Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
Why does dog pee kill the grass, but not the weeds?
My work email is being deluged with a flurry of bogus bounced mails this morning. I’ve had 10 of them come through my inbox in the last 15 minutes, all of them with attachments.
Tip: If you get an email bounce (typically has the subject ‘Returned mail’ or ‘Unexpected delivery failure’, always check the From address. Generally authentic bounced mail only comes from the mail server that your outgoing mail goes through. If the From address in the email doesn’t look like one of the servers you configured your email client with, odds are it’s bogus and you probably shouldn’t open it. If the bounce also has an attachment, odds are even greater that it’s a bogus mail. None of the mail server software I’m familiar with send out bounced email notifications with attachments.
Consider for example my regular netcom.com email. My email client is configured to fetch mail from Earthlink’s POP server, , and send outgoing mail through their SMTP server. If I get a bounce that doesn’t come from a netcom.com or earthlink.net server, that’s an immediate red flag so it gets flagged as junk and into the bit bucket it goes.
These bogus bounced emails are no doubt an attempt to take advantage of most people’s general lack of knowledge about how email is ferried around. The ones I got today were particularly obvious because the From addresses weren’t even valid emails.
Keep an eye on your email and never blindly open anything with an attachment. Spam filters are getting better, but they’re still not foolproof.
Checked with one of the guys from Charleston School for Dogs and he says I’m doing the right thing with the time-outs and taking away Simba’s toy. A strong and reliable ‘Leave it’ would help too if Simba and another dog started to face off over a toy. He also said that resource guarding behaviour is tough to train out of dogs and takes a lot of work, so I’ll just keep at it.
Simba’s got some toy aggression issues I need to deal with. What started out with just some growling whenever another dog wanted to play with whatever toy Simba was playing with has escalated to full out snarling/barking/charging/fight-about-to-break-out aggressive defensive behaviour.
He and Nala will play with the same toy just fine together. It’s only when another dog comes by and wants to join in. Then he turns all Jekyll and Hyde on me. Going out on walks and meeting other dogs, he’s fine. Throw a toy into the mix and he’s like “it’s all mine and nobody else can play with it”.
I’m always watching out to break anything up and to take the ball away from Simba. The leash goes on and playtime is over for a while for Simba. It doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect though. It’s getting to the point where the dog park experience is getting ruined for me, Nala and the other dogs. Nala doesn’t get as much play time as she used to because I always have to keep an eye on Simba, and it’s no fun for the other dogs who just want to play.
Not sure how or where to train it out of him, because he doesn’t do it at home, and I don’t want to have him going after dogs at the park all the time to correct the behaviour out of him there. I’m going to have to consult with some of our dog trainers to see if they have any suggestions for me.
Today’s nice and warm afternoon was spent over at Pet Fest at Palmetto Islands County Park. Forgot to grab the camera on the way out so no pictures this time.
This year’s event was much bigger than last year (which was bigger than the year before) and stretched out to cover more of the park this time around. Plenty of vendors and dog rescue groups showing off their things. The dogs had a good time meeting other dogs, walking around sniffing the sights/scents and getting treats at the booths. There were doggie contests to show off your pooch. Simba and I entered the musical sit contest and even managed to win a cool prize basket from Palmetto Paws!. The basket had some really cool things that both dogs will enjoy, along with a gift certificate to get more things for the dogs to play with :).
The K-9 division of the Charleston Police Department put on a neat police dog demonstration that was cool to watch. Those are some well trained dogs, I tell you. There were frisbee dog demonstrations that were fun to watch (those dogs can jump and catch like you wouldn’t believe). There was even a flyball track where they were doing demonstrations and giving short intro lessons. Flyball looks like fun, but I don’t think I could get Nala and Simba into it. Nala only goes after the ball when she feels like it, and Simba only goes for the ball if you kick it for him.
Caught up with Susan at Purely Positive to ask about the new off-leash class at her new Dolittles location. That’ll be the next class for Nala and Simba to do. I’ll have to start practicing some more with Nala again and get her to start paying more attention to me before class starts.
Great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.