Got a problem dog? I've got the trainer for you!

If you're in the Greater Toronto area and you're new to dog ownership and training, or have a dog with issues, or just want to be a better dog owner and trainer, you must take lessons with Steve Barker. His website is Steve Barker Training.

I've seen Steve at work with dogs, and he is a natural. He has studied many different techniques and theories of dog training, and has years of experience with dogs including problem dogs.

Steve helped me with foster dogs I had; I've seen first-hand how very, very good he is. Steve took one hyper, hyper foster dog, showed me how to get the dog's attention and use positive training methods to make the dog more secure in my leadership and more attentive to my commands. The change in the foster dog was amazing.

I applied the techniques Steve taught me with two older dogs I owned, and found that old dogs can learn new tricks, especially when Steve is teaching them.

Guess I won't get my vanity plates 4XMAS *sniffle*

Considering the Orwellian thought process ("thought" might be stretching it) of the vanity plate review board at the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, guess I won't be getting any of...

ONTFIBS SUK
FIGHT 4 YR RIGHTS
ONT = BAN LAND

Ontario is such a bureaucratic nightmare, someone who had vanity plates for 20 years had the renewal rejected for the most spurious, ridiculous, political-correctness-gone-mad reason. Read about it here and here.

Keeping your pets safe over the holidays

Year end is a busy, often frantic time of year for many people. Please take the time to read these articles about keeping your pets safe, and implement the suggestions. Don't let the holiday season be tragic for a beloved pet.

CityTV has a good article on pet safety. Read it here.

Yvette Van Veen, an excellent dog behaviourist and writer, has easy-to-understand explanations of why some dogs bite and how to prevent dog bites. Read it here.

And another article by Ms. Van Veen about why not to get your child a pet for Christmas, a very sensible approach that doesn't deny the child the pet but explains why not to get the animal until after the holidays. Read it here.

Here's hoping the holidays are safe and happy for all two- and four-legged beings.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Until I get permission from the author to reprint with copyright attribution, you'll have to read this wonderful piece on The Refuge, a UK message board.

It's a new Night Before Christmas.

"Dalton trimming the fat"

So reads a Toronto Sun headline today. What, he's decapitating some OntFib MPPs?

I see that the McSquinty Marketers are set to introduce yet another useless, feel-good ban. Which leads to the fact that people who support or accept bans are unthinking dolts who do not realize that these nanny state laws just whittle away at one's personal rights, one by one, until the real rights are gone and it's too late to cry.

McSquinty and his minions are chewing away at individual rights like rats on a rope, and most people can't see the process, that bans affect only the law-abiding, and that ban upon ban upon ban just turns the forest of one's rights into toothpicks.

Which will probably be banned in the end.