"They're Dogs"

"They're dogs." This is a phrase I use a lot when talking about my dogs. Or any dogs. I realized recently that the phrase means different things to different people. It comes across as "they're JUST dogs", but really it means something very different to me.

I have two dogs: a 7+ year old rottweiler and a 6+ year old mutt. I love them immensely and I am a better person because of their presence in my life, but that will have to be the subject of another blog post. I believe that as a dog owner, it is my duty to provide mental, physical, and emotional fulfillment to my dogs. A dog that is fulfilled in these 3 areas is what I call a "balanced" dog. Most behavior problems in dogs can be traced back an unbalance in one of these.

A key to developing a balanced dog is realizing she is not, in fact, human - (contrary to the popular tagline on doggie collectibles, "Dogs are just little people with fur coats", although I think that is really cute). To me, they are neither less than nor greater than humans; "they're dogs." Dogs needs are different than ours. They're designed to live in packs, follow a leader (or leaders), have a job, and have plenty of physical exertion. Dogs that are not provided these basic needs may become unbalanced and that unbalance can manifest itself in erratic behavior - not listening to the owner, separation anxiety, incessant barking, and in the worst cases aggression towards other dogs or even people.

In the future I'll talk more about developing a balanced dog with some specific tips, insights, and anecdotes that have worked (or not worked) for me. There are few relationships in life as satisfying as the relationship with a fulfilled dog. Dogs have earned the name "man's (or woman's) best friend" - it's up to us to hold up our end of the deal by providing them the fulfillment they deserve.

First post (again)

I know something about a lot of different things, but I'm an expert on very few. I'm not a great writer, but I do a pretty good job of concisely conveying information. Often, I find myself pondering something during the day and thinking "I'd like to develop this futher", "I should share this with people", and building on the first two "I wonder what other people would think about this?"

With those thoughts in mind, I'm resolving to blog. Clearly I've tried before and failed, as all I managed was two updates on my trip to Australia last year. This time, I plan on simply putting things out there with however much time I have to develop them, so you can expect a mix of random thoughts along with well-researched ideas. Before I start linking to my blog I will have several posts written, so the chance of anyone actually reading this post is small - which is fine with me, because it's not very interesting. Fitting with my purpose of having the blog, I'm trying to develop my ideas about having a blog by posting on it.

I expect my topics to range from sports, to business and the economy, the arts, music, video games, dogs, food, nutrition and exercise, and whatever is on my mind at the time. Posts that I didn't write in the past but wish I did include the role of numbers in sports (everyone knows 715 and 755, right?) and how steroids affects/affected this, the leveraging and reselling of loans by financial institutions (I started reading about this back in 2005 and it scared me then), food experiments that worked or didn't (ever grilled a whole chicken?) among others. I may go back and address some of these as they come up again - especially the topics not related to current events.

I expect that my writing will draw on personal experience and/or what is going on with me at the time, but for the most part I'm not going to use this as a platform to announce to the world what I did last weekend. If/when I do write "e/n" (everything/nothing) posts, I'll attempt to put a spin on them to make them a bit more interesting.

There are also times when I will simply post a link to an article or another blog with some a few notes. Hopefully these will be minimal, but sometimes I read something and just don't have anything to add.

Here's to being interesting! Let's hope I can pull it off :-)

-jpw

Happy Birthday Bill!

The last couple of days have been nice and relaxing. We had a lazy Monday morning and Bill, dad, and I worked on the Awesome-mobile Monday afternoon. For those who don't know what an Awesome-mobile is:

Awesome-mobile on the service rack

Check out the photo gallery for some pictures and test videos including the video where it all went wrong. Okay, the video didn't capture the mayhem cause I had to take off down the street. Basically, the braking system blew out which in turn locked the throttle wide open. Bill ended up with a gash on his ankle and the battery box on the Awesome-mobile is a little worse for the wear. I think we're going to take another look at it today. Monday night Beth's parents came over and Bill fixed some Chinese dishes - honey ginger pork and sweet & sour chicken. Quite tasty.

Tuesday was Bill's birthday! He got Hot Wheels from Beth and Liam so we spent the morning playing with those. The culmination of the morning's work was this video - just watch and enjoy the engineering. Bill and I attempted to go mountain biking, but after a short bit his crank shaft started to get loose so we had to head back to the car. It finally fell off about a half mile from the car so the last bit was fun. Click here to view our trek on RunKeeper. We saw a couple of kangaroos along the way too (video). We came back to the house and fixed up the bike then headed on a ride around the lake near the house instead. It was a fun ride and I got some nice pictures.

Camera was dying and we weren't sure if it was going to cut our heads off of the picture

After the ride, we headed to the grocery store to pick up some food for Bill's birthday dinner - a barbeque of beef, chicken, pork, and kangaroo. Add in some sweet potato, corn, and a caramel cake and we had a great dinner. It was nice that my parents and I were all around for Bill's birthday.

Lighting the barbeque


Blowing out the candles

For more on the last couple of days, check out the full picture gallery.

We're headed to the coast today and I'll be without internet until we get back on Sunday. I hear my iPhone will work so I may continue micro-blogging on Twitter, but these posts will most likely stop until I get back. If I get a chance to put up pictures along the way I will.

I hope you all make it a great rest of the week and weekend. I know I will!

First Post

A beach called "Manly" (http://tr.im/t60R), falling asleep at the pub (http://tr.im/t660), ~5 mile run through some beaches and a cemetery (http://bit.ly/cxOzS), and a 3 hour drive from Sydney to Canberra - that pretty much sums up my first 48 hours in Australia.

I'm going to chronicle my trip in this blog, but honestly it's too much to tell without getting boring. I'll highlight some things here, but you'll get more from checking out my pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/jennandjer.net/Australia.

It's a little after noon on Monday here which means it's Sunday night back home (add 2 hours, then add 12 hours to get from east coast time to Canberra time). I left Atlanta Thursday night and got into Sydney Saturday morning. My flight was pretty much what you would expect - long - but I slept most of the way so it didn't feel so long to me. My brother and our friend Mike picked me up at the airport and we made our way back to his apartment in Sydney to drop of my stuff and get some coffee before heading out for the day. We walked through the city, past Hyde Park and the Opera House to get to the Manly Ferry. There is an area of city named Manly, "So named after the confidence and ‘manly behaviour’ displayed by a group of local Aborigines spied in Manly Cove by Australia’s first Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788" according to http://www.manlyaustralia.com . Check out my gallery for pictures from the beach, our hike, and around the town - everything has the name 'Manly' which gave me a good laugh.

me and Bill on Manly Beach


on top of a wall during our hike

Saturday night we met up with some guys at a local brew pub for dinner and drinks. You may notice a lack of pictures once we entered the pub. I wish there was a good story about how the pictures were too scandalous to post, but honestly it was all I could do to stay awake as I was dealing with the time difference. I had to take a little nap at the table while the rest of the party drank up. Oh well, I had fun anyway.
The Pub

Sunday morning we headed to Bondi beach. Again I'll refer you to the picture page, cause the pictures captured it better than my words ever could. I planned on going for a short run down the coast, but it was so nice that I kept going until I ran through a cemetery and ended up about 2.5 miles from where I started. The link above is to the RunKeeper entry of my run, but something went wrong on the way back and it didn't track it correctly. I got some great pictures though.

Cemetery I passed through on my run

After Bondi, Bill and I drove to Bill and Beth's house in Canberra. It's about 3 hours away so the drive was good exposure to some Australian culture (cars, [lack of] billboards, etc). I got to meet my other nephew Liam for the first time since my wedding 2 years ago. He's two and a half and is a funny little guy. His favorite thing seems to be "crash" - whether it's on an xbox game, pinball on the laptop, or dropping Lego's off the table.
Liam and grandma playing with Lego's

Off to enjoy the day!