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PottersHouse BearsShelli,
I live out in the boonies so we do not have cable. However, I have seen Animal Planet and I thought then that it is probably a good thing that I don't get it. I would probably spend all of my time watching Animal Planet and making bears. I could see me buried in mohair scraps in front of the TV. My daughter and I are nearly addicted to the British show "All Creatures Great and Small". I bought her the first two series for Christmas last year and we have just about worn them out. I find it very relaxing in the evening to put in a James Herriott video and work on a bear. We are definitely animal maniacs here. We have even converted my husband who grew up without animals in his life and really had no desire for them. He didn't know what he got into when he married me. The first birthday present I asked for from him was a puppy. I picked out a St. Bernard (20 lbs. at 6 weeks old). From there things grew, including that puppy. My husband has joined the bandwagon, a few months ago he brought home a chicken that came in on one of their delivery trucks at work. HA!
Oh Millie! That is great about how you 'converted' your husband! 
And a St. Bernard is what you "broke him in" on?? 
Actually I do have cable and often do NOT watch Animal Planet... I just canNOT watch those sad stories - I get too angry 
How awesome that YOU were able to do something about it with Captain! I'm sure it was very hard for you not to do something about his previous owner....
Hi Hayley!! Glad to see you on this board too! I love BOTH Edinburgh's AND Intercal's boards!!! Love your avatar! What program did you use? LOVE the pawprints... can't figure out how to do those in my Photoshop Elements 
Hey, that's cool about the rats! I had NO idea that the pet rats and wild rats were different species??!! But I understand! I had a couple of pet mice and loved them! But wild mice??!!! No thank you!!
Just Us BearsHi Laura,
Thanks for the lovely comments about my avatar! I used Adobe Photoshop 7.0..but I am greener than green! I just decided that if Shelli could teach herself then so could I (how's that for the power of positive thinking!). The colour is very much 'not me'..I'm more of a pink and pretty colours type of person, but I just stumbled accross that background while I was playing and it seemed to suit that particular bear really well, so I decided that it would do..for now! Like most of us, I want nice pics...but I want them yesterday, and HATE wasting time learning stuff..I just want to be able to do it right away!!
Now that I've learned a thing or two..I'll try to be more adventurous..I haven't quite worked out how to get fonts other than the standard ones yet...nicer ones like what Shelli uses on her Avatars...but I will!
Millie,
We have a horse nearby who looks much the same as Captain did before you rescued him but without the sores. He is just really skinny and sad looking....and Anna wants to go rescue him!(she has taken the before and after pics of Captain to school today for show and tell!) Trouble is, we don't have an acreage...and I don't fancy just knocking on some strangers door to find out about the horse. She has this wonderful idea that she will rescue the horse and it will eventually look like Captain, and one day they'll ride off into the sunset together. The other down side, is that I am allergic to horses! So I think probably the best course of action is to phone the RSPCA and have them go check up on the horse...especially as we are heading into winter and he has no rug.:(
Just Us BearsOh..and about the paw prints Laura...I just took a photo of my front door mat which has the paw prints on them, then pasted them on a clear background and reduced the size. I have used them as buttons on my new website which hopefully will be up and running by this weekend...so much work!
Rather be makin' bears...
Posts: 8,574So glad you came out to play Hayley!......we have lots of fun here, and wil have more fun now that you have joined us!
Dilu 
Hayley and all.... There are a gajillion (yes, that is a REAL number) sites on the net which offer free "true type" fonts. Two favorites include:
http://www.fontfile.com/fonts.php?thesq … ger_next=1
and
http://www.1001fonts.com/
I can't remember off the top of my head how to install a font -- I want to say you just plunk the file (or download it directly) into the FONT folder in your CONTROL PANEL, but don't quote me. But it's easy enough to figure out.
Just download the font you want and install it and voila!, you're good to go. I can "see" all the fonts on my hard drive no matter which application (Word, PhotoShop, etc.) I'm using. I'm imagining it would be the same for you.
Be sure to have your virus definitions up to date and anti-spyware software installed. I usually get tagged by something icky when I download free ANYTHING (although I can't specifically blame either of the two sites above, I'd proceed with caution in downloading anything, especially anything FREE, nowadays.)
Have fun!
Just Us BearsThanks Shelli,
I love that term gajillion! And only you would know it's real term!:lol:
I did know of those freebie places and have used fonts from them before...but thought yours may have been something you made up. Thanks for clarifying that! I would imagine using the fonts in an avatar or a pic you do in photoshop would be different because you are actually saving the font part as a picture but in general with out of the ordinary fonts, people will only be able to see them if they are on their own font list. I found this out the hard way whilst looking at my website through someone else's computer. My whole site is done in Kristen ITC, but many older computers don't have this as a standard font and so it shows up as a default font, which is usually something basic like arial or times roman. So for a website, I have discovered you can get around this by 'embedding' the font in your web pages...and that way everyone will see it as intended, regardless of whether they have the font or not.
Just thought this snippet may be of interest to some.
And Dilu..thanks for your comment...you sure know how to make a girl feel special!
Yes, that's exactly right Hayley! My graphic designer friend Andrea told me the same thing when I was setting up my own website. One must use "web-safe fonts" in the text portion of the site so that everyone, everywhere, regardless of computer age and type and setup, will see the same thing. That's why my site uses IMPACT and, I think, VERDANA... two of the more common and web-safe fonts. Others include:
ARIAL
TIMES NEW ROMAN
TREBUCHET
COMIC SANS
Mac offers even more "default" or "standard" fonts but you can never know whether your site is being viewed on a Mac or a Windows/PC, so using the Windows/MicroSoft "web-safe fonts" is the best option.
There is one exception, as you noted... and that's if you embed your text into a photo file and save it as a .jpg, for example. Jennifer Murphy has a site which I can only assume utilizes just this concept to the fullest. Her site appears entirely handwritten -- probably is, actually -- and she does not type those words in as text but rather, saves them as photo files. That's how everyone, everywhere -- even though they do not have Jennifer Murphy's handwriting stored as a font type on their computer -- can see her lovely script handwriting.
Check here to see what I'm talking about, anyone interested: http://www.jmurphybears.com/
And no, the fonts are exactly the same even when used in PhotoShop. But you then "rasterize" or "simplify" them before saving them to the final version .jpg, and because they are a .jpg, or "picture" -- and not a "font," or text input/html, per se -- everyone, everywhere can see whatever cool, nifty-keeno font you use in your photographs. So no need, in avatars, etc., to worry about those pesky "web-safe fonts."
Hayley thanks so much!!! And thanks Shelli too! Love learning more about websites! Love Jennifer's site ... that handwriting looks so neat
One thing about having most of your text as actual jpgs though... the search engine crawlers cannot "see" those words when people do a search (since they are in actuality pictures, not words) Jennifer may have some text in there too that we just can't see (white text on white background) so that the search engines can find her.... just thought I'd mention this in case...
Ooh, very good point Laura. Thanks for mentioning it.
I'm not entirely sure how the search engines "spider" -- which is what it sounds like; they send out crawly little tendrils, looking for things -- but I do know they cannot read a .jpg or image file of any kind and can only read text.
They also read keywords, which you can insert as an html "header" in your site programming. That's where people -- in our case, bear artists -- would include words separated by commas like, "teddy bears, mohair, artist, one of a kind" etc., in the hopes the search engines would glom onto these terms whenever someone inputs them.
Jennifer's business is doing blazingly well -- anyone else see her in Mary Englebriet's Home Companion a while back? -- and as a design purist she might not care as much about spidering as she does about the design of her site. But I doubt that. She probably had used white text or lots of keywords to get people to her site, none of which we can see.
I also found out the hard way, after my own website had achieved a certain page ranking, that if you pull your site and replace it with a new one, you lose all of that ranking on the search engines and basically start over from scratch. What I mean by that is that certain of my website pages -- due to visitor use -- had been "indexed." Such that, if you typed in "POTBELLY BEARS", my website -- www.potbellybears.com -- was the first on the list to appear.
When I pulled that old site and replaced it with my new one, tho, the indexing got thrown out with the discarded site. So if you typed in "POTBELLY BEARS', my website appeared on, like, page 18 of the list of matches, after hundreds of other web references had been shown.
I think I've recovered ground over time because I'm back to where searching my company name GETS YOU my company name.... but just something to keep in mind -- a rookie mistake, made by yours truly -- for those of you contemplating doing your own site design and maintenance.
I'm not nearly an expert on this but I'm learning...
Hope this helps,
PottersHouse BearsHayley,
Sometimes in these rescue situations you have to let the authorities handle it. I was only able to get Captain because the owner was willing to get rid of him. He actually just gave him to me. This man could have been a real "other end of the horse", but he wasn't. And please do not take Anna's dream from her. Let her know that even if she can't take this horse she still can help him by contacting the right people. Who knows, she may be heading up the RSPCA some day. I know as a child I lived on those kind of dreams.
Past Time BearsJust gotta report what happened last night!! 
I know I've posted about the varmints that have come through the kitty door . . . raccoons, possums, next-door neighbor's dog, across-the-street neighbor's cat . . . but I draw the line at snakes!! Yes, as I was checking to see where all the cats were before going to bed, I noticed that two of the kitties were stalking something in the pet room (enclosed patio). On closer inspection, I saw that it was a juvenile copperhead snake!! The pet door was slightly ajar, so guess it had just come in as it hadn't gotten very far. Paul ran to get some kind of weapon and I went to open the door in case it wanted to escape the cats. Fortunately, I'm assuming it's immaturity at what to do when cornered served in our favor . . . it slithered quietly out the door and into the night. Whew!! I almost died laughing when Paul appeared with my rolling pin!! Needless to say, we will block the pet door from now on at night!
Winneybears and FriendsWhew ! Right ! Block that door at night !...Winney
I know this is pretty late from when the first post was posted, but I just saw it, and thought I would give my reply..
I dont have any animals, but I love them, and would love to have a cat, a dog, a rabbit, a pony, a.... should I continue..? lol
Unfortnantly I cant have animal with fur, cause Im allergic to them, especially cats and rabbits. Have borrow my brothers dog sometimes, but I need to take allergy pills, otherwise my nose is a mess and I sneeze, and get red eyes and so...
Oh I'm so sorry Jossan! I know how hard it is to love animals but not be able to have them. My ex-husband was allergic to animals... I got very lucky that my current husband loves animals as much as I do AND is not allergic!
Winneybears and FriendsHave you tried a dog that has fur that does not fall out ? I have a german snazzer ( spell . he. he ) her fur has to be clipped all the time...I don't think she is the kind of dog that has dander ... Oh my ...there is also a type of dog that has NO fur except for the ears, tail...Winney
LuxembearsOh Sue Ann..A copper head. Yikes, they are posionous right? That's sounds pretty funny though, your hubby coming to ht erescue with a rolling pin!:lol:
Jossan, sorry to hear of your allergies to fur..especailly when you would like ot have a pet. Is it the fur you are allergic to or the dander? I have a dog that does not shed, she is a maltipoo (maltese and poodle), she's small too, only 9 pounds.
Winney, is that hairless dog called a Mexican Hairless? They are adorbale in a wierd kind of way. I am sure they are very loveable.
Hi Winney & Welcome back Judi!
Or possibly you're thinking of the Chinese Crested? They have wonderful personalities! My hubby's aunt has 2. They do have to wear sweaters even indoors if it is cool. And although I love them - if ya pet them it's kinda like "petting bologna" as my husband says. I've never seen a Mexican Hairless... but the Cresteds have fur on their ears and tails.. and I think on their feet. There's another variety called "puff balls" that are fully "furred". They can even occur in the same litter!
The Chinese Crested was developed in China during the Plague. The disease was carried by ticks on rats. This breed of dog was originally developed to hunt the rats that carried the disease bearing ticks. Because of their lack of fur, if they happened to catch any ticks - the ticks were easily disposed of.
Didn't mean to ramble on there... probably WAY more than you wanted to know
Past Time BearsHmm . . . that's really interesting, Laura!!
LuxembearsYes, thanks for sharing the info Laura. I laughed out loud with the
if ya pet them it's kinda like "petting bologna" as my husband says
Winneybears and FriendsLaura you are so funny, LOL, Yes I think that doggie is a chinese crested bologna doggie. Hmmmm, wonder if there are any hairless cats ? My imagination is getting carried away with me. Oh, that was interesting about the dogs and the plague...learn some thing new every day........Winney
Just in case you really wanted to know if there were hairless cats...:P
Past Time BearsOh My!!
Delartful BearsGee, Oh My is right about those hairless cats. I love fur, could never have one of the hairless cats, but they are kinda cute in an ugly way! LOL
Jossan, people have given you ideas about pets for people with allergies. Well, if you wanted a rabbit, you could think of a Rex. Their coats feel like velvet and come in the standard size, and then in the minis - very pretty rabbits, and a more inquisitive breed and intelligent. Just a thought I had! They are great for people with allergies.
Danni
Fool's Gold BearsYou folks are making me want more pets, and I don't even allow our current ones inside! Maybe I'll just get some bologna. I've heard it has a long shelf-life
