Forums

Forums can be great fun and one can develop real friendships on them, sometimes even meet up with them, but they also seem to attract a lot of nutters.  You get people on the kdp forum for authors, who really believe they have written a masterpiece and when you point out the gazillion spelling and grammatical errors, they stamp their little feet and start calling you names.  Well, they do me, anyway.

 

In the last month I have been called a virago, a hag, a know it all and various other things, all because I pointed out that their offerings were not works of art and would not join Dickens and Jane Austen in the classics category.

 

Eventually these people start resorting to really childish behaviour, mentioning the genitals and my dad's bigger than your dad type of argument and it is always great fun to watch them disintegrate in this way.

 

One the other week declared himself to be a better writer than Stephen King, with his 35 page offering which was full of spelling mistakes.  Of course, he flounced off in a huff and hasn't been back since.

 

This week, on a pet forum, we have seen a very arrogant and pompous bloke not only making up stories that people had apologised to him when they haven't, but also threatening to sue us.  He also thinks that I panicked at talk of a law suit.  Yeah, right!  Do I seem like the sort to panic?  Far too energetic for my taste.

 

Please remember dog lovers everywhere - anyone at all is entitled to call him or herself a dog behaviourist or a dog trainer.  They need no qualifications whatsoever and many people are fooled because they set up a professional looking website and get some cards printed.  Anybody can set up a website, these people even set up their own dog training association because they can't get accepted at the official ones.  Then they can say they are the chairman and feel important.

 

If you get one who is up to date you are lucky, especially with idiots like Cesar Millan on the telly, talking about pack leader rubbish which was discredited years ago and by the person who thought of it in the first place.  He knows nothing at all about dogs, just look on You Tube.  The last dog I saw that bit him, he said:  I didn't see that coming.  Well, I got news for you sunshine - you are the only one who didn't!  He thought he was curing a dog of food guarding which is in fact one of the easiest behaviours to cure if done properly and if it can't be cured, it can easily be managed.

 

I have a relative who got one of these amateur 'behaviourists' out because her spaniel ran away and hid when they got ready to take her for a walk.  She had only been doing this since they got a headcollar but they couldn't work out that it was the headcollar that she didn't like.  This person couldn't figure it out either - she reckoned that the dog thinks she is the pack leader and it is too much responsibility for her!  What a load of bulls wotsit!  And they paid £60 for that gem.

 

Newsflash! Dogs do not live in heirarchical packs.  Neither do wolves but even if they did dogs are dogs, wolves are wolves and haven't been the same species for 50,000 years.

 

There is no method for training a dog;  it just takes patience and a respect for the dog.  I have a lot of tips for training newfoundlands on my website Gentle Newfoundland Dogs, but most of it would apply to any other breed.

 

When all is said and done, it is the nutters that make forums so much fun.  On the kdp forum this week we have had someone who has written 'an excellent 75,000 word novel which will be an enduring classic'.  The introduction to his offering declares that his house is about to be repossessed and he has done all the editing and publishing himself.  I pointed out that nobody wants to know that, that he is just telling them that his book isn't very good but they should feel sorry for him and buy it.  He didn't return, which I thought was a bit rude. 

 

If only these people would listen to some advice, they might actually have themselves an excellent book.