Thursday, January 31, 2008

American Staffordshire Terrier Dog Breed

Our dogs are very important to us and for those who have never owned a dog there is a lot to consider before you make the choice to add a member of a family. In some lines of thought it can be like adding a baby to the family because dogs need care, love, exercise, and a friend. The American Staffordshire Terrier is one of the many dog breeds you can choose from when considering adding a new member to the family. You will need to know the proper care, training, and the temperament of the dog breed before you add them to your family.

First you will find the American Staffordshire Terrier to be a small to medium sized dog. They reach 57 to 67 pounds, with the males being 18-19 inches in height and the females about an inch smaller. You will find they have a shorter snout than most dogs with pointed ears. The American Staffordshire has a boxer like face in the smaller snout and the jowls, all though you can definitely tell the two breeds apart. They are usually a solid color or partial. You will find white, black, and tan are the colors they display. Their hair is coarse and short. This means that grooming, which we will discuss in more detail later, is a little easier. They are not a cuddly dog, when you contemplate their hair, but they are also not great shedders which can be nice.

You should also not that the American Staffordshire Terrier is the American Pit Bull Terrier. Pit Bulls or the Terrier are often thought of as sport dogs because they have been used in the past for fighting dogs. This makes the dog an excellent guard or watchdog for your family. You will also find despite their use in history as fighting dogs they can be very gentle and devoted to their family. Despite the fighting mentality that has been trained in them in the past the American Staffordshire Terrier breed is actually a great dog for smaller children, all though you should not leave them unsupervised. You will also find that they are rather active and muscular. This dog breed does well for a one pet household. You should not introduce them to the family if you have other pets or dogs.

Training for the dog should include high energy activities that will keep them interested. They can get bored or stubborn if they don’t like the activity. You should start training as early as possible, especially with obedience. A firm, but gentle hand is required to train this dog breed. You will also want to be consistent and form a knowledge base with you as the master or dominant part of the equation. Exercise is extremely important. You will need a backyard, and should avoid apartment living with this breed. They can be destructive when left alone for long periods of time or when they become bored. Two hours a day spent on exercising and training will be required to keep them happy.

The care for the American Staffordshire Terrier is relatively simple. The short hair does not require much grooming, just a brushing once a week. In a warmer climate you will find they tend to shed a little more, so they will need a little more grooming. You can use a dry towel rather than a brush if you desire. You will also need to bath them perhaps once every six months or less. It should always be done with a dry shampoo as they can develop skin irritation from too much bathing or water.

Two Low Fat Dessert Recipes

This is a light and creamy dessert that is perfect for summer.
Ingredients:
1/3 ounce pack raspberry gelatin
1/2 cup boiling water
1 8-ounce block fat-free cream cheese, softened
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
2 cups fat-free cool whip
1 15-ounce canned peaches in light syrup, drained and chopped
Raspberries for garnish
Directions:
Add the raspberry gelatin to the boiling water in a small bowl. Stir for two minutes till the gelatin melts.
Put the softened cream cheese, the cottage cheese in a blender as well as the molten gelatin. Blend until you obtain a smooth mixture. Then pour the mixture into a large bowl.

Fold in beaten topping followed by chopped peaches. Then garnish with the raspberries. Place the bowl into the refrigerator for 4 hours.

Crumbles:
This is about crusty fruit cakes and cereals. This recipe makes use of apples and pineapples. You are free to prepare it with other fruits. The following mixtures are delicious too: apples- pears, apples-peaches�

Ingredients:
250 grams of apple
250 grams of pieces of pineapple or same quantity of other fruits to your own way.
50 grams of standard cereal �All-Bran�
50 grams of cereal standard �Cornflakes�
15 almonds or hazel nuts
A piece of peeled citron
3 spoons of sugar soup
1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon or a piece (2-3 cm) of ginger.

Directions:
Add the fruits and some water in a pan. Cook like you are making compote. Then add the piece of peeled citron and some citron oil drops), the cinnamon (or the ginger) and then mix well.
If you use very sweet fruits, you can add some more citron juice. Then grind the almonds and leave aside. Then grind the �All-Bran� and the other cereals, to obtain average petals (not powders).
Pour the mixture of fruits, and cover with cereals, and the pieces of almonds in a cake pan.
Place in an oven, thermostat 7 for 20 minutes.

Keeping Tabs On Your Hosting Company

There are so many web hosting services available nowadays that even making an informed decision can be an almost impossible task.

Once you have decided on the company to whom you are going to entrust your websites or blogs, you will always have that period where you wait anxiously for the first problems to arise. This is not because so many hosting companies are bad, more that there is plenty of negative press about the hosting industry in general and tends to make webmasters a little paranoid.

However, eventually, anyone running a website is going to bow to the inevitable and buy a hosting package.

So, once you've committed to your host of choice, how do you know that they are fulfilling their promises of 99.9% uptime? A lot of people have no idea of course, and assume that their sites are up and visible to the world 24/7. If a major problem arises you will soon become aware of it naturally, but what if you are experiencing downtime while you are not around? How often are people visiting your URL and landing on an error page? If that sort of thing happens too often, your visitors will soon give up returning.

It is therefore a good idea to monitor your host's performance on a daily basis. If they guarantee a certain percentage of uptime and fail to deliver on that promise, you may well find you are entitled to some compensation. Check the company's terms of service. This is all well and good, but often, the onus will be on you to prove that the downtime occurred.

Now, accepting that if downtime was excessive, you will probably be more inclined to switch to another hosting company, but if it is a case of only ocasional service outage, you might be prepared to tolerate it and just call the company on it.

However, if you don't monitor their performance, you will have no ammunition and your bargaining position will be compromized. It's easy to monitor your host's performance using free third party applications, and I currently use two services, one for daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly reports and another for real time tracking which will alert me as soon as a website goes down. Downtime Witness is a free service, and you can get a free registration key by visiting the link in the resource box at the foot of this message.

Alternatively or additionally you might want to use a reporting service such as the one provided by host-tracker.com

How do you know which diet is right?

A Diet is really the food that you consume on daily basis. But one should know which diet or food is right for maintaining the ideal weight or losing the excess weight in order to stay fit and healthy. Being overweight and obese is highly harmful as they pave the way for numerous health problems.

It is needless to mention that the major reason for people getting hypertension, heart attacks, stroke and diabetes at a young age is excess weight. Rapid weight loss is important for obese people because the longer the weight stays on the more problems arise.

The diet that provides all the required nutrients, does not have anything in excess, does not result in overweight, and keeps you agile all through the day is a diet full of fruits and vegetables. The diet can be a single food item or mixture of food items.

Below is the model diet program, which is perfect for maintaining the ideal weight by losing the excess weight, stored in the body. By following this diet plan rapid weight loss is possible.

Day one

This being the first day of the diet program that you are going to follow; you need to prepare the body system for the detox. Consume only fresh fruit on day one.

The fruit consumed will provide all the required nutrition. Fruits are nature’s gift. They are well balanced as far as nutritive requirement are concerned. A high consumption of fruit was very common thousands of years ago. Fruit is the best for rapid weight loss. Try to consume 9-10 servings for the day. You will probably be hungry, but dig deep.

Day two

In the morning you need to consume carbohydrate rich foods that are mixed with oil. This could be whole grain oatmeal with flax see or oil sprinkled on top. This is for the energy and balance requirement. Only vegetables should be consumed for the rest of the day. Vegetables are energy free but rich in fiber and other nutrients. Vegetables are very good source of minerals and vitamins.

Day three

You can consume fruits and vegetables on day three. It is better to avoid potatoes as the required energy can be received from fruits. On day three your system will start burning the excess calories stored. You may have a craving for regular food. You should try to control your craving which is essential for rapid weight loss. The craving will start reducing from day four. Find something else to focus on and persevere.

Day four

You are allowed to consume rice or soymilk, bananas and soup. The bananas are very important as they replenish the potassium you might have lost already. The bananas are also good source of sodium. You are sure to feel reduced appetite and reduced craving for sweets. Once the appetite is reduced rapid weight loss can be achieved without any fuss.

Day five
You can breathe easy on day five as you are allowed to eat potatoes and beans. The beans will provide protein and iron that is required. The potatoes are for energy and fiber. The potatoes also help in digestion. You will be surprised to note colorless urine on day five. This is the indication that your body is purified.

Day six
You should consume vegetables and beans. The vegetables you know that it provides vitamins and fiber. The minerals and protein requirement is catered by beans. By day six your system is perfectly ready for weight loss. You could see noticeable difference in look and weight when compared to day one.

Day seven

You can go for your normal foods. You are allowed to consume the food you like but the quantity must be minimal and the frequency can be increased. From here on weight loss is just easy, as you have tuned your body to weight loss mode. The best result is to consume fruits, vegetables and beans everyday. Stay away from cow’s milk, too much wheat, and too much corn

You can be assured if you follow the diet plan mentioned rapid weight loss is a possibility.

Discover Platinum Gas Card

The Discover Platinum Gas Card is another credit card that offers gas rebates, as well as rebates on other purchases. You can use this credit card to earn cash back at any gas station anytime. Every purchase you make with this credit card qualifies for cash back.

They claim a "Full 5% Cashback Bonus® on Gas purchases throughout the year*" and "Up to 1% Cashback Bonus on all your other purchases.*", but you have to read the fine print:

"Each year, earn a full 5% on your first $1,200 in gas purchases. In addition, earn a full 1% on other purchases in excess of $3,000; your first $1,500 in other purchases earns .25% and your second $1,500 in other purchases earns .50%. Gas purchases in excess of $1,200 earn Cashback Bonus at the same rate as other purchases."

So you actually only get 5% on your first $1200 in gas purchases each year. If you don't have your calculator, that is $60 in cash rebates at 5%. After that your rebate percentage drops a lot. Depending on your spending habits, that could average out to only about 2% cash back through the year.

This credit card could be a good option for someone looking for a second credit card to use combined with an existing card with similar introductory bonuses. By using multiple credit cards and watching your spending, you could be averaging 5% or higher cash back throughout the year. Maybe you even have a different rewards credit card to use after your first $1200 in gas purchases. Another limit of this card is "Purchases made at select warehouse clubs, discount stores and their affiliates earn .25%." So if you frequent such stores, don't expect 5% or even 1% cash back.

There are no limits on the cash rebates you can earn and the rebates never expire. You can increase your bonuses by redeeming for gift cards or certificates from their partners. You do have to redeem your cash rebates in $20 increments. As rebates do not expire, the only way you would lose rebates is if you do not have card activity for 36 months or you close the account.

The Discover Platinum Gas Card has no annual fee and a 0% introductory APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months. With credit cards from Discover, you can qualify for a regular APR rate as low as 10.99%. You also get $0 Fraud Liability.

Overall this is a very good credit card, but I do recommend using a secondary card once the yearly gas purchase limit has been met. It is a great card for someone looking for cash back everywhere and a low interest rate.