This is an interesting post. I had heard about insurance companies that cancelled because of certain breeds, but don't know of any cases personally. I also heard that you can claim some breed (like Sheppards) as a "security system" and it actually gives you a break on rates. Not sure if this is true, but I do know that our Sheppard is a great security system! Our rural neighbourhood has had some problems last couple of years with break-ins, but not our place. She's loud and she's intimidating and I wouldn't advise anyone to cross her. That said, she's a wonderful family pet, has never bitten anyone, loves all kids under the age of 20, and is very protective of her own (er, mine rather). I've learned a lot about having a healthy respect for others' property and dogs in general through the whole thing. I would have another Sheppard in a minute! Funny, because I used to be really scared of them. Guess I still am, but I just see it in a different way now. I think it boils down to personal experience. Miss Kitty, I have to say I'm a little scared of Jack Russels! I've been bitten by one. In fact, the four times in my life I've been bitten, three of them were little dogs (JR, Chiuahua (sp?), and Dachshund) - go figure! How are the JR's with other animals? I confess, I don't know much about the breed. gardengal, we had a black lab once that thought "home" was a ten mile radius. It was a real problem and we didn't keep the dog. He actually came to us as a "dog-sitting charge" but they never came back to get him. It was sad to let him go, but at a year and a half old, there was no changing him and I couldn't bear to keep him tied. He went to a good home, but for months I got calls to say "your dog is here"! yikes. Roaming dogs ARE a big problem. It's really maddening for folks who try to keep their dogs under control and for those who have other animals to worry about. Genny,you are wise to be wary of your neighbour's dog. Mine has never hurt any of our animals (she's actually afraid of the cows!),but I still wouldn't let her sleep with the chickens! Dogs will learn what is and isn't fair game, but it takes time. I hope your neighbour's dog will learn that. Sometimes making a friend of the dog is a good approach, though that may encourage it to visit more often which you probably don't want. My sheppard was VERY interested in new animals we brought home. It took a couple of weeks for her to stop circling the fences (which is a bit worrying in itself), but we kept telling here "no" and made her limits clear. After a couple of weeks, the new additions became just another part of her "pack" and she basically ignored them. Overall, she's not a bad "farm dog", although she hasn't got a clue about herding! LOL

As a person owned by 4 cats 7 cats if I count the neighbors cats (outside) I can attest to the truth of the Cat Rules. The only one that the cats have not done is drinking water from the faucets. But I do have a tabletop fountain that they love to play in and splash water all over the couch from. Tube mouse and hampering reading is a favorite of 2 of the cats.. one in particular does not stop with just capturing the tube mouse when he gets to the tube mouse he then turns his attention to shredding every tiny piece of TP all over the bathroom floor. Never a dull moment around here. I have some hampering going on right now..the TP attacker is walking back and forth in front of the monitor. Oh yah, it's time to feed them. SEE they have me well trained. :-) If I am a bit slow with the feeding he will go and recruit the "head butter" to climb in my lap and start with the head butting under my chin... OK OK... time for food, rubbing my chin,Pat

I have something new here that's unusual. I just did my final inspection for the evening and 4/5 babies were gaping. The fifth I thought was dead. It's in the nest with its head foreward and its feet pointing upward. I looked and it is still breathing. The parents have fed well today but these babies are so hungry! I'm wondering if maybe it has been poorly fed compared to the others. I have some experience w/ this. If a nestling is too weak it will gape w/o being able to cheep. If it's near dead it won't be able to gape or vocalize. Just concerning. Hope he's okay!

Thank you, Georgia, for posting your thoughts while the story is still fresh on your mind. It's only been ten months since I read The Terror twice, but I'm afraid I've already lost a lot of the details. For instance, I had forgotten the use of present tense -- I nearly always find that awkward, too, while I'm reading, but I immediately put things into my memory in past tense once I've read something. I figure you're right about male readers posting at other sites about The Terror. I still have run across only one additional male reader, though. The John Clute review: "No reader who has begun to get used to the literatures of the early 21st century should be flummoxed by the strangeness of The Terror, which seems to be an historically exact recounting of the famous doomed Arctic expedition led by the ineffably stupid Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), who caused the deaths of 130 men in his attempt to find the Northwest Passage by force..."Clute almost lost me completely with that intro sentence because Franklin didn't cause the deaths of 130 men by "force." Franklin may be considered "ineffably stupid" but that's hindsight about a failed expedition -- if he had pulled it off and found the passage his stupidities would have been considered minor. Besides that, Franklin himself died before all but a few of his men succumbed, and those that preceded him had other problems, such as tuberculosis. Clute either didn't know this or he made faulty conclusions. However, I was more interested in what Clute had to say about Simmons's writing style. He does like to use lit crit jargon: mimetic and in medias res -- I was half expecting him to tell us about breaching the fourth wall. "Crozier is still what one might call a victim of the wrong story, and he will not be able to save himself in any sense before he abandons, as it were, the mimetic tradition as applied to the para-mimetic exorbitance of the genuinely extreme, of a set of experiences that stretch mimesis beyond the breaking point."Got that? I don't, but I think I agree that Crozier is the victim of the wrong story. I still say that The Terror was one of the most interesting novels I read last year...maybe in several years. But the more I think about the story and the way Simmons wrote it, I have nagging feelings of dissatisfaction. I agree, Georgia, that the Inuit mythtelling was too much expository lump, and not presented seamlessly enough with the realistic aspects for me to accept with ease. Georgia, you've brought up some things that I will definitely have to think more about. That's pretty good for a book: to be still analyzing it a year later. I wonder if you will be too.