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My Experience Owning Two Scottish Terriers

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This morning, I was reading an interview with a Scottie breeder. She was going on about how Scotties are very independent and are certainly NOT lapdogs. She said they are likely to be aggressive towards strange dogs and that they hate to be treated with condescension. Apparently, my Scotties are not really Scotties. Maybe my evil plan worked: I bought them as wee puppies and brought them home to a family of Malteses, six Malteses, to be exact. I reasoned that this environment would teach my Scotties how to behave in a more Maltese fashion, and it worked! For starters, they are very much lap dogs! They love to lie on me or very near me, and they love to get rubbins and snuggles, just like my Malteses did (before the ex took them to FL). They are very friendly with other dogs, which is rather unlike my Malteses, actually. And they are quite well-behaved, generally speaking. My Scotties are not typical, then, except for a few factors: First, they do not listen very well, espe...
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Middle-Aged Man and Dr. Martens: A Love-Hate Story

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I first learned about Dr. Martens in 1992, when my friend Matt, who was cool as all get-out, was wearing a pair on campus at the small college I was attending in New Hampshire. The shoes were Docs, the 1460s, kind of shiny, and not the boots. When I got the chance, I had a pair of my own. Wearing Docs fit in with my developing darker persona in the early-to-mid '90s. I wore mostly black, listened to the Sisters of Mercy, wore an old Army-Surplus field coat, and was pissed off at the world. Living in Boston, and living without a car, I walked everywhere. The city streets are rough on footwear, and my jobs always required a lot of time on my feet, so the Docs were great! --Once I had them broken in. As a teacher, I liked that they were tough and comfortable and fit well with my lifestyle as a young ESL teacher on the make (if an ESL teacher can ever be said to be "on the make"). Then I moved to Fiji, and Docs did not work in that environment at all. They quickly molde...
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Northern Snobbery

Recently, we had a snowstorm here in North Carolina, and the schools (and just about everything else) closed down for about 4 days. Learning this, of course every person I know up North immediately scoffed long and loud about how ridiculous it was that we were so affected by a storm that only amounted to a maximum of six inches of snow. I used to be among these chortling hordes, but then I moved down South, and I understand now why everything closes. I don't fault it, I actually enjoy it. First, NC cannot handle snow or ice of any measure because we just don't have the equipment to handle it. We have loads of roads, and not nearly enough plows and salt trucks to clear everything. The best we can accomplish is to keep the major roads as clear as we can, but anyone living in a subdivision, which is most folks, doesn't really venture out since the streets remain unplowed and untreated. My Northern friends might feel tempted to look down their noses at the country-bumpkin h...
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