Blue Light Special

He was laying in a grassy strip between the road and a KMart parking lot in Trenton, New Jersey. At first glance, he looked like a big black trash bag flapping in the breeze. Hubby said, "Hey, that's a dog!" and made a quick u-turn on busy Kuser Rd. By the time we reached him, another passerby was offering him a plate of kibble, but keeping her distance in case he wasn't friendly. Hubby never has had much sense about approaching strange dogs and took the kibble right up to the pooch. He was hungry, friendly, and just plain tired. We lured him away from the busy street back to our car and awaited animal control.

He was a sweet dog of unknown breed, furry but well-groomed, clearly someone's special friend. I patted the backseat and he joyfully jumped right in. What was he doing out here by himself? He wore a chain collar without tags, so no help there. Surely his people were looking for him, and the best thing was to park him at the local pound where he'd be quickly and easily found.

Another side of this dog emerged when the animal control officer arrived. No dummy, the dog knew he had it good in the backseat of our car and had no intention of leaving. The animal control officer had no intention of risking a bite and no desire to spend any more time than necessary coralling this dog. When the loop of the officer's catch pole tightened around his neck, the dog turned into a snarling beast, to no avail. Into the truck he went. The officer informed us that he'd be kept for 8 days. If he wasn't claimed by then, he'd be killed.

At that moment, I wasn't concerned about the dog's fate. He was well cared for and well behaved. Surely, even now, his person was beating the bushes to find him. We helped the process along by putting an ad in the local paper and by posting flyers everywhere possible within about a 2 mile radius of the KMart where we found him. He'd be claimed in short order, I was certain.

Hubby called the pound every day, expecting to hear that the pooch had been reunited with his happy family. It was not to be. On the eighth day, Hubby took the drive back to New Jersey and brought this strange dog to his new home with us in Pennsylvania, taking his place in our furry family with new sister Fred, our husky-lab, and three cats. He was thrilled. Fred and the cats were not. Everyone adjusted- eventually.

Adopting an unknown stray presents an interesting challenge. What was the dog's name? We tried many of the obvious- Bear, Buddy, Rex, Fido -without a glimmer of recognition. Calling a dog without a name is problematic, so we had to choose a new name for him.

We named him 'Blue'.

When you meet the Buddha...

Recognizing when I've idolized something is half the battle. Letting go is the other two thirds.

Zeus in repose

Zeus, our boy Mastiff, is taking it easy after class at San Bruno Dog Obedience School.

To boldly go...

Just signed up for ping.fm as part of my ongoing exploration of social media.

#amazonfail

Made aware via the twitterverse of an apparently ill-conceived action by Amazon.com, I sent the following to their customer service folk:

I am concerned about your policy of removing the sales ranking from books on GLBT topics. Although you have claimed to be applying this policy to adult material, I observed several books that are decidedly not adult do not have their sales rankings listed. These include "The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government," "Why Marriage: The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality." and "Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940." I can only conclude that you have decided to arbitrarily categorize any book on GLBT topic as "adult". Therefore, although I have been a loyal customer for over ten years and have spent thousands of dollars at amazon.com, I am suspending my purchases from you until you change this policy and publicly apologize.

Thanks and regards,

This afternoon, I received this reply:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.


Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

Note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

I'm awaiting the public apology.