You Might Be A Great Dane Owner If......

 When you wake up to a giant snout licking your face.
 When you get home the first thing you do is see your doggy rofl.
 When you have a separate bed for your dog that is at least the same size as your bed.
 When you walk him down the street and you know you are going to be stopped at least once with the usual question. 

When you have more pics of your Dane in your phone than anything or anyone else.You find out your private conversations with your Dane are public knowledge - and they quote back to you what you say to your dog.

 When it's time to go to bed and the dog looks at you with longing eyes, pleeeeaaaasssseeeeee let me sleep with you?

 When you go to buy dog food and your usual purchase is 2 or more 50 pound bags of food and people are giving you the crazy look. 

When dinner becomes a publicly traded commodity - with your Dane. 

When sitting in your Lazy Boy and the dog comes up to you and his head is higher up than yours! 

When you go to Tractor Supply and buy a flat shovel - to clean up your Dane's cow sized poop.

When you go to the bathroom and - the Dane is trying to stuff himself through the door to be with you - in the bathroom while you are doing your thing. No, I don't allow THAT! LOL 

When you're walking down the street with your Dane/s and people come out on their porch and start a long distance shouting conversation with you. "What kind of dog is that?" being yelled at you from a minimum of 100 to over 300 feet away.

Or do it like Jeff Foxworthy and rednecks: YOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUU..... MIGHT BE.....A DANE OWNER.................when you're walking the dog down the main street and people stop in the middle of traffic to take photos of the dog! 

YOOOOOUUUUU.......MIGHT.....be a Dane owner if you take him to the vet and he REFUSES to get on the scale no matter how many people are trying. "Uhhhh, sir, we have to have his weight to determine how much heart worm medicine to give him" "Well what do you want me to do, the dog is sitting down like a donkey, he won't budge!" "Can you pick him up? We can weigh you both and then weigh you and then subtract the weight". Have you EVER picked up a 150 pound dog? That doesn't want to be picked up? I found out that day how much overweight I am!

 YOUUUUUUU...MIGHT....Be an Dane owner if the roast you just pulled out of the oven and have resting on the kitchen counter mysteriously disappears. Everyone is looking at everyone else? Huh? What happened to the roast? And thennnnnn.... you look at a giant dog.....licking it's chops with the MOST pathetic look you have ever seen on anyone or any dog! 

YOOUUUUUUU..... MIGHT>>> Be a Dane owner if when you pull up to a drive thru window and the window in the back is open - of course - the Dane's head is sticking out the window and the worker at the window inncoently looks out to recieve the payment and gasps - either in horror, disbelief or delight - when they see the dog. Amplify that by a thousand if you have 2 or more Danes in the car! And I'm sorry, but I can't avoid the nasty stuff.....

YOOOOOUUUUUUU.....MIIIIIIGGGGGGHHHHHTTT....BE A DANE OWNER....if you wake up in the middle of the night and have the most foul smell you have ever smelled curling your nostrils. You get up, you already know what happened, you just have to find it. You walk into the bathroom cause it ain't in your bedroom and find out the dog has diarhea. That after you just stepped in it in your bare feet while walking into the bathroom. You look at the floor, the walls, the toilet, the shower and everything else - covered with it. It is 2 am and you spend almost 2 solid hours cleaning up the mess. You look at your Dane with sympathy - and then realize he could do it all over againt - OUT! Get thee thither! 

And on a little more sober note, when your dog brings great joy to a person that is depressed, going through hard times and the encounter they have with your dog gives them at least a moment of brevity and a glimpse back to when times were better. I could go on...and on...and on..it's the fun and wonder of being a Dane owner!

Posting will be limited on here since there isn't that much going on.  I coudl talk about issues of the day that interest me, but I find it more engaging to do that in groups where both like-minded and opposing minded people gather to debate.  Which is usually quite entertaining because many of them usually have no clue what they are talking about, but speak with emotion so that they would sound to the uninformed as IF they know what they are talking about through their limited powers of persuasion.  When someone like me comes along with facts and hands them - facts without the emotion - they go off the deep end. They cannot come back with a logical response and so, they have to revert to getting angry and letting loose with expletives and all kinds of non-endearing rhetoric.
BTW, anyone that wants to engage in such groups, I have links to several of them. I don't take it too seriously though.  It's a lot of race stuff and groups full of blacks and a few whites, whites always being attacked and ganged up on.  Thick-skinned type of thing.

Onto things of current interest.

Addler is doing well, though he has started to try to chew on things he shouldn't be chewing on.  I am very much aware of the puppyhood phase of his growth right now - which if you looked at the dog you would wonder how an animal that big could still be considered a puppy, but he's only 13 months old and in Danedom, that is still a puppy status and still very much growing to do. He is now at 128 pounds, I would be a little surprised if he doesn't reach mid 150's to 160's range.

I have him on almost constant supervision when he is in my room in the house, for I do nto want that dog chewing up things he shouldn't be. Thankfully I am there at the moment it happens and I can tell him NO firmly but still being nice cause the dog is too loveable, lol, he gets the message.  Oh, I can't chew on socks, shoes or blankets.  No damage done yet excepting a hole in a pair of tennis shoes. I have my $350 cowboy boots out of dog range, I did that form the git go knowing a Dane's propensity for chewing things when they are puppies.

New Year's Eve was home, but I was part of the festivities here.  They have close friends - they being my landlords - that come over frequently.  They brought copious amounts of alcohol.  Again and as usual, I had a few drinks but nothing even remotely close to being called drunk.  Not into that.  But it was fun, even if the guys were completely bombed out of their minds by the time it was over, they weren't acting stupid. If you get drunk and you act stupid while being in that condition, I likely won't want to be anywhere near you, for I am repulsed by that stupid kind of behavior.

I went to church tonight (Saturday) instead of tomorrow morning because I was asked to show up to help serve Communion.  They just recently started a Saturday evening service versus 3 services on Sunday morning (church has grown well beyond it's ability to seat everyone that would potentially show up at one service only).  I won't turn down an opportunity to serve in the church, even if it is short- lived. However, they informed us that next week, the Hospitality workers need more people and the leaders are going to have a short meeting after service.  I likely will show up to that to see if I can fit anything into my schedule.  Hospitality is all kinds of stuff. Setting up and tearing down for special events; visiting families with dinnner/food and helping them out with certainly functions to ease the load in cases of a tragedy (death) or someone in the hospital.  Stuff like that.  I used to do quite a lot of that in various churches, I would like to get involved in that capacity again.

Actually, the message was soooo good I may go back tomorrow as well.  I need to get myself motivated and out of this funk.  I'm sitting around trying to find a lady on dating sites and so far it's just a bunch of people that are doing nothing more than looking for sex partners.  To each his/her own, I'm into relationships.  Maybe if I just get far more involved in church I'll meet someone there? Who knows, but I am setting goals for myself - note that that is not New Year's resolutions - goals I can deal with for they don't necessarily HAVE to be done in a certain time frame excepting those kinds of things that once you start them you really have to keep with it until it's done.

This week, I am headed to Planet Fitness and force myself back into at least  3 day per week workout regiment.  There are just things that I have gotten out because of my situation with Val and her demand to have all of my time and nothing "extracirricular".  I don't really think that working out is a frivolous waste of time.  I don't really WANT to do it, either, I just have the need to lose about 20 pound right now.  I was shocked at the vet's off the other day.  Addler would NOT get on the scale and I ended up having to pick the dog up, weigh both of us and then put him down and weigh me and then subtract.  I'm at 214 pounds which is quite unnacceptable.  My eating habits are to blame - not eating enough throughout the day, starting too late in the day to eat and ending too early.  Metabolism killer.  The dog is at 128 pounds and growing.

My car is still running well - albeit numerous minor problems - I'm just trying to wait it out and save some money up.  I really do not want to take out another 401k loan.  I'm killing it by doing that even though the last loan was taken out of dire necessity.  I"ve gotten through quite a lot now without taking out loans, but I never really get ahead.  Save up a grand and have to spend it on this and that. The obvious necessity - to me anyway - is more money and I still have yet to hear back about that.  But, the holidays are over and this coming week I will ask yet again about it.

I can't think of much else.  Caleb is still in Portland so going to Phoenix is on hold til' he goes back.  My living situation remains very good - at least as far as I can tell. I dunno, I don't really think these people would just throw me out, but this is life and in life, you just never know what is going to happen.  We all get along well with each other is what I can say about it.  I spend almost equal amounts of time out "there" in their living space visiting with them and hibernating in here, my bedroom, chilling out. Addler is hilarious.  I'll have to get a video of him playing with his squeaky toy.  He throws it in the air, jumps across the room to get it, picks it up, throws it back across the room, the dog is incredibly goofy! And quite entertaining, lol.  And very clingy now.  Ever since visiting Fin and Bethany, he has been far more inclined to follow me all over the place than before we went there.  Which there is nothing wrong with that, not what I'm saying, actually he's acting much more characteristic of a Dane that wants to do nothing but follow his humans around all over the place and be involved in every single thing his humans are doing.

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That was yesterday.  I'm considering taking Addler to a very long walking trail that appears from the overview to be in well wooded area. I am trying to find a place to take him where I can take him off of the leash and let him run. There is also a large and small dog park near the beginning of the trail.  Just not sure if I want to drive clear over there today. Kinda started looking into the a little late, it's already 1 pm, would have rather found this earlier and already had it done and over with.  There is a dog park here where I am living but it has restrictive hours.

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More time passed. I decided to simply take Addler on a nice long walk around the various neighborhoods here. This is an older community with older houses.  Some of them are beautiful and nicely maintained, others are dilapidated and falling apart - and finding this all lumped together on any given street.  I was looking at other people's landscaping ideas, but there wasn't much going on.  Green here doesn't really work, lots of natural greenery. What is needed is the bright, bold colors of flowers or flowering plants and trees.  There was one house that had a nice floral arrangement in front of their house - it was pretty nice looking actually, but that was really the only one I saw out of hundreds of houses. Amazing more people aren't into landscaping here.

Well enough for this entry.