This blog feature amusing and heartwarming stories about our late Leonberger dog Bronco, as well as other Leonbergers. It also has a lot of information about the Leonberger breed, the history, care, training, Leonberger organizations, etc. I also wrote a Leonberger book, which I am featuring in the sidebar.
Today’s writing prompt is “Describe a Family Member”. This family member is good looking, fun to be around, and he is a loving character. He loves to play ball, he is very curious, and he loves to eat. However, he is anxious and easily frightened and he can also be a bit of an a-hole, and he hates dogs and cats. Can you guess which family member he is?
Three family members, but there are more of us.The answer is Rollo our mini-Australian Shepherd.
You may ask yourself, but he is a dog, how can he hate dogs and cats? Good question, but I don’t think he knows he is a dog. I think he thinks he is a little person. He prefers human company. He got along well with our late Leonberger Bronco and our pug Daisy, but he hates every other dog and all cats.
Rollo loves rolling and chasing balls.As I mentioned, he can be a bit of an a-hole.As mentioned, Rollo is anxious and easily frightened. Daisy’s stroller is a good thing to sit in for such occasions.Today and the last few days Rollo has been wearing a cone. He had to extract a tooth on Thursday.
Last Saturday my wife and I and our daughter visited Screams. It is something we tend to do around every Halloween. Screams is the world’s largest Halloween theme park. It is located half an hour south of Dallas in a small town called Waxahachie. The park features a haunted cemetery, five haunted houses, a horror museum, games, live shows, horror movies, dozens of eateries, restaurants and pubs, and other entertainment. There are a lot of dressed up actors walking around and scaring people. You are not allowed to dress up yourself as that can cause confusion. The actors will never touch you, but you can’t guarantee that there will not be problems if visitors are allowed to be dressed up as well.
My wife Claudia and me at Screams. I am holding a milk stout from Left Hand Brewing in my left hand (where else).My wife Claudia and our daughter in the spooky tunnel.
At Screams, there are several places to buy a drink or get something to eat. However, in the middle of the park there is a dedicated area with restaurants and several places where you can buy Mexican food, Greek food, corn dogs, turkey legs, sausages, hot dogs, hamburgers, funnel cake, desserts, beers of various kinds including craft beer, German beer, cocktails and other drinks. On each side of this area there are covered seating areas. The restaurant naturally has its own indoor seating area.
A portion of a children’s playground. It had a large inflatable (not shown). In the background is an eating area for several restaurants and bars.A portion of the haunted cemetery. It was dark and it was very difficult to take photos with my phone camera unless the objects were nearby.The haunted castle is one of the five haunted houses. It is very big and features several floors. It might be the biggest haunted house I’ve been to.
It is a fun place to visit even if you don’t like haunted houses. There are a lot of less extreme entertainment to choose from.
Another spooky thing happened this evening. I took a swim in my in-law’s swimming pool (not heated so a bit cool). As I was swimming, an owl flew right above my head and sat down in a nearby palm tree and just sat there and stared at me. As I continued swimming I was attacked by this big black thing. I thought it was maybe a big insect or a black bird, and I thought it tried to bite me. Then I realized it was a leaf. I decided to take a photo of the owl who was still staring at me. So, I went inside the house to get my phone. As I came back out and approached the owl, he kept staring at me. In should have taken a photo at this point but I kept getting closer to the owl and unfortunately it flew off before I could take a photo. The photo below from pexels will do.
The incidence was a little bit creepy because according to Scandinavian folklore an owl that flies right above you or in front of you is a bad omen. Typically, someone will die. My grandmother died the day an owl flew in front of my dad. Anyway, if I’ll make another post tomorrow, you’ll know that I am still alive.
Last Friday I got a few phone calls from NBC Universal. NBC Universal is a large media company that is a merger between NBC news and Universal Studios. I did not expect a phone call from them and since I am getting a lot of spam calls, I assumed it was bogus, so I ignored them. However, unlike most spammers they eventually left a message, which I listened to during the weekend. They said that they had been reading my Leonberger blog and were interested in a post that I had made about the tornado that ripped through Dallas on October 20, 2019. They wanted to interview me and asked for permission to use a few of my photos. I can add it was not my latest tornado post but a previous one.
Seeing myself on the TV was a bit surreal. Click on the image to see the interview. My interview starts at 1 minute and 11 seconds.Here I am with NBC journalist Katie Blake. Click on the image to see the interview. My interview starts at 1 minute and 11 seconds.
I would like to stress that there are thousands of people whom they could have interviewed. Thousands of people who probably would have been better candidates. What made all the difference was the post I made on my blog. Therefore, fellow bloggers, perhaps this is an example of the fact that blogs bring attention. By the way, the photos below were taken with my old Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone.
NBC used this photo. A neighbor’s house the morning of October 21st, 2019. Again, click on the image to see the interview.NBC used this photo as well. Inside Claudia’s (my wife) parents’ house. This was the morning after. In the photo we are walking into their house to check on them (that’s my wife). Again, click on the image to see the interview.
Today, October 20, 2024, is the 5-year anniversary of the EF3 Tornado that ravaged our neighborhood. Our chimney was smashed by a piece of concrete flying off a neighbor’s house, our roof was damaged and needed to be replaced, our garage door was destroyed, and the wiring and pipes in the attic were destroyed. In addition, our fence was damaged, and my grill flew across the yard. The cost of the repairs was $50,000.00. However, we were lucky compared to many of our neighbors whose houses were destroyed.
A neighbor’s house the morning of October 21st, 2019.Another neighbor’s house. This house was about 100 yards from our house. It took a direct hit from the tornado.
The house of my wife’s parents was more severely damaged than our house. The wind from the Tornado lifted my 89-year-old father-in-law up in the air and he was hit by a broken marble table that injured his back. He had a sore that was about one foot long. He did not go to the hospital. The school where our boys used to go, St. Marks School of Texas, was badly damaged and the walls of the gymnasium blew away. The neighborhood looked terrible afterwards.
Inside Claudia’s parents’ house. This was the morning after. We are walking into their house to check on them (that’s my wife).
It was also a tough time for our Leonberger dog Bronco. He was more than 12 years old, which is old for a Leonberger, and he had various age-related illnesses. Earlier in October he had amputated a toe due to a type of cancer called squamous cell carcinoma. One week after that we discovered a large deep ulcerous sore on the same paw a few inches above the surgical scar. Fortunately, it was not cancerous, as we first thought, but we would have to treat this sore in addition to nursing him back from his amputation. In addition, he also had the first signs of geriatric-onset laryngeal paralysis polyneuropathy (or GOLPP).
Bronco our Leonberger and Daisy our Pug the evening before the big storm. None of us suspected what was about to happen.
We lost power for four days due to the tornado and about one week after the tornado Bronco had a congestive heart failure. He eventually recovered but October 2019 was a very difficult month for him.
Bronco had just had a toe amputation. He did not blow down our fence.We had to change Bronco’s bandages every now and then but Rollo, our mini–Australian Shepherd made sure we did it right.Bronco and Rollo a few days after the Tornado.
I remember October 20, 2019, as if it was yesterday. I was sitting outside in my backyard drinking my favorite SMASH IPA, Yellow Rose, from Lone Pint, Texas, ABV 6.8%. IPA stands for India Pale Ale, a type of beer that contains a lot of hops. SMASH IPA is an IPA brewed with one type of Malts and one type of Hops (Single Malt, Single Hop). The single hop in this case is Mosaic. My phone started making a loud sound. It was an alarm announcing a tornado warning and, in the distance, I could hear a faint tornado siren. At first, I thought it was nothing but when I saw the lightning approaching, I decided to go inside. Two minutes later a hailstorm made things very loud, the wind was strong, and the house shook, and then we heard a loud explosion. That was a concrete block that had smashed our chimney.
I was sitting in my backyard drinking Yellow Rose my favorite SMASH IPA, not knowing that a tornado was advancing down the street nearby.
After the wind had died down a bit, I opened the door to the backyard, and what I saw shocked me. My gas grill had flown across the patio. There were bricks and pieces of concrete all over the patio and the lawn. There was a big sheet of metal lying on the patio. Big tree branches covered the lawn. There was debris everywhere. We had also lost power. It turns out that the EF3 tornado had gone through our neighborhood and passed within fifty to one hundred yards of our house.
Another neighbor’s house (a bit further away from us).
My wife Claudia asked me to go check on her parents. I drove about 50-100 yards when a neighbor’s roof lying across the road stopped me. I turned around but this time I was stopped by a large pile of trees lying across the street. So, I started walking, but this time I was stopped by a group of firemen telling me that it was too dangerous to be outside. They told me to go back home, and I did.
This is the next-door neighbor of Claudia’s (my wife) parents.
I can add that we got some unexpected help from our congressman at the time, Colin Allred, congressional district 32. My wife left the neighborhood in her car, but the police would not let anyone back in. This made it difficult to, for example, go shopping. I complained about this on Colin Allred’s Facebook page and within hours I received an email from Colin Allred’s legislative director (Judith). They had contacted city hall and the police and now the police would allow residents back in the neighborhood as long as they could show ID. Colin Allred’s office had my email from a previous communication. I did not leave that with my Facebook comment. My wife was happy since she now could go shopping.
Below are some additional photos that I took, showing the carnage in the neighborhood.
The remains of the Gap, a store at a nearby shopping center.Destroyed house in the neighborhood.View of the shopping center in our neighborhood.This was a school bus belonging to the school where my boys went.Streetview from the neighborhood.Another house in the neighborhood.The remains of the veterinary clinic where we used to take our dogs. Luckily there were no animals staying overnight at this time.Our street, just two/three houses down from us.
I am so happy to announce that Sally Cronin is kindly featuring my book on her smorgasbord blog. You can read the excerpt from my book on her blog. I invite you all visit Smorgasbord Book Promotions 2024. Comments will be closed here. Leave all comments over there. Thank you so much.
The focus of this blog is Leonbergers but sometimes I post about books that are not about Leonbergers but that I want to promote. Since Halloween is coming up, I decided to post a review for one of the most disturbing horror books that I’ve ever read, Books of Blood. Books of Blood is an anthology divided into six volumes. This book is volume one to three. If “Clive Barker” does not ring a bell, his novel Hellbound Heart was the foundation for the Hellraiser series of eleven movies (with Pinhead). Books of Blood spawned seven movies. I read the paperback version.
I should mention that the stories in Books of Blood are very imaginative but disturbing and macabre and should not be read by children, and perhaps not even by young adults. There are bizarre depictions of violent deaths as well as some sexual themes. Other than demons, Clive Barker’s books do not include many standard horror characters such as vampires or zombies, and his stories also tend to be unique.
Paperback – Published October 1, 1998, by Berkley, ISBN-10 : 0425165582, ISBN-13 : 978-0425165584, 507 pages, Item Weight : 1.1 pounds, Dimensions : 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches, it cost $13.13 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Hardcover – Published January 1, 1999, by Little, Brown, ISBN-10 : 0316853674, ISBN-13 : 978-0316853675, 512 pages, Item Weight : 1.26 pounds, it costs $32.10 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Front cover of Books of Blood Volume 1-3. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the paperback version of the book.
Amazon’s description of the book
Rediscover the true meaning of fear in this collection of horror stories from New York Times bestselling author Clive Barker.
“The most provocative tales of terror ever published.”—The Washington Post
Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red…
With the publication of Books of Blood, Clive Barker became an overnight literary sensation. His tour de force collection of brilliantly disturbing tales demonstrated a genius for dark invention that rivaled Poe and Sade. He was hailed by Stephen King as “the future of horror,” and won both the British and World Fantasy Awards.
Now, with his numerous bestsellers, graphic novels, and hit movies like the Hellraiser films, Clive Barker has become an industry unto himself. It is his powerful writing style and arresting imagery that have made Books of Blood a classic—and Clive Barker a cult phenomenon.
Below is my review written for this blog post. I have not yet written a review for Amazon.
Simon McNeal is a quack pretending to be a medium. He is pretending to channel the spirits in a house that he claims is haunted. Unbeknownst to Simon, the house is haunted for real, and it is located on the highway of the dead and haunted by thousands of spirits. His fakery angers the spirits of the dead who have real stories to tell, horrific stories. They capture him and carve their stories into his skin using sharp little needles. These stories constitute the rest of the book. The concept of the Books of Blood brings to mind Ray Bradbury’s the Illustrated Man whose skin also told stories but in the form of pictures.
This book features 16 stories, and as I mentioned, are the foundation for several movies including Candyman, Lord of Illusions, Dread, Rawhead Rex, and Midnight Meat Train. The stories are disturbing and sometimes gross and they are gloomy and sad. In one story “Son of Celluloid”, a cancer tumor survives its host and gains sentience as well as psychic powers. It attacks people and implants bizarre hallucinations in people’s minds, leading to some very strange and gruesome deaths.
In another story “Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament”, a woman acquires extremely powerful telekinetic powers after a suicide attempt. After Jacqueline’s husband admits to an affair, which he blames on her gloomy personality in the same breath, she gets so upset that she screams at him to “shut up”, which causes him to bite his own tongue off. This gives her ideas, and she decides to take revenge on bad men. Working as a prostitute she lures men to their own death. Let’s just say there is not much left of them when she is done with them, thus no crime to investigate.
Clive Barker mixes the gory, the disgusting and the brutal with good story telling. His imagination is macabre but amazing. Clive Barker uses vivid depictions and our fear of pain and death, and the fear of abandonment, and the losing of our humanity, to create dread and fear as we read these short stories. Books of Blood is a collection of stories for real horror fans, and it may not be for those looking for more lighthearted horror. For that we have Stephen King. They are both great story tellers, but Clive Barker pushes the macabre further than Stephen King does, and his stories are darker and less hopeful. I highly recommend Books of Blood to real horror fans but maybe not to everyone.
Back cover of Books of Blood Volume 1-3. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the hardcover version of the book.
Rollo our mini-Australian Shepherd turned six years old on October 12, 2024. However, we were at a wedding in Chicago, so we had to miss his birthday. We celebrated when we came home. In the past we’ve put a funny birthday hat on him. Unfortunately, he hates hats so this time I took pictures without a hat. To celebrate Rollo’s birthday, I am posting 20 photos I took of Rollo through the years, including some with our late Leonberger Bronco. If you’ve been following my blog, you will have seen many of these photos already but not all of them, certainly not the ones I just took.
Rollo eating a pupcake from our daughter’s hand. A pupcake is a cupcake for dogs.Rollo reaching for a piece of a pupcake on the sofa.This is an old photo from his fourth birthday. He is unhappy with the hat.Rollo almost six years ago. He had just arrived at our house. Our Leonberger Bronco is welcoming Rollo.Rollo our mini-Australian Shepherd puppy.Our Leonberger Bronco with little Rollo.Close up of Rollo as a puppy.Rollo on his first walk. It wasn’t really a walk. More like carrying him around the neighborhood.Rollo peeking out behind the sofa.Rollo playing with a volleyball.Rollo rolling a soccer ball.Rollo frequently bit our Leonberger Bronco’s tail, and he even swung in it like a swing. He climbed all over Bronco. Bronco was very patient with him.When Rollo was young, he loved chewing shoes. Here the artist is posing with his art.When we left the house we put Rollo in his baby jail for his own protection. We were afraid he would bother Bronco so much that Bronco lost his patience. Rollo ended up loving his baby jail. It was his own special house and no one else was allowed in.When Bronco had a toe amputation and we had to change his bandage every day, Rollo helped out. He was a dog nurse.Rollo liked to play with Bronco. Here he is asking for a belly rub.Our daughter with our mini-Australian Shepherd Rollo and Pug Daisy.Sometimes there are scary sounds and Rollo wanted to sit in the stroller we bought for our Pug Daisy.Two friends.Daisy our Pug and Rollo are watching something from the window.
Some of you who follow this, my Leonberger blog, know that I have launched a second blog. The goal of my second blog is to create a list of facts or insights that are important and not trivia, known to be true, and yet highly surprising, shocking, amazing, or widely disputed amongst the public but not disputed among the scientists or experts in the relevant fields. I refer to these facts as super-facts, because they are kind of special. However, on this new blog I will also post other fact related posts that I find interesting including non-fiction book reviews.
Smash your old beliefs with new surprising facts, super facts. Expand your mind. Click on the image to visit the superfactful blog. Shutterstock ID: 1685660680 by MattL_Images
With this post I wanted to highlight some updates I’ve made to my other blog<<Link-1>>. First of all, I am including a short summary in bold at the beginning of all my super-fact posts. That way people who may just want to know what the fact is can read just this summary without having to read all the explanations, background and the evidence for it. Unfortunately, the full posts can get long and complicated sometimes. Below I am giving a couple of examples starting with my latest post “The Strange Worlds of Exo Planets”.
Superfact 13:
Our sun is a star, and it has 8 planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune (as well as comets, asteroids, dwarf planets, etc.). The stars you see when you look up in the sky also have planets. We have identified 5,765 exoplanets (as of July 24th, 2024) but there are billions more in our galaxy. Some exoplanets are similar to Earth, and some are very different from any of the planets in our solar system.
Exoplanet with life Stock Illustration ID: 1524001694 by Dotted Yeti. Click on the image to visit my exoplanet post.
The speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers regardless of their speed and the direction in which they are going. It is always c = 299,792,458 meters per second. If you try to catch up to a light beam and travel close to the speed of light the speed of the light beam will still be c = 299,792,458 meters per second compared to you. This is possible because time and space don’t behave like we expect.
Another change that I made is that I improved my list of upcoming super-facts. I made the list the first 50 super-facts list instead of 40 and I changed the list a little bit. This is the new list.
Below is a list of the first 50 super-fact posts
(1) We Know That the Earth is Billions of Years Old – click to visit
(14) The vastness of space and the beginning of infinity – click to visit
(15) The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes – click to visit
(16) Wind power is providing more than a quarter of Texas Power – click to visit
(17) Wind power is not a major cause of bird death – click to visit
(18) We know that global warming is real and is caused by us – click to visit
(19) The hockey stick curve is accurate – click to visit
(20) EV Cars Indeed Emit Less Carbon Pollution – click to visit
(21) Eating local is not necessarily ecological – click to visit
(22) Many Popular Actions for the Environment Are Useless – click to visit
(23) 10 Times more people died from natural disasters a hundred years ago – click to visit
(24) By 2018 the emissions of ozone-depleting gases had fallen by 99.7% – click to visit
(25) The United States and Europe are minor contributors to the plastic waste problem – click to visit
(26) Developed nations has successfully reduced carbon emissions since 1990’s – click to visit
(27) The US is the largest cumulative emitter of carbon – click to visit
(28) There are many environmental success stories – click to visit
(29) Human behavior initiating a sixth extinction – click to visit
(30) Sulphur dioxide pollution has fallen by 95% in the US since the 1970’s – click to visit
(31) Entropy Always Increasing Does Not Contradict Evolution – click to visit
(32) Early homo sapiens lived at the same time as many other human species – click to visit
(33) Evidence for evolution is strong and evidence against it is weak – click to visit
(34) We know something about the evolution of whales – click to visit
(35) Evolution is a fact – click to visit
(36) Modern farming techniques have greatly increased cereal yield per acre – click to visit
(37) Animal Biomass has increased Wild Animal Biomass has decreased – click to visit
(38) Industrial Farming has condemned billions of animals to brutal and often short lives – click to visit
(39) You Choose Before You Know You Do – click to visit
(40) GPS uses relativity for accuracy – click to visit
(41) An account impersonating you on Facebook does not mean you have been hacked – click to visit
(42) Animals display compassion – click to visit
(43) We know that homeopathy does not work – click to visit
(44) Astrology is not science and lack predictive power – click to visit
(45) Vaccines do not cause autism – click to visit
(46) Smallpox killed 300 million people in the 20th Century But No One Now – click to visit
(47) The Average Lifespan More Than Doubled Since 1800 – click to visit
(48) The Butterfly effect – click to visit
(49) The Surprising Monty Hall Problem – click to visit
(50) The Surprising Double slit experiment – click to visit
I have to admit I don’t have a lot of followers yet on my new blog so feel free to follow. I will divide my time and posts equally between the two blogs, which means that my Leonberger blog will have about half as many posts as usual. I will place book reviews for Leonberger books, poetry, and fiction on my Leonberger blog and anything (fiction and non-fiction) that touches interesting facts on my superfactful blog. I am open to any suggestions for further improvements.
The focus of this blog is Leonbergers but sometimes I post about books that are not about Leonbergers but that I want to promote. This time I would like to promote Haiku for the Midnight Hour by Dawn Pisturino. This is a wonderful book featuring spooky poetry. I bought the paperback version from Amazon for $5.99 .
Paperback – Published September 1, 2024, by Horse Mesa Press, ASIN : B0DFW6CQ7S, ISBN-13 : 979-8991244718, 64 pages, Item Weight : 5.3 ounces, Dimensions : 6 x 0.15 x 9 inches, it cost $5.99 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Kindle – Published August 31, 2024, by Horse Mesa Press, ASIN : B0DD3SBP6N, 64 pages, it costs $2.99 on US Amazon but is free with Kindle Unlimited. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Front cover of Haiku for the Midnight Hour by Dawn Pisturino. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the book.
Amazon’s description of the book
This collection of haiku challenges the traditional Japanese poetic art form. Experimenting with darker images and ideas, I have created non-traditional observations that address the other side of literature and life: monsters, ghosts, natural fears, supernatural forces, fearful gods and goddesses, and whatever constitutes the Otherworld. This book was written for people who like Halloween, scary stories, and being alone in the dark.
Haiku for the midnight hour feature more than 200 spooky Haiku poems divided into 17 chapters. All poems and chapters feature a different theme. There are poems about scary animals, paranormal beings, folklore, ghosts and demons, monsters, death, outer space, fairy tales, magic, occult practices, and much more. My two favorite chapters were Spellbinding and Wee Folk.
The poems are imaginative, varied, original, different, entertaining and a lot of fun to read, especially if you are into Halloween and all things spooky, like I am. I also learned something about paranormal beings and folklore that I did not know before. Do you know what Dagda, Samhein, Arachne, Nyarlathotep, or Lughnasadh is? I think Halloween and scary stories are about imagination, pushing the limits of reality, and having fun, and that is what this poetry book is about. It is not your typical Haiku poem book. I highly recommend Haiku for the midnight hour.
Other books by Dawn Pisturino
I should add that I was also delighted to find myself mentioned in the authors afterword regarding one of her other books.
Back cover of Haiku for the Midnight Hour by Dawn Pisturino. Click on the image to go to the Kindle version for the book.
About the Author
Dawn Pisturino is a retired nurse in Arizona whose international publishing credits include poems, short stories, and articles. Her first poetry book, Ariel’s Song: Published Poems, 1987 – 2023, debuted with five-star reviews. Her short chapbook, Lunar Gazing Haiku, became a #1 Amazon New Release in six categories.
Her newest release, Haiku for the Midnight Hour, achieved #1 Amazon New Release status in three categories. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, PEN America, and the Arizona Authors Association.
I just returned from a trip to Scandinavia with my son and his wife. Since it is World Tourism Day today (September 27th) I thought I’d make a post related to our trip. I already made five posts about our trip on my new blog Super-Factful so what I am going to do is just link to those five posts. See below.
From a cruise in Sognefjord, Norway. Left to right, me, my oldest son and his wife. Click on the image to visit my post titled : “Tourism in Scandinavia on World Tourism Day”Drottningholm, one of the Royal Palaces in Sweden. It was built in the 1660’s and was inspired by Versailles. Click on the image to visit my post titled : “Sweden and Norway and Carl XIV Bernadotte”Painting of Gustav I Vasa the father of Sweden. Fashion was somewhat different back in the day. Click on the image to visit my post titled : “Sweden and Denmark and Gustav I Vasa”Imagining how a Huldra (female magical creature) would look like. Stock AI-generated image ID: 2400845203 by Shutterstock AI Generator. Click on the image to visit my post titled : “Scandinavian Folklore”.A photo of the Vasa ship from the bottom floor. My son is standing on the right in a green and black shirt. Click on the image to visit my post titled : “Vasa Museum Stockholm”.
Leonberger Life 