Comments on: Why bother with the facts when they ruin a funny story?

By: straybaby

straybaby — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:30:12 +0000

Comment by Deanna — June 23, 2009 @ 7:29 am

Salsa, eh? I’m making sure my Dot doesn’t see this. She loves salsa and just about anything else involving fresh veggies. I can’t put my CSA bags on the floor or she’s in there like a vacuum. I was thinking I would have to deer proof my garden next year, but it now occurs to me I’m going to have to Dot proof!

By: Deanna

Deanna — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:29:59 +0000

I can vouch for the fact that many, *many* tomatoes will do absolutely nothing to a large (70 lbs.) dog. Did I mention many? All it takes is one stealthy tomato thief and unprotected vines. It’s a one rat study, but good enough for me. Oh, and he made his own salsa too by mixing the tomatoes with hot peppers.

I sure wasn’t checking to make sure the tomatoes were ripe enough. :-) All I knew is that my unripened tomatoes never got ripe! (Call me unobservant, but I was very busy with work at the time.)

By: Lis

Lis — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:48:52 +0000

Who’s getting summer heat?!

Here in New England, we’re having a summer nor’easter.

By: VJ

VJ — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:21:33 +0000

Oh my. Is the first day of summer heat getting to people already. Spit, hiss, growl.

By: Susan Fox

Susan Fox — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:17:02 +0000

Jeez, and all I want to do is keep my dog from peeing on the tomato plants. Will that kill them, do ya think? ;0)

By: Christine H

Christine H — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:09:50 +0000

Ms. Houlahan, was that before or after you watched Cesar Milan and dressed up your Chihupoo?

By: H. Houlahan

H. Houlahan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:39:37 +0000

I just went out back and beat all the tomato plants to death with my swiffer wet jet.

Thanks, John.

By: Gina Spadafori

Gina Spadafori — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:48:24 +0000

I get the hyperbole just fine. Problem is, as person who gives advice for a living, I can tell you that many people won’t. There are already people in your comments thanking you for the “warning.”

Just fix your factual error. :)

By: John Cook

John Cook — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:45:37 +0000

Also—my claim that tomatoes are “poison” was obvious hyperbole. Most people who read that in context with Knight’s quote that “one or two tomatoes” won’t do anything to a large dog would have gotten that. You obviously didn’t.

By: John Cook

John Cook — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:41:41 +0000

Whoops—sorry about mistaking you for a commenter. So you’re telling me that, after reading my post, you sat down to write that it “would have been nice if Gawker…had checked with the experts at the ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center” and “that took me like two minutes to find. But you gotta wanta bother to look.” You read where I wrote that I spent 90 minutes trying to find a professor of veterinary medicine to talk about tomatoes and dogs, and then criticized me for not bothering to look for information? And you think that was a fair characterization of what I wrote? None of this even remotely matters, but I actually did try, in earnest, to find an answer to the question. And I actually did find someone who knows what they’re talking about to answer it. And I actually did communicate his answer. So your “you should check your facts!” sneer is out of order. If you wanted to criticize what Tony Knight told me—that it’s inadvisable to feed tomatoes to dogs, but that one or two tomatoes won’t do anything to a large dog—you should have done that. But you decided instead to attack me for, what—getting taken in by the anti-tomato lobby? For being too naive in relying on the expertise of a professor of veterinary medicine who co-wrote a book called “A Guide to Plant Poisoning”? No—for not checking my facts. See the sentence at the top of this post where I acknowledged my error and apologized? Now you try it!