Dr Copa

My wife has been interested and very actively involved in training our dogs from an early age.  She got her first puppy when she was in her early 20′s and she took it to a place that taught her how to train it.  She (and the puppy) learned very well, and she has applied what she has learned to every dog she has owned since that time.  She truly believes that our pets are family members, and she makes sure that they are cared for as well as any human in the house.  That being said, she won’t feed them people food (except cheese.)  When we go away on vacation she is always reluctant to board our pets, and tries to find someone to pet sit for us.  Having a caring pet sitter is always her first choice; she says it is less traumatic for the pets when we go away.

So when her girl friend Tanya from San Diego called us last week and said she was coming into town for the holidays and was going to stop in for a visit, the conversation naturally turned to what was she going to do with her pets?  My wife told Tanya that she would look up a San Diego pet sitting service on the Internet and let her know what she could find.  She called her back this afternoon and suggested that she look at the expertdogtrainingsd.com website and consider using their services.  They offer expert dog training for adult dogs as well as puppies, dog walking, and pet sitting in her area.

With the holidays fast approaching, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to be hearing (and reading) more warnings about all of the toxic toys on the market.  I am totally amazed that these manufacturers are continuing to manufacture this kind of poisonous garbage.  As far as I’m concerned, these companies, and their CEO’s should be arrested and charged with aggravated assault.  I was reading about the dangerous toys on the market, but not reading that they have been recalled yet.  I sure hope they are recalled, and NOT allowed to stay on the market!  I don’t know, maybe we need to set up a system where whenever anyone buys a toy they have to sign a national registry so if and when the toy is recalled that particular consumer will receive a written notice about the recall!  Now I know that a lot of people would cry that violates some privacy issues, but the health of our kids are on the line here!

I decided to buy my mother a digital picture frame for one of her Christmas presents this year.  To make the gift nicer I asked my wife to copy some of our family’s pictures onto a SD memory card to put in the frame, so when she gets the frame and turns it on she will see a variety of family pictures on it.  I’m really excited about her getting this gift!  I’m sorry I won’t be there to see her open it and turn it on.  I know she’s going to love it!

My wife has been really busy working two part time jobs, so she asked me to try to help out more this Christmas than I have in years past.  Since I’ve been staying home because of my injuries, I try to help out when and where I can.  It is hard to help out, though, because I am still in a lot of pain.  So I’m limited in what I can do around the house.  Well, with the help of a friend we got our artificial tree out of the attic and put together.  One of our dogs has decided that she likes to chew on the bottom string of lights and that has caused quite a problem, we can’t seem to break her of that.  I guess next year we’ll be getting a different tree, one that is short enough to put on a table to keep the dog from chewing on the tree!

So over the course of this week I’ve been trying to decorate the parts of the tree that I can reach without hurting myself.  I never realized how many ornaments we had!  I stopped decorating when I thought the tree had enough ornaments on it, and there were tons of ornaments left over!  I thought it looked just fine, but my wife said that I was only about half-way done.  So today my wife has been spending some time decorating parts of the tree that I didn’t think needed decorating – you know – inside the innermost branches, and the back of the tree.  It’s looking pretty good!

I’m very particular when it comes to our vehicles.  My wife says I’m “fussy” about it.  Well, I say tomahto, and she says tomato, but the point is that I care about the way the vehicles look.  Every dent and scratch puts one more gray hair on my head!  Every time I go outside the house, and am near one of the cars (or trucks or motorcycle, as the case may be) I scrutinize it for any new signs of abuse.  There are some dents and scratches I can take care of myself, but not all of them.  Some of them require the assistance of a good body shop.

Being new to the area, I’ve been at a disadvantage when it comes to finding good local service providers.  My wife told me that she found a website I can use called collisionrepairexperts.com to help me find a list of the best body shops in the area.  She explained that it was set up so that you typed in your zip code and a list of body shops comes up in the area that are in their network of experts.  She said that the network is nationwide, so we could find California auto body shops or Virginia auto body shops and anyplace in between.