quote of the day

On watching the music video for 'Hard Rock Hallelujah' by Lordi:

"It's nice to know that monsters are too busy changing the status quo in
highschools to destroy us all."

halloween

It's the last week of university! I am very excited. After this, we have a week off to study, then two weeks of exams. To celebrate the end of my first year, I am going to three halloween parties. Photos will come eventually.

In the mean time, to compensate for my very lax posting schedule, have a picture of the best wedding cake ever:

Isn't it just awesome? Double-click to get a better picture of the details.

fever dreams

Snippet from an MSN conversation, demonstrating exactly how weird my brain can be, especially when I'm sick. Background: Pilot (the friend who wants to be a pilot, yes, that would be her) is having issues with finding a flight school.

Pilot: I HAVE NO FUTURE.
Emele: why do you have no future?
Pilot: Mrf.
Emele: Tell me :(
Pilot: I just want to be a pilot ;_;
Emele: You should be a pirate <3
Emele: ...what the hell, brain
Emele: That should've come out 'You will be a pilot <3'
Pilot: ...
Pilot: ...::loled:: XD
Emele: xD At least I made you smile?
Pilot: Yes. <3

the greed gene

The last week or two has been lousy. First I was hospitalised for a bit because of that stupid fever (and am still pretty unwell, but recovering) and then my grandmother was hospitalised, which led to much musing.

The greed gene is what my grandmother claims put her in hospital the other day. She's very, very elderly--exact numbers escape us, since she doesn't have a birth certificate and no longer remembers, but the minimum possibility is 96--and her digestive system is rooted. She basically can't eat anything more than a really light meal because otherwise things go... haywire. This doesn't bother her because she doesn't get hungry very often anyway, apparently another side effect of being old. (Side note: she is so thin. All the women in my maternal family have huuuuge stomachs, asses, and thighs, something they've passed on to me, but because she simply doesn't eat very often. Possibly because she is powered by the souls of the damned and no longer requires mortal indulgences like food. As a result, she has the figure of a mummified supermodel -jealous.- I did have a point. What was my point? Umm...)

Anyway, she went over to my aunt Valerie's place for dinner the other night, and partook in an enormous roast, because Val's two surviving children, her three surviving children-in-law, and her five grandchildren were also persent and Val had to stuff all their faces too. She ate a single cut of roast beef. Usually that would be enough for her. If she was in her house, where cuts of meat are basically all she has because anything else would just rot before she ate it, that's all she would have eaten. But because there was other food there... she felt compelled to eat a second cut of meat. And then a third. And then four roast potatoes, three pieces of roast pumpkins, a roast parsnip, a metric crapton of green salad (mostly cherry tomatos and fetta cheese, apparently) and seven glasses of very strong red wine. And then she had dessert (suffice it to say, there was at least three kinds of cake, and she tried all of them at least once and a half. And a loooot of coffee.)

What I'm trying to say is, my grandmother literally ate herself into the hospital. She's out now, and fine, and insisting it was the fault of the 'greed gene'.

I'm starting to seriously believe this 'greed gene' because to date, no less than sixteen members of my maternal family (of both genders) have been diagnosed with either binge eating disorder or an EDNOS which resembled binge eating disorder very closely except they weren't overweight and therefore can't have BED, proving once and for all that some psychologists are fucking hacks and how did these people pass uni anyway? Most of these were my cousins or second cousins, but we strongly suspect my aunts, mother, and indeed grandmother have BED or an EDNOS or whatever it is--they've just never been tested for it because the youngest of them is over fifty and they can't be bothered with that fancy psychological stuff, and what are you doing wasting your life in university Emele, you could be married by now, you're going to end up as a mad spinster--sorry. The last family reunion was hell.

So--genetic links to body type? Yes, duh, every woman in my maternal family has the exact same body shape as I do from the nipples down. Genetic links to binge eating disorder? Entirely possible, except no one's ever studied it (because clearly people who eat a lot MUST be fat as hell and therefore lazy and disgusting and bad people who aren't fit to raise children and don't need treatment because it's all their own fault and besides I don't want them to come in because then they will be FAT AT ME--sorry again. Umm.) I believe it is not only possible but probable, since they've proven genetic links to things like metabolism and effectiveness of certain diets and all kinds of other foody things you can find if you know what to Google.

Further things for consideration: a couple days ago, this study was published. Basically, genetic quirks make it possible for someone to develop a classical addiction to food, same as someone can get addicted to smoking or drinking or illicit drugs. (Does this sound like basically the definition of binge-eating disorder?) Teal dear: some people have less dopamine receptors or poor dopamine reuptake in the brain, and don't get as much of a dopamine (i.e. pleasure) kick from food. They enjoy eating less than other people, and so end up eating more and more food (possibly becoming overweight, depending on their metabolic quirks) to keep their dopamine levels as standard. Dopamine levels are passed down genetically. The titular greed gene appears to be passed down genetically.

Another possibility; several members of my maternal family also have major depression, including my mother and myself, one of the potential symptoms of which is overeating (theoretically this is also for the dopamine kick, but they haven't really looked into this in chronic depression cases to the best of my knowledge.)

siiiiiiiick

I have dengue fever. Don't expect a post for a little while.

i do so love a nicely bandied word

Title quote from the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' novels by George R. R. Martin. If you haven't read them, you really should.

For once in my life I'm actually ahead of schedule--statistics assignment is finished, two of the fiction pieces I'm writing are finished (one is an assessment piece, so I won't post it here in case it comes up as plagiarised, but I may post the other) and I have an actual cohesive plot for my NaNoWriMo novel. So here is the Pit Bull Rant, Part Two. Part One is here.

When we left off, I was mentioning that pit bulls are actually small dogs, and most so-called 'pit bulls' are mutts. The next part of this rant is that pit bulls, as most dogs, are not actually aggressive by nature. The reason pit bulls have a bad reputaton is actually the media. Now I know people are disinclined to believe that--after all, the media hype has to have some grain of truth somewhere--but bear with me...

Once upon a time, some idiot bought a spiffy new rottweiller puppy, because they were famed as a great guard dog. The idiot neglected or abused the dog, and the poor dog became vicious, and the dog attacked someone. Suddenly the papers were absolutely flooded with "ROTTWIEILLER MAULS CHILD", "ROTTWEILLER KILLS MAN", and so on, and so forth. While it's very likely that more than half these 'rottweiller' attacks were large mutts with black and brown colouring and possibly a docked tail, we'll ignore that for now. The important thing is, the scum of the earth--drug dealers, dog fighters, and the like--saw this, and ran out and bought rottweillers. Suddenly rottweillers were actively being trained to be vicious, and things got worse.

Breed-specific legislation was introduced to make it hard for rottweiller owners to do things like find houses or get property insurance, and the tide of vicious rottweillers slowed. Then someone's neglected German shepherd bit a person, and the cycle started all over again.

This has happened to rottweillers, German shepherds, dobermann pinschers, akita inus, chow chows, boxers, Rhodesian and Thai ridgebacks, Irish wolfhounds--in fact, just about every dog that's either large or known as a good guard dog has had this happen. And now it's the turn of the pit bull--who used to be known as a great dog to protect your kids while you were out.

Pit bulls are territorial, though--that I will never deny. If someone goes breaking into your property at night, they will happily chow down on the intruder. They will not, however, go seeking trouble--unless they're abused or totally neglected, which tragically is most often the case. Moreover, pit bulls need to be trained, as much as any other breed of dog and often more than any other breed of dog, because if you're buying a pittie from anyone other than a first class breeder who consistently shows and wins with their dogs, they've probably been bred for viciousness and/or had some mutts with totally unpredictable personalities put into their bloodline.

Recently I've also noticed an increasing number of people wanting to let pit bulls go quietly extinct, which I think would be a horrible shame, and also be like letting quarter horses go extinct because some of them have a genetic defect that causes them to keel over and die on occasion. Not all of them are bad--in fact, some are pretty damn good, and moreover will never spontaneously keel over before the age of 25. Same deal with pit bulls. Most of the good ones will go their whole life without so much as nipping a human, or another dog, for that matter.

I think that's all I wanted to cover. There may be a Part Three eventually, but I'm not sure--it depends if something else sets me off about pit bulls.

far too many notes for my taste

Title from 'Phantom of the Opera' soundtrack. I'm on a soundtrack binge lately, could you tell?

Hmmm, I have nothing much to say. How about another picture post?

This is the M24 I mentioned the last time I posted a photo from uni. This is also known as the Psychology Building. Five floors, the first being a psychology clinic where the postgraduate students often work. The second floor is filled with classrooms and offices, the third floor is basically one large computer lab, and the fourth floor is, once again, mostly classrooms and offices, and the fifth floor has laboritories where things like dissecting brains and running rats through mazes are done.

Also--you probably noticed this by now--it's a rather vibrant shade of mustard yellow. That continues to the inside of the building too.

I have some of the best and worst classes inside this building. Among the best; Individual and Social Psychology, which is about how people interact and the basics of abnormal psychology, and Psychological Science and Society, which is about psychology in media and popular debates among psychologists (for example, a topic such as homosexuality: nature or nurture, on which I recently wrote an essay and presented an oral report.) Among the worst: Research Methods and Statistics 1, the report for which I have just handed in. That class is a nightmare, and is the first of at least four to come. Ugh.

There are several reasons I like this building. For a start, it's essentially home base for all psychology students at my university, so necessity forces me to, at the very least, not loathe it. Second, despite the myriad corridors, it somehow manages to avoid feeling as claustrophobic as some buildings on campus do (see: the windowless M10 about which I once posted, which seems cramped and subterranean even in the upper floors. M24 manages to avoid that feeling, even though most of the rooms are physically smaller, by having very large windows and generally good lighting.) Third, while the third floor is a place of dread due to my statistics class taking place in one of the computer labs there, I have nothing but good memories associated with the second and fourth floors.

Hmm. I really must take more photos, of more interesting things. I simply don't have much to amuse me while I'm at uni.

inside her skull

Yes, I'm still listening to 'Needle Through A Bug'. It's just good.

A collection of random musings; I'll warn you now, there are spoilers for some literary works ahead.

I was talking about the Chronicles of Narnia with a friend, and she said she ahted them, because Susan didn't arrive in Heaven at the end of The Last Battle. She thought that Lewis implied that being a silly teenage girl means you go to Purgatory/Hell/whatever. It seems that several people were similarly distraught at this point. I don't understand that reasoning. It's always been simple to mean--the reason Susan didn't appear in Heaven at the end of The Last Battle was simply because she wasn't dead.

Arguably one could get up in arms about the fact that she didn't go to Narnia, either--but Diggory, Polly, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy only showed up in Narnia because they were dead. They died in a train crash, which also killed the Pevensie's parents. Jill and Eustace were also dead when they met them, having been killed at some point in the battle, or possibly the ensuing apocalypse. Susan was not dead, so she didn't appear.

Besides, why would they bring up that 'Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen in Narnia' refrain so often if Susan got booted out for being a teenager?

On to Shakespear. The titular characters of Romeo And Juliet are not the ideal of a couple in love, and were never intended to be so. The fact that so many people hold them up as a golden standard of love... actually explains a lot about why dating and marriage is kind of screwed up nowadays. Romeo and Juliet were fourteen and thirteen, respectively, and were basically morons. The bit Shakespeare actually wanted people to take in was the Friar's 'Love to moderation' speech at the wedding--but most modern performances cut that scene because it's such an unromantic thing to say at a wedding.

It also makes Edward and Bella from Twilight by Stephanie Meyer being compared to Romeo and Juliet frickin' hilarious, though.

i won't imagine the pictures

Pushing the Envelope" - American Head Charge.

I'm trying out this image-adding thing, so you're get a photograph. Let's see...

This is M10, the Social Science building at my university, as you can probably tell. It's where the criminology students basically live. I believe they're largely fond of it because of its gaping black maw, as shown. All the doorways look like that.

I don't really understand the love affair criminologists have with staircases, either (this building was erected with them in mind, according to the professors here.) M10 is riddled with them, the way an ant nest is riddled with tunnels; an endless number of winding staircases, going down into floors that seem subterranean for their distinct lack of windows. Sometimes staircases come together and cross over each other like a house in a farce, which rather ruins the gloomy appeal for me, but apparently criminologists don't see much in the way of the farcical.

It also holds a room dreaded by all students--the overflow exam room. It's a small, cramped, claustrophobic lecture theatre, and it stinks overwhelmingly of carpet glue. (Remember what I said about a lack of windows? This would seem to be a natural consequence of that.) Students only come to that room when their professors were woefully underprepared for the course, so not only is it an extremely unpleasant room to attempt to engage your brain in, it also implies a level of inadequacy in your education which tends to tug at the nerves until the end of the course.

I don't have much reason to go into M10--my own 'home' is at M24, who may well be the subject of a later photo-based post. But there you go, a little snapshot of my life.

you forced my hand and made me do

Edit: Part Two is here.

Title from 'Things You See In A Graveyard', from the Repo! soundtrack. This is The Pit Bull Rant, Part One. The second part will be posted later. I'll link to it from this post when it's up. Just for the record, to see bigger or better quality picture, click on 'em.

Pit bulls--TRUE pit bulls, by which I mean the American Pit Bull Terrier, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and the American Staffordshire Terrier--are small dogs. Not one of them weighs over twenty kilos, which is in the vicinity of forty pounds if you don't use metric. They're all around forty or fifty centimetres high, so around sixteen inches. They are smaller than a labrador. So if a dog any bigger than that goes after you? It ain't a pit bull. It's either a mutt, or a different breed of dog you can't recognise.

Take this test. See if you can identify a real American pit bull. I guarantee you'll miss a fair few times, unless you're intimately familiar with the breed.

For example, this is not a pitbull. This is a mutt. Her name's Honey, and she's pictured here in full flight across a beach. She does have some staffordshire bull terrier in her, but she also has boxer, rhodesian ridgeback, and mastiff in her, and the most dominant breed is actually labrador. I've mentioned her before--I got her for ten bucks after seeing an ad for 'labrador' puppies, so called, in the Weekend Shopper. The mother was a friendly, yellowish dog with short hair; patently not a labrador, but a cute dog. While Honey does have some pitbull-like features, she's too big, clocking in at about sixty centimetres tall, and has the wrong body-shape. The pit bull breeds have deep chests like hers, but Honey's body tapers off after that in the manner of a retriever's, whereas true pit bulls have a consistent barrel-shape.

Anyone familiar with the pit bull breeds can tell you that this is also not a pit bull. This dog was accused of mauling an older man who was walking past it's house. The media immediately slapped the 'pit bull' lable on this particular beast. This is as much a pit bull as I am. It's a mutt. If anything, it looks like a shar pei or dogue de bordeau cross. Another breed I'd toss in as a possibility is the patterdale terrier. It's definitely not a pit bull.



For comparison; here we have a composite image of an American Pit Bull Terrier, an American Staffordshire Terrier, and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier--with acronyms, for your convinience. They're all winners in their breed classes at dog shows, and so should be the best representation of their breeds. (I'm not sure about the AST in the middle there, actually, but she came up on a reputable site and it could always just be a poor camera angle, so she'll do.) The picture quality is not great, but you can see what these dogs have in common--wedge-shaped heads, deep chests, thick bodies, and strong legs. You can also see that they're on the small side. The first APBT is at the larger end of the range for pit bulls, and he only comes from the judge's knee to the judge's thigh, bearing in mind that the judge is actually a foot or two behind him in that shot and not a tall man himself.

inconceivable!

Given the people I know, I don't think a Sarah Palin fan will stumble across this blog... so, have a link to an article about her debate that summarises almost everything I felt was wrong with it. (If it tries to make you log in, you can get a password from Bug Me Not.)

The one thing it didn't mention was something that I found a little scary as opposed to comical; it was the moment directly after when Biden choked up talking about his late wife and child.

What Palin should have done: made some sympathetic noises and a nice, conservative-friendly comment about the importance of having a mother figure present in a child's life, or about how single parents need more support, or whatever.

What Palin did: blinked and launched back into her "John McCain is a maverick" shtick. I honestly expected her to show a touch of human feeling, but... no.

On that note, regarding her use of 'maverick': You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

My hair is orange.

No, I'm not kidding. My hair is orange. It was black, but now... it's orange. Huh. There you go, then, lesson learned--if I'm going to bleach black hair, I can't do it half-assed. At least it looks all right--in most lights it comes out fluro red, so it's more Blood Rayne than Stephanie Plum.

No lyrical title today because my iPod has been critically wounded. Usually I'd just pull a line from whatever song I'm listening to at the time (bonus points it it's vaguely relevent) but I have no music. Plus... my hair's orange. What more can I say?

just a little glitch, patch it up again

Title from 'Throwing Punches' by Page Hamilton.

The other day, I was wearing leather boots. I wear leather boots a lot--most of mine are old and beat-up and comfortable. These ones looked kind of new, because I'd buffed them up with Dubbin (it shines and waterproofs the leather) the night before.

Anyway, I was walking through a square in the city, and a protester threw tomato sauce all over my nice, clean, buffed-up leather boots and new jeans that for once in my life actually fit okay. Needless to say, I was slightly unhappy, and expressed myself vocally to this protester. Turns out they were vegetarians crusading for an end to animal slaughter.

Now, ignoring the fact that the grain and vegetable industries kill several hundred million tiny animals like field mice and rats with big harvesters every year (why don't vegetarians protest safer way of harvesting grain? I guess rats and mice aren't cute enough--though I personally am often worried by the thought of minced rat ending up in the wheat used to bake my bread,) I believe in eating meat. It's good for you, after all--in a different way to how broccoli and carrots are good for you, sure, but it's still good for you.

When I was younger and more idealistic, I thought I would become a vegetarian. I like almost all animals. Horses like me better when I smell herbivore than when I smell carnivore. Then... I met chickens.

My mum kept one or two chooks at various times in her life when she was a kid, little bantam hens and one rooster named Smedley von Sturdley. Now, I love bantam hens. They're not part of the meat or egg industry, although I guess you could use the hens for laying. They're mostly backyard pets. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about all those grotesquely fat, blond chickens that will one day end up on your plate.

Look at the eyes of a meat industry chicken. (Yes, I'm including free-range in this. They're the same breed.) Now go watch Dawn of the Dead, and look at the eyes of the zombies. There's a distinct resemblance--shrewd, but dumb as a box of hammers.

Actually, now that I think of it, chickens are mean bitches.

Maybe a better example would be a meat industry cow. Again, look at the eyes of a cow, then at the eyes of a movie zombie from Shaun of the Dead or something. Same thing. Shrewd, but so, so stupid. They have all the personality of a hamburger on hooves. And unpleasant, too--cows can (and do) projectile shit when they run. Often they drool, piss, and shit at the same time. An entire herd of cows running around with every orifice leaking is a sight to behold. Especially at feeding time. If one cow sprays the five cows next to it with dung, none of them notice--they all just keep eating.

The current slaughter methods are pretty shitty, of course, and I would prefer it if all meat was free range and humanely killed, but frankly, if we didn't eat cattle, they would become extinct. If we turned them loose they'd just follow us around, waiting for us to go refill their feeding trough--still leaking, of course. There's only a couple of species of truly wild cattle left. They mostly live in Asia and their numbers are diminishing--animals like the kouprey and the gaur. There definitely aren't enough around to knock sense into our domestic steaks. Meat industry cattle have been bred for generations to have the intellect of your average rock, and to taste great when roasted with potato and onion.

I personally would rather not feel responsible for the end of a species, so I keep on eating cow.

after this the rest is all bullshit

'Bullshit' by Mindless Self Indulgence for the title.

Another plug; Kate Harding's Shapely Prose. It's been slow there recently, but it's a generally awesome blog, and reading through the archives is well worth the time. As a plus-size lady with some pretty serious body-image issues I find it invaluable.

Still haven't gotten seriously started on that damn statistics assignment, nor the two writing assignments I also have due that week. Hmm. Tomorrow is going to be a long, dull day.

Oh, and psst--if you haven't download the very cheap, very awesome Repo! The Genetic Opera soundtrack yet, you really really should. It's already made its way into my Most Played list, and there are songs I've been listening to for years on there.

you're beautiful

Title lyric from 'Needle Through A Bug' from the Repo! The Genetic Opera Soundtrack. I've had this album since it came out on September 30--I got the digital download from Not Your Parents Opera but you can buy it at least four different ways--and oh. My. God. This album is like aural crystal meth; highly addictive and euphoria-inducing. It's something like ten bucks to download, or about twelve bucks to order a hard copy from Amazon.com and more than worth the money. Hell, buy a few dozen and hand them out to your friends. You will be so popular.

this is the new shit

Title is the titular lyric from 'This Is The New Shit' by Marilyn Manson.

I'm a bit too wasted to post properly just now, so here we go. Wallaby linked me to this little piece of wtf. As she said, "Starts out funny, then gets scarily realistic."

The author there is right--trying to work out how some of these people think is quite frightening.

In other news:

• The job market here is so poor I'm starting to seriously consider prostitution. Something like 40% of female students in Melbourne do it, apparently, although that may well be overly sensationalistic. Alternately I guess I could put an ad in the local paper as a dog walker/stablehand, but I really wish Starbucks or something was hiring so I could just drop off a resume and hope for the best. Bah.

• I am doing NaNoWriMo this year. (Haven't heard of it? Here.) Would anyone be interested in seeing my progress posted here? I'll probably put at least the first 1700-ish words up. So far, my main idea is a shameless rip-off of at least one Shakespearean play.

• I haven't started my statistics assignment yet. It's due on Tuesday. But that's okay, because it's only 1200 words. I can write 300 words a day on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Sound good? Not to me. Statistics classes and assignments are, for me, one huge long hooker moment.

they'll never find a happy home for you

Title lyric from 'My People' by The Presets.

I think this blog is going to have to become a place to put my rants out of necessity. Occasionally things happen that bring certain thoughts to the forefront of my mind, and I can't get anything worth doing done until I excise it--not a relevent blog post, not another few thousand words of novel, nothin'. So here we go.

I worked for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal--the RSPCA. You can find statistics about how many animals enter the RSPCA here (everyone can read PDF files, right? If not, just google Adobe Reader and download the free version.) Note that, excluding animals who were reclaimed by their original owners, the vast, vast majority of animals were euthanised. I wish there was some way animal rescue services could operate without euthanising animals, but there really isn't one. And even in death, these animals often go on to do things like act as training tools for vetinary students--which, if not the most dignified ending for a dog's corpse, is certainly a more productive option than many others.

Some of these animals are presumeably dumped for legitimate reasons, although I have no idea what those are. I do not believe any of the following are truly legitimate reasons: moving, pregnancy, allergies, sickness, or money problems on the part of the human, or behavioural problems caused by humans on the part of the animal.

The reason I disregard all reasons relating to humans are because, assuming you don't have a friend or family member who could take the dog, it costs next to nothing to advertise and sell an animal. I know for a fact that there are a lot of people who are looking for pets in the weekend paper, or on Craigslist, or any other local equivalents. The dog I currently own, who is lying next to me as I type and licking my foot, was picked up from someone running an ad for 'labrador puppies, $10' (yeah right) in the paper. A woman I work with picked up a pair of adorable Burmese kittens for some exorbitant sum by finding their breeder on Craigslist just the other week. You're not guaranteed to sell it, but even if your deadline does expire, you can always hand the animal off to a trusted friend who can then attempt to sell it on for you. (Admittedly this works a lot better with young animals, but it's not impossible to sell your older dog with some good advertising and a little presentation. A fair number of people prefer buying older dogs because they can, at least, control their bladder.) Hell, you can even print off or photocopy a few dozen flyers and stick them up along popular walking routes or in shopping malls. It's not hard.

When it comes to behavioural problems by animals, I have discovered one thing--about one percent of animals have an issue they were born with, like being incontinent or too aggressive. One percent of the time, there's nothing you can do about it. The rest of the time, it ain't the animal's fault. It is not hard to fix most behavioural problems in small animals. There are incredibly simple ways to stop your cat from peeing on the carpet, or your dog from barking excessively. Even if your dog bites or some other extreme form of behaviour (which, again, I almost always refuse to believe the people responsible for raising and training it did not cause, be it directly or indirectly) you can instantly solve the problem by buying a ten dollar muzzle and making the dog wear it in situations where he may bite! How cool is that?

Sigh.

I do know what it's like to have animals with issues that simply aren't your fault. I once rode a horse that had, ever since it was a foal, been headshy--for the non-horsey people reading, that means every time someone went near the horse's head, it flinched back and freaked out a little bit. There was no inciting incident, and no matter what we tried, nothing would get the horse to stand quietly while we were trying to put on his bridle or whatever. Eventually we managed to figure out a method of putting the bridle on one-handed while holding on the halter, and then taking the halter out from under the bridle, which we made sure to teach to the person hired to finish his training. However, I've also ridden a horse who was headshy because she needed her teeth floated, and one who was headshy because his previous owner used to smack him in forehead when he did something wrong, and one who was headshy because someone tried to teach him to rear on command and screwed it up badly.

I also believe animals that are dangerous and do not have the opportunity for extensive retraining should be put down. I wish there was someone out there willing to train dogs that attack without provocation to be nice family pets without wanting up to several thousand dollars for their services, but people like that simply don't exist a lot of the time.

But frankly, I believe dumping your animal is the worst thing you can do. It doesn't matter if it isn't euthanised, or isn't picked up by someone who fights dogs (I'm pretty sure this fate would befall my dog if she were ever dumped; while she's a labrador/staffy/boxer/ridgeback/golden retirever/bulldog/etc. mix, she does bear an awful resemblance to a pitbull.) It doesn't matter if the best family in the world comes and adopts your pet and gives all the love and training and treats it needs until the day it dies. You're still an asshat for dumping your pet. In an ideal world, the RSPCA would be there to find homes for stray animals, and only have to euthanise those with too many issues to find homes or those who are physically damaged and would require incredibly high-maintenance care to extend their life. But because people don't neuter their pets, or don't realise that the novelty of a Christmas gift tends to wear off, or decide they can't be arsed to catproof their baby's room when they get themselves knocked up, it's filled with animals that should really be other people's problems.

Please, please, if anyone's reading this who hasn't done this already: having an animal neutered is not a huge expense, it doesn't take very much aftercare at all, if they happen to be a working animal it has a very short recovery time, and it'll keep any little bundles of fluffy joy appearing unexpectedly. Moreover, take the time to go to some obedience classes--you can find them for as little as ten bucks for an hour or two of training--and teach your dog things like 'sit', 'stay', and 'come'. I'd also suggest locking in your pets at night, for a whole host of reasons. If you have a purebred that consistently wins at dog shows, is extremely well-trained, has never been responsible for a mutt puppy, whose introduction to the gene pool will improve the breed--more power to you! Your dog can keep his balls. But make sure he is never responsible for a mutt puppy, and make sure the bitches you breed him to are as high quality as he is, or higher.

For the record, a brief history of my pets: two budgies named Blue and Green, two show-winning purebred Chow Chows named Leo and Bear (technically my uncle's, but they lived with us a lot of the time,) two cats picked up from the RSPCA named Rupert and Daisy, a lizard named Saffron, two mice named Bubble and Squeak, briefly an extremely elderly cockatoo my friend couldn't keep anymore named Charleton, and--currently my only pet--the aforementioned ten dollar mutt, Honey. I'm also in the market for a horse, but will probably not be buying any until some time next year. I have never dumped an animal and never will--unless by some mischance I find an actual, legitimate reason for it. I doubt that will ever happen.

I don't currently have room in my life for another dog, or I'd adopt a few dozen from the RSPCA. Just for the record, adopting and hoarding more than you can keep is just as bad as actively abusing them.