How're the boys doing?

If you ask them, not very well at all. They're not excited that Rob's been using them as test subjects for his new pet-portrait business endeavors. More details on that later!

2010 WPBTCA National Championship

Hey, it's that time of year again! The WPBTCA's National Championship is coming!




Sadly, Doc and I won't be attending this one, even though it's close to our old homestead. Since we've relocated to Florida it's not exactly cost effective right now for us to travel ... plus, he hasn't trained for much since I left back in May. I have been trying to get him back into the habit of tracking down here, but neither of our hearts have been in it yet. I'm too busy and he's too stressy. Hasn't made for great tracking experiences.

Plus, there are nasty red ants everywhere, which is making baiting tracks nearly impossible. Sigh. Waiting to see what fall brings!

Enough about me: Everyone up that way should go out to attend the events and support the WPBTCA!

Pit bulls in Parade

Just saw this on Bad Rap's Facebook page.

Parade Magazine is doing a piece with updates on Michael Vick's dogs. It'll be out on Sunday. Makes me happy I subscribed to the newspaper recently.

Another upstanding pit bull owner makes us all look bad

This just in from Upper Marlboro, Md.

Woman in doctor's office with dog (a pit bull) refuses to leave, sics dog on cops.

I was surprised to read at the end that a different officer took control of the dog. Usually when this kind of thing happens, the dog ends up shot.

Shelters that adopt out intact dogs

Just in case anyone was wondering: I have a problem – a really big problem – with shelters that send dogs home intact. It's an irresponsible and foolish practice that needs to stop if shelters ever expect to make any kind of dent in this pet overpopulation problem that's causing them to be constantly working over capacity. Intact pets making more pets is the biggest problem most shelters claim to be combatting. But then they go ahead and adopt out intact dogs to people who come through the doors and seem nice, trusting them to follow through on the spay/neuter surgeries when time and money permits.

Whenever I mention this to someone, anyone, I inevitably get the "but shelters are cleaning up the mess created by other people" line and the "shelters have it so hard" line.

To the first response, I would say that any shelter that gives out any animal intact is actually contributing to the mess and is therefore just as guilty as the irresponsible people who have "oops" litters.

To the second, I would say that shelters will continue to have it very hard if they don't tighten up their practices and start getting serious about spaying and neutering animals prior to sending them home.

For the record: I have no problem with intact dogs owned by responsible people – none at all. But I do think that dogs and cats leaving shelters – animals that have already been human beings' throwaways once – need to be altered and should never be bred. Not on purpose, not by accident.

Shelters: If you want to be able to stop killing animals someday, then stop giving people intact animals to take home. Period. Otherwise, you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

DirecTV Sucks

Yes, I know, this blog is about dogs. But I am so very angry that I don't want anyone to make the same mistake I did. DirecTV is a horrible company to deal with. In the past year and a half, I've found them to have nothing but incredibly polite but very poor customer service that gives completely unreliable information to customers. They are right up there with Verizon. And, not surprisingly, they work together.

I feel like everything I've done through DirecTV has been bait-and-switch. They signed me up in Feb. 09, happily, to what I thought was a TV and DSL "package" ... at least that's what I was told. But quickly I learned that the "deal" I'd signed up for wasn't a package and the pricing wasn't what they said it would be. Despite multiple attempts to reconcile, I could get no resolution and finally just accepted the fact that it would be two bills and two installation visits from different companies (despite a promise that it was one simple trip). Then I discovered that the service I'd signed up for through DirecTV was somehow never applied to my account, even though I'd tried to jump through all the hoops they set up for me. Call a service rep, visit us online and sign up for your "rebate" (which, by the way, was presented as an offer, not a retroactive rebate, when I had gotten sucked in), wait 8 weeks, we'll make sure we apply it. It never came. Despite multiple calls to the rebate center and customer service to fix it. So eventually, after absolutely no reasonable resolution (which to me meant that these bastards should cancel my account without prejudice; they refused and insisted I had 12 months on a "contract"), I felt I had no choice but suck it up and just use the service and figure out a better option after my 12 months was over.

Well, it's 18 months later. I've moved to Florida from Maryland, and I tried to cancel both services. Neither wants to release me from what is now described as an alleged two-year "contract"; they say "everyone knows" people agree to when you sign up. Um. No. I never signed a contract for DSL at all. And for DirecTV, I was told it was a one-year contract, not two. I was also told I would get promotional pricing, which I never got, and that if I moved out of state, they wouldn't charge me to disconnect my service. So, a whole series of lies. Complete lies. To get new business and keep it at all costs.

I have talked to three people since I moved to Florida, two of whom told me that I had no contract or obligation and that they were going to send me boxes to return my equipment as long as I could give them my new address, pretty please, so they could FedEx it, oh and by the way, we can retrain your account for no fee if you just transfer with us now and that'd be so nice, why not just do that? Um. No thanks. Brighthouse Cable is cheaper for cable and internet, we thought we'd sign up with them. "Oh, OK, give us that address again so we can make sure to send your equipment."

Today I got a bill from DirecTV for $84 ... about $20 higher than any bill I've received from the company, and it's for a new month's worth of service. WTF? First, how did they get my address? From me when I cancelled my account – I did not transfer my service. Second, why the hell is it so high? Third, why am I not cancelled yet?

I called and waited for 10 minutes on hold, got a lady finally who could not help me and was confused, so she transferred me to an "agent" who had more experience. After 21 minutes on hold, he picked up and was laughing. At what? No idea. He giggled and apologized, giggled more, and then told me he had allergies. We finally got around to actually talking, and the guy tries to sell me on more services. No, I want to cancel. He didn't want to take No for an answer and after way too much time on the line, he tells me it'll cost me two hundred something to cancel my account. Um. WTF?

I asked for a supervisor. He resisted. And FINALLY someone named David, who says he's a supervisor though I am certain he's just another lackey, gets on the line. He refused to give me a direct phone number, last name, or the name or connection to a supervisor over him. He told me that he's the "top of the line" and that all I could do is send a letter to the "president" of DirecTV – nameless, faceless president, that is, with no direct line or address – if I wanted to vent my spleen.

Tonight David told me that I owed them either $240 or $120  to disconnect my service because even though I'd signed nothing. I apparently agreed to an implied two-year contract by paying my first bill (Note to self: read the fine print. There's always fine print. But usually it's with something you sign, not a bill they automatically debit from your freaking account without having to actually bill you.)

David told me he could do nothing for me, except give me a $25 a month discount to continue my service, to make up for the fact that the company never gave me the original as-advertised deal that sucked me in to begin with. Whoopee.

So they get to make more money off me and there is no recourse for their dishonest business practices. Great. So one more time, why were the two customer service reps we talked to about this before getting David telling us that we were released of contract and ready to go, as long as we gave our new address? Oh, so they could get our current info and then try to strongarm us into staying with the company, under threat of collections? Got it. But of course, now that push comes to shove, they have "no record" of those conversations because the reps didn't take notes. Those conversations just say that we called and that they told us what to do next. How convenient.

I'm so displeased. And I've been displeased with DirecTV for a good, long while, so it's not just one bad customer-service fiasco. It's a whole series of them. A pattern, if you will.

Since David refused to let me talk to anyone higher than him, I decided that he needed to read me all of the terms of the work order I was putting in. I just had him read me the explicit terms over the phone. I took notes. If they try to charge me a dime for anything not in what he read to me – which, by the way, they apparently can and will do – I'm ready to go to the mat. Or maybe court. Because this has gone way too far already.

I'm sure David is celebrating customer retention and that he did whatever it is they trained him to do to keep idiots like me on the line for as long as possible, until they finally break and relent. I'm sure he's not being paid much to do it, so it sucks that he was the one who had to listen to my angry rant for the past half an hour (after half an hour on hold waiting for someone to pick up my call and 15 minutes on the phone with a different rep). But right now, I'm so angry that I don't care.

We have rabbit ears on the TV and we get reception. We don't need DirecTV. Nor, after the experiences we've had with them, do we want them. I'll make sure I spread the word because no one should have to deal with this kind of crap.

Oh, and by the way: Yes, DirecTV's service does goes out during rainstorms, thunnderstorms, etc. in some parts of the country. It was a pretty regular occurrence in Baltimore. Even heavy wind may cause your signal to go out. Not always, but often enoug to comment on. Cable is much more reliable, even if it is slightly more expensive. And chances are, if you tell your cable company that you've been considering DirecTV, they may have a special discount just for you to retain your business. Make sure to ask about it. It could save you a headache in the long run, and chances are they won't sign you to a contract that "everybody knows about" and they claim the told you about when you signed up for a completely different service than was actually delivered

Fuck you, DirecTV.