Big Love in Oregon

Slade and I will both be officially dieting at least sometime soon. Maybe. We have gotten to that point where we are growing out of all our clothes and it is easier to fool ourselves that it would be easier to diet than box up the wardrobes, next to all the other boxed up wardrobes.

I have always known that as soon as I started to return to normal health the first thing that would happen is that my weight would start piling back on. That is happening, fortunately and unfortunately. I have gained about fifteen pounds in just about the last approx two months or less, after struggling to keep down the bare minimum about to eat for the last three years.

Just one of those very bizzare realities with my health situation that obviously shows they have no about anything and no good options for me to get a lot better quickly.

It was actually getting a touch disturbing at one point, as I think I mentioned, slade had started calling me Auschwitz. At my thinnest, about January or so I weighed just 120 pounds, which is not too much for my height. The twins who don't put away laundry so well accidentally put a pair of Archer's jeans in my closet and I mistakenly put them on one day, and they fit. I was like--I don't remember owning capri pants. Now that is very much not the case.

The good news is before it is too late I might be able to try to switch back to a normal diet. I used to have to eat Rocky Road ice cream for every meal just to get enough calories to have energy to walk accross the room. Not a particularly good picture when the best thing you can do to manage your health is eat ice cream, and I had some explaining to do to the kids at dinner time. The last pint I bought was about a month ago, so we shall see whether it continues.

Everyone laughs at Slade when he has said he wants to loose weight for the past ten years. He is like a broken record at night at dinner time. I guess it is just a matter of perspective. He likes HIMSELF thinner, but he actually thinks I look better now (but this coming from a man who looks at Lane Bryant adds like they are centerfolds) And the reverse is true, I like him fine now but he thought I looked like a corpse before. But it was really cool being able to fit into some of the things I wore. I should probably say farewell to all of the things I bought from the Junior's section.

The whole thing is a very interesting education about appetite in relation to weight loss. I struggled with my weight no matter what I did until I got sick and my appetite totally went away, and even though I dieted, while I was hungry all the time I just ate too much.

The good news is that this might be what signals the tide is turning in my life finally. I would have never thought that loosing weight three years ago was a bad sign, so I have no idea.

Obviously while I couldn't sleep or eat there wasn't too much chance of good things for me. I am sure I can look forward to that again if I continue to feel healthy, so I guess it is a mixed blessing. It is sure about time. I have been so incredibly sick of living this way that I would accept any consequence pretty much for it to change.

I give up as a parent. SERIOUSLY

I have been riding myself with guilt because of all the things I thought I could be teaching my kids and wasn't either because of my own laziness or their intransigence. Particularly music, because I have a few things to teach there. I have every once in a while gotten a bee in my bonnet and tried to pass on a few things but mostly I was figuring my children's childhoods were going by and I wasn't doing my job.

Then today Archer informs me that he and his friends formed a band, and he is lead vocals and keyboard, and Chase is ukelele. They are performing "Eye of the tiger" at the end of the year talent show.

EXCUSE ME?

Apparently at some point in their just ten plus years they learned to just decide what they wanted to do and go do it, and acquired the competence to independent of my teaching them, and I don't really have much to say about it one way or the other.

In a way it is disturbing, and in a way it is a giant weight off of my mind.

I am glad he slipped and told me what date it is because I will definitely be there to tape it and post it for you, whether it is any good or not. Because I sure won't believe it until I see it myself.

Interesting THC show on crucifixion

I have been nearly fed up with The History Channel recently, but I saw an interesting show today.

====A BIT GROSS=====

Unlike the previous conjectures about how crucifixion causes death - respiratory failure, etc - this new twist on things has been based on human experimentation on live subjects. They make the case the NONE of the physical stresses of being hung on a cross, even with minor injuries such as nail punctures or superficial cuts, would have resulted in death as quickly as the scriptural account.

Historical accounts show victims lasting up to nine days, even when they were crucified in the original fashion, which was simply being impaled on a single stick. Gross, I know, but this is fairly central to our religion here so bear with me.

The show made the case that Christ's relatively rapid death - rapid for a man of his age and likely health - was consistent with a scriptural account of concurrent and preexisting psychological trauma due to pain and other stressors, which are thought to be the actually instrument of death. Usually one thinks of death being a result of an actual physical insult to the body that prevents the organism's continued existence, but it is likely that if Christ died as soon as it is reported in the scriptural account, his body simply shut down because the pain was so bad, and that is actually rare in terms of death.

This is also based on the scriptural account that he was speakind and lucid up until the end, which if he had died of hypobolemic shock or whatever other people have argued in the past, he would NOT have been able to "call out in a loud voice" and then give up the ghost. He would have checked out long before and lingered in a semi-vegetative state. Something catastrophic happened near the end, and physically it is not adequately explained.

And even if one assumes little validity in the account that his true pains were in the garden (which would support this position even more emphatically), the physical evidence aone sugggests that he did die of a combination of physical, mental, psychological, spiritual agony, and not just because he was a victim of an instrument of capital punishment. Quite consistent with the Christian's view of his uniquely distressing experience in his final hours, which has come under attack because of the fact that millions of other people have died in comparably painful ways.

=======

As a side note, the show argued that aggravating the situation was the fact he was close to exhaustion at the beginning of it due to not sleeping for 24 hours. But as a chronic insoniac who goes without sleep for this long at least once weekly, I am not thinking this is particularly unusual. Perhaps I am the unusual one, though.

Broadway may need to wait a few years

This is not Sadie's best performance ever (she doesn't always mess up the words and hit sour notes) but this was pretty funny because of Chase and his friend vamping (is that the word?) in the background. If anyone has any thoughts as to why the audio and the video appear to end up mismatched, let me know. I.E. is it just my player or does it happen for the rest of you too? My computer's webcam is obviously not very good but it is such a dang good idea that I would love to be able to use it more if I could figure it out.

More preteen saga

The new generation is always different. I find it very funny that if there is anything significant in Drake's life he makes a powerpoint presentation about it.

I guess that also speaks to the most recent chapter in our saga. He made an RIP memorial powerpoint to our dog, who may actually have to be euthanized now. Harry bit the same girl, again. This time pretty bad.

Kind of a long story, Sadie had two friends over playing in the back yard. One of them is kind of a roving neighborhood hooligan always getting into trouble. Drake happened to be watching them out the back window and saw that she was about to fall of this ladder that the boys had shoddily constructed this weekend for fun.

He failed to shut the door behind him and Harry made a beeline for the girl he bit before. She is the one whose dog is his nemesis, they let him rove freely down the alley and he marks our fence and Harry gets really worked up about it. Seeing as he is blind as a bat and not that smart, I am pretty sure it is just an instinct thing based on smell.

That and he clearly was improperly socialized and neglected as a puppy, so it is really quite atypical of the breed. He hasn't shown any aggression to anyone else including children so I am pretty sure he isn't a general public safety concern, except this girl.

So I am not sure what is going to happen. I will have to talk to the county people today. I am definitely going to have the breeders investigaged, and I have been too lazy to do it previously.

Advice to anyone wanting a dog... do your homework. I guess the breeder really does matter and I wasn't just safe getting a type of dog that I thought would be good no matter what.

The thing is we are so bonded to him that we aren't sorry we got him and are going to try really hard to save him. Probably will involve a lot of hassle and money, at the very least.

Preteen humor

It is fun now that my kids are getting actually funny and not just funny to ME because of course they are my wonderful children, who can do no wrong. Well, actually I have always thought they could do wrong but....

Anyway we were listening to one of Slade's famous 80's mixes in the car the other day and to that song "King of Pain" Drake changed the lyrics to

"There's a little African American spot on the sun today."

He's got ther PC thing down, apparently.

Update, Drake's little joke got me thinking about euphemism and taboo speech, and I posted about it in my random thoughts blog, link to the left. I don't post on that one very often, and it isn't usually very readable when I do, but I think this is quite interesting.

Drake's trumpet lesson

So now that my insomnia jag is hopefully over I will be posting more normal things instead of the esoteric stuff. I always read it like I was reading someone else's writing. Some of it is interesting, some garbage, so I always need a filter a few days later. As I have said, it is always if you are going to put in the time to actuallywade through my posts to do it many weeks later. I get really frustrated that they won't just help me sleep at night. It ends up exacerbating all of my other problems when I go nearly a week at a time. The pain and sleep deprivation especially play off each other. But this is probably the more normal stuff that belongs on a family blog.

Drake has been first chair for most of this year, so I am pretty proud of his progress. He wouldn't play anything cool while I was taping, but this may give you an idea. He has managed to bypass the 'painfully squeaky and out of tune' phase that most trumpet players his age go through.

So glad when daddy comes home

I hope you all love seeing videos of my dog. He has this pretty funny ritual of greeting Slade and he can't hardly contain himself. You can see his stump of a tail wagging in the profile in the beginning.

I will try to get my kids to do more funny things to tape.

Soething weird happens to the audio at the end, it slows down and I sound like one of those backreel Satanworshiper things, if anyone knows what could be wrong that would be cool.

VERY bad insomnia jag

Well I don't know if all of you had really known this but for the last six months to a year after finally being treated for a sleep disorder which was obviously my main problem that pretty much led to everything else (in fact I think I functioned exceptionally well with about one or two nights of sleep a week) I have been doing fairly normally. I wouldn't say well, it is like I have stage fright for life waiting for the next thing to happen. Plus I am still dealing with how bad I messed everything up around here.

This is the first time I have really hit a patch where I have been more than one or two nights per I don't know a month without sleep, so we shall see what happens. I am already having some problems, I start checking out about the third night now when it used to take me longer. I am going back to those episodes of falling asleep mid sentence or mid pushing elevator button or whatever. I don't yet start transitioning into sleepwalking (I should say that I know of but Slade has started watching me pretty close) that usually happens quite a ways into it. Basically my body tries to go to sleep in every way not involving lying down on a pillow and closing my eyes. Once I crash tho that's probably going to be all the blogging for a while. Not all bad.

I wish I got productive during these things like I used to in college but I just kind of turn into a vegetable. I am kind of like those patients in Awakenings that need to borrow the will of the ball or whatever. Am still looking for something's will I can borrow.

Other various health crises (I so feel like an old person who knows how long my posts will have to be in thirty years) include Slade's freaky neck thing. A week or so ago I noticed he was sitting with a heat pad on his neck because he has this horrible blood blister looking thing that also makes him sore up into his jaw and into one shoulder. Very scary. He probably has the plague or something, just my luck that I would be the one to diagnose it and he wouldn't tell me until it was too late.

Sadie has to get glasses. It is kind of sad, because she is miss cutie patootie and everything and doesn't think it will go with all of her various cute looks. Don't know where we got the kids with eye problems, probably not the same place we got all the other weird problems because I don't think that person would have survived to produce posterity.

Who would Jesus bomb

This is not exactly readable yet but a lot closer. It belongs on the other blog tho I am not sure because I try to keep religion off that one, but all kidding aside I don't know what I am doing. I wrote this at four in the morning without sleep for three days, which tends to really loosen me up creativity wise, but out of ten pages I end up with one or two ideas that I save. SO someday I will narrow them down to those.

http://thevonmorganstones.blogspot.com/2008/05/who-would-jesus-bomb.html

I am not usually prepared for how much I have to say about politics. And this post is about politics and religion and a bunch of other things, so the fact that it was five times longer than this probably isn't surprising.

Some would react with skepticism at hearing me say this, but but I am really not very political at all. The reason I think so is that conservatism itself is apolitical. As a very proud conservative I think that very few of the world's problems should be handled via government interference. It is bad for the citizens of those governments because it gives them more power that they usually end up abusing any power given even against the people who gave them the power. And it is bad for the causes themselves because government is bureaucratic and is centralized and therefore has it less of a chance at working effectively and efficiently. Kind of like how there is a tax increase to offer some paultry service: have your city government take a thousand dollars from you so they can give you back somthing you would pay fifty dollars for maybe. I would rather have a bunch of independent philanthropists come up with their own ideas and get them done because they could do so sooner than a government institution could get on their pantsuits and have meetings about it.

Obviously I have some strong feelings about politics, but usually they only come out in response to something that sets me off and then I have all kinds of things pour out, especially when I am sleep deprived. It is no surprise at all that when I used to sleep once a week I was checked out. Hard to believe I survived it. As is the case with many of my posts, they aren't worth reading until I have at least about a week to come back and look at them. I wish it worked to just have it in Word and fix it before I post it but it doesn't. Until I get an editor, which hopefully someday I will, I will have to rely on telling people not to read stuff until a week after I post it. It is a wonder that I can win online writing contests because my first few drafts are always total garbage.

Now I realize that many of them are never worth reading, but I am not sure exactly which ones and am working on that at least through this process. I truly appreciate those of you who plow through what are largely total garbage at hopes of something that maybe someday I will refine into much more. But I think I am very quickly improving. I am doing really well on my other sites and show promise for doing even better. I aim too high is one of my problems. It is very hard to say something different or original that even makes any sense at all. And of course not everything I say makes sense, but from what I have heard I am getting there and at least much of it is indeed shockingly original, which is very hard.

This year has been a real blessing because I have found a great outlet for possibly doing this on the scale that really will meet my goals and obligations. Helium is actually a way that I can get real readership and at least cover my costs if not actually someday get paid for real. What is in my P.B. plus messages I have gotten ever since make me feel very compelled to keep trying to as it says 'spend my life in education of myself and others.' I would actually be quite relieved if this online stuff ended up being the way to do that so I didn't have to keep trying to go back to school. I am getting a little bit tired of all of that jumping through hoops. Many aspects of it I am good at but I really don't actually like spending two hours each way to get into class and our prospects of moving are getting rather poor, sadly. This would be kind of an end run around all of that. But many of my writer idols like Barbara Tuchman are actually just very well educated journalists and don't have Ph.D's. Slade still wants to be able do introduce us as "Mr. and Dr. Morgan," but it probably won't be worth the price.

Archer is getting curly hair!

As Archer's hair grew out a bit between cuts (his hair grows really slow) we noticed that he is getting curly hair. I'll post a picture sometime soon. He is actually excited because they wear it long and shaggy nowadays in his age group and it might help him get out of the RM cuts.

That probably means that Drake is off the hook because it would have started getting curly sooner. I told him that mine and my dad's hair got curly around 10-12.

Weather in UK vs Oregon

Someone asked me if I was going to do some more posting about my trip, well I think that I talked about most of the things that people would actually be interested in. For the most part I just saw rather obscure things related to all of the historical obsessions I have, and I am not sure that anyone would get much out of it. What I will do is post later my travel articles that I do for Helium plus a few more of the videos, of course plus anything I happen to think of as it comes to me.

For example, I thought I would do one on how the weather was while I was there.

Stacey has said, and I am starting to understand why, that she wouldn't want to live in Oregon because she thought that the weather here was like it is over there in UK. But weather usually doesn't factor into things for me because choices usually haven't been that bad, or that good because SOCAL isn't on the table unfortunately. I get into enough crashes anyway and we would have to buy like forty pairs of gloves a year so I tend to not like snow that much, or any extreme cold.

But after my trip here I am starting to understand why someone who put the two together would have such an extreme negative perception of the weather in Oregon. And considering that it was nothing at all like Oregon, I was under the impression that you haven't been to Oregon in the winter, so that must be something that you were told, probably by some of the Arizona people that think it is rainy by comparison. But I don't think there was two weeks in the whole entire winter this year or in recent years in Oregon that matched the collection of nastiness I experienced there, and know why it is clearly the off travel season.

I got there after it had snowed a few days prior. (this is mid April). Then as I was walking outside of London two days later it HAILED on me. The day that I travelled by train to Canterbury there was audible thunder, which there NEVER is here in Oregon. It stormed the whole time I was in Canterbury and near the coast making it very hellish to castle explore because it created very bad wind tunnels that were probably worse than it would have been outside (except for the hail, yep another day of hail in Canterbury) and only one day of a few breaks of occasional sun in Scotland... Ironically the only warmer weather was after I had broken down and paid an outrageous amount of money for another coat.

So basically I had assumed the same thing (before I had spent much time with a direct comparison - the last time I was in England I remember that it was much colder but I don't think that I had your theory in my mind and I was pregnant so my sense of temperature was pretty messed up.) In Oregon now we are already down to at most a tshirt and windbreaker, but over there it was full 'blown' winter gear.

Not comparable, I don't think, in fact I don't even think it is overcast here as much as there sine you not only have clouds there but it is foggy because of the water on all sides, and definitely not as cold. It is already fairly warmish by April here if not exactly dry, and February is a little colder (not than UK but colder than April here) but actually quite dry. Falls until November are quite beautiful, and summers are paradisaical. Not too hot or muggy. There are only about 2 weeks in the year where we would turn on the AC if we had it. Plus here it is a three hour drive to California rather than the channel. Actually since you can drive to the coast, to year-round snow and to dessert the summers can be whatever you want them to be here.

I wondered whether it was a fluke the weather there but I asked around the whole time whether that weather was typical for that time or year or for any year, particularly in Scotland when it got the coldest, and everyone said 'Aye, aye, aye.' So I got excited to that I might be able to alleviate Oregon's guilt by association, and of course encourage anyone to have a visit to check it out for themselves.

And BTW I guess the truth of it is that I always knew that Canterbury has a certain reputation for spring weather, and really it is appropriate to experience it on a 'pilgrimage' there:

Whan that April with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flowr;
Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye
That sleepen al the night with open ye—
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages—
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

Two really bad videos I took in Scotland

I didn't do too much on the photography end on my trip because I hate having to fool with cameras and stuff particularly when it was just me and I didn't have anything to take pictures of really. If I take pics of the sites I might as well just get the postcards and I am certainly not going to take pics of myself. But this was kind of funny because I was videotaping this bagpipe player in Edinburg and he wanted to see how my laptop cam worked. I didn't really do a very good job because I figured this out like the last day I was there.

Sadievid

Just still experiementing. This one is supposed to be Sadie at G and G Hicks' She had an amazing trip there including a trip to Disneyland! Yes the REAL Disneyland and not just Disneyland Grandma. She is going over her scrapbook. And thanks to all the Kelly women that helped her make it. And I don't know how to crop these so it is pretty much over after she's done showing her scrapbook.


Something weird obviously happened to the audio at the end. Have a lot of kinks to work out.

Trying again to do vids

I ended up posting one of my videos, so if it works let the fun begin.


This is Hary watching youtube, which he likes to do if there are other dogs on it. Watch the part in the middle where Drake takes his jowl off his tooth. Enjoy. Maybe.

Buying an English bulldog

So clearly Helium (unlike Google) thought that I had a genuine story here and published my story of having bought Harry from the backyard seller Luvabulldog.com/ breeder Rebecca Babb. So I am sure that this story and this post in general are only a small attempt to educate potential English Bulldog consumers, but I thought that I would try anyway. CERTAINLY these people are on to me and are Googling for me to make my story public, but I am ALSO CERTAIN that unless Google Blogger wants to go down in history having censored a lone uhappy consumer and not Communist CHINA, they will not make any sort of trigger-happy decisions that include taking down my blog.

http://www.helium.com/items/1121691-purchasing-a-purebred-english-bulldog

Can you see the bulldog in this picture?

How bout this one?


This one is funy because the stripe down the center of his head makes him blend in with the snow. We are so loving Harry lately. He is pretty much the main entertainment in the whole house. We just look at him and watch him all day because he is so cute funny and adorable. He is so incredibly affectionate and he loves Slade so much it is hillarious. He is totally excited about twice a day: When the kids let him into our room in the morning to wake up slade: He guiltily but determinedly slinks up onto our bed and starts sneaking around until he can't contain himself and starts snugging and licking Slade awake. He has this guilty pleasure over it like he knows Slade is tired but he can't HELP himself. Then when Slade gets home in the afternoon he is soooo happy that he has this ritual of wagging his entire body and dancing around with total unadulterated JOY. Slade has this thing that he does where he spins him around on his back on the wood floor. I have videoed it if I can ever figure out how to load it onto the blog I will be delighted. It is very curious that Slade never knew how much he would love this pup. The two ov them are so bonded. It is like his closest relationship in his life next to me. Maybe purer than mine and his actually. Harry is at least the most into Slade of any other person that has known him before. And I am pretty into Slade to the point of making everyone sick, so that gives you an idea.

Very funny show I saw in the UK

This is called Ned's urban sports. I don't know what else he does but he goes into places that obviously ban smoking and tries to smoke before he gets thrown out.

The other one I won't post because it is called Ian Appropriate, and it IS, or I would post it, but some guy pretends to have car trouble and he asks to use their cell phone and then he calls his girlfriend, 'Hey, what are you wearing?' etc.

Funny show. The Brits always have good candid camera type shows. Probably the same principle as MP, everything is funnier with a British accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4wgoDOiwIE&feature=related

WARNING! this post contains material that could be viewed as offensive because I thought that it might get me readers

Just kidding. Honestly I wish I hadn't even had to think about this much less write about it but I think it makes certain things very clear. I was minding my business trying to think of light topics and not how evil I think the natropathists are when I heard the following commercial.


"No one used to believe things like something you could get in a pill could enhance P-word size." (sorry I had to drop the P bomb, it had to be done).

This statement is the only one that actually introduces the issue of penis size, the rest of the following statements nor any other claim or testimonial refer to it again EVER. Tricky little devils. Because it is true that probably at one point or another depending on how educated a public we are talking about there was likely not this belief nor desperate hope at least that it could be true.

Obviously they have tricked a lot of people because....

"But now (certain kind of pill, I won't give it publicity) has sold over X million bottles."
Using the fact that a bunch of consumers have stampeded like sheep to buy it as some kind of reason that there should be one more lemming off the cliff.

"And the main ingredient in (whatever kind of pill) has been SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN [those words are always double emphasized in the con-mercials] to enhance a certain part of the male anatomy."[They are only relying on the fact that however millions of sheep they are trying to sell their wares to don't notice that 'enhance' is not a medical claim, nor do they even specify which part of the anatomy they are talking about.]

Laugh it up, I do, the sad thing is that these same people sell their stuff to people who are genuinely sick and dying. I think it should be criminal. It is the main problem that I have with Orin Hatch and his conservative ilk that think these people shouldn't have to be regulated. They should be strapped with at LEAST as much restriction and regulation as the genuine medicines that we can actually use to save our lives such as antibiotics and BP meds.

And I would add that any such words that you think I am using as a dirty pun in any of the previous sentences, shame on you.

I am just kidding, I thought I would try to get people to look for something dirty in what I said. But I felt obliged considering the subject to augment it with a bit of lighthearted humor.

Animal intelligence and things that don't exist

I meant to publish this on this blog instead of my other one so sorry to do double duty.

Now when it comes to animals as individuals, no one could be a bigger softie than me. I can't even leave the house without my dog in tow anymore, though I am thinking about trying a different strategy due to the dog hair in my car. I used to hand raise my hamsters. I saved a snake from a certain death at my mom's house by promising to escort it personally to the other side of Oracle Rd. I kicked in forty bucks and cab fare out of the goodness of my own heart.

But seriously animals are total idiots. Horses as case in point. Does anyone know the reason they have to put a horse down if it breaks its leg, even in our day and age. JP3, you are a veterinarian, why don't you tell us?

Just kidding, but sometimes my brother knows so much about things that I wouldn't be surprised.

IT IS BECAUSE HORSES ARE TOO STUPID NOT TO STEP ON THEIR LEG EVEN IF IT IS BROKEN.

You would think they could set the bone and splint it, and in some species including our own (sometimes) that works, but not in horses. They will keep trying to trot around on their broken leg like there's no tomorrow. That is probably why we are able to break them into manual servitude so easily.

Even my beloved bulldog doesn't qualify as smart. I won't fool myself at all on that score.

Today as he shows his increasing heat intolerance he showed that as unable as he is to tolerate the heat he is equally unwilling to stay out of the kitchen, so to speak. Ok it is his favorite room, for more reasons than one.

I tried to get him to stay downstairs because it is SO much cooler down there but he dutifully trotted up and down the stairs every time I went up and down with laundry or dishes or whatever in his continuing search to escape the feelings of insecure attachment he attained in his puppyhood (thanks to luvabulldog, as always). It makes me cringe to think that he spent the first summer of his tender little life outside ALL DAY. At least he got sprayed down with a HOSE afterward. I wonder during the summer whether he would like the hose any more than in the winter. He seems to have a problem now even with his warm bubble bath, so I am pretty sure the hose came in a distant second to how much he liked the mud and filth he had to run around in all day before he came in.

So animal lovers, I am with you. I am infinitely tender toward these creatures, particularly those that I am attached to like those in my care. Including the two legged variety.

But in the cases of those animals with less than you would call human-like sentience, it is not a good idea to anthropomorphize.

EVEN PITA PUTS DOWN THREE QUARTERS OF THE ANIMALS THEY RESCUE!

So as I say, I love animals, just like I love the planet and want to save the world, etc. And I suppose horses have even fewer brains than some of the animals that we have no reservations about eating, like pigs.

But they are not people. And just as any cause to be taken up on a banner or on a bumper sticker, there are complicated issues involved in any moral or philosophical issue like whether a dog is smiling.

And the answer is yes MY dog is smiling, because he knows he has hoodwinked about ten years of manual servitude from me.

(By the way whether there is a smile on a dog is a famous philosophical question, which now falls more into the per view of animal psychology).