Country Gal by Vanita Blundell Aug.2, 2007

I do not know about you but I think the more I know about the outside world- there are times when I would just like to go home and never leave. I call it the ostrich effect. You know, when you want to stick your head in the sand and let the world go by and hope that no one can see you.
Since I have been in the process of selling my pups, I have encountered an entire different type of people. I have been around horse traders but some of these people would make the most unscrupulous individuals look like saints. Technology has come so far that when you put ads in some papers, those ads go on-line. This is a good and bad situation. The good being, that the on-line ads has the potential of reaching many more people. The bad is that some people use the on-line ads to defraud the advertiser. I have received as many as seven different relay calls (normally used for the hearing impaired or those that are unable to speak) that were bogus and a couple of e-mails that were counterfeits. It has not been all bad as I have been in contact with several nice people. But I never imagined that someone in another country would see my ad and contact me for the sole purpose to swindle me. That whole concept is just overwhelming. I guess that I am more naïve than I thought. I did, however, catch on fairly quickly with the assistance of others who have been in the same situation. I wrote a friend who is all knowing of the internet and he gave me a site to look at. On that site, there were many people who had been taken with similar scams and warning others on what to look for. One doctor had been taken for over $200 thousand. So, I feel lucky that I received good advice and have not been taken, so far.
Do you remember when you were a kid and your folks ask you to do something that you did not want to do - so you come up with all kinds of devices to keep from doing the chore? I can remember sitting in the hot bathroom at harvest time after lunch to try to keep from doing the little dab of dishes that we had to do. I spent more time trying to keep from doing the dishes than the job actually took. Or when you were in school trying to keep from doing your homework, all the time and scheming you went through took more brainpower and time than the actual assignment.
If all of those people who work so hard to defraud others would put their efforts into honest labor they would be rich beyond their dreams or at least able to sleep well at night. My cousin gave me some wise words of wisdom- he said that he did not understand the 'thing' with money; you can work for all you want. The key word being ‘work’.