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The best lessons are taught by puppies

The Saskatchewan Roughriders lost their first game of the season, blowing a fourth quarter lead in the process. I have no issue with this. The Riders are a young team and they are going to have growing pains.
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The Saskatchewan Roughriders lost their first game of the season, blowing a fourth quarter lead in the process. I have no issue with this. The Riders are a young team and they are going to have growing pains. I said at the start of the year, as long as I see a conscious effort by everyone, I won't be upset. Thursday night was disappointing, but hopefully they can learn from it and move on.

Our family has decided that we just aren't busy enough, so we have adopted a year and a half old puppy named Bella from a woman near Ebenezer, who unfortunately for her, isn't able to look after the high energy Yellow Lab any longer. I call her a puppy, but she's 72 pounds of pure muscle. We are as green as grass when it comes to looking after a dog and we had our first incident this past Wednesday. We dropped our son off for a week of camp in Manitoba and the remaining four of us (five if you count Bella) opted for a picnic at Wasagaming. While Jenn was off to get fresh water, I tied the dog up to a tree and started to feed the girls. Well, it just so happens squirrels are prevalent at Clear Lake and when Bella caught a glimpse of one she was off like a rocket. No, I mean a rocket. This is not a figure of speech. She ran so hard, her collar snapped off her neck and she vanished into the woods. Since we are new owners, and her focus was squarely on the squirrel, she was not coming back So off I go into the sticks (where there are definitely lots of mosquitoes and quite possibly a black bear or two as well) to try and head lock our playful full grown puppy back out to civilization. It worked. I got her back and it's been pretty smooth sailing ever since. For you bleeding hearts out there... Bella never did get the squirrel.

One of the double standards in our society has cropped up in the Penn State child sex abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky. It just seems to me that because these were boys, there are some officials other than Sandusky that are getting off pretty easily. It's clear administrators knew something was going on. My question is what would have happened then and what would be happening now if we discovered the children sexually assaulted were girls and not boys? I suspect more people would pay dearly, it would be done more swiftly and we wouldn't see nearly the support for Joe Paterno that we are seeing now from a select few who insist his statue shouldn't come down. The whole thing is sick and Penn State shouldn't be allowed to compete in NCAA football for a very long time.

Kim Walker was scheduled to be released from prison July 13th. He has stated he intends to return to Yorkton. Something tells me Yorkton isn't going to be less safe with Walker back in town. I'm just guessing. So no need for massive public alerts.

At the time of this writing, I haven't gone to the Shinedown concert yet, which is in Saskatoon on Tuesday night. I'll do a review next week; but I can already tell you I haven't looked this forward to a rock show in a very long time. Rock music fans should definitely give their newest album, Amaryllis, a listen. There isn't a dud to be found. There are still some good shows on the horizon. Simple Plan and Collective Soul are going to Saskatoon in early August. Finger Eleven is in Regina. The Cult is coming to Saskatchewan as well before the end of Summer. I'm already hearing the Rock Of Ages musical is making a return in the Fall/Winter and Journey/Night Ranger are teaming up for a late November visit to our province.

I follow a number of neat Twitter accounts, one of them is called First World Facts. They tweeted over the weekend that people who are assertive tend to experience lower amounts of social stress and are better communicators. Well, I am not sure I agree with that. I have always been in the communication industry, but I've had a couple of instances lately where my assertiveness has caused me some stress! One tweet I do agree with from First World Facts: Society says to be what you want to be, but then Society will also pass judgement on you when you are someone they don't like.

Here's another one that I'm not sure how they figure out how true it is: before you fall asleep, 92% of your mind thinks about something you wish to happen.

Nice person mentions this week to: Ed & Adeline Smaluk, Darren & Janet Gusdal, Erin Taylor, Quinn Haider, and Dana Rathgeber.