Dogs Off-Leash

I live in a townhouse community with a lot of green space. It's one of the great things about our townhouse, all the lovely, large tracts of grass and trees, sort of like having our own private park. Every day I walk our dog, Sophie, around the four internal blocks of our complex and she sniffs, runs off birds, and chases cats if we come across one. We do all this with her on a leash.

I'm pretty sure it's a law that your dog has to be leashed. And I know it's in our HOA CC&Rs that dogs have to be on a leash. And yet....

At least once a week we come across someone who has their dog off-leash, and it really makes me mad. If these dogs were suitably trained perhaps it wouldn't be an issue, but none of them come when called, or sit/stay. Neither does Sophie, but I don't take her off-leash, because I'm not an idiot! I have met great dogs who do brilliantly when off-leash, and who can be trusted not to run up to strange dogs or dash away into traffic. These dogs do not live here.

There's an older man who walks his little, brown dog off-leash. It's a short, little, squat dog that looks like a Chihuahua mix of some sort, with stand-up ears, short legs and a sausage-like body. This little dog does not heel or stay, but waddles up to me and Sophie with hackles raised, growling quietly, and the whole time the owner is saying; "It's ok, he's ok." Um... No sir, he's not. He's quite agitated and if he attacks my dog I'm going to kick him. I keep that thought to myself though, and now when I see them I walk the other way, and if the dog gets too close I pick up Sophie and we skedaddle.

Another dog, a German Shepherd, is walked off-leash by his elderly owner and one evening charged right over to us, causing me to yelp and grab up Sophie as quickly as I could. The Shepherd slid to a stop about 10 feet away and watched us as the owner called for it to come back to her, which of course didn't work. The dog instead charged off towards another couple walking their dog. They ran him off and he came back by us. My husband was walking with us that night and shouted at the woman to please put a leash on her dog. She shouted back that she had special permission to walk her dog off-leash. I told her that wasn't possible. She claimed again that she had special permission. Even if, by some slim chance, the city would allow something like that (and I truly doubt it) she's still within the townhome community, which prohibits dogs from being off-leash. And perhaps someone could get special permission from the HOA Board, but certainly that dog, who charges up to strange dogs rather aggressively and doesn't heel or respond to it's owner, would not be a dog that would receive that sort of special dispensation.

This morning I took Sophie out so she could perform her morning ablutions and we went the same way we always do, out the back gate and around the side of the building towards the front. She's on a flexi-lead a bit in front of me, and she stopped at the corner of our building, tail straight up and on alert. I locked the leash so she couldn't get any further ahead of me, and came up to check out what had her so focused. It was a very large, very scary Rottweiler mix off-leash. I didn't see an owner nearby, but I was pretty focused on the dog. He was standing stiff-legged, and his hackles were up, so I grabbed Sophie and we quickly went the opposite direction. Fortunately he didn't follow. He was wearing a collar so I figured he lived nearby, and a few minutes later I saw a group of 4 guys come from the same direction the dog had been standing, wearing track suits and laughing. I think they were the owners, or one of them was at least, and even through 3 of them were wearing bright red, it's entirely possible they were standing nearby to the dog and I never saw them - my focus was totally on the potential threat to myself and Sophie. I think that's why they were laughing, though I don't find it at all funny. Walking away I knew if it came down to it, I'd grab up Sophie and allow that dog to bite me before I'd let it bite her. And while I love dogs, if a dog were to attack us, I'd lash out in any way I could to protect us both.

There is 1 dog in my complex that goes off-leash that I like. He's an older dog, short and long like some sort of Basset Hound and Labrador mix. It's kind of a big dog but really low to the ground, with a long black coat and gray muzzle. His owner is an old woman who lets him out her front door to do his business, and occasionally walks him off-leash. But he's a good dog, and returns to her when she calls for him. We've run into him a few times and he loves Sophie. We get close and he starts running around like a puppy - it's pretty adorable. Sophie's not quite sure about him, his energy and enthusiasm seem to put her off, but she tolerates him and I'm always right there to intervene if necessary. But it's never been necessary.

As for the others - I think their owners are total idiots, and if I knew where they all lived I'd definitely report them to the HOA to be fined. I don't care if they think their dogs are the sweetest in the world, they don't know MY dog, and to naively allow their dog to wonder around off-leash and approach random dogs is just stupid. What if my dogs rips their dog's face off? Then my dog gets labeled a menace even though I responsibly had her on a leash. This of course has not happened, nor would it, but it could.

I don't know what's wrong with people. These owners put themselves, their dogs, and the community at risk. It's so dumb I can't even fathom it.

And even now as I write this, I can hear someone outside through my open window, whistling to their dog, who is running around off-leash. Idiot.

-A

Today I joined Calorie King

Today I signed up for www.calorieking.com and am now a Member. Or customer, or whatever you'd call it. My weight is out of control. I like to blame it on the cancer, but that was over 5 years ago now, kind of hard to keep doing that. Now, in my defense, the cancer really kicked my ass. That part is true. And the oncology nurses told me it'd probably be at least a year (after finishing treatment) before I would feel "normal" again, and that's about right. I don't think I had much energy at all until around the end of the year 2005. But it's now 2010 and I still carry all the weight I gained while I was sick, and then some.

My sister has been counting her calories manually using the Calorie King online database, but not as a member of Calorie King, and she's also been working out using the Nintendo Wii, and she's lost 15 lbs or so. I'm terribly jealous, and it's motivated me to start doing the same. Though I don't have a Nintendo Wii, I do have a Tivo now and maybe Netflix has exercise videos I can watch instantly. I'll have to check that out.

So time to stop blaming cancer and to start moving on. I think I'm ready. Having Sophie, our dog, has been a real blessing. I walk her every day, and while our morning and evening walks tend to be short, our afternoon walks are long, usually 30 minutes. Unfortunately a lot of that time is spent with her sniffing and peeing on things, so it's not 30 straight minutes of walking but I'm working on that. The point is, I've been much more active since we adopted her, and it's been great. I feel stronger and more "in shape" than I have in a long time. It's a good feeling.

I recently bought some hiking boots, so that we can go hiking on the weekends. I haven't done it yet, but soon. I think Sophie would love to check out Camelback Mountain. And if we don't make it all the way to the top, so what? One day we will, if we keep trying.

I'm not going to tell you my weight though. Just know it's much higher than you would ever guess, and I carry it well so I don't look my weight. Part of that is the lymphedema I'm sure, all that fluid. But even so, I need to lose like 100 lbs. Yeah, that much. Crazy, right? It's so daunting, I think it's part of the reason I have had so much trouble starting. I can barely wrap my brain around the fact that I need to lose so much weight! It's seems like an impossible goal.

The thing is, it's not impossible and I just need to remember that. So Day 1 on Calorie King. I'll keep you posted.
-A

From CNN's 21 Best Money Tips Ever

This was #20 I believe, out of the the 21 tips, and this one made the most sense to me;

Liz Claman Fox Business Network anchor and author of "The Best Investment Advice I Ever Received"

Best advice I can give: We all have to learn from our mistakes of overleveraging ourselves and acting like 5-year-olds -- "I want four cookies." You don't need four cookies; you only need one. It's not about what you want, it's about what you need. We all must reassess our consumer behavior. It's not good enough to live within our means -- we have to live beneath them.

Best advice I ever got: My father, Mo Claman, would say, "Liz, buy good companies going through bad times." When I was growing up, he was a big believer in Kodak, and every day he would get the paper and run his finger down the stocks column to check on it. The stock went through some rough periods, but he kept his Kodak shares, knowing it was a good company. He swears he put us five kids through college thanks to that stock.
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I'm embarrased to admit it, but my husband and I have virtually no savings. And we have debt. Not a lot of debt, but enough. And I don't mean the mortgage or the car, those are pretty normal, standard debts that everyone has, but we also have some credit card debt that we've been carrying about a year now. Boo!

And on top of that, no savings. Yeah, not a good place to be in. We just got our tax return recently and we put most of it towards the credit card debt, which paid off maybe 1/5th of what we owe, and then we got a Tivo. Yeah... maybe not the best use of our money but the idea behind that is that we'll save over the cable box DVR that we're currently paying for so the intention is good - to save money.

The remaining money is going into Savings. For sure. And we recently got a small refund check from our home escrow account, I'm putting that into Savings too. I worry in this economy that we could find ourselves in big trouble, unable to pay the mortgage or car payments if one of us were to lose our job (knock on wood!) though I know we'd both work at McDonald's if we had to, just to pay the bills. We'd figure it out. Still, I don't want to be a spender, I want to be a saver.

We do have 401k accounts so it's not like we have absolutely no savings, but that's not the kind of saving that Liz Claman is referring to. Standard advice is everyone should have 6 months worth of expenses saved up, in case of a job loss or other such crisis, and these days the financial people are saying we should all have a full years worth saved. Scary to think that we don't even have 1 month saved right now. So time to change that!

Then I get stuck though, on whether it's better to pay off the credit card with any "extra" money we have, or to put money in savings? Shouldn't we pay off our debt first, and then save?

Ugh. Decisions, decisions. Now I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the remaining tax return. Pay off the debt or put into savings? I get paralyzed by the fear that I'll make the wrong decision, and then don't want to do anything.
-A