Closed Minds Let Nothing In

It never fails to amaze me, really. This is the situation. I saw a posting on FB from Cesar Millan's page that Massachusetts banned debarking surgery. I don't agree with the surgery myself, even though sometimes I've considered it for Dalila but I don't think I'll ever do it. I've got a better handle on her bark these days so I know I can manage her. I also don't agree with it out of convenience; if you get a dog, train it. Simple. But I also understand that sometimes it can be the lesser of evils. For example my breeder has usually 7 shelties in her home at once. Now one sheltie is loud - imagine 7. And I don't care what anyone says, when one gets going the others will follow. That's just the way they are. And they are hard to calm down. It can be done, but it's hard. And she's now experiencing health problems, which compounds the issue. One of her seven (Dalila's great grandmother to be precise) is debarked. The bark isn't gone, it just sounds really raspy like she has a cold. She has neighbours and doesn't want to trouble them, and having one less loud barker helps. Okay, her dogs her decision. Maddie doesn't seem to notice, she barks alongside everyone else. But everyone on this page considered every dog owner who did this surgery to be horrible people. I threw in my two cents pretty much saying that while I don't agree with the surgery, I don't agree with judging people either. Of course I got jumped on (anticipated that) but I stood my ground. I'm not ashamed of my opinions, and I'm not ashamed of speaking them even when 90% of the people are being a little close-minded in their passion. People don't listen when they're on that high.

One lady saw fit to tell me that I and my sister were bad dog owners because I wasn't agreeing with the masses and pointing out a few real realities. I was also called stupid.

Haha, I'm a writer honey. You want to take a hit at my feelings you're going to have to hit a lot harder than that!

She gave up, I guess she didn't want to admit that she wasn't reading what I was writing properly. I guess it's hard to admit that things aren't always fair to dog owners and some people have to make ugly decisions. I'm not saying that shouldn't be changed, because it should, but it's stupid to ignore the reality here and now. If any of those dog owners commenting there could honestly say that if they were ever faced with the decision of getting their dog debarked or removed from them, they would let their dog go they're stronger people than I am. I hope never to be in that situation, but I'd rather debark Dalila than lose her. If that makes me stupid fine, but I knew what I was getting into when I got a sheltie. I know what a barker she can be and I know I have to work to curb that. And I just can't bring myself to give her up and then someone who's unaware of that adopts her only to get rid of her. She'd get euthanized. And she is just far too happy and far too wonderful of a dog to have that happen to her. Not everyone is lucky like me to have neighbours and a super who would work with me if she was ever a problem. Some people have neighbours who complain over the simplest, stupidest things and sometimes the law sides with them instead of resolving it. That's reality. It's not always fair, and there's not always happy endings and rainbows. I'm all for people being more responsible dog owners, but I'm also for people not being so anal retentive about a dog just because they bark on occasion.

And I'm also for people not being so damn judgemental when they haven't been there and done that.

Festival Goodness

Back home and settled, with an ice cap and goodies :) I'm a hopeless addict, haha.

It was absolutely perfect weather for a festival. Lots of new booths, a fairly good crowd but considering there was also a festival going on at Locke street this weekend it wasn't surprising. But still, good crowd. Lots of folks with dogs, from little guys to Irish Wolfhounds. I caught up with my friends Michelle and Kelly who were both vending this year. It's always good to see people who are all glad to see you and not 'where the hell have you been?'. And saw some more of my friends who showed up a little after I did, which was nice. I forgot to ask if they were going lol Shannon brought Ruby along who was happier to see Dalila than Dalila was. Pup actually did pretty good at the festival, it was quite overwhelming but she loved it. And I love showing her off because she gets so many compliments. I think people see how happy a dog she is though too.

I didn't bring my camera this year, but I did get goodies and I did take pictures (please ignore my fugly desk >.> ):



Both mine and my mom's stuff. The dream catcher and the first two pairs of candles are mine, and the purple ball and the last two candle pairs are mine. The candles my friend Kelly makes. The first pair at the top is called Egyptian Dragon, the next Witches Brew, the third Dragon's Blood, and the last pair is Witches Cauldron. They smell sooooooooooooo good, I'm surrounded by scent.

As for Dalila:

Whoops!

Almost let this blog slip. My apologies!

I forgot about NaNo ML signups this year >.< So officially, I'm not ML-ing for my area but I can act in an unofficial capacity, if it's okay with the girls who are this year. I'm sure it will be, one has been my co-ML for a few years and the other has been in the group probably as long as I have. They're both cool. Even if my involvement is minor, it might be nice to relax a bit this year. 50,000 words in one month can get kind of nuts.

I have no idea what I'm going to do for NaNo. It has to be a new project so that means none of the seven stories I have in progress qualify. Not that I'm short on ideas, haha. I have one idea that I haven't quite fleshed out yet that was inspired by this art:



I couldn't read the title or artist's name (幽魂之地 - 李一丁 if anyone on my list can translate?) but I have a good idea of the 'story' of it. It's an undead warlock, most likely in Andorhol at night. Or it could be a farm in Tirisfal which always looks that dark but none of the silos glow green. It kind of looks like she's taking revenge which is what spurred the idea. Of course, another idea is inspired by this pic:



Not entirely sure what this one will be about either. Either vampire or shapeshifter, but leaning towards shapeshifter. I love vampires but I already have one on the backburner and right now I think the vamp market needs to cool some. Thanks Stephenie >.< Glittery vamps can go die now plzkthx.

Speaking of writing I didn't do any yesterday. Bad me, I'm going to fall so far behind on my target. I've been doing...well not great, but not bad either. I know if I can just get in one 7k day, I can stick to it. The Dragon King is almost at 30k (1,761 words short to be exact), which is sooooooooo cool. I think I'm just going to make it straight out asian fantasy in the rewrite. Well, maybe not completely asian fantasy because I have another story idea set in this world, and nothing of it is asian-based. Watching Fuurin Kazan is providing lots of good visual aid ^_^ Still need a subbed version of the whole show, it'd be nice to know what's going on. My untitled dark fantasy, which is kind of leaning towards Demon King as a tentative title at least, has clocked in currently at 10,433 words. I think I'll finally start working on chapters now that I'm out of spontaneous scenes. Revenant is at 4,056 which I think will be the first one I tackle later today, going for 5,944 words; Redemption is at 6,213 and still has plenty of spontaneous scenes left to write; my untitled historical is back on the backburner at 1,136 words; my untitled warlord story is also on the backburner at 1,000 words; and A Game of Nobles remains at 1,000, which was actually kind of a spontaneous addition. I had two scenes I didn't want to forget, and figured I'd add it to the tally.

So current wordcount total: 65,729. For anyone doing the math, those counts above don't include the 13,652 I added to a three-year-old manuscript back in January. As that story is done now, nothing more gets added to it.

Now for some sleep, then off to the Harvest Festival! I'm debating whether to take Dalila - on one hand the socialization would be good for her, and she loves people. On the other I kind of don't want to divide my attention between saying hi to friends, doing a bit of shopping and calming the nut. Guess we'll see. I'll post later about it either way!

EDIT: so this is the room GACKT is staying in at the Casa Loma. All I can say is OMFG I WANT. I've decided that if I ever make enough money I'm renting this room for a week either monthly or bimonthly to work in. I've never really thought about what my dream workspace would be before, but damn I'll take that!