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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2016-02-11, Page 5From Willie must be an old guy, I've owned nine dogs in my Life. Make that `hosted' nine dogs. You can hardly call yourself the lord and master when it's you who shells out for the gravy train and the doghouse, the collars and leashes and vet bills. Most of my dogs adopted me when they were pups, but the current resident, Woolly, snared me even earlier than that. I saw her being conceived. It happened like this: my partner and I were driving into town when we passed a pair of dogs doing...what pairs of dogs have a habit of doing at the least appropriate times. On top, as it were, was a magnificent -looking Golden Retriever. Receiving his advances was a sleek Border Collie clad in signature Border Collie black and white. Like good Canadians, my partner and I averted our eyes and continued into town. Returning an hour later we came upon the same two dogs in the same...configuration. We looked at each other and blurted in two-part harmony: "We want one of those pups." Long story short, we tracked down the Border Collie"s owner, informed him of the canine cavortings playing out on his front lawn and asked if we could put our names THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2016. PAGE 5. Other Views to Woolly: a life down for one of the inevitable pups. We could and we did. And so Woolly came into our life. That was nearly 15 years ago. The parental mix was so perfect it might have been divinely inspired. Woolly's mother was whip -smart and energetic, as Border Collies tend to be. The Golden Retriever dad was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a blonde. Very good- looking, excellent temperament. No Rhodes Scholar. Woolly dived into the deep end of that gene pool, emerging somewhere between a very bright Golden Retriever and a Border Collie on Valium. In the ensuing decade and a half the roly-poly all -black pup has turned into a stately black and grey lady. She's gone from Shirley Temple to Maggie Smith. She no longer leaps over logs or sprints after wildlife. She has no interest in acquiring a boyfriend — or a girlfriend for that matter. She endures other dogs and preserves her dignity by pretending not to notice them — unless they become obnoxious, which will occasion a matronly snap and a growl. She considers herself an honourary member of the human race. Her spirited forays into the bush have turned into sedate walks around the block. She stays by my side. A leash, once mandatory, is no longer necessary. She is the last of nine dogs, most of them mutts, which have graced my life. To wit: Shiner, Duchess, Toke (it was the 1960s), Beulah, Angus, Rufus, Homer and of course, Woolly. And not forgetting the pudgy black and white pup which was first in my personal series 'way back when I was a pudgy pup myself — a Fox Terrier cross Something Else named Willie. From Willie to Woolly, two furry bookends to my life. We've decided we won't try to squeeze in another volume after Woolly shuffles off to join the honour roll. Can't improve on perfection. But that's easy to say. There's no telling when another dog might decide to adopt us. Lawsw the answer people! its aren t its aren t Jt seems that every time I turn around, I'm reading about someone suing someone else for some incredibly silly reason and it's really starting to grind my gears. First and foremost, legal action should always (and this isn't like always getting your oil changed on time or always putting the seat down, I actually mean always) be a last resort for extreme circumstances. Unfortunately, it seems that many people look at lawsuits as the first response to trying to right their perceived wrongs. Most famously, of course, is the woman who sued McDonald's south of the border for burning herself with hot coffee which resulted in McDonald's labelling their hot drinks as, well, hot. Fortunately, north of the border, we expect people to be a little brighter and assume that coffee is hot and you shouldn't carry it between your thighs while driving. Now McDonald's is under the legal microscope again. Why? Well it's their mozzarella sticks. While you may have seen the mozzarella sticks making the rounds on social media for physically being more stick than mozzarella (the cheese has somehow disappeared from many people's deep fried treats), Chris Howe, from California, is alleging the sticks aren't made using the 100 per cent cheese McDonald's is claiming they use. Howe's lawsuit asks for the $1.27 he spent on the mozzarella sticks and damages for the U.S. customers who are being misled. He has filed documents that he says prove starch additives and other ingredients are being put in the mozzarella sticks, making them less than pure mozzarella. Ignoring how much $1.27 actually is in Canadian cash (it could be a fortune by the time this goes to print), one has to wonder exactly what Howe did with the sticks since he only bought one serving. Unless he bit into one, immediately identified the problem and sent them away for testing, it would seem he bought the mozzarella sticks for the sole purpose of testing them and getting to file a lawsuit. It's a waste of time and a frivolous lawsuit because, even if someone has a starch allergy, they wouldn't be eating the mozza sticks let Denny Scott 1116411. Denny's Den because the breading most certainly has starch. McDonald's has vowed to fight the allegations and I'm glad they have because settling with people like Howe is what is leading this continent down a very slippery slope. If we keep allowing people to file, and win, these frivolous suits, there are going to be half as many lawyers as the entire population because we're going to each need a lawyer just to step out of the door in the morning. Don't believe me? Well let's look at some other cases. Look at Nashville attorney Chris Sevier, who accidentally mistyped Facebook.com and found himself on a decidedly more racy site. He filed suit against Apple Inc., who created his computer, seeking $75,000 in damages for interfering with his marital contract and wanted to see all Apple products created with filters that block out adult material. Consider, if you don't think that's ridiculous, the case of 17 -year-old Scott Simon from New Jersey. Simon, while at a party, overdosed on some prescription medication stolen from a local pharmacy. As a result, he was in a coma and suffered permanent nerve damage. In a case like that, you could sue the person who gave you the drugs, or the people who owned the home, but, instead, Simon's family chose to sue everyone. They named the party host, his parents (who were out of town at the time), the other people at the party, Pfizer for making the pharmacy drug in question and the pharmacy that was robbed (I guess they should have known better than to get robbed). Simon must have done something right, however, as the pharmacy and the host's parents ended up shelling out $4.1 million for the case. That's $5.7 million Canadian for those keeping score at home. If that isn't silly enough, consider the tale of Elizabeth Lloyd. Lloyd, when at a New Jersey (maybe there's something about the state?) little league baseball game, was hit in the face by an errant warm-up throw. The young baseball player who threw the ball asked her if she was all right, which she reportedly said she was. She must have later discovered some significant damage, however, as she decided to sue the 11 - year -old baseball player and his family for half a million dollars for medical costs and pain and suffering a couple of weeks later. While two of the above cases are yet to be ruled upon (or see the light of day, if we're lucky), one person did end up a lot richer because of what can only be called a questionable situation. It's those rulings, those $4.1 million wins that shouldn't happen, that lead people to believe that suing someone is the best thing they can do. I know that, in Canada, rewards are capped at a certain amount so these kinds of stories don't happen, but we still have people who shout "Sue!" every chance they get. Unfortunately, any reward at all is enough for some people to think all their problems can be solved by a lawsuit that is cheaper to settle out-of-court than fight. It's a bit beyond the scope of my influence to bring an end to that kind of behaviour, however I can, through this column, ask people around here to think twice. Will a lawsuit really solve the problem? Is it worth ruining someone else's life because you feel you've been marginally wronged? Hopefully, the answer is no. Old sayings and cliches are often laughed at, but there is wisdom there and, when it comes to the legal system and the people in your community, you will always catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar. Final Thought Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish. — Sam Walton 411. Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense What makes a leader? 0 ne of the first lessons I learned about leadership came by way of hockey, when I was very young. It revolved around a team's captain: the man who wears a capital "C" on the chest of his jersey. As a young person who watched hockey, but didn't play it in an official capacity — lots of road hockey, but never anything official on the ice with a jersey or equipment — I didn't understand what makes a team captain. The earliest team I remember watching was the Toronto Maple Leafs in the early 1990s. Wendel Clark was the captain and he was complemented by Doug Gilmour, who was probably the team's best player during that era. While Gilmour would later go on to become the team's captain after Clark, at the time, it didn't make sense to me. If Gilmour is the team's best player, why then is he not its captain? It was then explained to me that being a team captain isn't all about on -ice performance and who finds the back of the net the most. It's a player with experience who has been around the block a few times, who the rest of the team respects and trusts to lead them. While other sports don't have the captain role as clearly defined as hockey with a literal "C" on a jersey, all teams have captains and most of the time it's a process that happens very naturally. On Sunday, Carolina Panthers captain Cam Newton played the role of a team captain process gone wrong after his team lost the Super Bowl. Newton was a lock to win the league's Most Valuable Player (MVP) award and led his team on the field to one of the best records in recent history. But when he got roughed up, made mistakes and lost his composure on the field in San Francisco, all in a losing effort to the Denver Broncos, he showed himself to not be the leader his teammates and fans of the team thought him to be. In addition to complaining and throwing fits on the field for a variety of reasons during the game, mostly frustration, his post -game behaviour was classless and unbecoming for someone said to be leading a team. Anyone with children has had a conversation like the one Newton had with reporters after the loss on Sunday. Newton slumped in his chair, wore a hood over his head and refused to make eye contact with reporters or answer their questions. He sulked like a 12 -year-old boy pulled out of the mall after being refused a toy he so desperately wanted, before putting an end to the press conference and simply storming out after just over three minutes of "answering questions". Newton played all season in a brash and flashy manner, always searching for the nearest camera after scoring a touchdown or winning a game. But on Sunday, when things didn't go his way, everything changed and he shunned the very system he had exploited game after game when he was on the sunny side of the street. As I've written about before, the world is changing. In an effort not to hurt feelings and to treat children as gently as possible, losing and failure are being legislated out of the world. And what we saw with Newton Sunday night is what we get as a result. Everyone loves a gracious loser — someone who keeps it together and holds his head high after being defeated. And it's those people — the people who remain as strong in defeat as they do in victory — who deserve to wear the "C", not just whoever appears the most in post- game box scores.