Consequences

It’s a basic law of physics that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and it affects each and every one of us when we do anything that requires the expenditure of energy. Of equal importance is a basic law of social interaction that is usually described as “The Law of Unintended Consequences”. Pass a law, promulgate a regulation and you usually find that some of the results are not what you wanted them to be. In the name of public protection a series of privacy laws were enacted over the past few years by social progressives who believe we, as individuals are incapable of providing for our own well being and are unable to comprehend the business of individual responsibility.

We run a business, and have financial accounts that reflect the activity and solvency of the business and let us know how effective our labor is. They also provide information that we use to keep the tax authorities happy when they come to collect their portion of the gains we accrued from our labor.

Recently we were asked by a niece and nephew who are relocating to another state to keep a general oversight on their local house which they intend to keep for income generation. Property Management is a new game for us, but they are family and family should be there to help as necessary. So we set up an account for the new endeavor and immediately fell into the trap created when politicians try their hand at social engineering. The account has to be electronically available to us for management purposes and to the niece and nephew for oversight and occasional transaction processing. And that is why we have a situation caused by misguided legislation.

Creating the account was easy, bank procedures are direct and it is in their best interest to handle our account in a business manner. But when we come to transferring monies between accounts we are told that the family, who now live several states away have to provide valid address information (Is a water bill valid identification?) and must provide that in person and only at the financial site where we established the account.  In addition the regulations are unclear if the valid address is the old address, the new address or our business address.

Until such time as the bank regulators decide what information they want and how they want it presented we are unable to move funds electronically but instead must travel to our branch bank and manually move our money between our accounts. The extra effort and frustration of having to move our own money makes a mockery of the theory of efficiency in government and making  life easier for the masses.

I eagerly anticipate the fun times when the government centralizes and automates the national health care system.

Growing old with the children

Several months ago we lost a service dog that had been with us for most of his 22 years. He was an expert in reading people, identifying their emotional issue and letting the person know that help was there for them and that all problems are solvable. We had to replace him in our lives, but we knew that any replacement would bring their own personality to the job. Our search for a replacement service animal ended with two replacement dogs that joined with two other dogs in our household. All our household companions are rescued animals and training them is an interesting process that focuses on persuading them that they want to do the job they are being considered for.

Our oldest service animal is now retired, sleeping a lot and keeping the food bowls clean for the other guys. The working senior is an 8 year old Papillion who will culminate her training by becoming a cadaver search dog. What to train the two new dogs for has been a challenge since small dogs fill a special working niche that bigger animals sometimes don’t do well at.  Right now it looks like the older of the pair, a 6 year old Papillion will need lots of work before certifying as a Search and Rescue animal and the baby of the family is a 4 month old Long hair Chihuahua who already has told us she wants to be an emotional support animal for disaster responders.

As working animals we depend on them to be responsive to our commands, but able to reason and perform on their own. Sometimes this backfires and we learn that small animals can cause big concerns.

Yesterday we let them run the yard and they managed to find perhaps the one unsecured area in the fence that allowed them to run free and cause their humans a few moments of deep concern (or should that be “terror”?). It started with a phone call from a motorist who had seen two of the dogs running through a school yard, managed to corral one and get our contact information off her harness. The second dog ran away, but as we saw him looking very lost and scared and when he saw us his attitude seemed to be “where did you go to? I’m lost and I’m glad you found me.

The last member of the escape party was nowhere to be found and we were concerned about the survivability of a two pound Chihuahua in a land populated with coyotes. Fortunately I decided to walk a small drainage area and found the culprit in short order, and had to endure a complete face wash and a complaint that we had gone away and left her alone in the wilderness.

Needless to say, all the miscreants are presently on short leash probation and remedial training on close to home and the humans has started. The humans have also improved the dog proofing of the yard and are considering locater collars.