Category Archives: Uncategorized

At 9 weeks, the three remaining keystone cops of the Sue x Max litter are showing their individuality. All four are 4’s on the 5 point power-intensity scale. Ideal for working dogs.

…and two pushy males.

An 8 week-old pup from a line breeding around Jenkins’ Jock is showing signs of strong eye.

This little fellow is recovering from a case of bacterial pneumonia that killed a littermate and almost killed him. Puppies with developing immune systems are vulnerable creatures, and it can be hard to spot these things early (enough). The lucky (and almost unlucky) pup in the photo is on 3 antibiotics, fluids and 24-hour monitoring. In 2 days time, he has moved from critical to stable to improving.

The veterinarian wrote:

“The way these infections almost always work is that a virus comes through and damages the protections in the nasopharynx, allowing bacteria to enter the lung and prosper, leading to your very sick puppy.  In good conditions that have low stress and plenty of air, many animals fight off the viral infection, maintain their defenses and do not get bacterial pneumonia.

Viruses to the many, bacteria to the unlucky few.”

The sadness at losing a beautiful pup is tempered by the joy of one who will recover and lead a rich, full life.

This bit of NAZI propaganda art is eerily, shockingly, appallingly, disgustingly familiar. The SA (Sturmabteilung) were Hitler’s the shock troops, a (white, nationalist) paramilitary organization that supported / enforced his consolidation of power –through fear, brutality and all forms of intimidation.

For Lenin, it was the Cheka. For Mao, it was the Red Guards. Same playbook, the common man ‘stabbed in the back’. Cults of personality rising in a weakened state and society. The difference with the NAZI’s and Trump is the ethnic component: foreigners ‘poisoning’ American blood.

Teun van den Dool has done more for those of us in the sheep dog world who breed than any one person. He developed the searchable relational pedigree database of ISDS dogs that we rely upon to generate pedigrees of existing dogs and prospective litters.

Teun has been my “go-to guy” for breeding assessments for years.

I was shocked and saddened to get this note today when making a routine request to Teun.

Some people leave the world better than they found it. Teun is one of those.

I know that Teun was at one time a practicing physicist in the Netherlands, who developed an interest in the dog world and breeding, and who then put his interest and skills as a statistician to work developing a database using the ISDS stud books and other records, a database that all of us in the sheep dog world rely upon for our pedigree information. The pedigree reports you see on dogs and litters are all the products of Teun’s work. He charged very little for pedigrees and data which is invaluable to us and not available in the same way elsewhere. He did this because he was committed to supporting the sheep dog world.

It is perhaps trite to say, but ‘Teun is a fixture in the international sheep dog world’. I don’t like to think of how it will be not to have his cheerful, prompt and knowledgeable responses at the other end of the internet exchange with his trademark signature, “enjoy reading”. His database is priceless.

I hope Teun’s work will be picked up by someone else. It needs to be. His database is the product of many, many years of Teun’s work and dedication to the sheep dog community. Teun’s life has counted for tens of thousands of us in the sheep dog world and beyond.

I am going to miss Teun personally and he has my enduring gratitude for making the sheep dog world better, every day, every dog.

THANK YOU TEUN !!

26-Aug-2025

Cool, dry air and long shadows: fall is in the air. A pair of recently turned one-year-olds.

19-Aug-2025

Former Trump fixer and consigliere, Michael Cohen, poses and answers the right question in his Midas column.

His answer is similar to mine: Yes, because they are afflicted by fear and laziness.

Cohen writes:

Part of it is fear. Chaos scares people, and authoritarians sell themselves as the antidote to chaos — even though they’re usually the ones creating it. Part of it is resentment. People want someone to blame for their problems, and Trump is a master at handing them scapegoats. And part of it, frankly, is laziness. Democracy is messy. It requires engagement, compromise, patience. Autocracy is simple. One man decides, and everyone else shuts up.

My slightly different but similar take:

1. Americans fear is more for personal safety and all they have worked for (or aspire to) than any general fear of chaos, though chaos is part of it.
2. Younger generations in particular want government delivered like Amazon packages. No worries, just delivered on time. ‘Rights’ and ‘democracy’ are abstractions.

Boomers like me wax on about rights and rule of law …and it’s just background noise. Today, we are separated from the social democratic and populist ideas of the New Deal that shaped my parents (and me), by 5 generations. The New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society and Modern Republicanism of Eisenhower were replaced by Reaganism and retrograde, faux-conservatism …that has morphed into appalling White Nationalism.

What shocks me most about Trump’s seizure of power is how things / people go on as if things were normal. People (who should and do know better) go about their daily lives with a ‘this too shall pass’ attitude. They do not want to resist. They do not want to get involved. They hope someone else will take care of it or it will take care of itself. I cannot count hoq often people tell me, “There is no sense in getting upset about (or involved in) something I cannot change.” …which is to say, ‘Stop taking about this already!’

** It is the failure of Americans (regardless of party) to resist the persecution and cruelty and constitutional overreach of Trump and his fellow bullies that is most disappointing to me and has soured me on America. I thought deep down we cared for human and constitutional rights… Silly me!**

Donald Trump and his goons knew America better than we knew it ourselves. They knew we were weak. Just how weak we were likely even surprised –and delighted– them. Trump’s Fifth Column of MAGAts –in the courts, in Congress, in state houses, in industry– was bigger and more compliant and willing than people like me imagined. The anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-color/gender/choice partisans had been working to undermine popular democracy for decades. A legitimate (though often wrong-headed) mainstream party was taken over by militant fanatics and it successfully tapped into feelings of resentment and selfishness. There are no Margaret Chase Smiths or Jim Jeffords in the Trump party. Republican senators who know better serve ‘in fear’, like Lisa Murkowski. Pathetic!

By Memorial Day, I recognized the answer to Michael Cohen’s question is …YES, (de facto) more people than not are okay with a Supreme Leader, because where the heck are they, why are they not resisting, if they are not okay with it?

What we are seeing didn’t start with Trump. It won’t end with Trump. He controls and is controlled by a movement (and interests). What comes after Great Leader is Dear Leader and veneration of Great Leader. Trump and his MAGA goons are the product of 50 years of social neglect, greed, hyper-individualism and libertarian propaganda. We stopped investing our collective destiny and social improvement, we nodded our heads when Reagan said soporifically that government is the enemy and wealth would trickle down from tax cuts to the rich. We allowed ourselves to be degraded and fractured because we stopped believing that government and social (re) investment was good.

Resistance is not futile, yet, but it comes with consequences –as it does in Russia and elsewhere. The stronger the autocrat becomes, the less chance there is for a successful resistance (at least in the short and medium term). People get worn down, bullied, threatened, and persecuted and they peel off, give up, go into hiding. Wearing people down, making examples of them: all part of the autocrat and reactionary revolutionary playbook.

A wiser person than me, Judge Michael Luttig, said today: “We can’t stop this now. The damage has been done.”

I believe we could stop this with concerted, popular resistance. But Michael Cohen poses the right question: maybe people are okay with post-democracy?

Those of us who expected mass resistance were more sure than we should have been about public sensibilities. Studies have shown for 30 years that people are in the main are increasingly okay with a less democracy and fewer rights. They just want things taken care of so they can (for the moment) continue on with their lives …even if that means living by a dictator’s whim, it seems.

Trump and his MAGAts will NOT allow the 2026 election to change control of Congress …either house. They can’t. Revolutionaries and autocrats don’t do that. They have to stay in power …or face the consequences of their actions. So, there will be more lies, charges of corruption on the part of the opposition (remember, every accusation is a confession for Trump and his bunch). Trump and his DOJ and their accomplices throughout government (at the state and federal level) will create chaos, tie everything up in court, in conspiracy, and in martial law, if needed. Trump will prevail, as he is fond of saying, “one way or another”. Resistance will then be enfeebled and dangerous. America will be Russia. The conservative revolution will have succeeded.

Judge Luttig said that by the 2026 election there will be nothing left anyway.** Is he wrong?

If you go to my home page, you will see the last two paragraphs of George Orwell’s 1984 reprinted. The protagonist, Winston Smith, in the end yields to Big Brother …because that’s what people do.

The reactionary revolution in America unfurled with lighting speed. Shock and awe visited upon the American people by people who do not play by the established rules. I am reminded of the line from the Beatles’ ‘Day in the Life’: “A crowd of people stood and stared.“

We already live in post-democratic chaos. People may or may not have been ‘looking’ for a Supreme Leader, but they were okay enough with him as he and his goons engineered his putsch. Now, we really do have a Supreme Leader, a power-mad, cruel autocrat. He and his storm troopers will use everything the can / need to stay in power, forever. You can bet on that.

** Note: Ironic, since Luttig was a key player in the Reagan Revolution, which set in motion the destruction of ‘good government’ and popular democracy. Law of unintended consequences, I suppose.