When a dog is your dog, you’ve got to love it. Those eyes. That face. That slobber. But when it’s someone else’s dog, you might wind up being a dog-hater — and for good reason: dog bites.

Though many cities, including Houston, have laws requiring that dogs be confined or leashed, many people routinely disregard them. They figure they’re special and the law doesn’t apply to them.  “Let everyone else toe the line, but my dog likes to run out the front door, too, so he can romp and explore while I’m getting the paper or moving the sprinkler. Now, where did he go?”

That’s just the problem. When a dog is loose, he can – and may — go anywhere. If he’s a big dog, he can dart across the street and playfully jump on someone – and that someone could be a small child, an elderly person or anyone nursing a neck or back injury – a person who could be severely harmed if your dog topples them over, even in play.

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We all like to indulge, whether it’s eating too much popcorn at the movies or snoozing away too much of a Saturday morning in bed. But not all indulgences are so innocent.

How much is drinking indulgence worth? Is it worth snuffing out a family’s lives? Is it worth spending the rest of your life behind bars? Even for those who often see the world in an alcohol-drenched haze, the answer should be clear.

It’s not worth it – not for the drinker, not for his or her victims, not for anyone. Rather, drunk driving is  one of the most horrendous yet most persistent tragedies in America, and all because someone thought that heavy drinking – and then driving – would be worth it, it would be OK, it wouldn’t really matter. And then, in an instant, it does matter, and everything changes and never can be the same again.

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Asbestos is all around us. But that doesn’t mean it’s killing us. You may have asbestos-laced insulation in your attic, yet as long as that insulation isn’t disturbed, you run little risk of inhaling its potentially deadly asbestos fibers, which can lead to cancer.

Sadly, for many workers asbestos exposure and asbestos poisoning are a daily occurrence – and often  without their knowledge. That apparently was the case for Ronald Deem, an Orange, Texas man who recently died after spending many years working in paper mills, chemical plants, refineries, military installations and other sites where asbestos exposure was suspected. His widow is now bringing an asbestos lawsuit for damages against his former employers and manufacturers – 39 companies, to be exact.
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SPLAT!
Overripe, under ripe or just right, tomatoes can make you as sick as a dog.

I speak from experience. Last week my husband was apparently the target of a salmonella tainted tomato like more than 500 people in the United States this summer. The encounter made him a “frequent flyer” to the loo in the middle of the night. This sudden “jump and run” form of exercise did nothing for his overall fitness although he lost six pounds from dehydration. (I don’t recommend salmonella food poisoning for anyone trying to lose weight).

I lost a lot of sleep. And, after reading that salmonella can be passed from human to human, I kept a polite distance for the rest of the week although I monitored his temperature and bought a seemingly endless supply of over the counter nausea and diarrhea medicines in hopes they would end his misery.

How was my husband infected? All I know is, after eating a tomato he came down with salmonella symptoms in less than 24 hours. We don’t have birds, pet turtles, reptiles or snakes – common carriers of salmonella food poisoning. We have a lone cat – “Miss Kitty”- who likes it that way.

But back to salmonella – have you ever seen what these bacteria look like? Invaders from outer space, that’s what – odd, rod-like bacteria that dig into the gut where they cause misery for up to seven days.

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Raw red tomatoes have consumers seeing red. Pitifully pained people in several states, including Texas, continue to suffer food poisoning via tomatoes tainted with salmonella, a bacteria which can cause diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, fever and abdominal pain. You know, like reading your income tax statement.

In other words, your price for munching a juicy red tomato with your burger or salad may be spending  days lurching between your bed and your bathroom – and all because you swallowed rather than switched. Oh, you know tomatoes can be rotten. But no, you eat them anyway, gulping down a familiar food which you trust will be healthy, as it’s been so many times before.

The source of this rotten tomato outbreak isn’t definite, but the Food and Drug Administration does believe one thing: Certain tomatoes remain A-OK. Reportedly, grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes and tomatoes with the vine still attached are safe enough to eat without losing your lunch.

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The tragic news of an infant death in a stalled car on the Galveston Causeway Sunday lends a sobering reminder that simply doing the right thing by buying and using protective car seats may not always be enough. Car seat safety is no guarantee of survival.

Child safety seats are far more common today, now that each state has passed child occupant protection laws. Yet as many as 1,800 children under age 14 die annually in vehicle accidents.

Even more disturbing is the fact that some of these children, like the child killed Sunday, were killed while sitting in a car seat.

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Some gun owners ascribe to the fierce philosophy that you can “take my guns when you pry them from my cold dead fingers.” Some SUV owners feel the same way about the keys to their bulky gas guzzlers – despite skyrocketing fuel prices which make them an economic dry well, not to mention ecological and safety issues, such as SUV rollovers, which deserve more than a drive-by glance.

CNN reports that, while SUV sales are down 33 per cent in this Year Of The $4-Plus Gallon, many SUV owners defiantly cling to their vehicles, hooked on the “sport” or the “utility” in their SUV name. Or maybe they just don’t like change.

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