Yay, fellow ex-Mennonite here and yes, college religious organizations threw me for a loop too. I don’t know about your Mennonite experience but mine was very “everyone has their own relationship with God and it’s not your business to judge them” attitude about things.  The students ranting about the evils of…

I actually know of two couples where both partners changed their names to something new.

I have. We had a fairly long running Shadowrun campaign in college that we let a GM’s friend join after months of asking. Friend/asshat decided the solution to our problem was to launch grenades at the suspect’s boat until it sank. Only problem, the rest of the party was on said boat when asshat pulled this stunt. My…

I HATE this. My boss did the “you spoke too much and dominated the meeting” thing to me once. I was presenting the fricken material, of course I did most of the talking. It wasn’t supposed to be an interactive meeting, just a quarterly update on where my program was.

You only say that because you haven’t met a tervuren. Brains of a border collie, heart of a malinois and the sheer presence of a furry god.

In complete & total honesty, my one terv can read about a dozen words on flash cards. I ran out of other things to teach her, she’s getting old enough that competitive agility is…

Growing up, my brother got a coonhound puppy one autumn. I used to put that puppy in front of me on the saddle and take for rides. Pup LOVED it and my mare tolerated it because she was a really good girl.

Come spring, pup is 70lbs of rambunctious adolescent dog. Pup sees me trotting up on the horse, takes a running…

Yep, the only sane “city” corgi I know has an owner that does agility with it multiple times a week and yes, it is the most adorable thing EVER! Watching those little legs go while it’s trying to get over jumps is enough to melt even the most anti-corgi hearts. It just looks So Happy! Other than that one dog, though,…

Nope, you can’t ride a miniature horse unless you are a very small person/child. Mini-horses mostly run under 35 inches tall at the shoulder, so size wise they’re not all that different than a standard guide dog. And minis can live really long lives - like dogs, the smaller you go with horse breeds, the longer they…

If you grew up in a religious-heavy environment, 17 really IS that young. Hell, 19 really was that young for my best friend and we’re about this woman’s age. It’s amazing how naive certain churches keep their young women.

See, I’ve never had a cat that did the chemical warfare thing either. One of my friends has a cat that pisses on his pillow whenever he leaves for more than 2 days but my cats are all just like “oh, you’re back. feed me!”

As far as other issues, yeah, the kittens’ mom didn’t know how to use a box either. So whether it…

I think you probably never heard of a good reason because you dismiss “good reasons” that you don’t value.

My family used border collies to help herd our sheep & cattle. That kind of drive & instinct doesn’t happen by accident and you certainly aren’t going to grab a random bully breed from the pound and try to make…

I’m sorry to hear your cat is such a mess. Yes, there are breed standards that have warped perfectly good animals into things that can’t breath, can’t breed without help and are as smart as a box of rocks. However, all those problems show up in mixes too.

I’ll admit it, I’m a breed-snob where dogs are concerned. I like…

I might adopt a from a breed specific rescue but from a general one? There’s no way I’d bring home a mal or a terv or a border collie from a group I couldn’t trust to do a solid, breed-based evaluation. These dogs can wreck havoc at the best of times, let alone if you get one that’s been massively mis-handled.

They are out there. My first tervuren was given to me by his breeder after said breeder used her contract in court to reclaim him. Contract said he had to be kept up to a certain standard of care. Pup’s first owner gave the breeder a good story about how he’d be a house pet and do schutzhund (guy was a retired police…

I’d change one big thing about your statement there ... if the breeder you’re looking at is indeed making a living at it, chances are they aren’t reputable breeders. Every good breeder I know, all creating champion show & performance dogs in their chosen breeds, does it strictly as a hobby. Breeding correctly, with…

What’s in the local shelters really depends on what area you’re in. In my area of the country, it’s all bully mixes and standard sized “poo” crosses. If you want something both young (not even a puppy, just under 8 years old) and small, you’re probably hunting for a private breeder.

Well, some of us use our dogs as more than just pets. On my family farm, we had border collies to work the cattle & sheep. You can’t tell me Joe Random Mutt from the pound would have the instincts & intelligence to do that work, not when 90% of them in my area are bully mixes or badly bred X-poos. Same with the…

Just because you’ve lucked out with kittens knowing how to properly use a box doesn’t mean it’s standard. Out of the five cats I’ve had as an adult, two kittens and one 10 year old had to be taught. Guess I am a magnet for anti-box cats.

Definitely not innate to all cats and it is something they learn/fail to learn from their mothers. We adopted two kittens from the barn where I kept my horse. Some asshat threw the mother out of a moving car near the barn. Mother was barely more than a kitten herself. We took those two kittens home at 10 weeks and…

Yeah, a curb bit that’s adjusted so low as to be knocking teeth. One to two wrinkles at the corner of the mouth, people! I’ve ridden my entire life, western, english & saddleseat and this is BAD riding in any of them. Seriously, who hauls on a curb bit, not just a shanked western bit but with an actual curb bit with…