animals, Automotive, Fantasy, News, pets, Uncategorized

Driving Miss Daisy

49 Comments

I saw a news story about a high-speed chase in the Seattle yesterday.  The owner of the car struck two vehicles before he headed onto the interstate, where he hit speeds as high as 109 mph.  At one point he drove on a popular pedestrian trail (luckily nobody was on the trail right then).  The police ended up throwing down spikes to end the chase.

During the chase, one officer thought he saw a dog in the driver’s seat and this was confirmed when they finally got the car stopped.  A “sweet” pit bull was in the driver’s seat and the car owner was steering from the passenger seat.  The news story didn’t say who was controlling the gas pedal.  The owner of the car said he was “trying to teach the dog to drive.”  The charges filed against him include DUI, reckless driving, hit-and-run and felony eluding.

Personally I would rather teach my dog something a little more useful – like changing the sheets on my bed every Saturday or how to mop the kitchen floor.

What would you like your pets to do for YOU?

49 thoughts on “Driving Miss Daisy”

  2. I have an mental image from a book or magazine (or movie?) of the Man of the House coming home from work, his faithful wife kissing him hello at the door. He sits down in his easy chair and the dog brings him his pipe and the newspaper. (Is this what would be for that age a meme? I’m still struggling with that words meaning.) Or maybe it’s Saturday morning and he’s in his robe, same chair, and the dog brings the paper and his slippers.

    This since I have not pets…

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        1. This is a simplification, but it’s how I think of them. A trope is an image or situation that’s a kind of shorthand everyone understands. Think of it as a New Yorker cartoon, where a man in an easy chair and a dog with his pipe & slippers are all the setup you need, or someone on a desert island or a disheveled guy in a lab coat with test tubes.

          A meme is more current and topical and ephemeral. Think about grouchy cat and how, with photoshop, that image gets dropped into various contexts, or think about when Trump would hold up a document as a photo op and various people online would photoshop different messages onto the blanked document. Memes are culturally relevant and subject to being evolved and manipulated whereas tropes are tropes because they are always basically the same.

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  3. I’d be happy if I could just get the cat to leave me alone until I was ready to wake up in the morning. 4:30 AM is not cool. You’d think it was all about her…

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    2. A couple of my past cats that I got as kittens got some negative feedback early in their lives with a spray bottle. After a short period of time, I could pick up the spray bottle, which had a nozzle that made a sort of distinctive rattling sound, and I didn’t need to actually aim and spray it. Just the sound of the nozzle rattling was effective enough. Whatever they were doing, they’d stop and skedaddle.

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      1. And I had the opposite with Zorro. He never reacted to getting sprayed with a water bottle. After Tristan died, Zorro went through a period during which he would meow (loudly) every morning as I was getting ready to feed him. I tried the squirt bottle and there were some mornings he just got soaked by the time I finally got his food to him. Luckily he grew out of that and we were able to quit arguing in the morning

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        2. Not to mention, an argument with a kitty.

          Of course, my mother could argue with my dog. Mom used to sit in the small recliner in my living room. One of the dogs would sit in another chair, then my mother would just swear that the dog was mad at her for sitting in the recliner. The dog did have to adjust to having Mom there, However, Bootsy is the most laid back dog ever unless there is a rodent involved. I would tell mom she was the one picking a fight, which of course, mom would not ever fess up to.

          My mom could pick a fight with anyone. And that was not dementia—she was always like that and she became easier to deal with after dementia. Good Grief.

          Liked by 1 person

  4. I had read about something like this on FB maybe a week or so ago – does this mean there are TWO of these nutcases?

    A woman here does a daily FB post of the three kittens who were born sometime in April. They are SO cute, and I’m tempted to get one. Right now it wouldn’t have to do anything but the usual kitten antics, make us laugh, and give us one more live body to interact with. Then I remember those 4:30 wake-up calls…

    I would want said cat to learn to use the toilet (I have a friend who was actually successful at this), and flush when it’s #2. And as previously mentioned, let itself in and out during the no-cat-flap season.

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    If I could just get them to clean up their own fur and shedding detritus. And then if they would brush each other, that would help a lot. Then I would add to that, bring me my pipe and slippers when I arrive home from work or from a tough day of pandemic shopping early in the morning. Except, nix the pipe—I don’t smoke.

    Bootsy has been tough on moles in our yard, which is a big help, and reduces my overall level of rodent rage.

    After I read todays post about this dog owner’s crazy behavior—the poor dog must have been terrified as the car hit things and finally came to a halt via spikes—my mind scrolled back to our discussion several days ago about things we believe. My belief was that GOPs are all crazy. My first thought today was, “This guy must be a GOP. Who else would do this to a dog?”

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  6. We had a sliding screen on our door to the deck, and one of our Welshies could slide it open with her terrier nose when she wanted to go outside. We never could teach her to close it behind her so the flies wouldn’t get in.

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    1. That’s one of the great things about Guinevere. She will never use her nose or her face to push open anything. So even if there is a door that is slightly ajar, if she can’t get her whole head through the opening she won’t push it open. She is the only dog I have ever had in my whole life with this idiosyncrasy.

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        1. We’re not 100% sure. When Jenai got her from the pound they said she was a black lab mix, but she is clearly a whole lotta shepherd and maybe some other kind of herding breed as well. Her body build is completely shepherd, but she has a little white toe and white under her chin and throat and on her chest. Other than that all black. Both ears stand up but one has a slight crimp in it. We weren’t sure that both ears were going to stand up; the ear with the crimp on it stood up much later than the first ear.

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        2. The reason I asked about breed is that I’ve lived with at least six breeds. Most of them were happy-go-lucky dawgs that rolled in the mud, ate their own poop and lustily drank from the toilet. But my last two dogs were sensitive, fastidious, principled animals, and both were English setters. Spook, my first setter, learned to drink water from the dog bowl with a curious lapping action I’ve not seen before or since. My daughter figured out that Spook hated sprinkling water on his nose, so he taught himself to drink in a way that created no stray drops of water. He was sometimes shocked by the ethics of dogs that weren’t as mannerly and ethical as he was. I decided that Katie, the setter you met, vs, was the canine equivalent of an HSP (highly sensitive person). Next to my two setters, all other dogs I’ve known were crude and boisterous.

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  7. I was out doing my chicken chores and I thought surely there must be things I wish they could be doing. “Pets” is a relative term.
    First, because they’re all free-ranging, they need to learn to stay off the deck. For some reason, they seem to be hanging out up here more than usual this spring. Just because we’re home more doesn’t mean I spend all day chasing them off the deck. Trying to teach the dogs to do it but they got better things to do all day too.
    Next, if they could stop tracking mud onto the eggs. And stop pooping in there too. Doesn’t happen often, but it’s not unusual to have an egg with poop on it.
    And some chicken is eating eggs. Stop that too!

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  9. OT YouTube Channel Suggestions

    I enjoy videos that compare US culture with the cultures of different countries. Having never been to China, I’m fascinated by modern Chinese culture, its old villages and new cities. I’m interested in what folks in South Korea think of Americans. What is it like to live in Japan if you are a black man from the US? If an American traveler needs emergency appendix surgery in India, what will that experience be like? YouTube has many sites delivering cultural commentary.

    Cross-cultural videos are fun partly because they are what they are. You don’t need to worry about who funded them and why, which can be an issue with many YouTube videos. When people from Russia describe their experience of the US South, you can judge them on their general plausibility. If you encounter a biased commentator, you can just exit the comment.

    My favorite cultural commentator is Felicia, a German girl who is fond of her home country and her adopted country. She speaks unaccented English as well as she describes US culture in terms more flattering than you are likely to hear from an American. Felicia recently met an American guy living in Germany who is her perfect counterpart, being thoughtful and fair and careful in his comments. Her videos with him are great. Felicia’s channel is “German Girl in America.”

    Lawrence, a British guy who moved to the Midwest, is funny and observant. He posts amusing videos in his channel, “Lost in the Pond.”

    The deepest and most probing cross-cultural channel I know is “Asian Boss.” This channel doesn’t have a bias that I can detect. It explores cultural issues in Korea (both North and South), Japan and China. I respect the way the hosts ask thoughtful questions and always respect their interviewees. I’ll try to find a short example. Many videos on this site are big.

    These videos might be more important than they seem at first. I keep discovering that people from other lands often find more to admire in American culture than those of us who were born here. Felicia will tell you it is refreshing to converse with Americans, avoiding the formality that limits speech in Germany. Lawrence loves American optimism and candor. The Asian Boss crew might surprise you as they show how favorably many Asians view the US. These sentiments are good to hear for someone weary from US political bickering.

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      1. Interesting. I just tried to post a comment somewhat at odds with the viewpoint of Steve’s above. I got a response from WordPress that my comment could not be posted. I wonder what that was all about? I worded it very carefully so as not to be offensive, but still it was rejected.

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        1. I’m not sure what happened. I looked in “spam” and in “pending approval” and all over the place on the admin page and I didn’t see it. Sorry!!

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