Galactapuss Vs ZombiePoms: Haaands (image warning)

[galactapuss]

[dreamer]

That one on the bottom right is scary. Did you make it out alive?

[galactapuss]

When you consider how much of the household (food, land, equipment, time and effort) is geared around them, no. They are the ultimate masters of the family.

Reaction Shots
www.johnperkins.com/dog12.jpg
www.johnperkins.com/dog15.jpg

Bath Time
www.johnperkins.com/bath1.jpg
www.johnperkins.com/bath2.jpg

Dinner
www.johnperkins.com/images/puppy01.jpg

We Serve Our Tiny Fuzzy Masters
www.johnperkins.com/needle.jpg

[dreamer]

So your one of their human slaves? It must be nice having something to look forward to when going home!

I think I just threw up a little rainbow in my mouth.

[galactapuss]

It's hard to get them to all be quiet at the same time and the yipping's kind of annoying. I don't know what it would take, but I have yet to see any of them not go 'oh my god oh my god it's a rock star' bonkers happy to see me.

I may be a human slave, but Carol's truly under their control. Poms have about a 50% mortality rate from birth to adulthood. She'll occasionally have to go on get-up-every-2hrs duty to feed/drain/inject them with whatever. It's nice when one pulls through and sad when one she's been trying to save for weeks on end doesn't make it.

[dreamer]

Doesnt that make you happy?

T__T Oh no! Does it affect all of their species? A sickness or genetic defect? Does she even get up in the night?

[galactapuss]

The mortality rate? It affects the entire breed (pomeranians), but not the entire species (species lupus or grey wolves, including sub-species familiaris, including all domesticated dogs). Partly it has to do with having selectively bred for smaller size over the last 200 years or so. Carol occasionally gets female puppies that are too small to be bred once grown- if they were, it would be an automatic cesarean section (affordable if it happens occasionally with a particular bitch, but not affordable if it happens every time) and significant risk to the life of the bitch when they had a litter. It happens for a host of reasons- the size of the puppy, respiratory health, gastro-intestinal health, the puppy's desire to live, etc.. Compare that to pet store parrots, with a mortality rate from the wild to the store of about 98%. That is, you have to catch about 50 parrots (usually in south America) to end up with 1 live parrot at a pet store in the U.S..

Yes, she gets up at night when she has one of those. Up every 2 hrs is the shortest period i've ever seen her have to get up at. More often it's every 4 to 6 hrs. She does that partly because she wants the puppy itself to live (I see how sad she is when one doesn't make it) and partly from a financial standpoint. Because she breeds for size and pedigree, her puppies sell for around $800 - $1,000 each these days.

I have occasionally wondered if we count as a puppy mill (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_mill), but i'm fairly confident we don't. Going from the wiki... She doesn't sell sick dogs. The ones that have a defect (wrong color marking, messed up hip, etc.) are either kept here for their entire natural life or spayed/neutered and sold (around $300 I think) for family pets. They definitely get medical care. She used to work as a vet assistant and is friends with the local vet, so she can do a good bit of medical stuff at home. Side note- most of what you pay at a vet's office for dog/cat shots is mark-up on the medicine and paying for the vet to give the shot. The actual cost of the shot itself is usually less than half of that you pay. The poms have plenty of room to run, so they get all the exercise they want. They live in a group environment, so they get plenty of socialization. She tracks their heat cycles, so she knows which male has to be in with which females at what times. Poor diets- hah. They get a mix of 2 dog foods that each cost about $50 per bag. We spend a little over $200 per month on dog food. I haven't tracked the actual numbers, but I think we spend more feeding one pound of pom than we do feeding one pound of human.

The older dogs (beyond 8 or 9 years or so) get put out to pasture, which for us just means they live out their natural lives here, with the rest of the poms, but without being bred. Some breeders (yes, there are bad guys in this world too) will breed a bitch until she dies. While you can get litters past 8 or 9 years, at that age a litter would pose a significant risk to the life of the mother.

[dreamer]

I guess that was bad terminology on my part. Or maybe because we had to read about speciation in anthro class. And I guess I was kind of confused, because I thought you meant she had to do that for every pom, and not just the puppies.

Do you know what a typical litter is?

But humans are probably 100-200% pounds heavier than poms?

By your description and the wiki's description, it sounds like your a responsible breeder: "raise their animals with the intent to produce a healthy dog, and to provide a quality pet for responsible owners." And probably a big difference is that she really cares for the puppies and adults.

[galactapuss]

She only has to do that for some of the puppies- the ones that get sick. Part of that has to do with the mother's behavior. Some are terribly irresponsible, have to be constantly yelled 'box' at (get in the box and feed your puppy), or don't produce enough milk. I've seen litter sizes from 1 to 5. If an average human is, say, 180 lbs, and an average pom (here, at least) is about 6 pounds, we're 30x as heavy or 2900% heavier. I don't think we have enough poms here, total, to equal the weight of 1 human. If we spend just over $200 per month on pom food and we have 3 adult humans, then we would have to spend over $600 per month on groceries for us to be more expensive, per pound, than the poms to feed. I'm fairly certain our grocery bill isn't that bad.

They're also good watchdogs. Not that they're physically intimidating or anything, but they bark whenever they see or hear something amiss. As a for instance, let's say there are 20 poms and each pom has a 50/50 chance of noticing a burglar. For the burglar to get inside without the poms alerting us, he/she would have to sneak by all of the poms, not just one. The odds of being noticed would be 1-(0.5^20) or 0.999999046, where 1.0 is complete certainty. So a 0.000000954 (roughly 1 in 10 million) chance of success. Those aren't valid numbers at all, but it gives a rough idea of how hard it is to sneak by all those eyes at once.

Found 3 more...

Broken Puppy: www.johnperkins.com/BrokenPuppy02.jpg

Angry Puppy: www.johnperkins.com/PuppySister.jpg

Our Poms Apparently Killed This: www.johnperkins.com/hawk.jpg

The hawk survived long enough for us to throw a sheet over it and get it into a cage, but it died during the night.

Much to Carol's occasional amusement, but frequent frustration, I appear to have successfully taught (treats and extra petting) one of the indoor poms to voluntarily sleep in a (lid off) large hamster ball. He aggressively defends his hamster ball from the other indoor pom.

[dreamer]

As you can see, I'm no good with algebra, despite finishing 9B last quarter. Its a good thing someone knows math around here! And unless you're pulling in the g's, it's a good thing your grocery bill is that high either!

D: I'm scared of those kinds of dogs. Do they ever warm up to people or do they just keep barking?

Aw, on the puppy pics. And awww, on the hawk pic. The humane society or pet hospital or whatever wasnt open for you guys to bring the hawk in for treatment?

XD Maybe you should make a video of that. What happens when you put the lid on?

[galactapuss]

A friend of mine had to take 9c three times. Not because it was hard, but because he was lazy about schoolwork.

I don't think any of them would ever attack anyone. The barking isn't 'I want to kill it,' it's 'there's a person!, look over there everyone! oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!' From what Carol tells me poms in general tend to be a bit stand-offish with new people, but it doesn't seem to be the case with our poms. We think it's because we're nice to them all the time and Carol's very gentle with them when they have claws trimmed / coat brushed / breeding time.

Carol's vet friend had contact info for a bird rescue place, but we found the hawk after business hours, so we never had the opportunity to deliver it to them. While we wish we could have got it to the rescue place, we don't feel too much sympathy for it. While it couldn't have carried off a full grown pom, it could have taken a puppy. We don't put puppies outside until a certain age, so that situation never arises, but still- the hawk would try to eat one of our dogs if it could manage it. We figure it was in the dog's pen for water.

When I put the lid on the hamster ball, usually they just sit there, maybe try to stand up, but they just fall over and wobble back and forth because they're too big to actually stand inside it. I don't leave the lid on for more than maybe 10 to 15 seconds and I don't put them in it more than once, just to see if they figure out how to use it like a hamster (they don't). The one that's trained to sleep in the ball is an inside dog. I don't put him in the ball; I just make sure to pet him and give him the occasional treat when I walk by and he's in there (usually first thing in the morning). No video since that dog is up north now, to be shown. You pay someone to show your dog and get it champion-ed, then the dog and all of its offspring are worth more. The ball was reassuring to the dog in the pics below, as he had been inside the house for a long time and wasn't used to being out with the group. It took him a moment to be willing to leave the ball, but he did hop out after a bit.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Championship_(dog)

...I can't think of a joke about dog balls right now...

www.johnperkins.com/dogball1.jpg
www.johnperkins.com/dogball2.jpg

[dreamer]

I heard that if you failed a class three times you got the boot. Or maybe that was lower maths and english. But I took 8B in the fall, 9B winter, and I'll take 9C in the summer. They say its a much easier class than 9B, which should be good.

It's still a scary noise! D: I know they wouldnt hurt me, but its like setting off a fire alarm.

Thats true. A sad fact of life that even we obey! To kill or be killed?

Maybe the pet store sells even bigger hamster balls...Like ultra-massive ones. Or maybe it could be like in that movie "Bubble Boy" where we can make a big plastic one that multiple poms can run around in at the same time. Since they cant even stand up, it'd be hard to use it as well as if they could run around in it. But I guess the hamster ball is a good tool for learning socialization?

I cant think of a good joke about champions and dogs right now...Do you train the poms for the championships too??

[galactapuss]

I don't know if it was due to that class or not, but he ended up switching from CS to Creative Writing as his major, and after that he still got hired by a silicon valley company before finishing at UCR. This was the height of the dot com boom, around 2000 or so. He survived the fall and still makes over $100k/yr. I believe the main thing that either sold him to the company, or that got him the skills that sold him to the company was that he had bought a used Sun computer and spent most of his free time messing around with it.

This was the largest (18") hamster ball (labeled 'ferret ball' I think) Petsmart carries.

Carol can train the dogs, but she usually either buys already-championed dogs or pays someone to have the dog championed- clean and brush, train, and take the dog to shows. The dog has to win a certain number of shows at which a certain number of poms appear- like a meeting that needs a quorum (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum). It's expensive, but the increase in value of that dog and all of its offspring is supposed to cover the cost. The dog has to be outgoing and happy in the presence of strangers (the judge at the show) and has to stand a certain way. Carol has one of these stands (see below) with adjustable pegs. The dog doesn't have anywhere to move its feet, so it stands however you set the stilts. The stilts are in slots and can be detached. The whole thing folds up into a regular box shape, with a handle.

Happy Legs: www.4mydogs.com/store/graphics/00000001/pix_400HL.jpg

[dreamer]

Thats great that he's doing well. Computer jobs should be relatively secure since its not going away any time soon. Although once all the older generation die off, there might be less of a need for tech support? Is he like a programmer like Kintaro Oe (Golden Boy)?

Do they do custom 25"? I guess we'll have to resort to the bubble boy ball.

Ooh. Does the trainer come over to your house? I guess the poms shouldnt bark excitedly at the judges? I suppose the cost to enter the show should be a factor into the cost too? Like with horses, its like 10$ per event or something. I havent been to a show in like 6 years.

You should teach a class on how to raise poms. ~_~

[galactapuss]

I don't know what exactly he does these days. I just know he started with Sun systems.

You can probably pay someone to machine any size of ball you want, but the one I got appears to be the largest, without going to something like a Zorb:

www.zorbingtoys.com/3m-zorbing-bal3.html

No, the trainer doesn't come to your house, at least it's never happened that way here. You give the dog to the trainer, the dog lives with the trainer for a few months, the dog gets championed, then you give the trainer $2,000 - $4,000 and you get the dog back, now with a champion title. In the bible (the version I had as a kid) anything Jesus said was in red, whereas everything else is in black. When a dog is championed, its entry in the pedigrees of all of its offspring is red, instead of black. The more red in a given dog's pedigree, the better.

Carol tells me, when a dog is being shown, it's supposed to act happy and curious. It doesn't matter whether or not it barks.

It's typically $20 per dog per show day. If you take a dog to a 3-day show it's $60 to enter that dog in all 3 days.

I don't know much about actually raising them. Carol can look at a pom and say that one's a parti and that other one's a red sable (colors). For me, it's just a black and white dog or a brown dog. Carol knows all the stuff about their fur having to look just a certain way, their claws have to be trimmed just right, etc..

It isn't limited to dog people; it extends to all interests and pursuits. It may be specific to Carol, but having seen the occasional overly enthusiastic fan boy, I think this applies to anything a person is interested in to a strong enough degree. When Carol really gets going, talking to someone about poms, she loses the ability to sense that glazed 'please oh god make it stop' look if the person she's talking to isn't equally interested in poms and is getting bored. It took me many, many years to (only somewhat) understand when someone isn't as into some topic i'm really enthusiastic about. I just know that, with Carol, if you start a conversation with her with 'so, tell me about the poms,' you should be ready to spend some time there.

If Verizon would put the equipment in to serve FIOS to my neighborhood, i'd have the bandwidth to do my own math tutoring show and Carol could do some kind of dog raising / grooming show. 30 feet outside the bleeping fence line and we can't get it (FIOS). It's a roughly $1 million box Verizon would have to put in (to serve the whole neighborhood), so I understand, but it's still frustrating.