1/29/09
Bomboukou...
in his new home in GA. His owners Skye and Josh Bauermeister also own Tylalt (Afelahlah X Tiwul), now one year old. Again, thanks to Susan Sita McKay for permission to publish her images.
Amaray...
...(Fasiqqi X Tawinak) in his new home in GA. He is playing with Bomboukou, his paternal half-brother, in one photo. Thanks to Susan Sita McKay for permission to publish her images.
1/25/09
...Batna's puppies...now 41 days old, al hamdullilah...
...from top: Amassakoul (co-owned with Mimi Cary Drake, CA), Ayur-ikmer, Kanazi and Madidou. The sire of the litter is Kidal (Fasiqqi X Imouyene). Click here for more information RE ancestry. Al hamdullilah.
...and again, more pics...
...from top: Hawa (Tamgak X Tiwul), Samhan (Aslam X Semteende), Tadamakat (Azenzer X Semteende) and little Tamoudit (Fasiqqi X Tiraout). Al hamdullilah.
1/24/09
and yet again...more pics!
These are 'tent' images. Images of things INSIDE the tent (my partner Tommy), FROM WITHIN the tent (a view of Choum sitting just outside the perimeter fencing [uh, we must keep the tent from being ripped by the dogs or we are screwed so the tent is surrounded with a six foot high fence....one of the reasons so many of the images of the dogs are of them behind fencing...but WE are the ones who are enclosed!]), and images of the dogs taken OVER THE TOP OF THE FENCING that protects the tent.
For those who don't know, the reason we live in a tent is because I chose to leave our house we had built with our own hands on our land in NM and move to TX because of the threat that my dogs would be taken away by yeah, 'well-meaning' (read ignorant) ANIMAL CONTROL people in Luna County NM. Turns out I had moved from my land in GA to a place in the desert of NM (we lived on 160 acres and our closest neighbors were four miles away as the crow flies) without fully understanding that the county to which we had moved had strict regulations RE the number of dogs a person is ALLOWED to own. Had this information been current, as in updated, on the county's website I would not have moved there. I cannot lay the blame at the feet of Luna County, though I take issue with the unreasonable limit...I should have more thoroughly vetted the situation. But well, once the discovery was made (suspicious to this day) that I owned more dogs than the county ALLOWED (again, in my opinion an unreasonable limit...certainly for anyone involved in preservationist breeding), I could not risk having my dogs stolen by ANIMAL CONTROL, their possibly being sterilized, and even killed. All my dogs and eighteen years of work COULD have been destroyed. And since they would have faced challenges in rehoming the dogs [uh, now way could I have afforded to get them back...] no doubt most of them would have been euthanized (read killed).
Again, I could not allow my dogs to take the fall for my inadequate vetting combined with the county's unrealistic and unreasonable limits (the same limits for someone owning animals within the city limits of Deming as for a person owning hundreds of acres of property well outside the legal limits of the city). So within two weeks of 'first contact' with ANIMAL CONTROL, we were outta there.
We moved to a very remote part of the Chihuahuan desert of SW Texas. Al hamdullilah. Life is not easy (and why should I expect it to be? What? I get a special break???) since there is no electricity or water. But well, like other people, in fact many people around the world, we manage. But not without the relentless help, generosity and support of good friends and family. Thankfully, FOR THE MOMENT, I feel the dogs are safer, Insh'Allah.
Anyone who owns an animal, who eats meat or "sea kittens" (UH, FISH) , believes they have the RIGHT to not have the government (starting with your local city and county commissions) dictate how many animals you ARE ALLOWED to own, keep intact (read NOT STERILIZE), and/or breed, better wise up. Its never too late and your rights are being stolen out from under you as you pet your dog.
I must find another way to work towards the goal of "rights preservation" now that my dogs are in a safer situation, Insh'Allah.
Good piece in the NYTimes today...
...by Bob Herbert, NYTimes Op-Ed columnist.
More Than Charisma
On a rainy October night in 2006, I took a cab to the John F. Kennedy library here to conduct a very public interview. As we pulled up, the driver asked, “Who’s on the program?”
“Barack Obama,” I said.
“Oh,” he replied, “our next president.”
I mentioned this to then-Senator Obama during the program and he got a good laugh out of it. He hadn’t yet announced that he was running. The capacity crowd in the auditorium was clear about what it wanted. It cheered every mention of a possible run. Obama-mania was already well under way, and it would only grow.
I was back at the library this week to interview Gwen Ifill about her new book, “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” and I wondered aloud about this continuing love affair with all things Obama — the feverish excitement, the widespread joy and pride, and the remarkable surge of hope in an otherwise downbeat, if not depressing, period.
Where was all this coming from? What was it about?
Yes, as everyone agrees, Mr. Obama is handsome, fit, smart, and a great speaker. As Ms. Ifill noted in her book, “Voters are attracted to youth, vitality and change.”
And Americans tend to get giddy over winners, especially underdogs who take the measure of a foe thought to be impregnable — in this case, the mighty forces carefully assembled over several years by the Clintons.
And it’s not just the president himself who looks good. Even the shameless purveyors of fantasy at central casting would blush at the thought of crafting a family as picture perfect as the Obamas. So, yes, there is an awful lot to like about the Obama phenomenon.
But I’ve seen charismatic politicians and pretty families come and go like sunrises and sunsets over the years. There was something more that was making people go ga-ga over Obama. Something deeper.
We’ve been watching that something this week, and it’s called leadership. Mr. Obama has been feeding the almost desperate hunger in this country for mature leadership, for someone who is not reckless and clownish, shortsighted and self-absorbed.
However you feel about his policies, and there are people grumbling on the right and on the left, Mr. Obama has signaled loudly and clearly that the era of irresponsible behavior in public office is over.
No more crazy wars. No more torture, and no more throwing people in prison without even the semblance of due process. No more napping while critical problems like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global warming, and economic inequality in the United States grow steadily worse.
“We remain a young nation,” Mr. Obama said in his Inaugural Address, “but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.”
On Wednesday, his first full day in office, the president took steps to make the federal government more transparent, signaling immediately that the country would move away from the toxic levels of secrecy that marked the Bush years.
“Transparency and rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” he said. It was a commitment to responsible behavior, and a challenge to the public to hold the Obama administration accountable. It reminded me of the wonderful line written into a federal appeals court ruling in 2002 by Judge Damon Keith:
“Democracies die behind closed doors.”
This has been the Obama way, to set a responsible example and then to call on others to follow his mature lead. In Iowa, after his victory in the Democratic caucuses a year ago, he promised to be “a president who will be honest about the choices and challenges we face, who will listen to you and learn from you, even when we disagree, who won’t just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know.”
In a cynical age, the inclination is to dismiss this stuff as so much political rhetoric. But Mr. Obama carries himself in a way that suggests he means what he says, which gives him great credibility when he urges Americans to work hard and make sacrifices, not just for themselves and their families but for the common good — and when he tells black audiences that young men need to hitch up their trousers and behave themselves, and that families need to turn off the TV so the kids can do their homework.
Or when he says of the many serious challenges facing the nation, as he did in his Inaugural Address: “They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.”
The bond is growing between the nation and its new young leader. Let’s hope it’s a mature romance that weathers the long haul.
More Than Charisma
On a rainy October night in 2006, I took a cab to the John F. Kennedy library here to conduct a very public interview. As we pulled up, the driver asked, “Who’s on the program?”
“Barack Obama,” I said.
“Oh,” he replied, “our next president.”
I mentioned this to then-Senator Obama during the program and he got a good laugh out of it. He hadn’t yet announced that he was running. The capacity crowd in the auditorium was clear about what it wanted. It cheered every mention of a possible run. Obama-mania was already well under way, and it would only grow.
I was back at the library this week to interview Gwen Ifill about her new book, “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” and I wondered aloud about this continuing love affair with all things Obama — the feverish excitement, the widespread joy and pride, and the remarkable surge of hope in an otherwise downbeat, if not depressing, period.
Where was all this coming from? What was it about?
Yes, as everyone agrees, Mr. Obama is handsome, fit, smart, and a great speaker. As Ms. Ifill noted in her book, “Voters are attracted to youth, vitality and change.”
And Americans tend to get giddy over winners, especially underdogs who take the measure of a foe thought to be impregnable — in this case, the mighty forces carefully assembled over several years by the Clintons.
And it’s not just the president himself who looks good. Even the shameless purveyors of fantasy at central casting would blush at the thought of crafting a family as picture perfect as the Obamas. So, yes, there is an awful lot to like about the Obama phenomenon.
But I’ve seen charismatic politicians and pretty families come and go like sunrises and sunsets over the years. There was something more that was making people go ga-ga over Obama. Something deeper.
We’ve been watching that something this week, and it’s called leadership. Mr. Obama has been feeding the almost desperate hunger in this country for mature leadership, for someone who is not reckless and clownish, shortsighted and self-absorbed.
However you feel about his policies, and there are people grumbling on the right and on the left, Mr. Obama has signaled loudly and clearly that the era of irresponsible behavior in public office is over.
No more crazy wars. No more torture, and no more throwing people in prison without even the semblance of due process. No more napping while critical problems like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, global warming, and economic inequality in the United States grow steadily worse.
“We remain a young nation,” Mr. Obama said in his Inaugural Address, “but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.”
On Wednesday, his first full day in office, the president took steps to make the federal government more transparent, signaling immediately that the country would move away from the toxic levels of secrecy that marked the Bush years.
“Transparency and rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” he said. It was a commitment to responsible behavior, and a challenge to the public to hold the Obama administration accountable. It reminded me of the wonderful line written into a federal appeals court ruling in 2002 by Judge Damon Keith:
“Democracies die behind closed doors.”
This has been the Obama way, to set a responsible example and then to call on others to follow his mature lead. In Iowa, after his victory in the Democratic caucuses a year ago, he promised to be “a president who will be honest about the choices and challenges we face, who will listen to you and learn from you, even when we disagree, who won’t just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know.”
In a cynical age, the inclination is to dismiss this stuff as so much political rhetoric. But Mr. Obama carries himself in a way that suggests he means what he says, which gives him great credibility when he urges Americans to work hard and make sacrifices, not just for themselves and their families but for the common good — and when he tells black audiences that young men need to hitch up their trousers and behave themselves, and that families need to turn off the TV so the kids can do their homework.
Or when he says of the many serious challenges facing the nation, as he did in his Inaugural Address: “They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.”
The bond is growing between the nation and its new young leader. Let’s hope it’s a mature romance that weathers the long haul.
1/22/09
and of course...a few more...
...from top: Afalkou, Ngozi, Tamgak, Azil, Ailal, Tezerift and Adoubou. Al hamdullilah.
1/21/09
uh...more pics...
...from top: T'naasheet with puppies, sleeping Noowairah, Hawa, Azzat with Tezerift behind, and Azenzer. Al hamdullilah.
1/20/09
All hats off!
...to the only hat that should have remained on during the inauguration of President Obama. I've been an Aretha fan much longer than an Obama fan...so again, hats off! That's one incredible damn hat!
Photo: Jason Reid, Reuters
1/19/09
...some pics...
...from top: Tezerift (Afelahlah X Tiwul), Tintzirit (Amenzu X Tawinak), Tamoudit (Fasiqqi X Tiraout), Anazar (Fasiqqi X Chenna) and Semteende (Ailal X Showq). Al hamdullilah.
Neshroon...
...not sure where I should go with this. Neshroon and Igazan, two Azawakh I had placed as puppies a year ago, were in a bad situation. The situation was bad for the dogs and bad for the owner. My friend and client Mimi Cary Drake stepped in and offered to take them in...al hamdullilah...and now Neshroon and Igazan, who were only a few words away from euthanasia...are blossoming in their new life. I have no desire to excoriate the previous owner...it was unfortunately just a bad fit for everyone...I only wish I had known sooner. Life is short. I know Mimi knows the extent of my appreciation. Insh'Allah wa al hamdullilah. Mimi has a blog.
1/18/09
...more pics...
...from the top: Tiinaade (Fasiqqi X Tawinak), Choum (Afalkou X Illi Tin Hinan Batna), Tiraout (Sahelian-bred), T'naasheet (Sheshonq Idiiyat-es-Sahel X Afsoon Idiiyat-es-Sahel, bred by Doug Koger, Domiko's Sighthounds, Miami, Fl), and Hawa (Tamgak [Sahelian bred] X Tiwul, with Tommy).
...Adoubou...
...a young son (I think about eight months old) of Tamgak (Sahelian bred) and Tiwul (old European lines crossed with more recent importations from the Sahel). Al hamdullilah.
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