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Recent Battles
Queen Victoria
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Juicing The Sheep
09 April 2009 11:11 AM | No CommentsThe Journal of Queen Victoria Thursday, October 21, 1868 “Juicing the Sheep“ At a quarter to twelve I drove off with Louise and Leopold in the waggonette up to near the “Bush” (the residence of William Brown, the farmer) to see them “juice the sheep.”...
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Queen Victoria’s Border Collies
26 January 2009 4:40 AM | 18 CommentsFor well over a century the “Collie” name has been co-opted by show breeders who have created a monster whose face looks like a door stop with beady eyes set in triangular slits. These same people have co-opted the notion that Queen Victoria was deeply...
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Show Me the Collie
22 January 2009 3:38 AM | 1 CommentHaving established that Queen Victoria’s direct influence on the proliferation of the show Collie is insubstantial at best, let’s explore what impact the Monarchy may have, in fact, had on the culture of dogs during her reign. Five. If the show Collie owes more to...
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The Queen and the Collie
20 January 2009 2:57 AM | 2 CommentsThe old wisdom on the rise of the show Collie is that Queen Victoria met them on a trip to Scotland in the 1860s, became infatuated, acquired them, sponsored them in shows, bred them, and her abundant trend-setting prowess lead to their bountiful rise to...
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The Victorian Collie Myth
19 January 2009 8:03 PM | 5 CommentsThe prevailing creation myth among show Collie enthusiasts is that Queen Victoria’s infatuation with the breed set the ball in motion, elevating the humble farm dog to aristocratic splendor. Queen Victoria saw her first Collies in the 1860′s, and she enthusiastically began to sponsor them,...
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Juicing The Sheep
Archive for February, 2008
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The 8 Signs of Groupthink
Posted on February 27, 2008 | 2 CommentsGroupthink is an endemic problem of groups and bureaucracies charged with making decisions when the decision makers use peer pressure to limit debate, enforce an often false consensus, and avoid conflict. Groupthink is similar to other forms of social influence and etiquette such as Political... -
Killing for a Myth
Posted on February 25, 2008 | 9 CommentsIn my recent correspondence with a pet rescuer who has yet to embrace No-Kill, I saw firsthand the phenomenon that Nathan Winograd discusses in Redemption: that we hear so much about pet overpopulation, but has anyone seen it? The e-mailer wrote: [Shelters] only kill the... -
Parroting PeTA
Posted on February 22, 2008 | 13 CommentsHere’s an e-mail I got today from a horse and dog rescuer (Help A Horse Organization) who is rather miffed at my “Buy From a Breeder” rhetoric. I think she missed the point. She also failed to appreciate the elements of my post that were... -
Hatred for Winograd
Posted on February 19, 2008 | 2 CommentsAn unintended occurance of a visual double negative. When paradigms shift and the new guard replaces the old guard there is generally a lot of spitting and cursing and ill will, especially from adherents to the previous school of thought as well as from the... -
We Feel Fine
Posted on February 15, 2008 | No CommentsI just got a click through from a rather strange looking address, www.wefeelfine.org, and I thought I’d investigate. It turns out that it’s a rather fascinating project (with a Stanford Connection) in human emotion using the Internet as a giant herd of guinea pigs. We... -
Memes about Me
Posted on February 15, 2008 | 4 CommentsI rarely participate in chain letters (and I do recall getting one or two physical letters before the internet was popular) or mass e-mails and the like (they still arrive in my in box on a daily basis), and I usually avoid the temptation to... -
Happy Valentine’s Day
Posted on February 14, 2008 | 2 CommentsHappy St. Valentine’s Day from Gemma, Mercury, Bella, Zeke, Maximus, and Stella Rose! -
Buy From A Breeder
Posted on February 13, 2008 | 4 CommentsThe New York Times is a little slow on the uptake and is just now reporting on PeTA’s disgraceful advertising campaign featuring dead dogs in body bags and the message that if you buy your dog you are directly killing a dog in a shelter.... -
BC/R&F: Viggo Mortensen
Posted on February 13, 2008 | No CommentsI began the Border Collies of the Rich and Famous series with the decidedly sub-par performance of one-time BC owner Ellen DeGeneres. We turn things around this time with exemplar Border Collie companion, Viggo Mortensen. Viggo is a modern renaissance man, flexing his creative muscle... -
I have to buy WHAT?
Posted on February 12, 2008 | 7 CommentsHere’s a post that I wrote up a few months ago that I neglected to publish at the time. Breeding and not-breeding dogs has made for some classic conversations at the check out line when I’m buying stuff for the pups. I thought I had...
Queen Victoria's Border Collies