Before I start with the picture dump, you might notice a familiar face has come back. Harley belonged to my father-in-law’s daughter and husband, along with two other dogs. Then they had some troubles and had to move, so they asked him to take Harley. After two years and all of us being really attached, they asked for her back and Frank didn’t want to tell them no. Then last month, Frank told us their marriage wasn’t working out, and that Harley was going to be given away. ‘s all around. So we agreed to split the costs of Harley, and the last time Frank went out to visit them in Maine, he brought her back. Brian (not my Brian, her former dad) took her to the vet and got her all up-to-date on her shots, treated for fleas, tested for heartworm, and sent her with all of her records and six months worth of heartworm pills. So other than food, she won’t cost us anything until she needs more heartworm pills.

And…I guess that means I have three dogs now! Jeez-o-petes. I still haven’t wrapped my head around that. We are also dog sitting for my sister-in-law this weekend so there are seven dogs in this house right now (our max was eight, Christmas with dog families is fun). I won’t lie, it’s a full time job. So it’s probably a good thing that I only work part time and my father-in-law is retired, everyone gets along (well, except that Chester is hella jealous of Harley and doesn’t like it that there’s a dog bigger than him), and they’re not alone for more than two hours a day barring emergencies.

So here’s my photo dog cat madness, and underneath is a rant about idiots who don’t get their dogs fixed and the bigger idiots who buy puppies from them. Happy Mother’s Day, spay and neuter/don’t shop, adopt!

And here is where i’m going to rant. A very popular fashion/lifestyle blogger posted about her parents buying a puppy via a sign in front of a random house, and I left her a polite comment about how it made me sad to see her posting about it so casually, especially given how many people read her blog (not surprisingly, she did not approve my comment). I am passionate about several things, but most are personal passions. Like, I am passionate about veganism, but I recognize that being vegan means changing everything you eat, wear, use, etc. for most people. It isn’t difficult, but you definitely have to turn the way you were brought up on it’s ear.

I am really, really passionate about animal adoption. There is no fucking reason to spend hundreds and up to thousands of dollars on a god damned dog. A shelter dog vs. a breeder dog isn’t going to make a difference to you, but it makes a big difference to the homeless dogs. I hear:

“Oh, but we want a specific dog.”
That’s great. Go on Pet Finder and search for that breed, if you can’t find one in a local shelter, I can guarantee you that there is a breed-specific rescue.

“Dogs from breeders need homes too!”
Breeders are selling a ‘product’, and like all people in a business, if their product isn’t selling, they’ll stop making them. Will they dump unpurchased puppies at the pound? They might, but if you think they’ll do something like that, why would you want to give that person your money anyway? I tend to not give my money to businesses if I think they’re run by shitty people.

OR: “These people were selling puppies on the side of the road for $50 and they looked soooo sad.”
Same thing. Don’t reward people for being irresponsible. Do you think they’re going to take that money and get their dog fixed? No, you’ll probably see them back on the road with another litter next year.

“The ad in the paper said free puppies, why would I pay $100+ to adopt a dog when I can get one for FREE?!”
Spoiler alert: dogs aren’t free. ‘free puppies’ means, “I was too lazy to get my dogs fixed and then they humped/got humped and now I need to dump all of these puppies.” Those puppies will need shots, and if you are anything close to responsible, to be fixed themselves. The initial shots and the surgery will cost way more for you to do with your vet than it costs to adopt a dog from your local shelter. My local APL often has ‘deals’ where dogs and cats over a year old are a special price. I can get a cat that’s been completely vetted and fixed for $20 right now.

“Shelter dogs were dumped for a reason. I don’t want a dog with problems/I want a new puppy.”

Yeah, they were dumped for a reason: either their owner legitimately couldn’t care for them anymore, or their owner is a dick who dumped them. Neither of those things means that there is something wrong with the dog. Dogs are like people, some of them are assholes. Some of them are more difficult to deal with than others. Sometimes it’s the way they were raised, sometimes it’s their personality. If you want a dog with specific traits, going to a shelter is actually BETTER because you can talk to foster parents about the dogs, or the staff can usually tell you a lot about the dogs if they’ve been there long enough to get settled. When I agreed to take Bonny when she was a baby, I got lucky that she wasn’t a stereotypical yorkie and a pretty awesome dog. I don’t think i’d ever want a puppy again.

I also don’t understand why it seems to be accepted that we get cats from shelters and no one really breeds cats (unless they’re fancy kinds), but the same people who adopt a cat from a shelter and talk about homeless kitties think it’s a-okay to buy a dog from a breeder, which creates more homeless animals. I love cats, I love dogs, and I wish there weren’t so many of them around.

Draw Something: sendmorecops
______ With Friends: sendmorebrains (I play Words, Hanging, and Scramble)
Instagram: braaaaaaaains (eight a’s)

Since i’m using an ipod and not a phone, I can only use it at home (unless I take pictures and upload them later) so my instagram is almost all cats and dogs.

Last week I sprained my wrist and then didn’t take care of it properly, so I ended up wearing a brace and sitting in a heating pad for a week, while trying and mostly failing to do things right handed, and then due to some super stressful family problems I got the worst eczema outbreak i’ve had since I ditched dairy. So I started Draw something by using my right thumb and now i’m using my left ring finger (because the rest of my hand is covered in bandages), so if you play me and are wondering why even my stick figures look like a drunken toddler drew them, that’s why.

Also because I am really, really bad at drawing.

One of the items I ordered got oversold, so Leigh emailed me and asked me what I wanted as a replacement. My reply was, “Chocolate, other jerky’s, chocolate, any non-perishable food item, chocolate, whatevs.” I got extra chocolate wrapped up like a present and a jar of Biscoff cookie spread, way more than the value of what they were replacing. This isn’t the only time that my Cosmo’s order has included a little something extra. Ken and Leigh are good people and I wish them luck in the next part of their life.

And now why i’m putting my url on my photos from now on: Pinterest and tumblr.

Actually, since this is long and not everyone will care to read that much about the subject, let me say that it is NOT because I think I take amazing pictures. I have nothing to sell, I don’t have ads on my site that I want more people to see. Since I only update about once a month i’m not even really concerned with how many people read/look at my blog. I used to think it was kind of ridiculous for non-professionals/non-artists to watermark their photos. If you still do, feel free to think i’m an asshole.

I have a Pinterest account and I think it’s great. I love having visual bookmarks of recipes, makeup ideas, gardening ideas, etc. There are some things about it that aren’t so great, like the fact that they save a hi-res copy of the pinned image. And that so many people DO NOT ATTRIBUTE/LINK BACK TO THE CORRECT SOURCE. I’m saying this as a user and not as someone who has found my images on there, I hate it when I see a pin I like and want to click through to the blog/site, and…it goes to a tumblr, or the person saved it and uploaded it themselves. Don’t do that, guys! I know when you’re re-pinning stuff you probably don’t always go and look at where the image came from, but if you are pinning something, make sure it’s from the site of the person who it belongs to, so at least people who want to follow the trail, can.

My friend Sunny has made a bunch of posts about this in the past month, if you want to read more about it.

What really gets me is tumblr. I kind of hate tumblr, but I know a lot of people who use it. My husband bought a tumblr t-shirt just to give me grief. Sometimes when I check my flickr stats, I get links from tumblr, and mostly I just make that Marge Simpson sound and move on. It bothers me that someone can post nothing of their own and get a couple dozen likes/reblogs for it, but the person who actually created the content gets jack. I’ve never turned off sharing of my photos on flickr though, until I found a referral on one of my food photos for a pro-anorexia tumblr. I absolutely do not want anyone using anything of mine to support hurting themselves, if I can help it. Can I?

But even if you have sharing disabled and your photo protection as high as it can be, someone can still use the bookmarklet function on either of these sites. The only other thing you can do is opt out of the flickr API search. But someone can still stumble across your photo and use the bookmarklet.

Now, a lot of people straight-up do not care about this stuff. That’s fine. If you don’t care, none of this matters. If you do care, you are basically screwed. There is nothing you can do except get off of the internet, because this is the way things are now. So that’s why I decided to just start putting my url in the bottom corner of my photos. Sure, someone can save my photo from one of these sites and crop it out, but considering how easy it is to repost things these days, less people are going to go through that effort. And if they do, there’s nothing I can do about that!