Jack Russell Dog Fails At Dog Competition But Wins At Life

Olly the Jack Russell terrier suffers a face plant during the Crofts
Dog Show skills competition, but who cares? He had the
time of his life, and delighted all of us. 

The recent Crufts Dog Show highlighted the discipline and agility of plenty of dogs

One dog, however, wasn't so disciplined, but gawd what a delight!

Olly he Jack Russell terrier really seemed to be having the time of his life at Crufts as he raced around the course, randomly performing some tricks, running in circles at other times.

During one leap, he landed with a a nasty face plant, but got right back up and gleefully ran around some more.

He didn't win, but he sure delighted the crowd. I love how happy he makes the announcer sound as he did the play by play.

Olly didn't win the competition, no sir. But he won all our hearts and he's winning the game of life.  We could all learn some lessons from Olly.

Watch:

Dogs Have Happy Time With Play Tunnel

A video of two dogs at a play tunnel has gone
viral for good reason. It's fun! 

Time is short to post a blog today, so I'm just going to leave you with a couple of dogs and their adventures with a play tunnel.

The video was shot by Matt Buckmaster when he brought his Italian greyhound Penelope to the K9 Fun Zone in Seattle.

He uploaded it to Facebook, and has been viewed 1.5 million times.

No wonder.  It's a happy video, so it's good to watch especially if you want to cure a foul mood:

Playtime! Baby Elephant And Two Dogs Have Fun In The Sun

Navaan the young elephant recently met a cat
at the preserve in Thailand where he lives. He
was a bit dubious about the cat, but loves
playing with his dog friends.  

As I like to take the occasional break from carping and complaining about the world, I'll add a couple of moments of brightness to this blog.

At the bottom of this post, if you want a little cheer, watch the video of baby elephant Navaan and his doggy friends Rocky and Jeremy have a little fun in a Thailand animal park.

The animal park is run by Save Elephant Foundation, a non-profit that provides care and help to Thailand's captive elephant populations.

When Navaan isn't playing with the dogs, he's playing with old tires at the elephant preserve where he lives. They're easy for him to pick up and throw around. See? Anything can become a treasured plaything.

 Here's the video of Navaan playing with his doggie friends:

Gorilla And Toddler Have Fun Together

A toddler and a baby gorilla have a fun day with
each other recently at an Ohio zoo.  

This viral video has been on a lot of the news sites, but I can't resist putting it here, too.

It shows a baby gorilla playing hide and seek with a toddler.

The gorilla is on one side of a glass enclosure, the kid is on the other side.  This was at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio.

But they form a nice, quick bond, proving that all kids love playtimes. The video will make you smile.

Watch:

Bears Make The Most Of A Hot Suburban Afternoon

A family of bears enjoys a refreshing dip in a New Jersey
pool on a recent hot afternoon. Video of
this scene has gone viral  

If you live in the suburbs, what better way to spend a hot afternoon to play out in the pool. You know, mom, the kids all splashing around having a good time.

So it was in Rockaway Township, New Jersey recently, when a a family did just that. Of course, it was a family of bears, not humans that were splashing around the backyard pool.

The Basso family, who normally plays in the pool, huddled inside and filmed the spectacle.

The fun part about the bears on video is how much they are just like a regular human family playing around the pool, the toys and the swingset.

One of the young Basso kids is distraught at one point and starts to cry as they watch from their window. ""They took my floaty!" the crying girl says. Those selfish bears! They should share the toys.

Mrs. Basso assures the kid that she will buy her daughter another floaty.

The bears obviously causes some damage to the pool and toys, as the yard was designed for humans, not bears, but the Basso family said the harm was not great and that the bears were pretty good houseguests.

The video below is 11 minutes long but worth the entire time. The Bassos said the bears were in the back yard for almost an hour.

The video has naturally gone viral and has been featured on many MSM news programs. But I can't resist sharing it here, too:

How My Parents' Terrible Carpet Contributed To Vermont Stage Company's Brilliant "The Mountaintop"

My husband, Jeff Modereger, on the set of
"The Mountaintop" at Vermont Stage Company.  

My parents' decrepit, scary, awful, 40 year old living room carpet became part of an awesome piece of art.

My husband, Jeff Modereger, is a set and scene designer for plays, and he's the scenic designer for the Vermont Stage Company's production of "The Mountaintop" 

If you're anywhere near Burlington, Vermont between now and May 10, when "The Mountaintop" closes, you MUST go see it.

It's the best play I've seen Vermont Stage Company produce, and that's saying something. They've done some awesome work over the years.

More on this in a moment.

The wall to wall carpet in my parents' home had become a risk to them. It was frayed, and split. Tripping hazards for my mother, who is in her 80s, and my father, who turns 95 on Friday (!!)

We were visiting my parents, and Jeff looked down at the carpet and said, "This is perfect."

Um, what?

"The Mountaintop" takes place in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. In the play, Martin Luther King Jr. has just checked in. It's the night before he is to be assassinated.

The play is exclusively about the imagined interaction between MLK Jr. and a chambermaid who comes in to deliver the coffee and newspaper he'd ordered. I won't describe what happens in "The Mountaintop" beyond this, because I don't want to be a spoiler.

African Americans in the late 1960s didn't get to stay in nice hotels, and the Lorraine Motel was pretty threadbare.

My parents' carpet was certainly threadbare, and was the just right color for late 1960s cheap furnishings, the kind in the Lorraine Motel. Jeff had struggled to find a carpet for the set, and my parents' mess of a carpet was exactly perfect for "The Mountaintop."

So we struck a deal. Jeff bought the carpet from my parents, and Jeff, me, and my two sisters and their partners chipped in additional funds to buy them a new, safe carpet. Everybody wins!

Except for people with allergies. Though my mother faithfully vacuumed the carpet over the years, the carpet has 40 years worth of cat and dog dander, plus whatever the cat literally dragged in.

People on the crew for "The Mountaintop" with allergies have not been happy. Because of this issue, and the fact that a feather pillow bursts open during one scene in the play, there's a sign on door to Vermont Stage Company alerting people with allergies.

Still, I love how my parents managed to contribute in a strange but effective way to the Vermont arts scene.

Even if you do have allergies, go see "The Mountaintop" at Vermont Stage in downtown Burlington.

The playwright is Katori Hall, who certainly has a way with language. From a literary standpoint, it is one of the most well written plays I've seen, full of provocative, beautifully constructed dialogue that never gets flowery, but does get intense.

Cristina Alicea, the artistic director at Vermont Stage Company, directs the play, and paces it just perfectly so that the plot moves briskly, but not so fast that you can't catch the powerful dialogue and the expressiveness of Jolie Garrett, who plays Martin Luther King Jr and Myxolydia Tyler, who plays Camae, the chambermaid who comes into MLK's room.

Interesting fact: Garrett was born on the day MLK Jr. was laid to rest.

Tyler is especially awesome. Many of her best moments are not when she's speaking, but when she's reacting to what Martin Luther King Jr is saying. This is especially true as "The Mountaintop" builds toward its riveting climax.

Yeah, I'm gushing about "The Mountaintop." Deal with it. Better yet, go see it for yourself.  As I noted above, this production is the Vermont Stage Company at its finest.

Crisis In Ogden, Utah: City Orders Cardboard Play Fort Razed

The cardboard castle in Ogden, Utah, that has
some city officials up in arms.  

A dad in Ogden, Utah had a whole bunch of big empty boxes. He must have made some big appliance purchases or something.

He was going to throw them out or recycle the cardboard, of course, but first he decided he'd have a little fun.

Jeremy Trentelman built a giant castle out of the boxes, complete with a  slide, trap door, tunnel and windows  or his two young children, ages 3 and 2, reported the Salt Lake Tribune.

Trentelman said he was going to take the cardboard castle down soon. After all, cardboard isn't all that durable in the outdoors.

Now he's going to leave it up longer. Because Ogden City Code Enforcement swooped down quickly.

The enforcement officers said the castle constitutes "waste materials or junk," and he would have to take the castle down within 15 days or face $125 in fines.

"It was a great project for all of us to build, and now it's just fun watching them play in it, and watching their imagination run wild is just fantastic," Trentelman said.

Trentelman said it's absurd that code enforcement acted so instantaneously, so he's going to keep the cardboard castle up longer, out of spite.

Like all code enforcement department's Ogden's is understandably worried about piles of materials that could pose fire, safety and health risks. Secondarily, they want to keep the city looking pretty.

Which all means there's good reason for most city zoning codes, in Ogden and everywhere else.

What gets me is when zoning officers strictly enforce city ordinances in a way that make no sense. Clearly, the Ogden cardboard castle wasn't going to be there forever. Maybe the city prefers children not play outside or use their imaginations.

Maybe code enforcers they feel they have to enforce the codes when they make no sense, because, after all, they do have to follow the law.

That's when you get stupid things like crackdowns on Little Free Libraries. Those are little kiosks that people put in front of their houses so people can voluntarily put books in, then take them out for awhile to read, then put back in the kiosk.

Nice thing, but code enforcers say those are structures. You can't have a fun little convenient little free library.

Some cities said they would allow the Little Free Libraries only if people pay for permits, and they can get the money to do that from local arts organizations, say these crack code enforcers.

Or as The Atlantic put it:

"We've constructed communities where one must obtain prior permission from agents of the state before freely sharing books with one's neighbors! And their proposed solution is to get scarce public arts funds to pay for the needless layer of bureaucracy being imposed on the thing already being done for free."

There've also been big crackdowns on people who dare to plant vegetable gardens in their front yards.

Apparently, your front lawn is supposed to be a useless expanse of wasteful grass, and not something that can provide food, and, if properly cared for, some beauty to a neighborhood.

In most of the enforcement of libraries, gardens and in the Ogden castle, action was prompted by an anonymous complaint. Apparently every neighborhood has at least one miserable killjoy who can't STAND to see anyone have any kind of fun, and in their wimpy, anonymous fashion, try to put a stop to it.

Back in Ogden, a protest movement is growing. The Salt Lake Tribune said a Facebook event is on calling for people to build cardboard castles in their front lawns.

Poor Marital Communication Part II: This One's Fun And Works Out Well

For the second time in two days, I found a case where
 a woman returns home to find her husband made some
rather substantial changes to their home while she was gone.
In this case, nobody was particularly upset.  

Yesterday, I wrote about the guy who is the WORST EVER at marital communication.  

He's the guy who tore down the house he lived in with his wife, who owned the house. He didn't bother to mention to her ahead of time that he planned to do it.

 This did not end well.

Today, I found another example of an extreme lack of marital communication, but this one is much more positive.

In this new one,  the wife had gone away on errands for a good part of the day, much like the women whose husband tore down the house.

In this case, the husband, named Roman Atwood, stayed home with the kids, and when his wife called to check in during the day, Atwood said they were doing nothing special at home.

Atwood wasn't exactly being totally honest with his wife on this one.  Things weren't actually that boring at home.

Atwood is known for his prank videos, so you know things might not go as expected.

When the wife got home, she found her house radically different than when she left it. (kinda like the woman whose house got torn down by her husband.)

In this new case, however, they still have a place to live, and I have the distinct feeling that there is very, VERY little marital discord going on here. Plus the kids probably think he's the world's coolest dad.

Watch:

Watch What Happens When You Rain Play Manna On A Beagle

Throw a ball and a dog will go beserk with joy playing with it.  

What happens if you throw about 100 at once?

Find out by watching this video of a beagle a bit overwhelmed by a play options on his birthday.

He survives, though. Of course he does need a nap near the end, but you can't blame him

Watch and feel the joy:

Nobody To Play Fetch Wity? Dog Has A Solution

Hat tip to Jack Rowell via Facebook for finding this one:

A dog figures out how to play when
nobody can do the fetch thing with him.  

Dogs always want to play fetch. But sometimes they don't have anyone to play with.

This pooch in Japan figured it out. All he needed was a running brook, a ball and he found himself limitless play time.

Note: Video title suggests dog was abandoned, but YouTube notes owners were watching and monitoring him for safety.

Foxes On Trampolines, Giant Tire Hula Hoops. It's The Weekend

Since it's the weekend and time to play, I present you two examples of how to do it.

In the first video, some foxes came down from the woods somewhere and discovered a trampoline.  They quickly figured out how to have fun:




Next, we encounter a gentleman who wanted to hula hoop. But he didn't have one handy.

So, he tried the next best thing. He found a 100 pound tractor tire, and just used that as a hula hoop. Why not, right?




So, whether you bounce on the trampoline or hula hoop this weekend, hope you have a great time

Dogs, Sticks, Balls and Televisions Don't Mix

Love this brief video of the hazards of having a dog that loves playing with sticks and balls, and sees such things going on on a television screen.

I'm afraid either one of my Boys, Bailey or especially Jackson, might do the same. Anyway, the video is good for a chuckle, especially if you're a dog love.

Kudos to the guy in the 12-second video who has VERY fast reflexes.