About Me

Living in the Caribbean is probably like living anywhere else, with the same ups and downs. But it does have its own vibe and flavour and gives me a unique perspective on most things. I'm often sarcastic, mostly funny, always looking for a new adventure. I have not boxed myself into any one category of life. I love a lot of things and dislike a lot more. I write about them all.
Showing posts with label dogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dogs. Show all posts

It's a Dog's Life - Try this Dog-inspired Fitness Routine

During the week I get up at the ungodly hour of 3.05 am to head to the office building, where there is also a gym. This is a huge sacrifice especially when one thinks of the sleep I could be getting. But with the morning rush hour being what it is, not going to the gym means I only get an extra 40 minutes of sleep anyway.

Still, my morning sweat - in the empty gym (until about 5.15am when people start trickling in) is the most relaxing part of my entire day. As much as I hate getting up that early, and struggle to get to the office, it really is my one moment of zen. It is more than just working out - it is a renewal of my mind and my spirit. But, of course, the working out is pretty important, and this week I have really been trying to stay serious - no resting and idling between sets, no jumping off the treadmill after 2 mins. Really serious. Even though some mornings I am as tired as a dog.

And speaking of dogs, I have this cute infographic that kinda shows how I have been getting serious this week. Now, as you know I love dogs, and my dog is pretty fit looking, so decided I would try his method as per this infographic from DogVacay,  I don't always look as happy as the dog in the photo but one can aspire towards something.

Get Fit like Fido!
The only set I left out - mountain climbers. I just hate them, as effective as they may be. My cool down is more of a slow stroll with my water bottle than stretching as well. A slow stroll or a booty shake depending on what song is playing on my MP3 player at the time. I have been caught a few times,  mid-booty shake, by co-workers, who then laugh and comment on my ability to be happy - even at that hour of the morning. The main difference between me and Fido - Fido gets to laze for the rest of the day and get his ears rubbed. I get to go to meetings and write reports for 8 hours. Oh well... 

Support Boo and Operation Smile

Boo
Photo courtesy Boo's Fan Page
A lot of people follow their fave celebrity on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently started a Fan Page for his dog. But no pooch comes close to gaining my love as Boo has done.

CNN recently featured Boo, who has over 920,000 Facebook fans as "The Cutest Dog in the World" and Boo is not even a celebrity dog. He does not belong to the queen or to Obama. He is just a cute dog whose owner decided needed to be shared with the rest of the cute dog loving world. Thank you Boo owner person. We love him!

Boo and his best mate, Buddy
Photo courtesy Boo's Fan Page
Today is Boo's 5th birthday and he is asking not for personal gifts but for donations to Operation Smile, which raises money for kids born with cleft lips to get the simple operation that will give them beautiful smiles and the confidence to face the world. Boo has up to 6.04pmGMT raised $1,250.00 out of the $5,000 he has hoped to raise. That is pretty outstanding for a dog. And pretty darn cute. It has brought light to my grey day.

You can find Boo on Facebook and if you want to donate to Operation Smile on behalf of Boo, you can check out his Birthday Donation Page.

My Evening in Pictures

So since my dog entry yesterday did not go down well with some of you (imagine how I felt having to see it live and in HD) I am not going to say much today. But besides fighting off the cold, I am also fighting academia and its impact on my life.

Before...

There are more of those wonderful books on the floor

After...

I'll come to you, honey

Clearly this is a joke. But oh I wish. The real After...



Sad. And yes, I sleep next to my books every night. My books and my laptop. I roll over and they're there. My fluffy socks are usually on my feet but my toes were a bit hot. Shocker.

I am done with the books for tonight, and I am going to watch another episode of Jersey Shore now and remind myself that I am better off than most. Watching this show makes that so easy.

Mike "The Situation" and Jenni's cute doggie

An Entire Entry about Crap. No. Really.

First, some housekeeping. For my article on the Five Must-See Spots in Trinidad and Tobago, hit the link, peeps.

Okay, so I have the cold again. Shocker. The weather really does not agree with me, nor do the germy people. Is it so hard to embrace the concept of blocking your mouth when you sneeze?

Speaking of germy and this was not germy this was just nasty. Now I am a dog lover, but I think I would have to either forfeit having a dog here, if I did not have a garden, or have a dedicated dog walker, because what I saw this afternoon, really made me look at dog ownership in a whole different way.

Just a bit of background - in Trinidad, dog shit is everywhere. There is no rule about dog shit. Most people who have dogs, have a big yard so we don't really have to walk our dogs outside. They run free in the yard and if not, the run free in the streets, savannahs and noone cares. You just have to accept that while walking through the savannah or wherever, you are likely to encounter a pile of turd, so be on the lookout.

So while I know that the poop 'n' scoop rule applies here, where your dog poops and the human scoops, never in my wildest dreams did I think it applied if your dog had the runs. I am walking down the street to my house and a woman is ahead of me, walking her dog. He stops to smell the fence, then he moves on, and then he stops, moves on. Then he stops and squats to do his thing and before I could look away, there is his runny poop escaping from his body. Ugh. My dinner-to-be was spoilt. But then to make matters worse, human master has a black plastic bag over her hand (cigarette in the other) and she kneels down to scoop up this runny mess. I could not believe it. And all the while, she is still smoking her lungs out, as though she is picking out oranges. She calmly sops up this thing and then folds the bag over her hand to hoist it away. O.M.G. And all the while...puff puff puff on the fag. Ciggie in one hand, bag of hot, runny dog shit in the other.

Rover better learn some new tricks
if he wants to live with me in London
I had to cross the street cause it was too nasty to look at. Sorry. I love my dogs but scooping up runny dog crap with my hand - only separated by a plastic bag - is NOT COOL. C'mon people!!! And they call us Third World? lol. Why can't the rule be,"walk with some sand to cover said crap" or if you know you are feeding your dog highly inflammatory foods, invest in some human friendly pooper scooper thing-a-ma-jig. My God! You bet your life, that dog better learn to scoop that sh... up himself/herself. I am not doing it. No way. Baby crap grosses me out and that's a small human. Dog mess? And runny mess too? Nah man. I evolved! I ain't doing it. Let me pay the fine, yes. And the scariest part of this episode? This lady will gingerly dispose of her black bag of treasure and without thinking, greet someone in the street and shake their hand, pinch their baby's cheeks or share their crisps with THAT hand. I may never let another person touch me or my crisps ever again.

And as we are on dogs, this neighbour of mine is really stifling her dog's freedom. It's like she is stalking the dog's life. He cannot bark without her flying out the house and shooing him inside. Poor creature. All he wants to do is chase the cat and chase his ball. When Daddy is at home, he plays catch with him and he gets to run and bark and enjoy doggyhood. But Mummy is a serious hater. Yet she is the one who spoils him most. Tsk.

I had an entirely different entry but it clearly went to the dogs.

I am a Hot, Doggy Mess

 
Richard Gere and the little Akita pup, in Hachi
I always put the tv on when having a meal. I usually put it on on BBC or a channel I know I would not get glued to, so when I am done eating I can get back to work. But it was still on one of the movie channels after I watched the end of Valentine's Day this morning (go figure) and Hachi - A Dog's Tale was on. Anyone who knows me knows I absolutely love dogs. And there has not been a dog movie yet that has not made me cry. So I said to myself after sitting with my sandwich and my apple pie - bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, bad idea.

But it was too late. I always already glued to it. And I was hooked. And like every other dog movie, I bawled. It is really something else - the genre that never fails to make me cry. I sat there crying over my apple pie - no, bawling. Thank God I was home alone. The movie was so sad. Oh my gosh. If you have not seen it yet, do! Really incredible and based on a true story. Hachi also reminded me of my own dog who we lost some time ago. It's just bloody sad all round, dammit. I am now a flaming hot mess, and need to probably go read the news or about Lindsay Lohan to make me all cynical and bitter again so I can get on with it.

Why can't people be like dogs? When women say men are dogs, it is such an insult to the dog, because they are loving and loyal creatures.

I really miss having a dog.

Going to compose myself and get back to work. I may be back but really had to share.

Winter Fashion Update


So I have created a public transport mood chart since I do not want to harp on the crappy London transportation every day since it is clearly going to be an issue for the rest of the winter. Today had the potential to be a RED alert but I took the bus this evening and it was the first time in living history that I enjoyed the bus ride from the train station to home. I had a seat at the back, near the engine so I was toasty, and I had an Evening Standard with Becks all over it, looking as sexy as ever (he is getting better with age I tell ya). Bliss. So after the horrible morning, where I waited almost an hour for my first train following cancellation after cancellation, and where the day at that point was hot red, it ended on a more subdued orange. The other colours are red, as previously discussed; blue for days when I am just either indifferent or just plain depressed, and yellow for the smurfy, happy days when they get it right. Something to aim for, London transport peeps. I imagine the people who had to sleep on the train to Kent or wherever it was last night, were a boiling red.

Anyway, I manage to surprise myself every time I face the stove. With the chill gripping my bones every evening after school, I decided to make myself another soup this morning before class. And after Sainsbury's not having my pre-cooked chicken breasts last evening, I was left with the task of making a veggie soup instead. I did find some scraps of ham and some mushrooms and I got some potatoes, onions, garlic, scallions, pumpkin, cauliflower, carrots and broccoli. What a wondrous concoction this was. I just had some with some crusty bread and it was pretty damn awesome. Add some orange juice and rum and it was a really warm experience.

And in winter fashion news, I am secretly stalking my neighbour's dog. Not having a dog of my own and missing having one, I listen out for him when he goes out into the backyard to chase foxes. He is a little thing, a Westie, but he is quite fierce in his own mind. Anyway, this weekend, in the deep chill, I saw my lover run out in the cutest little red coat and I actually found a spitting image of what he looked like.




Cute. I really love the doggie winter fashion. I love seeing the dogs in their coats and love that their owners love them enough to keep them nice and warm in this awful weather. And they are really stylin'. I mean, these dogs look better than some people!!



And it's not just the little dogs either. Brutus gets cold too.


It's so fun and sweet and can really put a smile on the face of someone stuck on a train platform for what seems like zonks.

And good luck to England tomorrow in Zurich. It's funny that the Brits are depending on a Trini (FIFA Vice President, Jack Warner - key to the 3 CONCACAF votes) to win their 2018 World Cup bid. Can I then demand perks tomorrow?

Cuppa Coffee, Anyone?

It's been a really long time since I have had to do anything other than watch tv and sleep on a Sunday. I sat down with the best intentions of reading this global marketing text and after the second page I was nodding off. I am probably too old for this school thing or the text books are probably more and more tedious. Also the worst thing one can possibly do is look at just how much you need to read in total. It is a sure way to go crazy. I decided to take a break, make a cup of coffee and waste time online until I felt re-energised.

Ummm...yeah.

The coffee worked a bit, but I really miss my oversized coffee mug and my next purchase outside of fluffier socks and thermal underwear will probably be a cute coffee/soup mug for winter days and nights. I really am in love with the Blue Celtic Ceramic Mug below. It's so me. Feel free to buy it for me as an early birthday/Christmas present.

















I also miss having a warm body in my bed. Out of the gutter, kids. I meant a dog. The neighbour's dog has been barking up a storm since yesterday and is currently out in the backyard looking as cute as a button. I love how his mum calls him in for breakfast every day. Precious. I also ran into him yesterday during his walk and he is so affable and loving and cute. I really miss having a dog and though it definitely will not happen here, with my dog-hating cousin in the house, I want to have a dog again soon. Until then...the warmest thing around here is my laptop, which I should get off if I am to finish reading these 6 chapters.

Taking Animal Love Village to Village

My BFF is part of a great initiative in Tobago, which is aimed at reducing the stray animal population in the sister isle of Tobago, and promote animal welfare on the island.
It is always such a big thing for me more as a Trini, and not so much as a huge, gooey dog lover myself (I cannot see a dog and pass it straight), to travel and see animals treated well - I mean beyond the normal boundaries of animal wellness. lol. I love my cousin's neighbour's dog, a West Highland White Terrier named Womble, who is such a little star and is so loved and so spoilt by his owners. My own mongrels get the sort of love and care that Trinidad terriers aka pot hounds aka mongrels rarely get here because of their inferior status in the Trini dog world. Yet so many animals do not get to enjoy this type of love and comfort, but are forced to make it on their own on the streets, diseased, hungry and dying.  Mongrel or not, I really cannot stand to see an animal mistreated or abandoned. They give such unconditional love and such joy to so many, that the ones who are left out on the street through owner abandonment, lack of proper spaying practices or just neglect really tug at heart strings (unless they try to bite me as I work out in the village).

So the Village-to-Village programme is really aimed at addressing some of these concerns, primarily the spaying and neutering of animals to reduce the large number of strays on the streets and highways, who become roadkill, or are abused by evil human beings. The aim is to neuter between 65%-75% of stray, and owned doggies and kitties in Tobago and increase awareness of such techniques among the local population. The great thing about the programme is that it addresses the problem in the rural communities, where one may not have access to veterinary care and where pet owners or concerned residents just cannot afford or will find it impractical to spay or neuter their animals. The programme makes such a service available, at no cost, and is managed by veterinarians and persons very much experienced and committed to the cause.

There will be two rural outreach clinics to spay and neuter approximately 150 animals in Charlotteville and Bacolet, Tobago from Sept 3-5, 2010.

Volunteers are welcome to be part of this awesome initiative for all aspects of the clinic, including clerical staff, vets, vet techs and assistants and anyone with experience in handling animals or a real passion for lending assistance. And if you want to donate items like paper towels, bleach, pet collars, blankets, disinfectant, garbage bags or buckets, please step up to the plate and do it! To volunteer, donate funds or items to the cause, please contact any of the following:


Dr Paul Crooks  1-868-688-8281
Dr Kevern Sawh 1-868-678-8023
Dr Adana Mahase 1-868-689-1586
TTSPCA - 1-868-639-2567

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