You Wouldn’t Like It, They Say

Shining a Little Light on Nonsense

BREED LONGEVITY CLAIMS remind me of this packaging, which says this expensive lightbulb is good for 22+ years — *but is guaranteed for only 10.

And you better have the receipt and the box. 

And with the dog, there is no warranty.

Drone in the Snow on the Driveway

Snow Tracks in the Yard

From  the top:  Fox, Coyote, and Deer

Flying Immigrants Named After Stars

Big flocks of Starlings are fairly common this time of year. All of them are descendants of birds released in Central Park, New York City, by a group that wanted every bird named in Shakespeare’s sonnets to be found in that Park.  

Starlings are named after the iridescent star pattens that speckle their mostly-black plumage.   See >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2005/01/shakespeare-in-park.html for a bit more info.

The Strength of Common Virtue

THIS ILLUMINATING AND IMPORTANT PARAGRAPH can be found in this Atlantic piece >> https://shorturl.at/oBNCp

Drone on Driveway and Adjacent Forest

Down the Driveway

Before the plow came.

Capitalism Went Wrong Quite Early

Bunkering On a Snowy Day

The house dogs entertain themselves in the sun room watching the actiom at the bird feeders. The two terriers are in and out of the basement and their own fenced yard which is half-sheltered from the snow by a large deck.

Beautiful Music

Two separate violins crafted by French instrument maker Joseph Gaffino in 1748.  From “Museum of Artifacts”.

Before the Snow Begins to Fall

John Brown’s Truth Is Marching On

John Brown's body 

lies a-mouldering in the grave;

His soul is marching on!

Glory, glory, hallelujah! 

His soul is marching on!

He's gone to be a soldier

in the army of the Lord! 

His soul is marching on!

John Brown's knapsack 

is strapped upon his back!
His soul is marching on!

Viking Tough

It’s 10 degrees out, and my son ran over 19 miles in shorts.

I want an aspirin if I drive 19 miles.

300 Million Gallon Sewage Spill on the Potomac

A massive pipe that moves many millions of gallons of sewage has ruptured and sent wastewater flowing into the Potomac River northwest of Washington, DC, polluting it ahead of a major winter storm that has repair crews scrambling.

This sewage spill is already 300 million gallons and counting, making it one of the largest sewage spills in US history. More >> https://cnn.it/3O1m8vr

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Dirt dens are a sensible way for animals to tuck in and get out of the cold, the heat, and the wet, to say nothing of predators. 

The list of animals that hibernate in underground burrows, live in burrows, or nest in burrows is astounding: many types of fox, all types of badger, many types of turtle and tortoise, some owls and parrots, all kinds of ground squirrels and marmots, some penguins and puffins, chipmunks, wombats, European rabbits, several types of bears, wolves and dogs, cicadas, stoats, weasels, platypus, ferrets, otter, some wild pigs, voles, aardvarks, aardwolves, some wild cats, many snakes and lizards, beaver, nutria, alligators, catfish, coyotes, salamanders, mole crickets, possums, raccoons, wombats, hedgehogs, bats, swiflets, pangolins, frogs and toads, several kinds of shrimp, moles, mice and rats, crayfish, clams, kingfishers, many kinds of worms, armadillos, skunks, muskrats, meerkats, some large spiders, and several types of wasps and bees.

White Privilege

WHITE PRIVILEGE is your history being taught as a requirement and "their" history being taught as an elective.

My Favorite Soup

My mother made chestnut soup to die for, but I have recipe for Green Curry Soup that *might* be even better.

I discovered Green Curry Soup in the most unlikely place — a very small restaurant in Davis, West Virginia, near Blackwater Falls.  Davis has a population of 600, so I did not expect great things from the Ish Kitchen and Bar, but I was happily wrong.

I spent a lot of time looking for “green curry” in Halal and Indian food shops before I discovered it was canned, and in the “Malaysian” food and soup section at H-Mart.

There is Green Curry and Red Curry, and I slightly prefer the Green Curry, but to my tastebuds it’s a dime’s worth of difference.

Here’s the very simple recipe: 

• 2 cans of Green Curry Soup
• 1.5 pounds of chicken breast, cut into small chunks for soup
• 1 can (use the Green Curry can as a measure) of chicken stock
• A 1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar
• Half a Green Curry can measure of oat creamer

 That’s it.  The cut up chicken in put in a frying pan with about 3/3 of an inch of water and cooked and stirred until the water is gone.  The rest of the stuff just goes into the pot willy-nilly.

Belted Kingfisher

A Belted Kingfisher hunting for small fish over a creek near the house.

Kingfishers nest underground in holes they drill into high stream banks.

These birds have enormous heads for the size of their body, and have both a very distinctive flight pattern and a very distinctive clicking call.

This bird appears quite grey in this picture, but they are more typically a rather nice blue-grey.

A Note For Overseas Readers

For those overseas and at home, it’s worth mentioning that TWO-THIRDS OF ALL ADULT AMERICANS DID NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP.

There was huge vote suppression of minority votes, but just under 64 percent of all adult Americans still voted.  

Trump got less than 50 percent of that 64 percent, or (rounding up) 32 percent.  

Two-thirds of all Americans did NOT vote for Trump and *no one* voted for killing off entire agencies, turning the government over to children under the control of Elon Musk, firing half the FBI, and abolishing the FDIC, USAID, the Dept. of Education, consumer protection, etc.  

No one voted in support of Trump selling pardons to murderers, rapists, conmen, pedophiles, and international drug lords. 

No one voted to have masked secret police kicking down doors, without warrant, in order to disappear people without due process. No one voted to kill off cancer research, or to invade or threaten other countries.

The only question now is when do the days of rage REALLY start.

Trust me… it’s coming.

A rolling general strike is next, and it’s long past time for it.

The Power of Protest at the Greengrocers

At DAVOS, yesterday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the smart, reality-based new leader of the free world referenced Václav Havel’s 80-page essay entitled, “The Power of the Powerless,” written in 1978.

It’s worth a read >>  https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/1979/01/the-power-of-the-powerless.pdf

“The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual

offense [by taking down the sign], isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game.  He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked.”

Bingo.

Ladies and gentlemen, the emperor is naked.

Donald Trump only has the power we give him by acquiescing and obeying in advance.  

Trump only has power if we live in fear of what might happen if we step out of line to help our neighbors who, in turn, might help their neighbors.

We are the power.  

We are who we have been waiting for.  

We only need be good neighbors, and join other good neighbors, to help each other achieve a common goal through honesty and reciprocity.

But first, we must take down the sign that says we will go along to get along.

We must take down the sign that says we will comply in advance.

We must show that we, the people, will show up in numbers too big to police and too many to jail.

We must refuse to obey illegal orders.

We must fight the secret police who are already so scared they dare not show their face or say their own name.

And we must let the corporate dragons hoarding huge piles of gold know that we see them and hold them complicit.  It is their money and their cowardice that has enabled this, every bit as much as the cowardice and insider trading of Congress.

The world only needs to stop buying US treasuries for it all to come crashing down.

Denmark’s fleet of Maersk container ships only need boycott the US for 6 months for the US economy to lose a trillion dollars.

The current world order, with Trump and the US on top, is as fragile as a soap bubble, and collectively and individually, we all hold the pin.

The Most Important Speech In My Lifetime

1989, 1998

Trump’s Greenland Plan

Donald Trump keeps threatening to send the 11th Airborne Division to Minnesota. The 11th Airborne is based in Alaska, and encompasses around 12,000 soldiers across two infantry brigades and support elements, focusing on large-scale Arctic training in vast terrains.

Trump is not ginning up the 11th Airborne for Minnesota, but for Greenland. 

NATO needs to say it plain; they will engage in rapid, non-proportional, lethal strikes if that happens, and they will not limit those strikes to Greenland. 

Mar-a-lago needs to be put on the map for Day One retaliation, as does every Trump property, and every American oligarch yacht.

A County of Spies

This is former house of famed spy-chaser James Jesus Angleton in Arlington, Va. >> http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jesus_Angleton

He lived only a mile or so from Aldrich Ames, the spy who used to live just around the corner from me. >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_Ames

Across the road from me lived Jim Schlesinger, who  was a former Secretary of Defense, former Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, former CIA Director, and former Secretary of Energy. He was a very dedicated birder.

A story about finding 3 stray beagles and visiting Ames’ house while trying to return them >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2006/08/traitors-spies-and-beagles.html

A Universal Language

“If you smile at me, I will understand, ‘cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language.” — David Crosby

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

The American Dream Still Exists

“So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.” 

— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Moving the Immovable

In 2006, I wrote a blog post called “Inbred Thinking” about the failed genetic theories and closed minds underpinning the world of Kennel Club dogs.

In 2007 I got an email, and then a phone call, from Jemima Harrison. She was interested in the history and canine health outcomes I’d written about.

In 2008, Jemima produced “Pedigree Dogs Exposed” for the BBC, a documentary that quite literally blew the doors off the Kennel Club.

Some months later, I was visiting with Donald McCaig at a sheep dog trial in Virginia. Donald could clearly see the enormous impact Pedigree Dogs Exposed was having, but he didn’t quite get it.

“Patrick,” he said, “we’ve been talking about this stuff forever.  There’s nothing new.”

“Right,” I said. “But we were TELLING them.  Jemima SHOWED them, and it’s showing them that has made all the difference.”

At first the Kennel Club tried to be OUTRAGED that anyone would question their morality or expertise. 

When that didn’t work, they tried lying and minimizing both the disease and deformity.

When that didn’t work, they bunkered down.  Surely we would eventually get exhausted and move on?

But we did not get exhausted, and we did not move on.  Instead, we were joined, sometime by critics, but more often by supporters.

Jemima created CRUFFA, and I discovered Facebook.  

Bloggers were joined by veterinarians and, in the process of trying to prove us wrong, or sometimes out of curiosity, thousands and thousands of people discovered the depths of disease, deformity, and dysfunction in the world of Kennel Club dogs.

Somewhere along the line, pet insurance actuaries joined the fray. 

Thanks to CRUFFA, I believe, a few countries in Europe banned the “torture breeding” of intentionally deformed and severely brachycephalic dogs. 

This morning, Jemima posted on the latest report from the UK Kennel Club, which squarely faces the myriad problems in the world of pedigree dogs, and begins moving everyone towards sensible solutions

Once again, I am reminded of my old friend Donald McCaig, who wondered if it was possible to move the Kennel Clubs whose position he likened to a religion, free of evidence and based on faith alone.

“Ah,” I said, “it’s possible.  But it’s a bit like moving the Pyramids; it’s the first three feet that’s the hardest!”

Twenty years on, many thousands of hands pushing on the very long fulcrum of the Internet, has indeed begun to move the immovable. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, THE FIRST THREE FEET >> https://shorturl.at/ERdtr. 

Please read the entire report.

The Chairman of the UK Kennel Club, Ian Seath, writes:

Our intention in commissioning this review was clear: to understand, with honesty and precision, where our current work is effective, where it falls short, and where we must focus our efforts to support a healthier future for generations ofdogs. The findings do not shy away from the complexities and challenges faced by breeders and by the wider canine sector.

Nor do they overlook the dedication, care and commitment demonstrated by the many individuals and breed communities who work tirelessly to preserve and improve their breeds.

This document sets out a structured and forward‑looking programme for the Royal Kennel Club. It provides a clear framework through which we will refine our support for breeders, strengthen our evidence base, modernise our tools, and address the most pressing issues in genetic diversity, conformation, and breed‑related disease. Importantly, it recognises that the Royal Kennel Club must offer leadership that is grounded not only in scientific rigour but also in transparency, collaboration, and accountability.

Dr Alison Skipper (MA Vet MB Cert VR MA PhD MRCVS), Veterinary and Research Advisor at the Royal Kennel Club, was recruited in January 2025 to write the report and suggested way forward.

The report focuses in three lines of inquiry and reform:

1. Genetic diversity and inbreeding
2. Extreme conformation
3. Breed-related disease

Please read the entire report.

As skeptical and cynical as I always am, I have to say this report is terrific, and Allison Skipper deserves all the roses, as does new Kennel Club Chairman Ian Seath.

Full applause here.  This is Herculean-level stable cleaning. leaders

How To Speak German

In Germany they say if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people are sitting talking to him, you've got a table with 11 Nazis. 

In America we say if there’s a Trump supporter at the table and 10 other people are sitting there talking to him, you've got a table with 11 Nazis.

Going to the Mailbox This Morning