ironbjorn

I don't think I've spoken about what led up to James becoming part of the family on 2-15-23. Prior to him, we have a bad 3 weeks in January. We decided that a dog would complete our little household: me, my fiance, our cat, our rabbit, and now our dog, plus my kids every other weekend. At first we tried to do the ethical thing and adopt from a shelter. We did a lot of research and found what we thought was a great dog at a shelter 2 hours away. He was a Blue Heeler and Australian Shepherd mix. He was absolutely amazing during the meet and greet and walked well with us on the property. We took him home and within an hour he bit my fiance. Then he started to snap at us for any little thing. On top of that, he wouldn't leave the rabbit alone in her pen and was freaking her out. For that part I cannot blame him. I knew it would be a transition, if it was even possible. Prey drive and all. But aggression towards humans is something I will never tolerate out of an animal. He went back to the shelter the next day. I didn't trust him around my fiance let alone my kids when I have them. Several days of more research goes by and we find a beautiful Black Lab at a shelter 35 minutes away who, from the description, would be perfect. She was 1 year old. We get her home and she's great with my fiance and myself, good with the cat, and indifferent towards the rabbit. We had her for a little over 2 weeks. She became a nightmare. She busted every window blind she could reach in the house because she was trying to get out to attack other people and dogs. On walks she would become a savage beast trying to hurt other people and their dogs. I had a hard time controlling her. My fiance couldn't walk her. She had to go. We can't have a dog hurting people or animals, and I absolutely would not trust her with my kids who are irregular members of the household. She went back to the shelter. So we had a long conversation. Is a dog really for us. Yes, we wanted one badly. I had a family dog when I was still married, and my fiance had always had dogs. I'm like, we have to be done with shelters. We're not being reimbursed, it's a waste of money and they're all so bad (not to say literally all shelter dogs are bad, but we were striking out). Nobody truly knows what they've been through. So we did research. The perfect dog to be around cats, rabbits, kids, people, other dogs, who is pleasant around the house. The consensus was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. The only problem, they're very expensive. We sacrificed a lot and scraped everything we had together to buy him from a breeder. He's been absolutely perfect. He rejects us for my kids while they're here, which is beautiful to me. He loves them. Everyone he meets is his friend, and he wants every random dog to be his brother or sister. He's amazing around the house. He's great with the cat, but doesn't understand why the cat isn't the most fond of him. But where he melts my heart, other than his affection with the kids, is with the rabbit. He LOVES her. He likes to spend time with her even though he makes her fearful because of his hyperactivity and size. When we vacuum out her pen, he barks at and bites the vacuum. Today we had to put her in a pet carrier to take her to get her nails cut. We placed her in the carrier in the living room while we cooled down the car. We found him laying next to her carrier CRYING because he didn't understand. I decided to stay home while my fiance took her to get her nails done and he sat in her room crying and pacing until she returned home. James is a blessing.

Sounds violently American. I'd try it. I mean, I'd have to have literally nothing else in the house to pair bacon with, but I'd give it a shot.

I only fish 6'6" to 6'10" rods from the bank. Any longer than that is a nuisance.

Guys who would buy that definitely call their wives to change a tire.

Similar to making love, I'd be done fishing in 30 seconds. We like it fast around here. Pound 'em!

Just pay attention to me. If you fish everywhere I haven't and won't, you'll run into big bass.

Yeah I do. I'm an animal lover in general. She's so awesome. She knows her name and will jump up on you to snuggle. However I will never get another one. I had no idea what it takes to take care of them. But since I bought her I have a duty to her. My ex wife's snake of a friend is allergic to them as well. I love when my kids snuggle with the rabbit on Sunday before going back to their mom who is always with this chick.

Trap em and eat em. Just check the meat and livers. I didn't want that to come across as aggressively contrarian or anything. Rereading it, I can see it might have. The problem with pet stores is that they're truly - usually - not professionals in anything other than carrying some supplies and legal animal trade. Every pet store with rabbits I've ever seen feeds the rabbits Muesli, which is a grain, seed, nut, and dried fruits mix. Seed and nuts are huge no-nos for rabbits, but it keeps them alive long enough to sell. Fruit should only be given in very small quantities on rare occasions. The high sugar content can cause GI Stasis and bad teeth. A rabbit with bad teeth is a rabbit who struggles to eat and dies. They need daily various greens, something the pet stores don't give. It's expensive. They need CONSTANT access to UNLIMITED hay as their main diet. Again most pet stores give a Muesli mix diet. If they do have hay it's brown, which means it's devoid of nutrients. They all use the cage clipped water bottles. Those things don't allow proper water intake and the rabbits end up dehydrated. Many end up sick from the bacteria build up on the ball of the bottle. They need bowls. They're supposed to have at minimum a 4x4 space per rabbit because they must stretch their legs and hop. Pet stores keep them in cages or tanks. They're supposed to have about 1/4-1/2 of special pellets per day, but again the stores use Muesli. Nothing they do is right. Believing they're experts is like thinking your Walmart electronics employee is a tech specialist. It's just a guy they hired who can do the bare minimum and operate a register. I'd never leave her in that kind of care. The corporations know they are wrong, but the innocent workers often have no clue and do their best. But the best they know isn't right.

And some cultures eat dogs and cats, but I'm sure you wouldn't want someone making those jokes about your dog or cat (if you have them). Eat all the rabbit you want, man. No problems with it. Eat it myself. Just nobody eats mine.

I would never buy a rabbit from a pet store let alone trust them to watch after my rabbit. Other than disease, they don't feed them properly, they regularly die, they're not experts at all, they keep them in cages, hell they could even sell mine by mistake for all I know. They don't even water them correctly. They drink from bowls, not bottles. A rabbit drinking off a bottle is a dehydrated and sick rabbit. I've never seen a rabbit receiving proper care in a pet store in my life. They are avoided like a plague in the rabbit community.

Domestic rabbits and wild rabbits are very different animals. They can't even breed with each other.

I found a video that perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about here, the bigger part of the illness that causes disability and that hardly anyone considers or even knows about at all because the symptoms of seeing things that aren't there or believing things that aren't true make the movies more interesting. Very scientific video. He uses the "cognitive" word as well but struggles to explain all that that really means. I firmly believe the correct term and understanding isn't something we have an answer for in our vocabulary.

It was a shock to us too. We bought her on a whim at the State Fair 2 years ago at the plea of the kids. Luckily we couldn't pick her up (she was 4 months old then) until after the show the next day. This gave me time to research what else to feed her besides carrots. Well it turned out that rabbits and carrots is a myth and they don't go hand in hand. They can have a small piece on occasion, but as a regular diet it's not good and can kill them. Then I learned there's special greens they eat, constant access to hay, a certain amount of pellets each day, etc. Then another shocker: no cages. I didn't know that and we had already bought one. A big pen wasn't a big deal, but we didn't expect it. At that point I called the vets to find out more to make sure I had this right. Found out the regular dog and cat vets will not see rabbits and they all told me I had to find an exotic animals specialist. So I did. She was seen a few weeks later. We managed through those first few weeks before the exotic animals specialist saw us with the help of our friend Google. And she did go into GI Stasis once a year and a half ago. Nobody knows why. That was an emergency vet visit that costed so much money. She would have died. We were given this special concoction called Critical Care that's essentially Narcan for rabbits when this happens. An unbelievable amount of rabbits die suddenly and unexpectedly from this and most people have no idea why. We wouldn't have known either. She's great now and no issues since. Wouldn't take anything back, but I also won't own another rabbit. Won't even go into what it takes to clean up after her regularly. That's a nightmare.

Do you take Allopurinol? It's used to treat gout and kidney stones. It keeps my uric acid low and the gout causing crystals away. Highly recommend.

So far we're lucky. Most Cavaliers get very long hair and need groomed frequently. At 11 months, Sir James Allen Douglas, aka J-Money, the fraudulent thug, hasn't required much maintenance yet.

Could just be the reel. I have several SLX XT reels but I got 1 that just wouldn't dial in no matter what and backlashed constantly if it wasn't set up to get no distance.

What the heck. I don't think I've ever seen a mole but you're catching them all like they're Pokemon. Talk about a friggin colony under your property.

I follow a page on social media that posts very old remastered and colorized videos from history. One video I saw the other day was a bustling NYC street in 1911. It was amazing to see all the high rise buildings already built by then, as well as all the cars. I had no idea so many cars were in NYC at that time. Then it struck me that everyone in that busy video is dead and the city and earth in general has cycled. Kind of a surreal feeling.

I suffer from a chronic mental illness. Here's what I can tell you. I'm on 3 medications for anxiety and depression alone. They don't do enough for me either. The only medications I take that actually help anything at all are my antipsychotic, my gout pill, and my blood pressure pill. Talking with a therapist every week does nothing for me as far as helping my mental illness. It's all therapy-speak mumbo jumbo. BUT where it does help, is that talking with her gave me courage to talk to people who actually matter to me, and going weekly keeps my courage in peak form. That's where it matters for me. I used to keep everything to myself other than the odd behaviors that couldn't be hidden. Now I'm open and honest with my fiance about everything at all times, as well as a close group of male friends. That means the world. People like that in your life actually listen and care and make you feel like you matter. So that's what I would do. I always thought people would leave if they knew what was really going on, but the truth was that people left because they didn't know what was going on.

I don't understand, but if this is about my shorts and his location in Minnesota, pride month ended a week ago bro. No need for Viqueens up in here.

I once casted a Champ XP casting rod from the bank and absolutely hammered the Sierra spinning rod I had propped up behind me. The sound of that crack, I was sure I broke one or both. But nope. And they have never given me a problem since. I see a lot of people mentioning broken Dobyns rods, but even on my best (accidental) effort I couldn't break mine.

I saw the gym once. Granted, it was on my way for food, but I saw it.

A couple of months ago we returned home from running errands and I spoke to James at the door like a gangster and he absolutely loved it. The pitch of my voice drove him crazy in a good way. So I gave him a rapper nickname: J-Money, and call out to him like a gangster sometimes and it gets him wound up. Unfortunately, he was exposed as a fraud on the 4th of July. He is, in fact, not a gangster at all. He hid from the sound of fireworks. He's not about that hood life. He can't handle gunshots. I joked that from henceforth he is a Ginger Vietnam Vet. J-Money doing his gangster impression.

This deformed eagle. At least, that's what I've witnessed white suburban women experiencing nature for the first time call it on two different occasions.

I'm not entirely sure about the vet. I do know that when she needs veterinarian care that we have to travel a considerable distance to an exotic animals specialist. Not that rabbits are entirely exotic, but the average vet doesn't deal with rabbits and they don't even know how. I probably wouldn't want to take her out of her environment anyways. She's got her own room in the house. I mean, she's in a pen for her own safety, but it takes up half the room. I wouldn't want her caged like a classroom play thing. Good idea about Facebook. I didn't even think of that. Too late now, but something to consider in the future. Then again, should this woman be great (and she probably will be, but you just never know anymore), we could hire her again. The cat will be self reliant for the most part. Just needs food and water to be topped off. The dog is coming with us. An unlikely family, but the best of friends. Especially the cat and the rabbit. He's never not in her room laying next to her. When we let her out to free roam they wander around together.