Hello Hife, One of my best friends here in the states is from Conakry, Guinea. I have another good friend who is from Togo. Just thought I would say hi, I see you are from Nigeria.

...and... comparitively speaking, the stomach is a larger organ than the heart... hee-hee.

Hi Morning Song... I used to be "TelephoneMan" on here a couple years or more ago. Decided to create a new account and do a fresh start. :-) (couldn't login with the old username, so I made up a new one). I guess the old name, etc is now defunct and gone bye bye.

God bless you... I know you are one of the true-blue, honest to goodness, real-live Christians. Nice to see you here again, too.


GG49

I agree. It is also much more cost effective to buy groceries and cook at home. Eating out at restaurants is very expensive, even at the per-meal level at fast food places. If you took the same money you spend (even at a fast food place) and bought groceries, you could eat for days.

There are many places in the world where people struggle just to have fresh water to drink, let alone food and regular daily items.

I live alone and I cook for myself everyday. I would say (of myself) that I am a very good cook. I have a friend who is a gourmet French-style chef who has given me a lot of pointers along the way. Some of it is just common sense, but I do think it is a learned skill, not something folks are born with. Some folks can't cook to save their life, haha.

Not sure which English version you are reading but... if it is the King James version (a.k.a. "KJV"), think about this... it was written at the time of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The KJV was finished in 1611. We just don't talk like that today. Folks say they have a hard time understanding Shakespeare, too... because nobody talks today the way he penned his plays FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

I haven't read back through all the posts, so I'm not sure which version Morning Song gave you, I have been here long enough to know she is true-blue and loves God with a sincere passion. What many churches today use is called "The New International Version." It is written in what one might say is "today's English" (not 400-year old English.)

Here is a link to this version online (I clicked it to the Book of John for you...)

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1&version=NIV

If you look at the top of the page, there is a drop-down that says "New International Version"... you'll notice many more choices of Bible translations on that drop-down. Not just English... but French, Spanish, and a whole bunch of languages I can't pronounce, haha. (Arabic, Bulgarian, Haitian Creole, all kinds of languages.) And it also has the traditional King James... (I count 30 English versions alone... wow...)

I do love the King James Version, it is probably the translation I have read the most. But if I were from Bulgaria (for example) I guess I wouldn't be reading the KJV... I'd be reading something relevant to my daily spoken language (i.e. Bulgarian, etc.) Or if I lived in China, if I had to learn King James English first in order to read the Bible, it would be a long time before the message got home. But a version written in the language I spoke everyday in China (i.e. Chinese) would make much more sense to read... As a thought, there are now 6.8 billion people in the world. Only 311 million of those folks live in the English-speaking U.S. English is a popular language on the globe, but it isn't and never will be the ONLY language. God's word (the Bible) is for every human being, so it has been translated from the original texts so that it may reach the greatest number.

Anyways...

Enjoy the links and God Bless.

:-)

Not sure which English version you are reading but... if it is the King James version (a.k.a. "KJV"), think about this... it was written at the time of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The KJV was finished in 1611. We just don't talk like that today. Folks say they have a hard time understanding Shakespeare, too... because nobody talks today the way he penned his plays FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

I haven't read back through all the posts, so I'm not sure which version Morning Song gave you, I have been here long enough to know she is true-blue and loves God with a sincere passion. What many churches today use is called "The New International Version." It is written in what one might say is "today's English" (not 400-year old English.)

Here is a link to this version online (I clicked it to the Book of John for you...)

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1&version=NIV

If you look at the top of the page, there is a drop-down that says "New International Version"... you'll notice many more choices of Bible translations on that drop-down. Not just English... but French, Spanish, and a whole bunch of languages I can't pronounce, haha. (Arabic, Bulgarian, Haitian Creole, all kinds of languages.) And it also has the traditional King James... (I count 30 English versions alone... wow...)

I do love the King James Version, it is probably the translation I have read the most. But if I were from Bulgaria (for example) I guess I wouldn't be reading the KJV... I'd be reading something relevent

Here's some biological facts...

...men have a better sense of taste, so they tend to make better gourmet chefs...

...also, women have a better sense of smell... so it should be the man wearing the colonge (perfume?) rather than the women... :-)

GG49

Another tip for "short attention span" readers like me... (I learned this when stumbling through ultra-boring college text books...) Leave the book open in a common place somewhere in your house. Don't plague yourself by thinking you have to read 100 pages to a sitting. Read a verse and think about it. Maybe read a chapter. Maybe just read one of the Pslams today.

There really is no prize in the achievement of saying "I've read the whole Bible"... if you get to the last page and have no idea what it is you just read. (Its not a novel...).

The Bible is a book of faith, a book that contains God's promises to us, and it is a book of hope. It is a book of love, given from God to all human beings, no matter what race or financial situation that human may be in. Its not just for the rich, its not just for the poor.

Another thing...

... the one main theme throughout the entire Bible is Jesus Christ and him cucifed for our sins, that on the thrid day he rose from the grave, and is now ascended to the Father. That we who believe in Him will also have eternal life.

The life we live here on Earth is a testing ground. God wants to see if we will choose to follow his son Jesus, or will we deny him. For those that follow, the hope and the prize is heaven as our home. Some will not choose to follow. There is a place for them at their end, too, but it is not with God.

Yes, some of the concepts might "seem" hard, but the thing was written so the most simple of child could read it and understand. It is not a difficult concept to know that God loved you and I and every human so much that he sent his son. Jesus came here, and lived in the same exact type of body that we are given. It says in the scriptures that he was tempted in every way, but did not ever sin.

Just find a nice table in your home to lay the Bible, and open it to some place (like the book of John, etc.) and don't stress that you have to read gobs of it per Sunday. Read a word. Read a verse. Mostly, don't just read it like a newspaper, but read it a bit, then listen for God's still small voice talking to your heart through those words.

Jesus said that if anyone thirst, come to him and he would give you living waters. You are thristy, and you come and read... and he will pour out the waters of understanding to you. How many in this world have no desire to ever turn a single page in that book... how that must make Jesus sad... But that you want to learn, it is God that put that desire in your heart. When you "thirst" go to His word (the Bible) for a drink of something deep...

:-)

I didn't read all of the posts, etc... but here is my answer to the OP's first question...

...look in your table of contents for the New Testament "Book of John." (aka "Gospel of John"... aka "Gospel according to John"... aka "John") That is actually a great place to start reading the Bible. It takes you through the life of Jesus, his death on the cross, and his resurrection. Then motor right on through to the "Book of Acts" (the next book in the Bible after the Gospel of John.) The Book of Acts tells the stories of the very first Christian churches.

When I first became a Christian, this was what my first Pastor told me to do, and I find it is helpful to first have some idea what it is to be a Christian and what the original first Christian church did, etc. before digging into the deeper bookd (like Genesis, etc...) Keep reading all the way through to the end of the New Testament.

(You've probably heard this before, but...) You don't read the Bible like a novel... i.e., pick it up and start at page one and proceed through to the last page... howbeit there IS a happy ending...

You study it in relative portions... study sections that tie together in similar meanings. It is a sacred text, not a novel.

For example...

The fall of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden (Genesis) is connected to the "why" of why God sent his son Jesus to the world as the last sacrifice for sins (Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). The connection being... by eating of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis) Adam and Eve chose to sin... Jesus was God's final corrective answer to the world's sin problem. Everything is tied together philosophically, and spiritually. Verses in one book are tied to topics and verses in many other books.

What you might find helpful is a printing of the Bible called "The Thompson Chain Reference Bible." http://kirkbride.com/

This printing has tons and tons of very helpful scripture references in the middle and on the edges of the colums that help you study topics that string throughout many verses in the Bible. For instance "salvation" and many other topics... there is also a numbered topic index in the back that ties common-topic scriptures together so you can study one idea/concept in the Bible from one end of the scriptures to the other.

I might also suggest getting something called a "concordance"... a concordance is a dictionary of sorts that helps you find Bible verses when you can only remember one or two words of a certain verse. For example, if you could remember "for God so loved the world" but couldn't remember where in the Bible it said that, you could choose any of the words in that sentence and (depending on how exhaustive the concordance is) it would list every verse with each of those words, in alphabetical order.

The most exhaustive concordance ever compiled of the King James Bible was "Strong's Exhautive Concordance of the Bible." Mr. Strong literally separated every single word in the King James Bible, even down to the "thou's and thus's..." and put them in alphabetical order... then pain-stakingly listed in chronological order every single verse in the King James Bible that contains each and every word.

http://www.amazon.com/Strongs-Exhaustive-Concordance-Bible-Strong/dp/0917006011

Another idea is...

When I studied a law class in college, I found the need to buy a legal dictionary in order to keep up with all of the strange new terms. "Legal Speak" and what I call "Lawyer Talk" is crammed full of Latin and all kinds of stuff I'd never been exposed to before. So I bought "Black's Law Dictionary" (that works for legal stuff, not the Bible...)

However...

I might suggest finding a credible "Bible Dictionary" that will define all those odd and new Bible words. Something like Smith's: http://www.amazon.com/Smiths-Bible-Dictionary-William-Smith/dp/0917006240 Then, as you come across stuff like "Lot's Wife" you can get a run-down of who she was and why she turned into a pillar of salt, etc... There are also Bible Encyclopedias printed for similar reasons.

Something we have today that most generations of Bible readers never had... is the Internet. If there is a scripture you are trying to find, Google it. Its amazing how much information pertaining to the Bible is out there.

If you don't like the King James version, you can find any and every English version of the Bible, available for free reading, out on the web. Most times, each version, no matter how simple it is to read, has been painstakingly processed by a room full of scholars, and the meaning has been left the same. English isn't the only text, the Bible has been printed in hundreds of languages. So for those folks who think the King James English version is the (ahem) "only true Bible"... then if I spoke only French, I guess I couldn't read the Bible, huh? I do love the King James, but I also read the New International Version. I suppose the whole idea is to open ONE of them and read... that's much farther than many ever get...

If you don't like reading, you can also get the Bible on mp3 via a CD recording... or... here is a site that allows you to download the King James version as an audio book on mp3, book by book, for free:
http://www.audiotreasure.com/indexKJV.htm

Also... when you read the Bible, don't read it like a novel... i.e.... when you read a novel, you generally try to race through as many chapters as possible to get to the other side... that's just not how you read the Bible.

For example, open your Bible to one of the Pslams...

...Turn to any one of them... just read them verse-by-verse and give some thought to what each verse means and is trying to say...

...read the Proverbs this way, too...

...actually, read the entire Bible that way... look for meaning, try to picture the characters, try to find the meaning in why folks would have left this or that particular verse or book in the Bible... what is the connection to the bigger picture and the whole... (?)

This is how you will get much more out of it in the long run. The idea is to "meditate on the scriptures"... not buzz through them in a week from start to finish just to say "I read the whole Bible"...

As you read, certain verses will (sort of) "jump off the page" and hit you in a way that has a deeper meaning. Just the first verse of the 23rd Pslam... "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want..."

There is a lot of meaning in that one simple verse.

A shepherd is someone who is watching over (typically) a sheep. Sheep need protection from wolves and predators (we typically need protection from Satan and his demons...). The shepherd also makes sure the sheep have the necessities of life, water, food, shelter, protection from wolves, etc. If the "Lord" is our shepherd, if he is in charge of what we do in life, then he is watching out for us. And the comfort the pslamist finds is a correlation between himself being a needy sheep, and God (the Lord) being that entity which watches over those in need. Because God is watching over him, he feels no sense of "want"... I might relate that condition of non-want as being or finding peace in this life. Simply stated, if God is in charge, (for example) perhaps you won't be driven by materialistic "gotts-have's" but rather you "shall not want." There are also other Bible verses where it talks about God being our provider. If he is your Shepherd, he will provide for you, and you "shall not want."

The verse only has 9 words, but has an ocean worth of depth...

Happy Bible reading...


GG49

My dog is definitely in tune with (from your list of doggie birthday things...):

"The best thing about getting old is pretending you don't here them call."

That's my dog after a certain time in the PM...

I can call her, she will be staring right at me... and she does not move or even twich... until of course I raise my voice, and it seems to pint some kind of poke in her presence... I think she is pretending to be asleep... or maybe she is sleeping with her eyes open... haha.

"Koko... beg..." (hilarious...)

(this is sort of long, so read when you have the time... and if you love dogs...)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Koko
February 3rd, 2012
Dedicated to my best friend on Earth, my dog Koko
GuitarGuy49


It was September (or October) of 1996. I had just moved into the house way up on Macktown Gap Road in Dillsboro/Sylva, North Carolina. From the north direction, the dirt road we lived on wound down the side of the mountain in a series of sharp switch-backs, with no guard rail. It was about a 3-4 mile journey in that direction until you met up with the main paved highway, then into town. In the southern direction, there were a series of ascending, chatter-bumped switch-backs along the dirt road, then right at the peak of the mountain about one mile south, the road was paved and followed Sutton Branch Creek from its artesian well beginnings to its crescendo enveloping the next several miles until it emptied into the Little Tennessee River that ran along side the town of Dillsboro, North Carolina.

From the top of our mountain, in the winter when the post-fall leaves had cleared, you could see for several miles to the north, east and to the south. To the west was yet another mountain peak that was at a higher elevation than our home at the 4,000 foot elevation. We rarely, if ever, got any traffic up in our world, it was a mountain retreat which also homed our family-owned vacation rental. We got $500 bucks a week for the rental, and after just one year of renting, we were booked 12 months out of the year. I don't remember the exact day that Koko showed up at our property, but it was just over sixteen years ago in September or October of 1996.

One thing that came of living in such a secluded place is that it became a haven for lost and abandoned dogs. I never honestly figured out if it was that the dogs had wandered so far from the village below and just couldn't find their way home, or if evil people had actually driven up our switch-backed dirt road, and dropped off their unwanted pets in some type of cursed abandonment. Whatever the case, if some evil person abandoned Koko, then they gave up on a million dollar dog. We noticed not too long after she showed up at Macktown Gap that she was soon to bare a litter of puppies. Because she was so pregnant, I have always figured that is why the evil idiot dropped her off. I guess some people are so lame that they can't deal with puppies. I can't tell you how much joy eight little rug-rat doggies can be, all running about the property, close by mama, and all licking, nibbling, whining, barking in their little doggy pup bark way. It was our pleasure to accept the mama dog, and then to see her through her whelping period, giving the world eight beautiful bundles of joy.

It was no problem finding the new pups a new home once they were at the weening age, either. We took them in a cardboard box, mama dog in tow, to the local Wal-Mart, and sat outside the doorway with a sign "free puppies"... all eight were gone in less than ten minutes to (hopefully) loving homes of local residents. Now how hard was that? I've often thought I'd like to get my hands around the neck of the person that abandoned Koko on the side of our hill. Either to strangle them for the deed of abandonment, or to thank them for being so stupid to give up such a great dog.

For the next four years, she was a true "mountain dog." She was typically, mostly an outdoor dog, but she was also very comfortable next to our gas log fireplace, nestled near to the TV and our feet. Her big trick back then was to come by you, and lay her nose on your leg. Of course the resistance to petting her waxed thin, and then one paw would come up on the chaise lounge. Then another. Pretty soon she gained the bravery to nestle in right next to you up on the seat. She has always been a sucker for being petted. Such a pure spirit, undying love to any and all that would have her. I swear she is some secret kind of pure bred million-dollar dog. But she is just a lab-mix mutt that somebody else didn't want. I'm actually glad they didn't want her.

It was at our house on Macktown Gap that Koko got her "people training." She trained us to feed her, and she trained us to let her outside, haha. She also learned to shake hands with either paw by simply touching the side of her face, and saying "give me your paw." She was given a comfy doggie bed in her first years with us, and she soon learned the command "Koko, get in your bed." Of which she always without fail would comply, tail wagging and seemingly happy to do so. Of course, being a mountain dog, she also had free reign of the outdoor dimension. There were often times various odd draggings came back with her from who knows where up or down the side of the mountain. It might have been some kind of un-identifiable road kill she thought was a catch. Or, one time (I have no idea where she found it) she drug home an entire white-tailed deer carcass. As of to say, "look what I found out in the woods, daddy!!!" If it was stinky, or dead, or just not available to be passed by on the side of the mountain, Koko would find time to chew it, drag it, claim it, then we would either bury it or pass it to the garbage.

Dogs....

She had free reign of the entire side of the mountain until one day some ditty-dumb mountain biker discovered our secluded stretch of switch-backs and decided this was going to be his daily work-out place from then on. Well, we rarely got any vehicular traffic up this way, and when we did, Koko, the "Defender of Her Universe", would chase whatever car, tractor, 4-wheeler, truck -- or in this case -- mountain biker, that would pass by. One day, the mountain biker made a complaint to the sheriff that Koko had nipped at his leg. The sheriff came out and Koko had to spend three days and nights in "doggie jail" (at the dog pound) until they realized she wasn't vicious. We got her back, and then it was decided that a cable run would be constructed for Koko, a dog house would be in place, and she wouldn't be allowed to have free reign of the mountain anymore.

Talk about killing a dog's identity...

For the next few months, you can imagine the misery this free-spirited, loving, passionate-for-life dog experienced at the end of her chain and cable system. The cable was strung between two large poles in our backyard, which ran about 100-feet from end to end, then her chain was about 40-feet in length, but that was all the Earth she could now explore. Whenever someone would drive in or come home, you could hear Koko barking in the back yard, as if to say "welcome home, bark-bark, hey, I'm back here, come pet me, pleasssssse." I didn't much care for the idea of her being tied up, but the sheriff insisted, so we had to comply.

As events changed and I found gainful employment as a road-warrior contract field engineer for the phone company, when I was working on one contract in Mississippi in 2000, I had the idea of bringing Koko on the road with me. So when I came home on leave time, I gathered up an igloo-style doggie house in the box of my truck, a couple bags of cedar doggie bedding, had Koko hop in before I took off, and from that day until right now this dog has been by my side nearly every minute of every day. She road with me on all my contract jobs, she would either wait beside the truck as I did my field work, or would patiently wait in her passenger seat. She has sat in that truck seat for so long and through so many adventures that it is now "her spot." Today, if I offer anyone else a ride in my truck, she will edge over almost into their lap because that's "her seat." Twelve years later, I suppose she has claimed ownership of that little space on Earth.

Everywhere I have went for the last twelve years, she has been by my side. If I go to the grocery store, Koko comes along. If I got to church, she rides along and sleeps in the truck while I'm in praising God. Where-ever I drive, I never go alone, I always have my baby girl with me. "My little doggie" I call her. Or, since living in an Ann Arbor apartment, the city code here requires that pet owners pick up after their pets, I many times call her my "Pooper Dog.." I put food in one end, and she makes Lincoln Logs and Tootsie Rolls out of the other end for me to pick up. I guess it wouldn't be a full dog story if I didn't admit that I talk to my dog. When she does her business, sometimes I'll say to her... "what did you leave there, are you trying to buy the apartment complex? You just left a deposit on the land." LOL.

Today (February 3rd) is my birthday, and I turn 50 whopper years old today. Every year for as long as I can remember, since I have no idea when Koko's actual birthday is, I celebrate her birthday on my birthday. So, today is Koko's birthday, too. As best I can calculate, she had to be about one year old or a little more when she came to us with her (what was obviously) her first litter of pups. That was 1996. If you do the math, add one year to that (1995) then update to 2012, that makes Koko seventeen years old today. Maybe seventeen and a few months, who knows.

Now she is an older dog, but has incredible doggie health for her age. Her hearing is good, her eyes are good, she's a little lame on her right side back leg, but I give her glucosamine in her food, and it is doing wonders. She was particular happy to go outside today, and was running around like a puppy at the end of the leash. She is absolutely a nut when she is trying to tell me its time to go outside. To make the experience stick, I play a little game of (sort of) hide-and-seek with her before we go out, and she runs back and forth in the apartment, chasing me around, ruffing, and snorting in her doggie language.

I have spent so much time with this dog that I can tell what she wants just by the way she breathes. If she is hungry, she humpfs and puffs a certain way. If I am petting her and she would rather sleep, she has a small way she breathes to let me know. I have never studied doggie psychology or veterinary anythings, but I'm convinced this type of breathing communication is something dogs do with their young. When I cuddle with her, if I am too active, she will breathe a certain way until I settle down, then she stops that form of breathing. She also communicates several other ways. If she wants to wake me up when I am sleeping, she will shake her head so her ears slap the side of her face. Later in her life, this is how she wakes me up in the middle of the night if she has to go out. Another form of "I gotta go out" is that she will bump my elbow with her nose. This is especially effective for her if we are riding in the truck for a long distance. Its amazing, maybe I have a bit of "Doctor Dolittle" in me, and I can understand how animals talk. When you spend every minute of your life with an critter, you're definitely going to learn from them as much or more than they learn from you.

If she is hungry, she will go over to her food bowl and rattle it around. It is a metal bowl inside of a metal fixture that holds it, and she's learned that it will make noise if she bangs it with her nose. Or, if I am eating dinner, and she hasn't been fed yet, she will sit on the edge of her doggie bed and "hur-rumpf" at me. She does this thing with her nose, after inhaling some air, then she exhales it in a "hur-rumpf"-like sound when she is trying to tell me she is hungry. It is ultimately hilarious. Then if I "get the clue" and turn to her and say "Koko, are you hungry" she will sometimes rub first one side, then the other side of her face on her doggie bed. Then lay, paws-spread, chest to the bed, tail wagging. "Boo-lap"... she'll take her tongue and wrap it around her mouth, what might be mistaken for "licking her lips." This is her communicating that she is hungry.

As she's gotten older, she's gotten ultimately bored with regular dry dog food. So over the years I have mixed up some kind of doggie grool for her that consisted of something stinky and flavorful, along with her regular dry dog food. For many years the trick was to simply sprinkle her food with garlic powder, then add a cup or so of hot water. She would dig right in... A year and five months ago we were going for a walk up to the local Starbucks store and she got one of her claws hung up in between the concrete slabs of the Starbucks driveway. For the longest time I thought she had pulled a hip muscle or a knee joint, even the young first-year vet we visited (for a hundred bucks, ugh...) thought it was her old knee. But about a month later I noticed she was missing a claw on that back paw. It had fallen off some where along the way. So much for the new vet fresh out of college... it wasn't her knee, it was her claw. Well, during this set of events, (for what ever reason) she lost the love for garlic powder and I had to come up with some other stinky, yummy thing to try over her food.

I wasn't sure what it would be, and I was willing to try anything, as long as it just added stink and a little flavor to her food. One thing I've learned as a pet owner is that dogs love stinky food. The stinkier it is, the more they dive in and gobble. Garlic powder worked for a long time. The next stage of stink became a 1/3 cup of Kroger grocery store brand spaghetti sauce (99 cents for 26oz.). I'd fill her bowl with dry food, dump 1/3 cup of spaghetti sauce over the food, add 1 cup of hot water, serve. Gobble-gobble-gobble. That's how we got her foot all healed up and her on the eating game again. She stopped eating for a little while when she hurt her foot, and to get her interested in food, the spaghetti sauce over the food did the trick.

Not long after all this a friend told me that onions (and garlic) will build up a toxicity in dogs, depending on the size of the dog and the amount of onions or garlic. There is a sulfide inside the onions and garlic that dogs cannot digest. Nothing ever happened to Koko according to the comparison of what I researched on credible vet web sites, but I thought it best to change to something else that was stinky and yummy, and leave the garlic, spaghetti sauce, and people food... to people. The next venture was my discovery of Kroger grocery-store brand canned dog food (55-cents for 13oz.). Especially the ultra-stinky "beef and liver flavor." I now use 1/2 can of the canned food, fill the rest of the bowl with her regular dry dog food, get my water as hot as it gets out of the faucet and add hot water to the mix. I put the canned food in first, break it up with a spoon, add a glucosamine tablet (broken in half), then the dry food on top, water, mix it so a small chunk of the stinky canned food is on top... bah-duh-bing. I have not once prepared this and she wasn't sitting on the edge of her bed, waiting to chow down. Most times licking her lips and shaking her ears in excitement as I bring it on... haha.

These days, Koko sleeps a lot. She is an old dog, but she still learns new tricks. It wasn't until she was 8 years old that she was taught to sit up and beg. With her poochie-belly and silly side-hanging front legs, she looks completely ridiculous and hilarious when she does "Koko beg." She is also an expert on the leash these days. She is so gentle on the end of the leash, you hardly know she is there. If she is about to walk on the opposite side of a tree of street sign, all I need say (one time) is "this way" and she stops her path, crosses back around to my side of the obstruction, and we continue the walk. She usually walks just ahead of me, it used to be right at the end of the 25-foot retractable cable, but not so much that anymore. When she hurt her leg, it was kind of the opposite. It was like I was almost dragging her through her walk. You could tell she was in some pain, as she hobbled through her business and her little walk. This morning, though, she was bounding and dancing around. When there is a flick of snow on the ground, she scoops her head down and laps some into her mouth. I swear dogs are in some ways very similar to little children. She loves to eat snow. I'll say to her "what is that white stuff?" and she'll lap it up some more, its hilarious. Or she'll root into it if it is a bit deeper until she has a small pile of snow on her nose when she looks up. When she roots around like that, I call her "my little piggy dog." She's got those floppy lab-like piggy ears, and a big pot-bellied-pig almost bare belly. It fits...

Not only does she sleep, but she also snores. You can tell when she is really deep into her sleep time, she will exhale little puffs of air out of the sides of her mouth. She also sighs as she is relaxing. You'll hear her inhale, hold it, then let it out in a quick flash of air. There is something about listening to her breath as she sleeps that sort of makes me drowsy. Probably because she has curled up at the foot of my bed every night for years and years. I can lay down at night, and once I hear her start off to sleep, it makes me sleepy hearing her breath and sleep. Funny, the connection between man and doggie. I guess the folks who abandoned her missed out on all this great stuff. She is some kind of Guinness Book of World Records dog. Have you ever seen some kind of movie where the actor or actress had a dog, and all they had to do was move their hand in a certain way, and the dog knew what they meant for them to do? That's Koko. I guess she missed her starring role along side John Wayne...

I am so in-tune with this dog that I can whisper commands to her and she will comply. A few years ago I traveled to Mississippi to check on a special guitar a fellow had for sale. Koko was downstairs standing by the fireplace, and we were up in the vaulted section of the ceiling, in a little loft room. I told the man showing me his guitars, "check this out, I can whisper commands to that dog and she will obey." From probably about 100-feet away, and on the second floor of his house, I simply whispered, "Koko sit." and without a second thought, she simply put her butt to the floor. Just like that. Little did he know, she knew exactly where I was, and she was paying attention to me all the time.

I sincerely think the key to obedient pets is the time the owner is willing to spend with them. When I visit folks who have pets, I can tell how much time they spend with their pets by how much their pets listen to them. It is annoying to me when I might go to someone's house and their little lap dog is still barking and growling at me an hour or more after I first arrived. To me, that isn't the pet's fault, its the owner's fault for not spending more time with their animal. And I have learned the cure for the begging dog at the table. Its actually very easy. Just never, ever, ever feed your dog scraps when you are sitting at the table. It doesn't matter what I eat or when, Koko never pays me any mind. Because I have never fed her junk and table scraps off the table. How annoying is it when you go to someone's house and their little lap dog is climbing all over your leg at dinner time, begging for food. The dog simply associates the table, the setting down of food, and meal time, with the getting of scraps. This is not the dog's fault, either. Its the pet owner's fault for giving them junk off the table.

Have you ever been by someone's yard and their dog is constantly barking? I used to think it was the dog breed, or the idea that they were tied up outside. Nope, this is a pet owner issue, too, I'm sure of it. The dog is trying to tell the owner something. I lived next to a house in Mississippi where they had a Pit Bull tied up in their back yard. The poor dog barked 24 hours a day non-stop. As I started noticing, no one ever payed the dog any attention. As I noticed more, the dog never got any food or water, either. I then recognized the dog was barking due to duress and stress. That is when I decided to pick up the phone and call the sheriff. You just can't neglect a dog for days and days. It just isn't right.

Or have you been at someone's house and their big dog just won't stop barking? Pet owner issue. The pet owner hasn't spent enough time with their animal to get connected to the animal's world. Canines have a den instinct. Even in the wild, there is a commotion in the dog den when a family dog comes home. But when "all is clear" the den settles down and the barking and commotion stops. In the widl, dogs do not bark constantly for an hour when a new dog comes home. It is part of a dog's normal social structure. It does no good to yell at animals. Or beat them with a rolled up newspaper. You have to BE THERE FOR THEM. And one of my pet peeves with pet ownership abroad is that many people just get a dog and it is part of their furniture. When he or she barks, its an inconvenience to the owner, so they (even in a small way) mistreat the dog until it shuts up.

Koko barks, usually only when someone knocks at the door or comes over. OK, that's the natural side. I have learned to let her come to the door and see that everything is OK, then the command is simply, "Koko, get in your bed." And that is the end of it. She doesn't go on and on with the barking after I have made the decision that all is clear. But... during the alert session, there is no quieting her. Her instincts are on alert status, and even at her demure and melancholy way, she still barks. I thank God for this, actually. Living by myself in a not-so-kind world, I am glad to have a "Koko Security System." There aren't many burglars that are going to be willing to break into a house with a barking dog around. And unless she gets an "all clear" signal from me, she is going to continue to bark, and protect her turf. "Yay, Koko." it is amazing how brave dogs are...

She will also protect my truck when I am away. My uncle learned this the hard way one day. My truck was in his driveway, and Koko was sleeping inside. It was a decent fall day, so the temps were such that the windows were rolled up. My uncle came up to the truck, being a stranger not known to Koko, and tapped on the truck window. He told me later that he thought I had (quote) a "vicious dog" as she lurched at him from the seat to the point that he said her teeth made contact with the truck window. So much for bad guys trying to steal my truck with Koko around. Yay, Koko.

My mom loved Koko. Somehow her and my dog formed some kind of symbiotic relationship. Koko really spent the crux of her time with me, but when ever I would go visit mom and dad, she was mama's dog. My mom was always the one that appreciated that I had a dog. Now, going back in my history to the days when I was about 2 years old, we had a collie dog named "Lady" that (mom said) "used to follow me every where." If she ever needed to know where I was, all she had to do was look for Lady, and I'd be close by. I have a picture somewhere of me when I was that age, in a fenced in part of our yard, and there is Lady laying on the ground, and me playing nearby. I guess I've always had a connection to dogs. Now my mom has gone on to be with Jesus. Of the many things she left with me, I suppose it was the appreciation for dogs. My parents were never really "dog people" but they did have Lady almost fifty years ago. I don't recollect that they ever had another dog after her. Mostly our ten acres had my sister's horses, and a barn with a hay loft that when it was empty, we could play full-court basketball up there.

I'll always be a "country boy" for as long as I live. I'm not at all comfortable living in the city but it is the life I have for now. As God provides, I'll pay my rent and be content in my dwelling for now. But my heart and my mind often goes back to the mountains. I will never capture the exact life I had there sixteen years ago, as that life ended in a brutal divorce and is not one I will ever go back to. Nor can I ever return to that mountain on Macktown Gap Road. Neither can Koko ever go back to her original home there. But the memories are still there for both man and dog. Koko still remembers the chatter bumped dirt road. Any and every time I turn onto any kind of dirt road these days, her ears perk up and she makes a doggie fuss. Its like she remembers the mountain in North Carolina. Or, if she sees any kind of bicycle, she growls or even barks out loud. Other than that one mountain biker, there were also children just down the mountain who road bicycles and I think they used to mistreat her or something because she simply hates all bicycles to this day. For "fun" sometimes I will purposefully take her on a ride to downtown Ann Arbor where she can have a field day sitting in her truck seat and barking at all the U of M students riding their bikes. It seems to give her life to perk up and bark at bicyclers.

I have no idea how much longer Koko will be with me. I think one of the tricks to her long life are my prayers. Many times I have been petting her, and while laying my hands on her I'll simply ask God to give her a long, healthy life. 17 years old and in pretty good health, do you think God answers those prayers? I do. He takes care of our lives, and cares about the things in our life that mean something to us. He has taken care of my 2000 Chevy pickup truck, too. The day I drove it off the dealer lot in 2000, with 4 miles showing on the odometer, I was not hardly out of the parking lot, and I said a prayer dedicating my truck to God and asking him to watch over it. That was 12 years and (now over) 189,000 nearly maintenance-trouble-free miles ago. Do you think he answers those prayers? I do.

I know this has been a rather long e-mail. I imagine that some folks saw it's length and didn't get past the first paragraph or so... that's ok. I just wanted to send something out from my heart about my precious best-friend-doggie Koko. Not many dogs get to see 17 years of life. At the equivalent of 7 years of human life to one dog's life, she is now 119 human/dog years old. I wonder if she would make it to the Today Show? Probably not, she is only famous within my small circle of friends, and within these four walls.

I didn't get to see her be born, but I did get to witness not one but TWO litters of puppies from this wonderful dog. Then we had her spayed and she has been an awesome pet for the last sixteen years. The second litter was just as easy to give away at Wal-Mart as the first. For nearly two decades of my five decade-old life, she has been there. Sleeping at my feet, nuzzling at my wrist, chasing after squirrels at the end of her leash, dragging all forms of who-knows-what road kill into our yard, haha. She is one of the only things in my life that has been true, consistent, never-failing, and always there for me. And she has never ran up any expensive vet bills, either. Not only has she been blessed with long life, but outside of her regular rabies shot, etc... the only time I have ever had to take her to the vet for anything in 16 years was her time she was spayed, and when she pulled her claw at Starbucks, September, 2010. Other than that, 17-years of maintenance-trouble-free-miles.

My Koko dog.

ps. This tip applies to those uploading pics from their home computer/PC... it doesn't apply to uploading from phones, etc...

If you are using the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser, and you are having trouble uploading pictures to your Mingle account...

...try using the Mozilla Firefox web browser instead.

I was going nuts trying to shrink the picture size, then "browse" to the picture, then would click on "Upload" (here on my Mingle account)... using the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, all that would happen is that the Browse box got wiped of any of the location address, then no picture would get uploaded.

Logged in to my Mingle account using the Mozilla Firefox browser...

...first time I browsed to my picture location on my computer, it was upload in seconds with ZERO trouble.

Thought I would post this here because I think I am probably not the only one having this problem.

BTW, I am using Windows 7, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 9...

...my Mozilla Firefox version is v10.0.1

You can download the free Firefox browser here:

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/

Just figured it out...

...evidently some kind of Microsoft Internet Explorer glitch-o... logged on using the Mozilla Firefox browser, bah-duh-bing... pics uploaded with zero problem...

Microsoft sucks, LOL

I guess the one silly photo with the shower curtain in the background will have to suffice, LOL

PC

Perhaps its a Mingle system glitch...

The one photo I am trying to upload is:

28.7KB

and

175 x 184 (or, 32,200 total) no where near 10 million...

same thing is happening to me...

...can someone post what the maximum file size is here (in megabytes or kilobytes...)

...also, is there a maximum size as far as pixels x pixels...

I have used Photoshop to shrink my photos to 175x175, still nothing...

yes, they are jpegs... no, not trying to post from a phone...

Does Mingle have a minimum post count before you can post pics? i.e., user must post X-amount of times in order to be able to post pictures?

Funny question to ask on a forum that posts your "joined" date under your avatar pic... LOL.

Actually longer than what mine says. Was "TelephoneMan" back in the "JustSayHi" days...

... hung out here mostly when FeralCatLady used to be on... haven;t heard from her in years now, no idea what ever happened to her...

I haven't posted much here lately, not sure if I'm bored, or wanting to entertain myself again with this kind of stuf or what.

Hope everyone is doing well.