Royal Tour

A big thank you to Royal Canin and their educational trip/conference/tour! My tour to visit the Royal Canin factory and distribution centre was fantastic. Not to mention it was an all paid trip. They spared no expense. I got my own king suite at the hotel, vouchers to eat at the hotel's fancy restaurant, transportation costs covered, and after a day of learning more about their products we were treated to a wine tour and fantastic meal at Rockway Winery.

I am impressed with Royal Canin's "sales pitch" as well, its more of a we're going to inform you about what dogs and cats need in their food nutrition wise and de-bunk how pet food in general is advertised and sold and let you form your own opinions on what you promote to your customers. It was pretty similar to some of the topics that got covered when I took my grooming course.

I was impressed with the cleanliness of both the warehouse and factory. I was also very impressed with their systems of quality control. It was also interesting to hear the history of the company and hearing about their research facilities. And as an added bonus they're very environmentally friendly!

I'm not entirely convinced that my dogs should be eating their food, mainly because their price point is still quite high, but atleast I know why its a premium pet food now.

Wrathful Wednesday

A couple updates before getting to my main story.

Bird phobia is still in full swing. However the turkeys and I seem to have worked out a system of sorts. Not entirely sure how this is going to progress as they continue to get larger. I may be calling in a support team. I'm also down another bird, so 11 turkeys left.

Work has been busy. On top of my grooming I'm helping with some re-organization and the store is in desperate need of it. Plus the manager and I are trying to get it all done before Friday so it will be all set before we go to our conference and before she goes on holidays. We're getting close.

Now to my main story:

Back in May a local man was attack by a black bear. The bear allegedly attacked his livestock(chickens), his dog(killed it), then went after the man. The man suffered many laseration wounds to his head and shoulder. To me the story sounds fishy, there's something just not right about the whole situation. Here's an article in the Timmins Daily Press http://www.timminspress.com/2013/05/12/man-injured-in-bear-attack. The bear was suposedly killed by the MNR. There has been no coverage as to whether or not there was something "wrong" with the bear or if it was a freak accident/attck.

Since this attack the paranoia over bear potentially attacking at random has sky rocketed. I think people are insane. Sure we should be aware of bears and educate ourselves on bear safety but really having arms at the ready just incase a bear strolls through your yard. I keep going back to "they are more afraid of you than you are of them", make loud noise to scare them away, let the dogs bark at them, keep garbage inside, clean up bird feeders etc. bear safe common sense seems no need to apply these days. Sure maybe the re-instatement of the spring bear hunt may help keep the bear population at bay, but I also think that we can learn to better co-exsit with them. Don't want to co-exist move to down town Toronto (or other equally large city).

Into thin air

So I was working away today, grooming my heart out. There's not much to concentrate on while grooming so my mind tends to wander while I'm going through my steps to beautify dogs. I had 2 or 3 great ideas for blog posts. Now that I'm at home; nothing.  I am going to have to start jotting down my ideas when I have them instead of filing them into my mental space to retrieve at a later time.

So in the mean time....

The turkeys turned 4 weeks old on wednesday. I had ordered 12, got 13; one died last friday so I'm back down to 12. They arent as ugly as they were, theyre starting to get their adult feathers and look less like naked chickens. This weekend I'm going to be brave and let them out of their pen while I clean their shed, its not terribly dirty yet but I want to get into the habbit of letting them outside while I clean the shed and I think them exploring their pen should be fine, they're big enough not to escape through any holes in the fence.

This weekend I get to work again...I need the money soo its not too bad. And i have no life, plus I'll have 7 dogs at my house so a couple hour break saturday morning will be nice. I'm also on stand by for our new student if she runs into any trouble she can call me and I'll go to her rescue. Shes also kind of being thrown under the bus this weekend too. As the manager is out of town for a fishing derby and the student who usually works weekends has her prom and is apparently not capable of working the day after prom, nor even coming in on Saturday at 1 to work for 4 hours. Whatever happened to going to work hung over or still drunk? Kids these days...I do have full confidence in our new hire, she just needs a little more practice time and her confidence will improve as time goes on too.

I am looking forward to the 24th. Sam, the manager and I are headed off on a mini work vacation/conference. We're headed to the big city of Guelph to visit the Royal Canin pet food plant. The trip is entirely paid by Royal Canin, meals, hotel, gas money, plus once all the business seminars are done we get to go on a wine tour for dinner. We're only gone for 3 days but who can say no to an all expence paid (plus our wages) oppotunity to get away. Then on the 29th I'm on the road again for my aunts 65th birthday party, then home on the 30th for my friends parents anniversary party, then Canada Day festivities on the July 1. And then 8 days of work and I'm off to my best friends wedding.

Busy busy. And I should be tidying the house(house proofing for 7 large dogs and 1 small dog), and getting myself organized. Hopefully I won't loose too many more ideas for interesting blog posts.

Feeling Broke and Jaded

I don't often shop at our local grocery store because the prices are outrageous. I look for their sales or just go their for fruits and vegies and cheese.

Tonight I decided I wanted to get some "good" meat, a steak, for a dinner this week, and I was craving something sweet.  40 bucks and 5 items later I leave the store!

My haul was a T-Bone steak that was on "quick sale" cuz it will be soon past its freshness date and even then it was nearly 13.00, 2L of Chocolate Milk -I very rarely buy milk let alone drink it but every 3 or 4 months I'll have a craving for chocolate milk which I usually fill with a lunch or dinner at subway, but I splurged tonight and spent 5.05 on milk. I got some jalepeno poppers at a price of 4.99 for 8 poppers, a case of Presidents Choice ginger ale, which was on sale, and after tasting it doesnt compare to Canada Dry(remember when I case of pop was 24!). And to fill my sweet tooth some President Choice Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookies, also on sale.

I am most upset at the cookies. I buy cookies less often than I do milk. Usually I bake my own. So when I open the bag theres only 18 cookies in it?!?! WTF? 18 cookies?!?! I was expecting atleast 24. Shame on you Mr. Wheston. Needless to say I'll go back to baking my own sweets.

Plea to all Parents...and a Thank you to mine.

Parents you are not doing your kids justice by waiting on them hand and foot.

My most recent eye opening to this fact is that at work we have 2 co-op students working with us...One student clearly has chores to do at home, she is very good at cleaning up after herself, even knows how to clean and do laundry.  The other student had a huge learning curve. She had never done laundry, washed floors, and clearly has someone that picks up after her at home. Both are very nice polite, pleasant girls to work with, and I'll be sad to see them end their term with us.

Back to my topic, parents please fight with your kids to clean their own rooms, do the dishes, wash and fold their own laundry, sweep and wash the floors, shovel the driveway, cook meals for the family, cut the lawn, dust, feed the pets, clean the bathroom. They will thank you when they are older.

So thanks mom and dad for making me do some chores. Learning some of those basic life skills truly help shape people into well rounded independant individuals.

Turkey Time!

 

 

It's turkey raising time at my house. I was expecting 12 ugly 3week old large white turkeys and got 13, never fails you almost always get an unexpected guest for dinner (at least this one will I'll get to eat ;) ). Hopefully they make it through the next couple of days and we'll be good to go; the reason I say that is the next couple of nights its suposed to get pretty chilly at night, mind you not the below zero temps they were calling for a couple days ago. 

 

And here's hoping I can get over my bird phobia and get these guys to 15-20 lbs.