Skip to main content

Childhood Obesity

This. This makes me crazy.

I am so tired of reading about the childhood obesity epidemic that it makes my eyes cross. We're making our schools feed our children healthier lunches - but what do they come home to eat? What did they eat before they got to school? If commercials and other people's shopping carts are anything to judge by, we send our children off to school filled with the refined sugar that comes from most cereals and convenince "breakfast" foods such as Pop-Tarts and Toaster Strudels. Don't have time to fix your children breakfast? Fill 'em up with sugar! And when they get home, be a good mother and give them sugar filled fruit juices and fat-laden pizza rolls - be a 'cool' mama, mama!

Meanwhile, our playgrounds sit empty because of the incorrectly perceived threat of pedophiles and kidnappers lurking on every street corner when the reality is that your dear uncle is more likely to molest your child and your ex-spouse is more likely to kidnap them. We don't allow our children to walk to and from school any longer either. Don't believe me - go here and check out some of her posts. Free Range Kids is a great blog, but it makes my stomach churn just to know that we have to reassure parents that their children should be allowed to be children.

I'm happy that I was raised as a feral child out in the Texas plains. My mother rarely knew were we were - and we were turned loose with horses, guns, knives, lunch and no cell phone. I miss those days.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

High Toes

Sometimes I get into discussions with people about dog structure and really, really, it makes me want to beat my head against a wall. However, those always make me publish those words and pictures that have been rattling around in my head for a while. Case in point – someone posted on a board that they thought that a high toe on a dog was a “cosmetic fault.” My opinion on this is fairly solid – NO! A high toe is a STRUCTUAL fault. Someone then posted that they wanted “proof.” Ah, here we go. The boondoggle of proof! Studies! Someone, somewhere, somehow agreeing or disagreeing with my point! The unfortunate thing is that it really isn’t to be found. Our Proof wanter found a website in which a couple had a Staffordshire Terrier with a high toe, and they readily admitted that the high toe caused issues with her gait, but then concluded that it was just a cosmetic issue. Hmm, really? The document can be found here , you can look at the pictures and read it for yourself. (Don't use the

All Positive - All BS

I, in my infinate inability to keep my mouth shut, offered someone training advice on a public forum for their resource guarding Rat Terrier. I told them that when he does the growling bit, calmly walk over, pick him up by the scruff of the neck, and put him in his kennel for a few hours. In my own experience with Ratties, this works pretty well because the dog learns that if you attempt to guard something, you will be corrected and then removed from your treasure and the rest of the pack. I didn't think that this was in any way controversial. Oh, how wrong I was! I found out that I might as well have told her to punt the dog like a football across the room, because that is what "scruffing" is to the "All Positive" fanatics. Of course, their suggestions would lead to reinforcement of the behavior or out and out terror. There were two camps - the first camp said to "redirect the dog's behavior by offering it a treat to give up it's treasure

Brindle and the Rat Terrier

It seems like every once in a while the topic of brindle comes up in the Rat Terrier world. Teeth are gnashed and garments are rendered because brindle is not an acceptable pattern in our breed, and the standard says that brindle is a disqualification. The standard probably won’t change any time soon, and I certainly hope that it will NEVER include brindle! Why? The UKC standard says, in the very beginning, that “These terriers probably included crosses between the Smooth Fox Terrier, the Manchester Terrier and the now extinct white English Terrier… Some of these dogs were crossed with Whippets or Italian Greyhounds (for speed) and Beagles (for hunting ability).” Let’s take a look at the ancestors of the Rat Terrier and how their standards treat brindle: Smooth Fox Terrier UKC : Serious Fault AKC: Objectionable Manchester Terrier: UKC: Disqualification AKC: Disqualification Whippet: UKC: Any color/pattern accepted. AKC: Any color/pattern accepted. Italian Greyhounds: UKC: Disqualif