Obedience Training for Dummies

Losin' It #26

Tasha has been taking our Neopolitan Mastiff puppy, Argus to obedience training. He does however have some issues with other dogs.

Tales from the Playground

I’ve always considered myself to be the type of person who resolves things with reason and through communication, especially during the past sixteen years of my life since getting out of the Army. I do, however, feel that there is a place for fighting in society. I was thinking back to the first fight I can remember being in. I was in fifth grade and it was after soccer practice for the illustrious soccer powerhouse the Berney Bulldogs. There was this kid in school; I can’t even really remember his name other than I think his last name was Nelson. He was always kind of a bully and was picking on kids in the school yard that afternoon. I was on the play equipment and he shoved me off, not cool at all. I fell about four or five feet onto my back and enough was enough, I’d had it with him. I jumped up, ran up to where he was, and threw him off. I then jumped down, punched him a few times, and then held him down. The mean part that I feel was over the line, and a little humiliating, was that I held him down and let all of the kids that he had been picking on come over and slap him in the face. I went home and he showed up at my house a little latter, I still don’t know how he knew where I lived. He said that his dad said he had to come over and fight me again and beat me up. I felt really bad for him at that point. I told him that I wasn’t going to fight him again, and that for me it was over. I also told him that as far as I was concerned he could tell his dad he beat me up. After that he acted as though I was his best friend. I told him to quit picking on kids and he did. I don’t really remember him after that year; I think he moved away or something.

I know that when I was a kid there were a lot of outlets to settle scores with people and to get out natural aggression. There were fights after and during school, there were “smokers” or boxing matches where people could go to challenge each other and things were resolved, it was therapeutic. People usually felt better afterward and went out for drinks or something. I remember a fight I was in while in high school. I was sticking up for a female friend of mine and talking crap about her boyfriend who had been allegedly cheating on her. I was a sophomore, he was a senior, and I had been running my pie hole. After weeks of buzz around the school the issue had come to a head. He was waiting outside my English class and a whole lot of people were waiting there as well. I decided it was time for me to face the consequences of my alligator mouth and walked down to class. I was taking off my coat when he hit me (right now I am going to go on the record and say that I was going to lose that fight and get beat up regardless, I’m just saying having my arms caught in my coat didn’t help matters much). I was beat up pretty good, mostly because I kept getting back up and going after him. I learned a valuable lesson in life through that experience. To stay out of other peoples minor personal issues and keep my mouth shut. I didn’t have any hard feelings after that, I had it coming. That guy, Scott Rand, and I were pretty good friends for a period later in life.

What I am trying to say, I guess, is that I don’t think that I EVER heard about a mass shooting or anything like that back then. There weren’t huge school imposed penalties, like expulsion, and guys could have a fight and not go to prison. I’m not saying that bullies or people who fight a lot should run the world or push people around, but our society has gone so far the other way with its wimpification. The “teacher’s pets” rule the world. They can lie, connive, conspire against others, and kiss the boss's ass. They say anything they want without fear, because they know that their deceit will get them ahead in life. Most of them are lawyers, politicians, and CEOs making millions through the TARP funds and public bailouts. What have we done to society?

These guys need the hat trick of the wedgie, swirly, and the purple nurple.

Oh, the HORROR!

Losin' It #veinti cinco

I want to preface this entry by saying that I did not have a horrible childhood, it was alright. That being said there were some questionable ideas that were developed in the Hale household. This is a little story about one of them. First off, we did not live out in the middle of nowhere, in some remote location seldom frequented by civilized human beings. We lived just outside the city limits, and had a city water supply. We also had a well that was used strictly for irrigation so my parents water bill would stay low. In addition we did not live on some large farm or ranch. We had a house on a large city lot. One day, when I was about 12 or so, my father announced to the family that the well was running dry, but never fear, he had developed a plan to save the Hale household's water bill. He was going to send my brother and I down the well to start digging. To me this was not nearly as great a plan as I think he thought it was.

Now the well was approximately 40 feet deep or so and there wasn't a whole lot of elbow room around a kid when he was down it. My father's awesome idea was comprised of a large "A" shaped steel thingy-ma-bob that went from the ground and leaned at an angle against the house. On the big "A" there was mounted a hand crank winch with a cable. At the end of the cable was a wooden seat like a swing set seat. This was the contraption that lowered me down the well. As far as I know ther were no buried bodies, giant naked mole rats, or Creatures from the Black Lagoon, but those are the kind of things a kid thinks about when he is being lowered down a pitch black well. My equipment included a hard hat with a regular flashlight duct taped on top, A rain coat, and a tall pair of rubber boots. While I was down the well a plastic 5 gallon bucket was lowered with a shovel that had part of the handle sawed off because there just wasn't room for a regular legth shovel down the well. I spent hours digging and filling the bucket which was pulled up when full, bouncing off the sides of the well all the way up, knocking rocks back down on me. But I had my hard hat.

This went on for some time; it seemed like years, but was really just most of the summer. One day while my dad was at work my mom lowered me down the well and the winch came off the crank and I was stuck half way down the well. My mom ran and got some neighbors, it turned into a real "boy trapped in the well" situation. One of the neighbors was able to fix the winch and get me out. You might think that would be a moment to ponder an end to the children down the well situation; nope, I was down the well the next day. After a summer of digging we were allowed to stop, I don't feel like we made a whole lot of headway on the well, but hey, now I have an interesting story to tell.