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.