"Melinda Shore" wrote in message
...
In article VrFUj.20152$Fv.8289@trnddc03,
\(the\)duckster wrote:
Without a double blind, peer reviewed study, you are correct.

No, not so much. Put it this way - if you flip a coin, you
can't predict with any accuracy what the result will be.
Flip a coin 500 times, though, and you can do a pretty good
job predicting the aggregate outcome. That is to say,
research might be able to produce a range of likelihoods
that she'd develop allergies but it wouldn't be able to
answer the question definitively. (I think this is one of
the reasons that people who like black-and-white answers
don't like science.)

You are correct. Most of what I have read is that because kids have such
great immune systems, raising them with animals can be responsible for their
not having them later.

All I know for a fact is that my daughter has cuddled with vaious packs all
her life and along with being an animal lover doesn't seem to be bothered by
dander or hair.

Hm? Among my southern chinese friends eating dog is considered a
delicacy,
Northern Chinese, however, not so much.,

A couple of years ago I saw a news segment on an American
woman living in a Chinese city who bought live dogs at a
food market and took them to visit seniors in assisted
living facilities, where apparently the residents typically
had never looked at dogs as companions but only as food.
According to this news bit she was very successful both in
doing therapy with these dogs and in changing views of dogs
among the people she worked with. However, you never know
how representative this kind of thing actually is of
cultures you (well, I) don't know, etc. But still, it was
impressive.

I remember seeing that story. It was very impressive.

As I said chi gou (eating dog) is restricted pretty much to southern China,
especially Guangdong province. When we adopted our daughter, the live
markets were full of dogs and cats meant for dinner tables. We even saw
heads of dogs hanging in shops like hams. It was stomach turning.

In fact, our chinese guide told us that in southern regions the Chinese
there eat everything on four legs except the table.

Dogs, too, make their living as well. In Hong Kong, we saw many chow type
dogs on sampan boats, that looked more watchdog like than meant for dinner.

Years ago when I worked at an incentive company sending American companies
to the Olympic games in Korea, there was a concerted effort to take dog off
the menus out of courtesy to American stomachs.

One of the most vivid memories I have is on the bus from Hong Kong to
Guangzhou was of three very fat, lab type dogs lying on the ledge of a
hillside, watching the traffic go by. Wild? Owned? Who knew.

Probabaly the weirdest food experience was going into a restaraunt in
ZhanJiang, my daughter's birth city and seeing stations of live animals.
Fish, snake, turtle, chicks. You would point out what you wanted and the
cook at that station would take it back to the kitchen, slaughter it there
and prepare it on the spot. "Everything fresh that way,", our guide said.
He was the same fellow though that told us not to eat eanything cut open
with a knife on the street (like fruit). Hepatitis.

We pretty much stayed close to western hotels and vegetarian the whole time.
That was something else the Chinese didn't quite understand unless you told
them you were a Buddhist.

A very, very different country China. Even now so ultra modern, yet so
third world. I've been invited as a guest by a company we do business with
in China to go to the Olympics Games in Qingdao (regeatta) in August. It's
been ten years since I have traveled been I'm told I won't recognize the
place.

Kind regards,
(the)duckster

In article ,
Shelly wrote:

(the)duckster wrote:

unless your wife is a stay at home mother
and a dog person, you are in for a ton of work.

Maybe Dave is a stay at home dad. It's been known to happen.

datapointOne of my neighbors is./datapoint
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