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Great Dog Names

Having a pet dog can mean days of entertainment, exercise, responsibility, feeding, and yes, a bit of cleanup.

But what do you name your dog? That can be one of the hardest questions you’ll have to ask yourself.

You can always go with the standards: Spot, Rusty, or Rex.

Or you can name your pet the same as some famous people have named their dogs. One of the best examples of a famous dog name is Cheeseburger, the name Jimmy Buffett gave his pet dog.

John Wayne’s nickname, The Duke, came from his childhood pet being called Big Duke by local firefighters. John was actually called Little Duke by the same guys.

Less original, and quite frankly just as dull as the standard names, are the movie star dog names like Toto, Lassie, and Hooch.

Although Laika is a less-well-known name, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. (This was the name of the dog which was sent to orbit the Earth.)

Some fun pet dog names to start trending:

Fight–you could totally have fun yelling “Fight!” to call for your dog.
Bigfoot–even more fun to yell.
Bossman–or you could just name your dog after your boss? Would the boss ever know?
Barfy–wait, isn’t that a famous dog name?
Taylor–so NOT after anyone famous, right?
Grits–could be good, except it rhymes with nits.
Nacho–another food related name. Or is it after the hilarious movie Nacho Libre?
Squeaker–for a small dog, right? Even funnier if it’s a big dog name.
Dynamite–Dyna, for short.
Scuba Dude–sounds like another dog name, but it isn’t.

If these suggestions don’t sound like the right name for your dog, you can always try the trick of naming your pet after your favorite food/color/aunt/uncle.

“What? Uncle Butch, it’s totally a coincidence that my dog is named Butch too.”

It has occurred to me that one of the reasons why many of my friends who mountain bike don’t end up hanging out together, let alone riding together, is because there are so many styles of mountain biking. How many styles are there?

First, let me list one that’s not: Not quite grown out of the BMX, there are some riders who prefer huge gap jumps, double back flips, or doing “The Superman”. These are those who may be riding a bike with 29ers, but what they’re doing with that bike isn’t necessarily anything anyone would consider mountain biking. It’s only BMX stunts on a different bike. There are skateboards with fat wheels, which a kid can ride on dirt, and that action would be about as much like true mountain biking as all the BMX jump parks. When I do the jump parks, I think it’s a good workout, but it doesn’t give me much of a thrill. The parks are usually in the middle of a city with a parking lot and a convenience store right next to them. The mountains are generally far away. My point here, before I move on to true mountain biking styles, is that you might as well throw some pegs on that bike and call it what it really is: a fat-tire BMX.

One style is the style of “century” traveling, which doesn’t quite have to do with time. They call it a century because they travel 100 miles. This is indeed a hardcore type of mountain biking. These guys and gals plan a day and a route, then they just go and go and go. They don’t take a lot of breaks as they crank out the miles, however, they do bring plenty of food and water. They experience a lot of scenery along the way. They sometimes take trains and shuttles to get back home, or from home to where they start the ride. This kind of mountain biking is for people who love to travel long distance.

The style opposite to century riding is “downhill” biking. I don’t know why I put quotes on that. Maybe just to make the word stand alone. The quotes don’t mean it’s not like downhill—it literally is downhill. The reason it’s so different from century riding is that it doesn’t cover many miles and it doesn’t take long at all. Downhill mountain biking is the ADHD of sports. Depending on the trail and the skill of the rider, a downhill ride can last only a matter of minutes. For instance, one ride I like to do averages about three miles in ten minutes with the elevation change of around 2,000 feet. There are a few jumps on the trail, but you don’t jump super high unless you want to be in the trees. Trees are an essential part of the thrill. Trees make it so you can’t see too far down the trail, provide shade, and provide obstacles such as downed branches, janky roots, and piles of leaves with branches and roots and other things hiding underneath.

Adventure riding is a fun style of mountain biking, though generally unsanctioned because it involves traveling off every conceivable trail and making your own way through everything from cacti to bogs to log piles. It requires an excess of curiosity. Adventure riding can get a rider in trouble though, if the rider has no regard for the usual signs of occupied territory. Going over gates, around fences and other barriers, just to satisfy an unquenchable curiosity is a poor way to be an ambassador for the sport. Getting lost is another poor way to show people how we play. I would say, most of the people I know who go adventure riding obey the conventions of society and don’t travel on anyone’s private property. Now, if only all of them would.

Last, but not least, is the generic style of mountain biking. These are the people who want to go up the mountain, come back down, maybe catch a few pictures of wildlife, and have a good time enjoying the outdoors. These folks might go 5 miles, or they might choose to go 30 miles, whatever fits their mood for the day. They fit the mountain biking mold fairly well.

Whatever style you like, I hope you have a fantastic, safe time doing it.

The Day After

Photo by ADELAIDO BAUTISTA on Pexels.com

Happy Thanksgiving indeed! What’s really important here is what you’re having for dinner the day after Thanksgiving. You want Mexican food. You know it’s true. You’re tired of turkey and potatoes and all the weird side dishes that your family loves, like the shrimp-flavored craisin bread uncle Henry brings every year but almost nobody eats.

Yes, Mexican food. It’s on everyone’s menu. Those delicious beans with cheese, rice, tomatoes, and fresh avocadoes. That’s what you were thinking all along. My only suggestions have to do with how you prioritize the ingredients.

To serve the best Mexican food, you want lots of tortillas just hanging out there, available for whoever wants one. A great way to serve those is warm, delivered with a set of tongs, as if you’re handing out steamed towels at the spa.

You’ll also need refried beans, of course, by the gallon. Whether they’re totally vegetarian or infused with delicious, nutritious bacon grease is completely up to you. It’s a matter of personal style. Do, however, make sure you provide a lot of them. Without beans, the meal may only qualify as Southwestern food. To be authentic Mexican, it has to have beans.

The last essential item is sauce. While the Italians have their marinara, the Mexicans have their salsa. Not talking about the music here. It’s all about the food, and the salsa that belongs with Mexican food is a tomatoey sauce, not unlike marinara, but different in that it is usually a bit spicier and less pasty. When serving up Mexican food you should have no less than seven different types of salsa at varying degrees of hotness.

So the above are the essentials. The following though, are only if you want ‘em.

Rice is fantastic. It definitely rounds out a meal. Cooked right, it can seem like an essential part of the meal. Once you know that you already have grains in the tortillas, you’ll likely agree you don’t need more grains on your plate, so rice can stay or go, it doesn’t matter all that much.

Cheese, like rice, makes a meal even better, but it just isn’t integral. You can have a bean burrito, or you can have a bean and cheese burrito, but you can’t have a cheese burrito—that’s just a quesadilla. Quesadillas are the only food in which cheese is absolutely necessary. Narf! But aren’t quesadillas 100% Mexican? I ask myself. Okay, maybe cheese is an essential ingredient. I’ll let you decide.

Lettuce is great too, but it’s not essential, even in its role as a vegetable because the role of vegetables is fulfilled by the salsa tenfold. The only thing less necessary than lettuce would be corn chips.

Let me tell you about the corn chip. The corn chip is a tool. That’s all he is. He’s a tool for scooping, shoveling, or pushing the other food around. Eating the corn chip is as optional as Beano or cilantro. Serve up any of those three last items at your preference and your prerogative.

And, you know, it doesn’t hurt to be thankful the day after Thanksgiving. Estoy agradecido por la comida Mexicana.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

The Last Leaf

Is it pointless to rake leaves if they haven’t all fallen off the tree? Would you wait until all have fallen but three? Two? One?

Or do you just pray for a big wind to blow them all into someone else’s yard?

There’s a best way to do this autumn activity. I’m still trying to figure out what that best way might be.

If your leafblower breaks, do you use a rake? If your rake breaks, do you use your hands, or feet? Are you the kind of person who prefers to mulch the leaves with a mower? Do you rake them up and put them in with the compost? It’s probably the best way to use leaves. That’s how they’re used by nature. Leaves are the top of the topsoil. Leaf piles are frequented by fat worms. Worms love the loamy part of the naturally decaying piles of leaves. That part at the bottom where it’s all damp and the leaves are barely discernible as leaves because they look more like dirt—that’s where the worms love to be.

Do you pile the leaves in your garden, hoping to attract worms? Do you play in the leaf piles, rolling around, covering yourself in leaves, and hoping not to find worms?

Do you turn the leaf piles into the garden soil with a trowel, a shovel, a rake, a hoe, or a tiller? How close to the earth do you get? Are you the kind who really gets in, so that every part of you gets some dirt on, or are you the kind who lets the natural world go on doing what it does?

Then again, maybe you’re in the middle of the spectrum. Maybe you dig a little dirt, rake seven leaves, and then let the rest of nature go on as it would without you.

The natural way is probably the best way, if you can get away with it. Some people put themselves into slavery by joining an HOA, and then the HOA dictates to them when and how the leaves are moved. If the HOA commanded the people to ingest and digest the leaves in their own yards, they would have to do it. Contractual obligations, you know? Well, you can praise the Lord every day you don’t belong to an HOA. Those people suffer, while the rest of us enjoy watching the last persistent leaf in the tree like a dog watching a squirrel, or a squirrel staring at an acorn.

Therapy

When you say the word therapy, it brings a variety of things to people’s minds.

There’s physical therapy, mental therapy, and aroma therapy.

A lot of these require someone else to direct you toward the end result of being whole again, however, I’m here to say you can do it yourself. With the right amount of knowledge you can perform all the critical therapies on your own body and mind.

This is not an excuse for you to skip therapy sessions with your doctor, whether that doctor is a PT (physical therapist), or a psychiatrist. The objective view you get from them may be essential for your recovery.

Aroma therapy may even require a guide at first, though when you learn what scents you need and what works best for you, then they might not be as necessary. You’ll be guiding your own aroma therapy in short order.

Mental health therapy can be corrective, when you absolutely need that objective point of view, or preventive, in which you can do all the work yourself. Creating a sturdy foundation of mental health can be as simple as swimming or going for a walk. You can set your own prescription of bike rides or runs with the dogs. You can paint a picture or let someone else paint you. (And I do mean that in every sense of the phrase. Who knows but you might like to see your portrait or get paint all over your skin. Therapy, anyone?)

When you find what keeps you sane and physically fit, you might stick with it for a while. Don’t be afraid to try new things. There may be more than one way for you to stay fit in body and mind.

Some common ways to do your own therapy are:

Work.

Conversation.

Scrapbooking.

Visiting friends and family.

Nature watching.

Sports.

Art.

Praying.

Meditating.

(I had to check that last one, to make sure I didn’t spell it “medicating”. Even though people commonly self-medicate, I don’t recommend it.)