Pet Store Hate Mail…

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Oh, goody. We’ve got some pet store hate mail to share with you today, which always makes for fun reading. I should actually clarify here that the mail came in response to this post that I made over on the French Bulldog experts blog.

I don’t know if the person who wrote it is affiliated with the Pet Store mentioned in the blog. I assume not, but since they didn’t sign their mail other than with a first name, I can’t say for sure.

I’ll give you the entire email first, then break it down bit by bit afterwards.

Firstly I am writing to ask WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE???? You dont know anything about my pet store or probably any pet store anyplace. Mine is as very up scale a place as you will ever find. My puppies and kittens are all clean and healthy and friendly. We are a GREAT PLACE for people to get their new pets from!!!

So what if some people want to use a credit card to buy a dog???? Big deal!!! Do you think only rich people should get to buy a dog???? Money isnt everything you know.

You don’t know where we get our puppies from. For you information we only ever get ours from real LIVE caring breeders. Yes caring sell to us, imagine that!!! We look in the papers and find people who have had a litter and let them know we can find such good homes for them. They are grateful to us!!! And the puppy buyers are too. Other times we have agents who find us puppies from great breeders. All our puppies and kittens are loved!!

If a puppy we sell gets sick we take it back. How many breeders do that huh?? We will even partly pay vet bills or even sometimes just give them a new puppy. You don’t even get that when you buy a car, but we do it because it’s the RIGHT THING to do. We have a vet look at all our animals and he says no breeders can care for them as good as we do.

So you need to get off your high horse and stop thinking that all you breeders are sooooo special and better than pet stores. We are as good as you and better. And people who get a puppy here come back again and again to us. I would say you need to APOLOGIZE but you likely dont even know what that means. Well God bless anyways or are you not even a Christian huh???

Whew. She sure told me, didn’t she? I need to take a moment here and recover from the total shaming she gave me, and then I can move on.

Firstly I am writing to ask WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE????

I think I’m Carol “Just-Gravestock-dammit-stop-calling me-Taylor-it’s been almost ten years now”, and that I breed French Bulldogs under the prefix “Bullmarket”. I also waste my time running far, far too many French Bulldog information sites, because I need to get a life. Oh, and I’m a capricorn, my favorite color is black, my favorite drink is two pots of coffee per day and I’m not a fan of pet stores, BYBs, or stupid people in general.

You dont know anything about my pet store or probably any pet store anyplace

Well, you didn’t sign your full name, or the name of your pet store, so who’s fault is that? If you’re so proud of it, why not share it? As well, I feel I’ve done a good bit of research into the retail pet industry, but again, if yours is so outside the norm, share its name and address with us. I bet one or two of my readers will be happy to stop by for a visit (and a bout of covert photography).

Mine is as very up scale a place as you will ever find. My puppies and kittens are all clean and healthy and friendly.

My Grandmother always said “Pretty is as pretty does”. Clean does not equal ethical. Also, it takes a truly sick baby animal to not be cute, or to not beg for attention.

So what if some people want to use a credit card to buy a dog???? Big deal!!!

Do you want to know why it’s a big deal? It’s a big deal because people should not view their purchase of a living being the same way they purchase a sweater. If you can’t afford the puppy, you’ll be unlikely to afford its on going care, either. No one claimed pet ownership wasn’t a luxury, especially ownership of breeds prone to esoteric diseases and conditions even when bred to the best of a breeder’s ability.

Money isnt everything you know.

Yes, I’m sure you’re one of those non profit charity pet stores. Give me a break.

You don’t know where we get our puppies from.

Yes I do – the same place every other pet store does.

For you information we only ever get ours from real LIVE caring breeders.

As opposed to what, dead caring breeders?

We look in the papers and find people who have had a litter and let them know we can find such good homes for them.

Oh. My. GOD. Did you just admit to trolling the papers for BYB litters, then re selling them? And you think you should be praised for that?

They are grateful to us!!!

Of course they are, because they bred their pet without any idea at all what to do with the puppies, and now they’re getting older, and eating, and pooping non stop, and now they need shots and… that breeder is thinking “Who cares who the pet store sells them to, because my wife/spouse/parents are going to throw a fit if I don’t get them out the door soon, and the kids who kept telling how they’d do all the work are no where to be found, so good riddance”.

Other times we have agents who find us puppies from great breeders.

Umm, those agents? They’re called brokers. They’re the middle men between you and the puppy mills, and the big outfits like Hunte Corporation. This makes you different from other pet stores how?

If a puppy we sell gets sick we take it back. How many breeders do that huh??

Every single good breeder I know. That’s sort of the line in the sand between ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

We will even partly pay vet bills or even sometimes just give them a new puppy.

“Partly”? “Sometimes”? Let me guess – the only way they get a refund is if they ‘return’ the puppy to you so you can ‘euthanize’ it. That’s called the death card insurance policy – the odds that someone will return a sick puppy they’re emotionally invested in weighed out against the risk of refunding their money. I bet you don’t have to pay out very often, do you?
You don’t even get that when you buy a car, but we do it because it’s the RIGHT THING to do.

You do it because most states require it by law. Also, dogs – living beings. Cars – hunks of metal. Not a good analogy.

We have a vet look at all our animals and he says no breeders can care for them as good as we do.

Have your vet breathe on a mirror. Does it fog over? No? That’s proof your vet has no soul, a common trait among the living dead. He sold his soul when he came to work for you. I’d pity him, but really zombies just sort of freak me out.

So you need to get off your high horse and stop thinking that all you breeders are sooooo special and better than pet stores.

I like my high horse. It’s comfortable, and the view from up here is great. Plus, I don’t think all breeders are so special, but I do, however, think all pet stores are the debbil.

people who get a puppy here come back again and again to us.

Of course they do, because they are the type of Paris Hilton esque nitwits who change their pets like the rest of us change our socks. They buy a cute puppy, get sick of the not so cute adult, dump it, then buy another cute puppy. Stupid people are a pet store’s best friends.

I would say you need to APOLOGIZE but you likely dont even know what that means.

No, I do apologize. I apologize to every puppy hauled cross country in a truck to be sold by you. I apologize to every sick kitten sitting in your display window and shivering with FLV. I apologize to every well meaning person who ‘rescues’ a puppy from you, only to have it break their heart when it dies.

Who do you apologize to?

Well God bless anyways or are you not even a Christian huh???

Why? Why do they always, always have to throw in the God part? Do they think it’s some sort of animal cruelty get out of jail free card?

Am I a Christian? Not if being a Christian means that I have a special dispensation to commit acts of animal cruelty. Not if being a Christian means cloaking myself in God every time someone questions my very dubious morals. Not if you’re one.

Somehow, I have the feeling that Jesus would be saying the same thing – “If that’s what they’re calling themselves, I’m getting a name change”.

So, Mr. Pet Store owner, if you have any more to share, please do so. And, like I said, share the name and address of your store with us, too. Come on – prove me wrong. It would be a relief, actually.

Hey, you! Internet Explorer users!

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It has been pointed out to me that my blog isn’t displaying properly in Internet Explorer, and that the side bar looks all wonky and out place.

I have a solution for this – get a  R E A L browser! Seriously, use something else, anything else!

Firefox kicks IE assBest of all, download yourself a free copy of Firefox. Faster, less prone to leaving your computer vulnerable to hacks and exploits (those are bad  things, take my word for it), and free.

Otherwise, suffer with it, because I’m not re writing my CSS – which displays just dandy in Firefox, Safari, Opera and Camino – just so that you Gatesians can see my sidebar (which in likely fact no one ever looks at anyways, so who cares). If that sounds cranky, take as a token of my deep and abiding loathing for all things Microspawn related.

Do not even get me started on Frontpage.

Thursday Thirteen – 13 Weird Things On Our Google Analytics Page

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Don’t you just love Google Analytics? It’s a rockin’ piece of technology, and ever so useful in helping you to find out how people found your website.

I’m not an obsessive about checking stats, but every so often I like to take a look and find out what search terms (the phrase people typed into Google or another search engine – wait, are there still other search engines?) have been used to find my site, along with such interesting tidbits as who’s linking to me and who’s visiting me.

So, here’s this week’s Thursday Thirteen – 13 weird things I noticed when I checked our Google site stats this week.

Weird Site Search Terms

I expect people to find us using normal terms, like ‘French Bulldog’ or ‘Bullmarket’, but how do I explain these?

Cooking Dogs (please let this actually mean ‘cooking FOR dogs’)

my dog cant pee (site owners suggests taking him to VET)

site looks good but to small (I spent 20 minutes trying to find my own site via this search term, to no avail)

french dog mall (ooh, a mall just for French Dogs – sign me up!)

Weird Links

I know most of the sites I’ve personally listed bullmarketfrogs.com – Canada’s Guide to Dogs, for example, and Dogs in Canada. But how did we end up on these pages? It’s a mystery to me…

yellowpages.com (we really, really don’t have a yellow pages ad!)

weathernetwork.ca (from checking the weather to.. Frenchies?)

Unusual Country Visits

I can understand Canada. I can understand the USA. I can even understand Australia and Europe, I suppose. But some of the countries in my top one hundred list sort of leave me puzzled… and hey! If you’re the single person who’s on here from Lebanon, leave a comment and say ‘hi’, will you?

# 88 on the list – Peru, 2 visitors

#91 on the list – Uruguay, 1 visitor

#101 on the list – Lebanon, 1 visitor
Browser Usage Stats (interesting to geeks only)

I expected to see the usual – Explorer, Firefox, Safari, a few Mozilla hold outs. But these ones – two of them I had to look up!

Camino – 15 users

Blazer – 9 users

HTC-8900 – 6 users

Konqueror – 3 users

The Boy is Growing Up…

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Dexter spent quite a bit of time this spring going through a fairly horrid – and fairly typical – gawky stage. His feet were too big for his body, his chest was too big for his body, his rear looked high, his head looked small, and his ears resembled satellite dishes.

Add to this the fact that he was barely what one could call ‘graceful’, forever slamming head first into walls, or tripping over his own feet in the garden. He seemed to have little control over co ordinating where his body was aiming with where his feet seemed to be going, and chaos inevitably ensued.

The only solution seemed to be a paper bag and a career in something math related, because beauty contests did not seem to be in this little geek’s future.

Dexter and Tessa, waiting for French Bulldog ice creamLuckily for Dex, I am a patient woman (ha!), and was willing to wait it all out. Swans from ugly ducklings sometimes come, etcetera – plus, he’s a fun little goof to have around. Still, it was a pleasure to notice that he’s finally starting to bloom. As if over night, we woke up one day and said to ourselves “This is turning out to be one good looking little dog”.

His head has finally started to square up, losing the apple dome he had between his ears. His neck has turned from a scrawny stick that seemed to exist only to attach his head to his should into a thick, muscular column. His chest has dropped and started to muscle, and his forelegs are thick and strong. Even his slow to develop rear is muscling up and filling in, and he’s developed into a graceful and agile mover, able to leap over dog gates and onto couches in a single, flowing motion.

He’s still a teenager, but he’s a teenager with potential for both beauty and grace. It’s an amazing process to witness.

He has his faults, of course, including today’s foray into peeing on the couch, and a disturbing new penchant for flicking his weiner when he’s bored. That’s boys for you, I guess. After a lot of years just having girls here at home, I’ll have to get used to his testosterone laden dumbness, in addition to his manly good looks.

Loads of photos on Flicker of Penelope, Delilah, Dexter and Tessa going for a hike yesterday over near the Saugeen River, or view the slide show below.

Sad News for Fashionistas and French Bulldog Lovers

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Yves Saint Laurent and French Bulldog Moujik

Yves Saint Laurent, long time French Bulldog owner and ‘tortured genius’ of Fashion, has died at age 71.

While the rest of the world knows him mainly for his fashion, those of us with Frenchies likely know him best for his eccentric approach to dog ownership – over the years, he owned a never ending string of French Bulldogs, each Brindle pied, each with the same name.

Upon the death of each dog, he’d promptly acquire another, and name it Moujik – the same name held by each of its predecessors.

A few years ago, Laurent immortalized the current incarnation of Moujik with a t shirt featuring his image, and Moujik II was the subject of the very last work done by Andy Warhol.

From Conde Nast Portfolio –

Yves Saint Laurent, dead at 71

Farah Farouque pulls together the colourful threads in the life of a fashion legend.

Yves Saint Laurent and French Bulldog MoujikI ran into Yves Saint Laurent on a Wednesday afternoon a couple of months ago at the Hotel George V having tea with a handsome young man. It was a rare sighting. Saint Laurent was wheelchair-bound by then and had become quite reclusive. He was terribly palsied—he could barely bring the petit fours to his mouth—but seemed in fine form nonetheless.

He was elegantly dressed in a charcoal-gray tailored suit with a colorful silk square pouring out of his upper pocket. He had a slight tan, most likely from his majestic riad in Marrakech. And as my 7-year-old daughter played with his French bulldog Moujik—the sixth or seventh Moujik by now—he smiled a crooked smile and chatted sweetly with her. I didn’t think it would be the last time I’d see him.

But it was. Yesterday, Yves Saint Laurent, the man who changed the way women dressed, died in his home on the rue de Babylone in Paris. He was 71. There were no official reports of what he died from, but for me, it was obvious: 50 years of fame.

Born to a French lawyer and his stylist wife in Oran, Algeria, in 1932, Saint Laurent had dreamed of becoming a fashion designer since childhood.

At the age of 17, he moved to Paris and studied at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture fashion school. In 1954, he shared the first prize of the prestigious International Wool Secretariat award; his co-winner was Karl Lagerfeld.

Yves Saint Laurent and French Bulldog Moujik Saint Laurent was then hired to work as an assistant to another titan of fashion, Christian Dior, and his profound talent was quickly recognized. When Dior dropped dead of a heart attack in 1957 at the age of 52, Saint Laurent was named successor. He was a mere 21 years old. His first collection the following year was such a smashing success that American fashion journalist Marylou Luther wrote, “The king is dead. Long live the king!”

But Saint Laurent’s shyness, reticence, and fragility was greater, evidenced by the famed photo of him leaning out the window of Dior after a show as his fans cheered in the street. “He was already grave, distant, full of poetry, and mystery,” Pierre Bergé, his longtime business partner and companion, told me.

Two years later, the French government informed Saint Laurent that he had to fulfill his military-service duties. The night before he left, he confessed to his friends who had gathered at a villa in the South of France for a farewell weekend that he couldn’t face it. He was the world’s most famous fashion designer and a homosexual: He would never survive in the military, he feared. After 19 days of boot camp, Saint Laurent suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to the mental ward at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris.

For six weeks, Saint Laurent was subjected to drug and shock therapy, and he dropped to 80 pounds. Finally, Bergé managed to get him released.

Read the rest here