It's a boy! And another one! And another one! And another one!

Zoe and the four pups

That's right, we have four baby boy chihuahuas, each weighing 5 ounces (142 grams). They seem healthy and strong and each began searching for milk within two or three minutes of being born. Zoe, the little mother, is doing fine. She's being a great little mother and didn't seem to have any problems with the births.

Yesterday afternoon, Zoe wanted to go up to her bed and banged against the closed bedroom door to get my attention. I went upstairs to open the door for her and put her in the box we had prepared for her. She was acting pretty normal, though, so I assumed it would be a few hours away. I went out to feed the chickens. That was around 2:00 p.m.

When I came in the back door about 10 minutes later, I heard a baby squeaking! I ran upstairs and Chloe the Rottweiler had the first puppy out on the floor and she and Joey were all excited about what they had found. Whoa! That was scary! They are both curious, but Chloe is actually trying to protect the pups from Joey. She barks very loudly at him whenever he gets near the box.

By 4:00 p.m., it was all over, the puppies were eating and Zoe was resting. The first one looks like Joey, the second two one looks like Zoe, the third one is a little darker, and surprise, surprise! − the fourth one is black.


Joey's father was black and his mother was rubio (blonde). Zoe's father was white and we think her mother was blonde. El Jefe bought her in San Pedro. It was love at first sight for him and he didn't ask. (He did send me photos of Zoe and her brother over the internet so I could help him choose.)

Here is the video!



It's not too gruesome or explicit − suitable for all audiences.

Can you help me think of four boy's names that rhyme with Joey, Chloe, and Zoe? Not that we are going to keep them all but we have to call them something in the meantime.

Situation resolved without machetes

The offending site that was stealing my blog articles seems to have been taken down and I'm very happy about that. It was really creepy to see my articles on this site. It didn't seem to be coming from the RSS feed because the articles were all jumbled in date order and some of my articles were almost 6 months old, while that blog was only around for two months.

I did a lot of research about stolen content and it seems that for the most part, blog authors don't have a lot of recourse if the offender can't be shamed into taking his site down or the site administrator doesn't take action. I guess I was just lucky, or maybe enough of you flagged the blog that it got someone's attention.

In doing the research, I read that a lot of people seem to think that if you put something on the internet, it's like a gift − fair game for anyone to steal. Others say that by publishing an RSS feed, you are explicitly giving permission for anyone to use your material. I don't think so! An RSS feed is a convenience for your readers, not permission to steal something and call it your own.

While a snippet of an article with a linked reference to the author is a compliment, copying 22 articles without attribution can only be called plagiarism.

Initially, I was confused as to the purpose because there were no ads on that blog. However, I then noticed that there were a few links attached to my words which went to a couple of dubious looking sites. One was called Photo Leech (gives a nice picture, doesn't it?) and another called Referral Loot.

I did click the flag (flag this blog) button and reported the blog as copyright material. I should have said stolen content as Carol suggested but I just didn't think about it at the time. Since words were misspelled and the instructions weren't even grammatically correct, I thought the reporting process was a sham, too.

I reviewed the excellent article that Patrick recommended and followed Lorelle's recommendation about the email notice to the domain owner and the service provider. Coincidence or not, within a couple of hours, the site was taken down and it now reads: This blog has been archived or suspended.

I really recommend that every blog author read Lorelle's article. It includes several easy suggestions for finding out if your content has been used on other sites. If you don't regularly check for this, you may be very surprised at what you find.

You might also want to read A brief introduction to copyrights and 10 myths about copyrights , both by Brad Templeton. Dan Richards' article DMCA Action (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) includes detailed information about how to find out who you are dealing with and how to contact them when a problem arises. Splog Reporter compiles data on spam blogs (splogs) and reports the information to search engines. I also plan to do some reading about Creative Commons and Plagiarism Today.

Thank you to all the readers who helped by flagging the blog, finding the IP address and email addresses, and to all the commenters who had such nice things to say. I really appreciate your support!

To John W, who said,

"It's uncanny, the way the feeling of being connected comes across on your blog, while the same material reposted elswhere is dull and lifeless."

and to Germinatrix, who said,

"the material seems so lifeless when taken out of the context of your blog. When I read your words, I hear your voice - well, a voice I imagine to be yours, but the same words seemed so robotic and cold on the other site. Icky. There is only one Blogicito...,"

I just want to say that I consider these to be the ultimate compliments! These comments really brought a smile to my face. I have that feeling of being connected to you, my readers, and that's what makes it such a joy to write this blog.

And to Patty who suggested that her Macho Man and El Jefe could "prune his garden" with machetes in the true Honduran manner, we had a good laugh over that one, too!

Blog content theft

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I found a case where it's more than imitation, it's downright content theft. What would you say about a blog that consists 100% of someone else's articles?

I stumbled upon this blog (no follow tag used) today. The entire blog is nothing but La Gringa's articles! Every single article is mine, word for word, with no link to my blog and no credit given to me as the author. I'm researching right now to try to figure out what I can do.

I've seen my articles, or parts of them, on many blogs. Often they are spam blogs with a paragraph or so of an article and a zillion ads. Sometimes they provide a link to my blog, sometimes they don't.

This is the first time that I've run across one that is completely my stuff. The odd thing is that there are no ads on this blog, so I really don't understand what the purpose is. Not to mention that the title has nothing to do with what I write about.

I noticed that they strip out all the links, so even if I put a link to my blog in the RSS feed, I guess it will just be stripped out along with all the others. Just in case the jerk prints this article in his blog:

Notice:
The author of this blog steals all of his material from
La Gringa's Blogicito at
http:// lagringasblogicito. blogspot. com

Any ideas, folks, about what I can do about this?


Update, Friday, February 9, 2007: Situation resolved!