Well, this is it! Last year I got all sentimental & I didn’t have the heart to let my mindyGirl.us domain name expire. I even registered a new domain name mindyGirl.com!

So one year has passed, and both domains sit unused. So, this year I am just letting go. Time to move forward. TwoRatties.com is all I need for my girls, Lexi and Mindy!

Goodbye sweet mindygirl – oh well. Gotta move on. It’s time.

Just found this forum post:

http://www.petsourceusa.com/Blog/?p=9615

quote:

What Kind Of Cat Is The Best Mouse Hunter?
I have mice. Dammit. I need a cat. I’m going to go to the shelter tomorrow, but I was wondering if anyone knew anything about the best kind of cat to get. Like what breed, age, size, sex? I’m not sure if any of that makes a difference, but if you have any comments on the subject I’d appreciate it!

WHAT AN ASS!!! Sorry for the profanity but this just makes me so angry! And the majority of the people who responded are idiots too.

What happens to the cat after this jerk discovers that it costs money to parent a cat properly!? Does he just throw it outside when he’s done using it for a mouse exterminator? Grr. I just hate reading ignorant stuff like this!

I hope the shelter is smart and asks the right questions, like “Why do you want a cat?” and hopefully they can see his true colors. Idiot!

Found a whole mess o’ Pet themed podcasts over at www.petliferadio.com

I am starting out with the Wynn With Dogs podcast. The latest episode #15 includes an interview with a wonderful holistic health expert and author of The Healing Art of Pet Parenthood, Nadine M. Rosin. I follow her on Twitter and she’s awesome. Looking forward to hearing the show. I downloaded and it’s ready for my drive to work tomorrow!

Okay this is sad and pathetic, or is it?!

I have a Google alert set up for a couple canine keyphrases, and one is “dogfood recall” – I recently received an email alert the same story from four different web sites….I don’t want to give them any credit, so I won’t be linking to their web sites, but the latest story was about the pet food recall back in 2007. It was the same story (same author) on at least four different web sites.

With additional digging around on google, I found interesting info regarding niche content websites. Yeah, I had an idea this was going on, but I didn’t realize how BIG it was. E-zine stories can be copied and published to a web site, and they wait for a few visitors to click through their “adsense” and other advertising links; because they have several web sites with different content, the $ starts to add up even with only a few visitor clicks from each page.

Sounds pathetic, yes, but people must be clicking the ads or they wouldn’t be doing it! The only salvation is hopefully Google is somehow banning them!

From wikipedia:

Online niche marketing
An often used technique for affiliate marketers. By seeking out smaller segments of larger markets, a website can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted and usually loyal customer base, giving the affiliate a small but regular income stream. This technique is then repeated across several other niche websites until a desired income level is achieved

Moral of the story? Don’t support web sites like this by clicking on their ads! Give your support to web sites with original, helpful content, not a site that regurgitates e-zine content just to make some money.

I was all set to let my previous canine web site domain name “mindygirl.us” expire. It expired on May 3, and I just ignored all the emails godaddy sent me to renew.

This morning, I decided to check the domain name whois to see if any cyber squatters scooped it up. Surprisingly it was still registered to me. (come to find out now, it takes a lot longer for a domain to become available again to other purchasers)

Then I started thinking about my poor ole Mindy web site, and how terrible it would feel to have a domain squatter sitting on it. I don’t know for sure that anyone else would even want to buy it, it wasn’t that popular of a web site, but still I didn’t want to take the chance. So, guilt got to me, and I caved and renewed it. What a sucker!

And then the kicker is I ended up buying mindygirl.com too. When I first bought mindygirl.us, the .com name wasn’t available, but it did become available last year or the year before, but I never bothered with it.

So, I have no idea what I am going to do (if anything) with the two domains. But it was cheap enough for peace of mind, less than $16 for both. Hmm, maybe a photo site just for Mindy. She is a great poser!

Lexi is scheduled for her spay surgery next Friday. I had learned previously that it’s best to stop fish oil 7-10 days before surgery, because of the anti-clotting properties. I stopped giving it the other day.

I also just realized that it’s better to stop Vitamin E as well, for the same reasons, so I will stop that as well. I am continuing to give a 1/4 tsp of probiotic powder once or twice daily.

It’s okay to start giving fish oil again 7-10 days after surgery.

Come follow Two Ratties over @TwoRatties

How cool. I am pretty sure I knew about this before, but I just never bothered to browse, but Google has a huge digital library full of wonderful books on every subject.

For instance, here is the “Dogs” search
http://books.google.com/books?q=dogs&btnG=Search+Books

Time to browse!

My original dog web site Mindygirl.us was a wonderful way for me to share our life with our first Rat Terrier Mindy. But now that our second Ratty, Lexi has been added to our family, I thought a new domain name was in order.

Even though it’s a fresh new start, I wanted to keep all the old posts so they have been moved over to our new web site.

My plan is to keep the domain Mindygirl.us active for about a year and half. It expires in May, so I think I might renew one more year until 2010. Once the posts have been established on the new site, I will remove all content from Mindygirl.us, and I will add a notification to redirect visitors to the new domain.

Oh boy, another energetic and informative discussion forum to get addicted to!

I joined OurDogsOnline.com the other day, and my first post was today. What a friendly welcome I received!