Well You asked for it Dawgs, so here it is. OUR story. Tell us all how you came up with your avatar. I'll go first even most all of you have heard the story. I'm old and tend to repeat myself, so to bad.

One summer we had a REALLY bad Skunk problem in our little 6 block section of town on the South side of where the Railroad tracks used to run through town. One of our neighbors called me saying that they had a skunk hanging around their house and wondered it I could do anything about it (I had killed a Psyco cat that had been terrorizing the neighborhood some years earlier). I said I would see what I could do.

One day I saw their "Problem" wandering around in their yard so I ran inside the house and grabbed my handy (actually it weighs 9 pounds) RWS Diana model .177 pellet rifle and headed down the street. NOT wanting to get their house sprayed I waited back a ways until it got almost to the street about 60 ft from their house. I took aim at the head about 20 - 25 yards away and pulled the trigger. BLAP, skunk went down but not dead. It started pulling itself along with it's front legs (must have hit the spine or something as back legs would not work and it couldn't spray). I quickly reloaded and let fly with another lead pill. This time, no movement. I waited about 2 minutes and slowly creeped up just to make sure it wasn't "Playing Possum". It wasn't. The Hunters first successful Kill.

Well one thing led to another and by the time fall was beginning I had killed 12 Skunks, all the rest were "One Shot One Kill" hits and by then the moniker SkunkHunter had stuck. BTW the "City" killed 6 in the same time period so you can see we WERE overran with the stinky little fellers.

Heehee! Love it Randy! Wonder what the average cost to the taxpayers was for those six city-killed skunks

As for me, I simply sat down after a long-day's work in the yard and, when asked to pick a name, thought "No clue. How am I feeling?" The answer was clear: Dog Tired.

Back then, I had just started down the road of figuring out I had a bunch of weird medical problems. My wife had only recently made me aware that always hurting and being exhausted might be an issue.

My wife after listening to my litany of complaints about what hurt while laying in bed:

"You know that's not normal, right? Most people don't hurt everywhere when they go to bed. They might be tired, or their feet or back might ache, but it's not EVERYTHING."

At age 36, that was literally the first time in my life it had even occurred to me that everyone's else want always in severe pain too; that pain and exhaustion were not there general normal.

Why the Super Squirrel? I like squirrels. They are quirky, brainless, fuzz balls that people either love or want to kill. Obviously it is my spirit animal

But, like the squirrel, I've got my own secret identity. I have to battle 20 or 30 issues on a daily basis. I know there are people who deal with much more on a more frequent basis, so I am loathe to complain (it can ALWAYS be worse). Increasingly, though, it takes
(what for me is) a superhuman effort to get out of bed and get going... even more so than back when I chose my avatar.

So.... in conclusion, the three words that best describe my name and avatar are:

-- Beat.

-- Brainless.

-- Battling

My avatar choice was not very inventive. I had my Yard knives spread out on the table while I went through the process of putting mineral oil on the blades. I thought that the Bullnose Regulator looked the coolest so I started using it.

Mine is just my pup being herself. I happened to have a camera handy and caught her in mid-snarl.

I won the "Name the knife" contest with my name of DogFather. When someone said that I was the Father of the DogFather, I said "No, Dan Busse was the Father". In turn, Dan Busse named me the GodFather of the DogFather, hence my avatar. I was originally going to use a picture of the old cartoon character "the Sad Sack".
I was dubbed "Private Klink" by my Marine SSgt drill instructor; Hogan's Heroes was still on television but he certainly wasn't going to call me "Colonel Klink".

Reread mine... now all I can think of is:

"Bears.

Beets.

Battlestar Galactica."

Bonus points if you know it. Extra points of you laughed out loud or shot milk out of your nose. Other beverages count too.

But what about your USER NAME Ray? Tell us a story!

So your the GF to the DF...do you get a ring?

If we have the Dogfather we should also have the Queen B. Maybe that can be the super-secret codename for the 1311... which we all know as the MOAD

DT, many years ago I used to collect, restore and use fountain pens. One of my favorite pens was from Italy and named Settanta. When I joined a fountain pen forum I used it for my pen name.

Sounds just "write" Ray!

Oh you are so bubbly you're just like a fountain. Pen, get it, fountain pen... Oh never mind