Every time I go hiking with my dog I pull one of these little bastards off his fur. I cover him in permethrin, as well as every inch of my clothing, shoes and hat, so I’m not SUPER stressed about it, but it’s still annoying. A couple days ago I found one in his tail floof (he’s a golden so it’s a giant poof.) The tick was near dead already by the time I got it untangled from his fur thanks to the permethrin though. Usually I spot the ticks on him either because they’re on his head (where they’re easy to spot immediately), or because they got tangled in his fur and couldn’t jump off. I’ve never once seen one bite him thankfully.

It’s wild to me because I have only seen other kinds of ticks twice so far this season, but otherwise it’s all lone star ticks, which are not supposed to be the most common where I am. They’re definitely more prominent this year though. Of all the tick diseases, alpha-gal terrifies me the most, so I’m not thrilled by this increase in lone stars.

When it’s wet you should avoid getting it on bare skin, but once it’s dried it’s inert and you’re completely fine. The instructions say when you spray your dog or your clothes you should use gloves, but it dries pretty quickly. Usually about an hour for my dog (he’s double coated so it just takes a while for the undercoat to dry), but with most of my clothing I’ve sprayed it’s usually 30-60 minutes depending on the fabric.

With all that said, permethrin has long been approved for and used in lice shampoos, so it’s fine even against the skin, it’s just that it doesn’t work once it’s dry on the skin. All studies on permethrin show it to be entirely safe at the concentrations we use it at. It has to bind to fibers, but on skin it will break down quickly and be ineffective. It bonds to fibers really well though and is why it’s a longer term solution lasting weeks versus spraying harsh smelling deet that wears off in hours. For ticks it’s really the best solution.

You definitely do not need to bathe them and it wouldn’t matter if you did. Permethrin is meant to be a long term treatment (up to 6 weeks) so you spray it on your dog and let it dry days before your hike. Once dry permethrin is safe for humans and even cats. In fact treating your own clothing with permethrin (NOT while wearing them) is a safe and effective way to keep mosquitoes and ticks off you as well. Like dogs, permethrin treated clothes are effective for about 6 weeks (or 6 washes).

Also highly recommend spraying your dogs thoroughly with Permethrin in addition to whatever else they’re on. Permethrin is an insecticide and when ticks come into contact with it they immediately want to get away from it and will hop off as quickly as they can. My dog and I go hiking a lot and I almost never see ticks on him anymore. This applies even if you only walk your dog on paved paths - the ticks sit on the tips of leaves and grass blades waiting for something to come near.

Ok but um…what do we do with California?

Correct

Back many moons ago when I smoked I preferred unfiltered Lucky Strikes. I generally put them in ash trays anywhere I could find one, but if one wasn’t available in the vicinity I had no qualms with dropping it and giving it a smash and twist with my shoe to put it out and effectively destroy it. One rain, or even just a good fog, and it no longer existed. I agree I think this habit was continued when filters came into fashion and it’s just not equivalent at all.

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Oh I definitely wasn’t throwing shade at you! I love that your little buddy is all bundled up! I just hate the sentiment in general of people being snarky over dogs in clothes or shoes. Just had to get the rant out of my system is all!

Edit: dog tax

My response to “wolves don’t wear sweaters” is “apes don’t wear coats, yet here we are”. Both are equally stupid. Just because a distinct other species that evolved with/from/alongside doesn’t do something doesn’t mean we shouldn’t if it is advantageous for us.

I put boots on my dog in snow or the little turd gets snowballs frozen between his toes, chews them out, licking his feet, making them wet so snowballs attach bigger and faster, until his feet are ice balls. All this because it feels weird to him when the ice balls push on his toes so he removes them. He gets boots so the balls never form and he can run around like an idiot and enjoy the snow!

The unfortunate part is the two counties in KS most affected currently are two blue counties. They’re the more densely populated part of the state being part of the Kansas City metro. Sucks 😔

Depending on the type, my grocery store is anywhere from $5-9 per dozen. Baking is getting expensive yo!

As an elder millennial I struggle to see the problem honestly. When cell phones first came out and teenagers started getting them when I was in high school, the policy was you could have the phone in your bag, but if the teacher saw it during class they would take it away and your parents would have to come get it at the end of the day.

I am not sure when schools started allowing phones to be a free for all, but going back to the original phone rules I had seems like the easiest solution no? Kids still have the phones in case of emergency, but they cannot use them during class. Is the concern about the confrontation of taking the phone from the kids? That’s the only argument I can see, but if they resist, send them out! I’m genuinely confused here.

I think people who do sports with their dogs are likely to be able to see these preferences easier. I do agility with mine and there’s a lot of time spent watching their feet and seeing where and how they start and land jumps and such. He tends to favor his left and will typically lead with it. When we’re doing scentwork he also raises his left paw to signal as well. He uses both paws for all sorts of things, but I believe he does favor his left!

Eggs are also used in a lot of baked goods. If you’re cooking at home and making a lot of things from scratch, eggs are common ingredients. In addition to that they’re also an excellent source of protein that doesn’t require any forethought or planning to just make in minutes. My husband and I go through a dozen every 7-10 days depending on what I’m making. That’s not a ton, but considering most grocery prices are up it’s frustrating. I can cut back on a lot of things, and I can make alternative recipes that don’t include eggs for a lot of things, but then those things have a different texture, less protein, or can’t exist at all. I’m already cooking nearly everything from scratch at home to save money as it is. Not buying eggs is a bigger sacrifice than many realize, especially for someone that loves to bake.

While I don’t disagree that it engages different parts of the brain, reading audio books is still beneficial, and no studies have shown a demonstrable difference in a person’s comprehensive ability using physical vs audiobooks. In fact, some groups like the National Literacy Trust have shown that audiobooks can be beneficial for engagement in education and if used properly, beneficial to the learning process in general. Humans (and our precursors) spent millennia conveying stories, culture and history entirely through verbal storytelling. As a species we have spent more time listening to stories and absorbing them that way than physically reading them.

While there is certainly a difference between reading and listening to books, I absolutely would not criticize anyone who chooses to pick up an audiobook vs not consuming books at all. Seeing words spelled out and the punctuation within the writing is helpful, especially for those learning to read or learning the language. But audiobooks are still books and as far as I’m concerned you “read” the book if you listened to the audio in full.

To be honest, Ingram’s VMWare team was hot garbage, unresponsive and unhelpful for the last 2 years. Good riddance. We were looking at switching our VMware disty anyway

Makes sense. We send everything through it by default and then we have a separate device group for non-Pihole DNS handling. Devices such as work computers that might get weird or have issues get put in this group. Everything else is by default put through Pihole until we have a reason otherwise.

Pihole has always worked as expected on my Pixel phones. To the point that I have to drop off of our wifi to visit some sites when they don’t load correctly. Pihole is happening at the router level though, not a setting on my phone. Unless Android starts tunneling around it (I wouldn’t put this past Google), then all traffic will continue to go through Pihole since it’s going through our router. Any device connected to our network has Pihole as its DNS.

Dame Maggie Smith was a gem in everything she was in. Her performances elevated every piece of media she performed in. I would watch movies just because she was in them, and I never regretted that. Today is truly a sad day. Rest in peace. She gave the world countless masterful performances and now the curtain has closed.