{"id":469,"date":"2003-11-19T17:41:18","date_gmt":"2003-11-19T21:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2003\/11\/19\/its-a-dogs-life-in-todays-world\/"},"modified":"2007-02-16T01:29:27","modified_gmt":"2007-02-16T05:29:27","slug":"its-a-dogs-life-in-todays-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2003\/11\/19\/its-a-dogs-life-in-todays-world\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s a dog’s life in today’s world"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> The other day we were persuaded that our dog appeared to be in need of having his anal ducts<\/a> manipulated. I had no idea dogs had anal ducts or that these could be in need of manual intervention (and all I can say is thank god for latex gloves, too). As it turned out, his “scooting or dragging the anal area” around the grass or rug was a red herring — nowhere near his bottom, incidentally — as his glands or sacs turned out to be in fine working order. At any rate… Before I took him to the vet, I checked the web for information. It seems that searching for [dog “anal gland”] turns up only humour sites, such as the Wacky Sayings Archive<\/a>, and while this page wasn’t at all helpful in explaining what might be my dog’s problem, there is some funny stuff here, including outgoing telephone answering machine messages such as:<\/p>\n

This is not an answering machine. This is a telepathic thought-recording device. After the tone, think about your name, your number and your reason for calling, and I’ll think about returning your call.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are several other headings here (Label Instructions<\/em>, Signs and Notices<\/em>, Product Warnings<\/em>), including Bad Headlines<\/em><\/a>, which reminded me of Sheila Lennon<\/a>‘s recent chortling over nonsense headlines (and sorry I can’t make the exact link to Sheila’s entry — something to do with registering — but it’s better to go to her main page, anyway, and read from the top):<\/p>\n

Lawyers Give Poor Free Legal Advice
\nAutos Killing 110 a Day — Let’s Resolve to Do Better<\/em>
\n… and, my favourite:
\nJuvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given our “progress” I hope that last one doesn’t turn out to be prescient. (Check out Frank’s expose<\/a> of the views of James Leon Holmes, a Bush nominee to the Federal Bench: Mr. Holmes appears ready to take incarceration to a whole new level of pre-Bastille standards….) And speaking of the Bastille<\/a>, which “was a prison where kings and queens usually locked up people who didn’t agree with their decisions. To a lot of French, the Bastille prison was a symbol of the corrupt system run by the kings and queens. On July 14, 1789 the Revolution began when a large group stormed the Bastille prison,”<\/em> you have to check out Betsy Devine<\/a>‘s entry on the establishment of “Free Speech Zones.” Science fiction today, reality tomorrow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day we were persuaded that our dog appeared to be in need of having his anal ducts manipulated. I had no idea dogs had anal ducts or that these could be in need of manual intervention (and all I can say is thank god for latex gloves, too). As it turned out, his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}