Lana, "the loneliest dog in the world," Needs Our Help

Photo: Lana, from my blog entry in 2015, and from this week's article here.

Okay, let's help the underdog.

Lana, "the loneliest dog in the world," needs help. I've written about her before, so click here if you missed it. The bottom line now is that she's been returned to a shelter, and she only has until May 20th, or she may be put down.

Having read about her twice, and having now written about her twice, it seems to me that she suffers from excessive shyness and mistrust, and she may have been abused in her past. It sounds like she's been in a shelter for so long, so often, that being left alone in a house or apartment for a few hours may give her actual PTSD symptoms. My dog, a greyhound who was put in a cage for two years, gets like that around dog cages, so he can't ever go in one to wait for his turn at the groomer. One hallway at a building I used to work in must remind him of the track, or a shelter, because when he saw it, he reared up on his legs like a horse and actually came out of his harness. Dogs can have PTSD symptoms. Anyway, the article says that, when Lana's not around the people she trusts, she shuts down or becomes more hesitant. Well, hell, so do I. Who doesn't?

From the article:

Nearly two years after Lana the Labrador became known as "the saddest dog in the world," she's looking for a forever home again.

After an image of Lana cowering at an animal shelter went viral in 2015, thousands of applications poured in and she found a new owner.

But this week, animal rescue group "Rescue Dogs Match" shared an update: Lana is back up for adoption...She's now living at a boarding facility, but due to limited space, she only has until May 20 to find another home. After that, she may be euthanized.

The rescue organization says the best home for Lana, now 2, would be a farm where she can spend most of her time outside.

"The best family for her would be a mature couple or person that has the time, patience, determination and commitment to help her become more confident," the rescue group wrote on Facebook.

"She is sweet and silly, that is hard-wired into her character. She is timid, wary of strangers only at first. When she is not around the people she trusts, she has the tendency to shut down or become very hesitant."

If you’re interested in Lana, you can email info@rescuedogsmatch.com to foster or adopt her.

From "Rescue Dogs Match" on Facebook (click to go there):

May 14 is Lana's Birthday ( she will be 3 ) Please help find her a Foster or Forever home. Lana only has until May 20th

Name: Lana Turner
Breed: Lab mix
Gender: Female
Size: Medium
Age: 3 yrs
Cat: NO
Dogs: NO
Kids: None
Fenced in backyard if in the suburb

Lana Turner is looking for a foster or forever home. She has made some improvements but there is still work to be done. The best environment for her would be a horse or hobby farm where she can be outside most of the time “helping” her person with the chores around the property. She LOVES to be outside no matter what the weather. For cold winter days a quality winter coat would keep her cozy. Lana loves to be part of whatever is going on but not in “tight” quarters. The best family for her would be a mature couple or person that has the time, patience, determination and commitment to help her become more confident. A family that would arrange controlled play dates with other dogs, without food or toys around. A family that has a routine she can rely on, and an active lifestyle that would banish the thought of endless hours in concrete bunkers with nothing to do.

She is sweet and silly, that is hard-wired into her character. She is timid, wary of strangers only at first. When she is not around the people she trusts, she has the tendency to shut down or become very hesitant. It is important for her to be in a home where she will continue to be exposed to new situations with lots of positive reinforcement. She is loyal and loving to the people she trusts.

She very much likes to hang out with other dogs. However time, training and patience is required to continue to lessen her possessive issues around food . Every dog learns at their own pace, so best that she be the only pet in the home. No apartments and a fenced in yard is a must if living in a suburb. 

Her rescue team is committed to supporting her next, and hopefully final, adoptive family with training and time, as much as is needed to help her be truly forever home.

Help Lana by sharing her story. Please email info@rescuedogsmatch.com if you are interested in fostering or adopting.

(Me again.) Let's help Lana live beyond May 20th, and look more like the picture below. Please forward this blog, or copy and paste it, to your own blog, and to your friends. Let's pass the word and keep this dog alive. She'll be 3 on May 13th, and she hasn't had a chance to live. If I didn't already have a dog, I would've contacted them already.

Thank you.

A Few Things

Just a few things I need to point out.  Minor things that have accumulated over time:

--A hearty THANK YOU (that's right, I shouted that out) to all 10 of my beta-readers.  You guys rock!  I owe you, big-time.  I won't forget the kindness that you've been showing me the last week +.

--If you like a blog entry, or if you just want to help me out, please mention it on your media, or like it, or comment, or something.  Any of that is supremely appreciated!

--I cannot accept comments from Anonymous.  I have very good reasons for this.  Commenting is really, really appreciated, but please leave your name or avatar (preferably, both), or I'll have to press DELETE when I go over the submitted comments.

--Please comment anytime, on any blog entry, even if it's not a contest.  Your comments are very important to me, for many reasons!

--If you don't want to leave a comment, but want to say something or enter a contest, please feel free to email me--but not anonymously!  (A surprising number prefer doing this.)

--Please remember that I have many blogs, the most important (to me, anyway) being this one and my published works blog.  Please visit them!  All of the tabs are above.

--I should read the blogs more of people who follow mine, read mine, add me to Google +, etc.  When you comment, it's okay if you remind me of this.  I'll get there, I promise.  And I comment on anything I can for my friends / followers / readers, etc. because I know how important that is.

How Bookstores Pay Us Not to Go There

Photo: Barnes and Noble icon, from twimg.com.  (Notice the brick and mortar name and the .com.)

So a few days ago I walk into the only large (chain) bookstore left in all of Rhode Island: Barnes and Noble.  I wanted to go there because a) I'd forgotten if I'd pre-ordered Stephen King's latest, Dr. Sleep, his sequel to The Shining.  (For the record, I'm a little concerned about how I'll like the motorcycle gang, but we'll see.)  I ask the guy behind the help desk to look it up in my account, and it turns out that I hadn't pre-ordered it.  I ask him if I can do so, using this 20% extra coupon I'd been emailed, and hoping I'd be able to use it with the 40% off new hardcovers usually come with, and maybe even the 10% off I sometimes get because I'm a member.  (I realize that hoping to get 70% off a new Stephen King hardcover is extremely unrealistic, but as my previous blog entry mentioned, these are some hard times.)

He says No, that Barnes and Noble doesn't offer discounts on the pre-ordered books through BN.com because new books ordered online are already greatly reduced.

"How much reduced?" My ears perked up, because I like things greatly reduced these days.

He explains that to buy it in the store, I'd have to pay the $28 (or so) price, plus tax.  That's over $30.  I'd get the 30% off, not the 40%, and I'd get an additional 10% for being a member, and that's it.  No other coupons allowed.  No 20% additional from the coupon.  I was about to start a discussion about the meaning of the word "additional," as in, the coupon says "get an additional 20% off," but instead I ask him how much it would be to just pre-order it online.

"Nineteen dollars," he said.

Huh?  I quickly figured that 10% of $28 was $2.80, and that twice that was $5.60, and that twice that was $11.20 (that's the 40% off total, for those not so mathematically inclined), and that $30 (with tax) minus $11.20 was $19.80--essentially what it would cost me to sit on my butt at home and order it from there.  Plus, I wouldn't have to pay shipping, because I'm a member and I get that for free. And no money spent on gas, etc.

This gave me pause.  I told the guy I gave him credit for bringing the whole online thing up to begin with, as I had been ready to buy it from the store the week of September 23rd.  I said it was especially good of him to mention it, since everyone who orders a book at bn.com, and not at the store, makes his job more and more obsolete.  It also would make obsolete the jobs of the cashiers and the cafe workers, and it would negate the sales of a great many other books and magazines that are sold to people who come into the store to buy A, and who leave the store buying A, B and C.  From my experience, people who go online to a bookstore website to buy A end up buying A and that's it.  ("From my experience" here means me and a few friends.)

He acknowledged all of this, though it was clear that he hadn't considered all this before, and nobody had had the gumption (or the arrogance) to bring all this up to him before.  Times being what they are, I pre-ordered the book and had it delivered for free to my house, feeling badly as I did so, but at least congratulating myself for not waiting a few weeks or a few months and then buying it for just a couple of bucks on Amazon or Ebay.

To make myself feel a little better, I looked for a baseball card checklist / price guide I needed, but I was told that they didn't carry it in stock, but that their website did.  Sigh.  I bought a couple of coin books I needed instead, feeling that Barnes and Noble was at this point working against me as I tried to buy something in its store.  I had to go through entirely too much hassle and brainpower to do so.

In the long run I'll have to admit defeat.  Before long, the workers behind the registers, in the cafe, behind the help desk, and in the rows of books won't have a job, and the stockholders and CEO of Barnes and Noble will make more money because they won't have any workers to pay.  And there won't be even one large bookstore in my entire state.  Somewhere in there (though Stephen King himself probably doesn't need the money) the writers themselves, and the book publishers, will end up somehow getting screwed, as more and more people buy "books" online and then read them on their electronic devices, never having to actually be verbal with another person as they do so.  For this, book-makers will disappear, as will printers, type-setters, and all the middlemen who are responsible for the sometimes high price of books--but who also keep the economy going by being a necessary worker, and by holding a job.  This in turn makes them money, which they would spend on things that would also necessitate the jobs of other people.  The economy is a house of cards this way, and it's all going to someday blow down.

People will wonder why the economy got so bad.  And there won't be any economics books to teach them.

Or the teachers, for that matter.  But that's another blog.