More dog stuff.

[bunn]

I have created a website - http://www.oldies.org.uk/ - for a new group who are working to help rehome older dogs (roughly 8 years plus) in the UK. Old dogs have a crap chance of finding new homes from rescue centres, and as a result they are less likely to get pulled out of the pounds that have a put to sleep policy for strays. So, the plan is that our group will help to promote older dogs that might otherwise be forgotten - partly through the website, but also by putting up posters all around the country telling the story of our featured dogs.

There's a lovely old greyhound I keep coming back to : he is 8 years old and has been stuck in kennels for years eating soft food, so only has 4 teeth left. He's not a featured dog yet, but I think he might become one...

Started Mollydog on Synflex liquid glucosamine on Friday. It's supposed to be more easily absorbed and more effective than the pills she's been having for her arthritic wrist so far. We will see. She seemed to be a bit better yesterday but I foolishly took her walking in the woods and after flinging herself up and down the banks after squirrels she was holding that paw off the ground again. Drat.

Butternut squash soup is really nice. And apart from the squash, all you need is stuff you mostly have in, like onion, garlic, a stock cube and olive oil. To my amazement Polo likes it too, even though it contains vegetables. I haven't told him it has garlic in though....

Built a tiny MySQL database and a php tool to query it all on my own from scratch, without nicking any code today. I am so proud. Dunno why I find database programming so absurdly hard, whereas css, which seems to fox many people, comes easily. Odd.

Comments

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I wish you and the group well - and it's a lovely website, too! I volunteered as a dog walker at the RSPCA shelter in Kensal Green, and of all the dogs I walked, the three I fell completely in love with were Blackie (a greyhound), and Lucky and Lucy, a half-brother-and-sister pair of elderly mongrels. Lucky was a collie-spanielly 16-year-old, and Lucy a 10-year-old rough-coated something or other (terrier x?), whose owner had had to go into care. They were inseparable and adorable and it was very hard to leave them at the kennel at the end of the afternoon. It took about a month, but they were rehomed - together.

I hope I am not one of the people foxed by CSS, as my web publishing coursework will require mastering at least a modicum of CSS layout. Any tips from the expert (or URLs of other websites you've worked on!) are naturally welcome :) I've found it absurdly hard to find examples of attractive pages that haven't used tables or masses of Javascript.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I haven't told him it has garlic in though.... Oooh! You devil you! ;-)

The soup sounds good, is it the usual for the other veg (chop, fry a little) and then add stock, but with diced squash too, or what does one do to the squash?

[na-lon.livejournal.com]

Great website. I do hope that you all manage to find homes for your Oldies. If the Marquis and I ever decide to get a dog, I'll certainly consider looking at an Oldie!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think only a month waiting for a pair of oldie mongrels is pretty good! Must have been a good popular rescue.

Css - I can't really take credit for the Oldies css, as it's a template from the CMS (Wordpress - excellent table-free accessible CMS, highly recommended) and I just messed about with things a little (well it is a freeby!)

I assume you've looked at http://www.csszengarden.com/?

Pretty much everything I do is css-only, but I sometimes have problems convincing my colleagues A and T of the righteousness of the CSS Way: they will try to sneak in tables for formatting.

http://www.airsouthwest.com/ is kind of interesting: it was designed by a Dreamweaver Deziner as a hugely tableheavy site. They found it got no search engine traffic, so I recreated the look and feel (and made a few tweaks) in css, which worked rather well. The code isn't exactly clean, but the filesizes are about 6 times smaller!

I'm quite proud of http://www.tropicbreeze.co.uk/ - that is pretty much pure css formatting except maybe the odd form - http://www.plymouthguild.org.uk/ is our best effort at pushing the right accessibility buttons so far, but it's not so pretty. http://www.hayne-alpacas.co.uk/ is all css (apart from the Gallery section, which has tables from the CMS), and also contains cute alpacas...

Do you use Topstyle Pro? I love it!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Yes - basically chop all veg and fry till the squash is softish, then add stock and boil for a bit, then liquidise. Dead easy. Mmmmmm.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

:-) thanks!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Just added a pair of trailhounds to the site, and they have been waiting 2 years for a home! I thought a month was quick. But I think the trailhounds are mostly in the North: fewer homes for rescue dogs up there, and more backyard breeding. :-(