:32 AM
Sortation Center Departure
EDISON, NJ
March 15, 2008
12:14 AM
Sortation Center Arrival
EDISON, NJ
March 14, 2008
5:58 PM
Pickup
HAZELTON, PA
* indicates data from USPS

First of all the "estimated delivery date" is a bit off, since that was four days ago. And, "sortation" isn't even a real word. The package has been sitting in the "made-up-word" center in Los Angeles since LAST THURSDAY!!!! That's at most two hours away from here! The nice people at dog.com couldn't even get a reasonable answer from USPS as to why the package hasn't moved in over a week. Their reply was "it can take up to 15 days, and we haven't gone over that yet." What happened to the customer service maxim: "Under promise and over deliver"? What happened to plain old giving a shit about making people happy? Obviously USPS still thinks that it has no competition. I only took this type of shipping because it was free, which of course brings up that other saying. You get what you pay for. Next time I order anything I'll pay the extra and get UPS or FedEx delivery.

JUST A NORMAL DAY IN THE RESCUE BUSINESS

I pulled a new dog (Arlo) from the shelter today. Poor guy-he's shedding badly and has tufts of fur coming out all over. They had owner information on him, but his people never came so we're finding him a home. I picked him up and then ran him over to a new boarding kennel close to my house. I handed over the vaccination records. The kennel worker looked at all of it, I looked at all of it, and there was no rabies vac. (For those of you that know me, no-I don't believe in vaccinations for any living thing, but the shelter pokes dogs with everything before they let them out of the door so I can't help it.) Of course no one at the shelter was answering the phone, so Arlo and I drove all the way back. Actually, Arlo rode nicely in the back, I drove. I'm sure that makes you feel better. Turns out the the medical staff neglected to update the computer when they gave him the shot and his microchip. Got the corrected records, back to the kennel. I think the poor boy may be coming down with kennel cough-he was hacking a bit when he pulled on the leash. Which goes to show you that the KC vaccine is useless. I'm going to take my homeopathic remedy kit with me to the event tomorrow. Maybe I can keep the drug pushers from pumping him full of antibiotics and screwing up his stomach.

I have to fight the battle constantly with some of the other volunteers. One guy takes his job of feeding the dogs very seriously. Whenever I bring a foster dog to an event I have to fight him and his crap-in-a-bag off with a stick. All the dogs at my house are raw fed, and I don't clean up kibble poop. Some of them want to slather all the dogs in flea poison, shove antibiotics down their throats "just in case", and other things. I keep trying to educate them, but so many of them don't want to hear it. Oh well.

I have signed up for a very comprehensive homeopathy course-supposedly I'll know enough to be a real homeopath when I'm done. A few miracle cures might get some people to pay attention. Or not. Some people will never accept a new idea because that would mean that they would have to accept that their previous way of doing things was wrong, and some people just can't be wrong about anything, ever.