Mountaineer Mastiffs

October 20th, 2006

So... I've decided to start a blog for Mountaineer Mastiffs. It's hard to tell what random things that I might decide to put in here so watch out! LOL :) Seriously though, I thought this might be a nice way to communicate with folks. Posting things I find interesting or updates I've completed on the site, or just random thoughts.

It seems like it's been forever since the site has been up in "full force". Life issues have taken precedence, but I am trying to eek out more time for it lately. And still debating what portion of the 400+ pages than used to be on here are worth re-posting. I really wanted to streamline the site. When a site grows to over 400 pages and over 600 photos in just a couple short years, it can be quite a job to keep a handle on it all.

Which is why I wanted to pull it all down and re-build it from scratch. The format will be different, a lot of the old stuff is not coming back. Some of it is. And new stuff is coming too.

On the personal front, life is about the same. We recently rescued a new dog. It was after dark, cold, and we were on our way home. She was wandering a stretch of road and a nearby parking lot, clearly searching for the vehicle that had left her stranded. I hate that scene. It is such a heartbreaking scene. The dog that has been dropped in the middle of nowhere, abandoned by the people supposed to love her. Her eyes getting excited as she sees each new vehicle, thinking she will be seeing her family that just abandoned her. It's garbage. And people should NEVER do it. Especially here. We have an excellent shelter ran by caring and considerate people, less than a 10 minute drive from where we found this dog. No excuse, no excuse at all.

She is some sort of mix. From an above view she very closely resembles a brindle pug. And she does that classic pug trait of wanting to perch on furniture (like the back of the couch for example) to look out the window like a cat. Hard to tell what she is. She looks like what would happen if you crossed a brindle pug, with a cur! LOL One thing is for sure. She is 23 lbs of pure LOVE. She is unbelievably affectionate. So far she gets along great with the other dogs & cats. And the kids absolutely adore her.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Halloween!

October 31st, 2006 - HALLOWEEN

If you visited our site yesterday you may have seen an error page stating that the site was down. I apologize for that. I've been very sick recently and it totally slipped my mind to renew our domain name well in advance. (oops!) But I took care of it as soon as the problem was brought to my attention and I hope that nobody panicked too bad on me. I got a couple of contacts from folks that were scared that we were letting the site go. And the answer to that is NO NO NO. Everything is cool now. Sorry for any inconvenience or worry this may have caused amongst our friends.

I narrowly escaped being hospitalized for Halloween. A respiratory infection that ran thru our family, has hit me really hard and developed into a very nasty case of bronchitis that is trying hard to turn into pneumonia. I spent the better part of the day at the Asthma Center getting treatment and hopefully I can pull through this without having to be admitted. So I'm basically parking my butt for the night, trying to take it as easy as possible.

For a little Halloween trip down memory lane... Here's a very old photo of Brutus and my dear friend Ashley. Who are both a lot more grown up now, than they were all those years ago!

I hope everyone is having a safe and HAPPY HALLOWEEN !