Boomer

I'm not a big fan of taking animals to the vet. Even after the most egregious porcupine encounter there's no need to run to the vet. I remember my old German Shepherd (or "Alsatian" as my elderly Jewish neighbour insisted on calling him) Buddy, who had a truly fearsome killer instinct, lunging up a utility pole time after time in a vain attempt to get at the porcupine who'd already left hundreds of quills in his snout.

Vet time? No way. Me and Buddy, a pair of pliers, and a bottle of brandy shared between the two of us was all it took, at a savings of at least a couple hundred bucks. By the way, if you can't get your  dog to down the brandy, try mixing it with eggnog.

I always figure, worst case scenario, a bullet costs less than fifty cents.

Not that I could bring myself to do that; that's more tough-guy bluster than anything else. But the Farm Manager has a different approach. Even though I've never known her to make a medical appointment for herself, she's really keen on taking the hounds to the vet on a regular basis.

So it was that we took the girls to Wiarton to have their shots updated and get a general assessment of their health.

While I don't want to blow his cover, I'm pretty sure the Wiarton vet is that Bulgarian weight-lifter who applied for political asylum during the Montreal Olympics. His biceps are bigger than my thighs. He can pick up a hundred pound mutt by the scruff of the neck and plop her on the examination table - with one hand.

We'd had some dark conversations around the old girl the last couple weeks. We're not 100% sure of Boomer's vintage, but she's more than likely in her early teens. That would be around 90 in dog years. We've noticed that there's sometimes a puddle under her when she's lounging in front of the fireplace for an extended period. If she's on the couch for a spell she'll leave a wet spot.

So my thinking, as the guy who pays the vet bills, is maybe the only bill that makes sense is the last one, if you know what I mean.

But as the guy who takes her on that 5k walk every morning, I've got another perspective. She's perky as all get out on that morning walk. She has serious quality of life! Sure, she may be tuckered out by the end of it, especially in the summer months, but what the hey?...

Putting down a creature that still has decent quality of life would be a crime.

The Bulgarian didn't seem to think the leakage was a big deal. She's an old girl, he says. A course of hormone replacement therapy should fix her up in no time.

Alrighty! Got out of there for a whisker under five hundred bucks, plus whatever a few months of hormone therapy is gonna cost...

And it's nice to know we can look forward to a few more seasons of Boomer.

Dear Lord, may these be the last Olympic Games. Ever. Amen.

Have you noticed the tsunami of bad press around all things Brazilian recently? From government corruption to gang rapes to the Zika virus, things are just going from bad to worse. Just in time for the Olympics.

Olympic Games have become a complete boondoggle. They're vanity projects for the political types who champion them. They're a windfall for the contractors who build the facilities. They're a showcase that allow a few international brands to bask in a vastly subsidized spotlight for a couple of weeks.

While it's true that the Games will permit a few genetically engineered freaks to convert their gold medals into membership in the realm of the beautiful people, it seems to me that they are otherwise devoid of meaningful impact on humanity at large. In fact the opposite is true. The host city typically displaces tens of thousands of ordinary people to build their "world class" facilities. Those are the people who for the most part couldn't afford to attend any events even if they were so inclined, but they'll be expected pay off the deficit for decades after the party is over.

I remember sitting in the (unfinished) Olympic stadium in Montreal in '76 for the gold medal soccer game. All I could think about was what a fantasmagorical waste of money the stadium was. It eventually blew through its original cost estimates ten times over and took thirty years to pay off. For that kind of money you could build a multi-use sports complex in every city, town, village, hamlet, and Indian reservation in the land.

Now THAT might have had some benefits!

Hopefully the bad press will build to a crescendo this summer, and the entire Olympic Games scam will be so thoroughly discredited that we'll never have to endure this fraudulent spectacle again.