Buford!

This is our latest foster dog, Buford. He is a sweetheart! He's polite and affectionate and just wants to lay across your lap, he's very easy to love.

He's a smaller dog in stature and right now he's very skinny, due to an esophagus problem that causes him to throw up if he isn't held upright for 5 minutes after eating. He can't eat hard food, but he loves rawhide chewies. He's very motivated by food, I'm hoping that feeding him small meals around the clock will stop him from feeling frantic about food. I have a recipe for food that I'm making for him. It's called "Satin Balls" and he LOVES it. Apparently, it helps dogs to put on weight quickly.

Buford was likely given up by his owner because of his health problems, and the poor baby bounced all over the state. According to paperwork that I have, he's traveled all the way from Iowa City to Waterloo to Waverly to Ames and here to our house in Urbandale. He can stay here until he finds his forever home! He gets along fabulously with Sophie and has had a few snarly moments with Copper, but Copper is a notorious jerk. He's housebroken and hasn't had any problems since he arrived. He's oddly afraid of crossing the threshold from the kitchen out onto the deck, not sure what that's about, but he can easily be bribed with food.

RECIPE for SATIN BALLS

10 lbs of cheap hamburger meat

1 large box Total(tm) cereal

1 large box uncooked oatmeal

15 oz jar of wheat germ

10 eggs

10 small pkgs knox unflavored geletin2

1 1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/4 cup unflavored molasses

Pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together in large (or larger) bowl.

2. Place in freezer bags, appoximately 1 lb per bag.

3. Place in freezer, thaw as needed.

4. Feed raw.

Pinch off the amount you want to feed and roll into a ball. Place on top of regular food. This recipe is good for putting weight on a dog. Be careful though, it will put weight on the dog in a matter of a few days. A lot of weight in a matter of a few weeks! Total cereal because it contains all the vitamins and minerals necessary as a supplement. Knox gelatin not only holds the stuff together (molasses does a good job of that) but it is a protein builder.

Recipe from:

Sandi Wittenberg

Red Bay Bassets

Barcelona Market!

For our honeymoon, we went to Spain. It was visually amazing at times, especially in Barcelona. These pictures are from La Rambla, a touristy street with street performers, animals, flowers, art and touristy junk.

Identity Thieves and Life Thieves

Out of context with my usual posts about dogs and crap in my house, I have a few things to say about Identity Theft and a new opportunity for malevolence--Life As You Know It Thieves.

Everyone knows that they need to shred papers with personal information. Maybe that's not even enough--thieves have time on their hands and can tape things back together. Thieves are savvy, patient about aggregating files on potential scam-ees. Everyone knows to install a firewall and patches on their computers, to password protect sensitive items. A locking desk is a good place to store all of your bills, checkbooks, cash, etc. Stopping your mail when you're going out of town, even for a long weekend can be done over the internet. I do these things, and I can walk away when I have contractors at the house and feel totally confident that they'll not be tempted into trouble. The more physical and electronic elements I protect, the less likely an identity thief is to be able to piece enough of me together to apply for lines of credit, or buy things with my name. Because thieves are good at Excel, too.

But this post isn't about ID theft, what we're missing here is the opportunity for the theft of Life As You Know It by people you consider to be "friends" through Social Media.

It's super easy to get to know complete strangers via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, specifically. Each of these allows you to get to know the parts of people that they want you to see...and provides a portal for them to watch You, study You, learn-up on You...and perhaps get jealous of You? What if they decide that you have it pretty good, and wouldn't it be fun to watch you take a tumble?

As this article points out, you can set up fancy filters to block certain groups of people from each other, from your information... but why let them in AT ALL? Facebook fails all the time, what if your settings were lost and all of your info was open to anyone? What is the purpose of having a high follower count? To look connected? You can't possibly be sincerely connected to and invested in all of those people. I'd rather not have any connections, than people I barely know aware of my every job, every vacation, every move. And what is the point of all of that, anyway? To get attention? Seth Godin said in a recent blog about internet infamy, it's better to be trusted, to be purchased from, to be a teacher, etc, than to vie for attention from the masses. The masses are pretty dumb, and if you doubt this? Look at Twitter's Trending topics. #Itoldyouso.

When you link everyone you've ever met, from Elementary School teacher to college drinking buddies, you open yourself up to, as my friend Jon fears most, your "worlds colliding". For some people, that is okay. It's likely that your story checks out, that you're consistently the same person with everyone...and that you lead an extremely boring life.

BUT. What happens when people you know through Social Media get together, get drunk, start gossiping and decide to play pranks on people not there? Or what if someone alone and unhappy with their lot in life decides you'd make an easy target for some mischief? People can turn into mobs pretty quickly, and it's easy to be a bully when all you're looking at is a screen.

• What if they contact your husband because they saw you having lunch with a male client and decided it *must* be a scandalous affair? (this didn't happen to me, dummy, it's just an example)

• What happens when people you know decide to tell stories about stuff you did in college, and your Mom finds out what REALLY happened to her car that night of drunken folly? Awkward! (this didn't happen to me, dummy, it's just another example)

• Or, what if (and this is paraphrased to protect the guilty and the innocent) people get together, get drunk and decide that a less-than-flattering item from your past means you need your life ruined NOW...so they contact someone you work with via Facebook and long story short, YOU LOSE YOUR JOB. (This DID happen to a friend of mine, I recently found out about it, and it feels as awful as if it happened to ME.)

There is no recourse for any of this, as 1. Iowa is an at-will state (and a no-fault divorce state) and either party can leave for no particular reason at any time. 2. The information was public and could be accessed by anyone. 3. The person wronged in the last example isn't vindictive. In fact, she's one of the nicest people I know.

My Facebook got a thorough cleaning this past weekend and eliminated anyone who I had a shadow of doubt about being able to trust. I feel much safer now. And I've thought through what I would do, if something like this were to happen to me. I feel like it's High School. I don't know who I can trust, and who will try to cash me in as a chip to be "more popular" some night when they're drinking and being reckless with people's lives and livelihood. Seth Godin (who I don't usually read, but am going to start) wrote about it today: http://ow.ly/uV04 and he knocked it out of the park. I'm not as short-sighted as High School. I know who I can and cannot trust, and the people who have done it before won't have a chance to mess with me and my Life as I Know It.

Facebook Folly

Giving Facebook a serious look on how it does (and mostly does not) enrich my life. Recently, I have become aware of several instances where Social Media has caused major set-backs in people's lives. It has messed with relationships, it has cost people their jobs.

In my own life, sharing my opinions has already killed off three friendships--albeit, relationships that were questionable in the first place, due to their online nature--but I am not sure if I want to continue this pattern.

I don't know if Facebook really serves any purpose other than to give people my Rolodex, and a means for potentially meddling in my life. The more that I think and write about it, the more I realize that I need to tighten up what I share, make my life more private, work on the relationships that are reciprocally meaningful, and shed the extraneous.

I don't want to offend anyone, but I also can't leave my virtual door open to pernicious attacks. Weighing the options between mildly hurting some people's feelings versus the potential damage that giving open access to people I don't know that well… I think we all know where I would rather err.

I'm sorry, I'm cutting just about everyone who I don't feel I know well enough. It has to just be friends I've made (not friends of friends) friends from real life, people I've known more than 3 years, family, and people whose character I really think I know. I'm sorry I have to pass this judgement, but my life is just too valuable.

Puppy Love in Spain!

I saw these two dogs in Spain, waiting for their owner outside a Dia store--totally without leashes and without need for supervision. This would never happen in most of the US, let alone Des Moines, where people drive everywhere and dogs are treated like livestock...