ECA Survey

The purpose of this survey is to give constructive feedback to the City of Santa Rosa (first, then to other Cities and Counties if this survey goes well to follow) on how ECA firms perceive and react to doing business with the City of Santa Rosa on Public Works projects. Your responses will NEVER be revealed to anybody from the City of Santa Rosa, or anybody else with your firm connected to the responses. We want you to answer honestly and without hesitation or fear of retribution, or giving your competition any information that could be used against your firm in competitive bidding areas.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8CG3XF5

I apologize for not doing a newsletter last week. I will try to make up for it with a good Soapbox today!

 

Murphy

Last Saturday night, Murphy, my happy and inquisitive yellow lab, decided a noise on the front porch of my next-door neighbor’s house in Arizona was worth investigating. The noise was a very angry diamondback rattlesnake, about 3’ long, and Murphy got a defensive strike from the snake. I was in Sonoma County at the time, so my long-time girlfriend Debra had to keep her emotions under control and get Murphy to the emergency vet at 9:30 at night. Partly because Murphy had been given a rattlesnake vaccine and booster shot back in January of 2021, he had enough time to get the anti-venom into his system, and he survived.

I flew back to AZ on Sunday and got Murphy back from the vet and after several other vet visits, he seems to be recovering nicely. Life and death for about 3 days. Both of the vets that treated Murphy suggested he go to “rattlesnake aversion training” and I just kind of laughed and explained the following to them: Murphy went to that class in October of 2019. What they do is put a shock collar on the dog, and a handler leads the dog over to a half buried cage with a rattlesnake in it, and when the dog gets close, the rattler buzzes and if the dog shows interest, the handler zaps his collar with a shock-the dog jumps, and presumably learns that showing interest in the snake is not a good idea.

Well-Murphy got led to 3 different rattlesnakes that first class and got zapped harder and harder each time. Murphy failed his class. They suggested I bring him back in April.

I did, and Murphy failed the class again in April of 2020. At that point, I decided to quit spending $90/class as Murphy simply wasn’t going to go against his personality-he obviously would prefer putting up with an electric shock then ignoring something as interesting as a buzzing rattlesnake.

You might wonder what the Hell I am telling you all this for. Good question. It has little to do with the ECA. The rest of this newsletter is filled with useful information that is business related. This Soapbox is simply written out of thankfulness that my dog survived a snake bite. Despite my taking other precautions like “rattlesnake avoidance classes”, Murphy still got exposed to a snake. And that part of the reason he survived that encounter was because he got a vaccination shot that gave him a better chance of surviving should he get bit.

It worked.

I’m glad.

That’s All Folks

John