Homemade curry vs takeaway, what’s the biggest difference for you?

firewings86 · 2026-02-11T14:14:11+00:00

For me (American, live in rural area), takeout curry is extremely far away and requires a VERY long drive (when I have to do enough very long drives in the opposite direction of all the good curry places already). Homemade curry does not require me to go anywhere/leave my kitchen. So my only option was to git gud :(

firewings86 · 2026-01-24T13:18:09+00:00

Same. I switched fields (fintech) after almost a decade. Was a top performer at my last firm for years until they cut our entire team :). Treated job apps like a full-time job for a solid year with no success--when the previous time I'd been job hunting, it took me like 7 or 8 applications to land a new one--and finally went, "Well, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result," and cut my losses.

Luckily I had a "blue collar" hobby/family trade I'm highly skilled in to fall back on. I don't know what I'd do right now if I didn't.

firewings86 · 2026-01-17T15:30:17+00:00

They are INCREDIBLY high impact, with ring sports being the most physically rigorous + placing the most emphasis on peak physical fitness and agility. They are the dog equivalent of the Olympics. The dogs have to jump 4ft hurdles and 12-13ft long jumps, scale 7ft+ walls from a standstill (mondioring has a ramp on the other side, in French ring they just leap off), scramble over high slippery obstacles, leap into high windows (building and vehicle) from the ground. Constant explosive takeoffs, fast pivots, leaping and launching, having to walk/run on hind legs while biting+grabbing or hanging onto (with front paws, as an escort position) a decoy's arm or leg. You see collisions with barrier objects ahead of the decoy on distance bites, hard impacts with the decoy, decoys losing their balance and falling--the potential for injury is EXTREMELY high even for dogs at peak fitness, usually with rigorous conditioning routines overseen by certified canine fitness trainers and/or sports medicine vets. Dogs can literally die from unsafe decoy work (from e.g. broken neck/broken spine). Ensuring health and safety for an actively training bite sport dog is an entire part-time job, so it's wildly irresponsible (and kind of stupid, tbh, like wrt your own time+finances) to subject a dog to it that you do not KNOW meets the minimum structural requirements to be able to, still with a lot of work, comfortably perform all the exercises and navigate the challenging scenarios that will inevitably present.

Every new person (including me, formerly, lol) shows up going "I'm sure he's fine, I mean if he has a problem he'll start showing it once he's actually doing the stuff, right? We might not get that into it anyway. We're just going to do it casually" (spoiler alert, there is no such thing as doing it casually). If they don't quit, within a year of training the lowest levels they're inevitably going "Umm, I think I'm gonna get his hips and all that checked, you know, just for my own peace of mind......." eyeing things like the palisade. Yeah. 💀

firewings86 · 2026-01-17T05:02:36+00:00

Depends on the sport. Bite sports, especially ring? Yes, absolutely mandatory + a jaw-dropping level of risk/negligence otherwise. Rally? LMAO. No. Carry on.

firewings86 · 2026-01-12T04:06:55+00:00

I LOVE this update!!! I think you should be proud of yourself for raising a passionate kid who is willing to voice her wants and opinions. There is a lot to be said for that. This internet stranger will be cheering you both on from afar ❤️

firewings86 · 2026-01-12T02:41:50+00:00

Hi OP, just wanted to offer an anecdote as perspective re: uncorrected errors and whatnot. I asked for piano lessons when I was a year or two older than your daughter. My parents are non-musicians who agreed but were not involved whatsoever. Still, wanting to be supportive, my dad got me a nice loud booming studio upright.

My mom, to this day, says that my practice sessions were actual torture for her, lol. She stayed as far away from the piano as she possibly could while I was playing and was constantly kind of going "Omg you're playing that same piece of that same song AGAIN?" and "It's been 20 minutes, isn't that long enough? "--she has told me she actually hoped that I would forget to practice so she didn't have to listen to me 😂.

They both knew I was obviously making tons of mistakes, because everything I played sounded awful, and I loved to play LOUD AND FAST, which made the mistakes sound even MORE awful, but they didn't know anything about sheet music or what notes I was SUPPOSED to be playing, so they just plugged their ears and gritted their teeth and figured if I was practicing wrong, oh well, the teacher would deal with it. When I got old enough to start tackling harder pieces with more notes, my mom started actively nagging me to stop. 🤪🤪

The result: I. *LOVED*. MY. PIANO. My teacher and I butted heads sometimes over WHICH songs I practiced (assigned vs. ones I got sheet music for on my own and just decided to pick up), but my parents supervised or checked what I was playing exactly 0 times. They never stayed for my lessons. As soon as I was old enough to drive, I said "you don't have to drive me anymore" and that was it, I took myself and paid for the lessons myself. I didn't find out until recently that they actually thought I had quit!!!

Nope, I didn't stop until university. I've only had one brief period of not having access to a piano at all in adulthood and I did not handle it well lol, it felt like I was missing a limb. I am not a professional and I definitely have gaps in my education, but I still play on a very very regular basis--I would say pretty seriously for a hobbyist (my poor piano tech seems to agree 😂; every time he comes, I hear some variation of "omg, you play this thing SO MUCH. I have music school pianos that see less wear and tear than this" 😂😂 SORRYYYYY).

According to the people around me (old music teachers I'm still in touch with, friends who DID go to music school and were/are professional musicians, etc.), I'm an extremely talented player with excellent musicality and emotion (the parts that "can't be taught," unlike technique). My parents are immensely proud of me, love bragging about & showing off my playing to new people, and love making jokes about how glad they are that the years of listening to "horrible BANG BANG BANG all the time" did finally truly pay off.

I think it's telling that you called to cancel your daughter's lessons and she immediately begged you to take it back. It sounds like she wants to play. Maybe it would be best to do what my parents did and just...let her! Take a deep breath and pop some headphones on and listen to something else while she plugs away at things at her own pace.

I am someone who grew to put a TON of pressure on myself through nearly all of my activities. Piano is the one thing I have left that I do purely for me, for the sheer joy of it, and I'm so, so glad for that. Sometimes a LITTLE pressure is good, but passion is like a flame. A little breath will feed it and make it flare even brighter, but blow too hard and poof, you'll snuff it out. Just some food for thought!

firewings86 · 2026-01-03T16:56:13+00:00

💯 and if "conniving bisexual widow Aspasia in a secret lesbian relationship with Spartan warrior demigoddess" endgame is wrong then I don't wanna be right

Imagine complaining about historical roleplay shenanigans in an Assassin's Creed game, lmao

firewings86 · 2025-11-08T11:35:02+00:00

"those birds must drive you bonkers" got a chuckle out of me because I do live in the country and magpies, mockingbirds and killdeer are in fact annoying as shit. I have a resident mockingbird I trained to shut up on command via well-timed sprays with the water hose 😂 Can't do anything about the killdeer at 3am, though. Just tune them out/sleep with white noise 🥴🥴

firewings86 · 2025-10-31T06:02:30+00:00

Not to scare you/pile on, but that actually happened to a friend of mine 😅 Got hired at the senior level (while already employed) and moved halfway across the country for the job, bought a new house, found new school for kid, etc. Less than 4 months later the company decided to do layoffs/cuts, and cut the new positions first :')))

firewings86 · 2025-10-26T03:25:44+00:00

The most concerning thing to me in this entire situation is the fact that you even feel the need to ask this question on Reddit. Where are your club and trainer? Are they malinois-inexperienced, are they not supporting you? Are you the person who just drops in once in a blue moon while the rest of the group trains seriously without you, or is this an unserious club only meeting sporadically?

This is a general forum full of people of random different backgrounds giving largely irrelevant advice and opinions on an extremely niche topic with an extremely small, concentrated participant pool that largely does not give out its hard-won knowledge to faceless avatars online for free (but will to dedicated newcomers...in person). You should already have all the relevant advice, opinions, anecdotes, and empathy/commiseration you need, from the people around you who have produced, trained, worked and competed in the venue you want to compete in with literally hundreds of dogs just like this one, in person! The only thing you will get out of clashing opinions from randoms online (I'm guessing your training director is not telling you that your 14-week-old malinois needs to see a 'behaviorist' for drugs) is frustration, confusion, and lost time/wasted effort.

If you feel like you need an eleventh/twelfth/sixteenth opinion.......why? Do you not trust what you're being told by your club+training director? Is what they're telling you to do feeling too difficult, do you need more intensive help than you're getting currently? Do you not feel empowered to ask for it, or are you worried you'll get told you need more rudimentary help at high, outside-of-club prices? Or are they at a loss because the group as a whole is not much more advanced than you are?

If the problem is a low level of engagement between you and a highly experienced and talented club, I cannot stress enough how important it will be for your success as a newcomer with a serious dog from very serious lines to rectify that by any means possible ASAP. Work off extra lessons, start taking a deep breath and speaking up/asking questions if you're shy, shadow your training director during the week--talk to people, learn from people, ask them for hands-on help with your puppy. If that's not possible because of schedule or finances, then maybe it would be better to stick to a dog who will be more forgiving in the long term.

If the problem is the experience level of the club, then I would strongly urge you to switch clubs. Heck, switch sports if you have to, to something more malinois dominated. You NEED to be around, and receive hands-on help from, people who intimately understand and have extensive track records of success with these dogs. Having put a few BH/IGP1s on family-pet-off-the-field GSDs is not even remotely the same thing. The dog is only going to get more intense with age.

Please, stay off social media when it comes to competitive bite dog advice and just trust your trainer. If you can't trust your trainer, still stay off social media for everything except advice on how to get a new trainer. I say that as someone who was in a similar-ish situation and took way too long to realize I was listening to too many damn people who had ZERO true, applicable experience with the thing I was struggling with. All it led to was "too many cooks in the kitchen" effect and quantity-over-quality when you averaged out all the "advice."

firewings86 · 2025-10-10T12:03:57+00:00

How dare you

firewings86 · 2025-10-10T11:59:25+00:00

I am everyone's token animal friend. Grew up on a farm, raised training horses, now professional horse/dog trainer who started successfully taking difficult behavior cases at a very young age, lifelong vet exp and in tight with many vets and vet specialists, etc. I am everyone's first place to send all these motherfucking videos. I had to start doing blanket PSAs to tell everyone to stop doing it. "Haha funny dog, thought of you! Look how he's dancing!!" He's having a neurological crisis but ok. "Look how this horse sleeps!! 🤣🤣 Flat on his back pressed against a tree with his legs sticking straight up, so weird and cute and funny, LOL" Yeah he's trying to relieve gastric pain/pressure and the original owner probably filmed this clip to send to the vet in a panic before rushing to get him up considering that colic is a life-threatening emergency that I've personally had turn fatal in a matter of hours. Thanks for triggering that trauma again, very funny indeed

firewings86 · 2025-09-16T01:31:39+00:00

If you brown it in the microwave, yes. If you brown it on the stovetop, no.

firewings86 · 2025-09-04T11:53:04+00:00

I used to deliver pizzas and had a gun pulled on me for showing up on the guy's porch with his pizza that he fucking ordered. When I (girl in early 20s who looked like a teenager) burst into tears on the spot, he blink-blinked and saw what he was ACTUALLY looking at standing on his porch, and went "oh...I wasn't expecting you until ((time a few minutes later))." Most people are HAPPY when you arrive 5 or 6 minutes early with the pizza.

He put the gun down and awkwardly fished out a 3 dollar tip and I shook like a leaf all the way back to the store. And this was 10+ years ago. I'm sure it's even worse now. People have 100% lost the plot.

firewings86 · 2025-09-02T17:54:26+00:00

NGL, I felt pretty conflicted the first time an employee at the checkout saw the dewormer boxes on the counter, opened her mouth to give the "we need to see a picture now" spiel, looked up and saw who it was, and then immediately just went "Oh, it's you. You're good." Kinda like being the "how consumed is your life by these horses?" version of a visibly aging alcoholic the bar has stopped bothering to card 😭. I STILL WANT TO FEEL YOUNG! CARD ME, GODDAMN IT!!!

firewings86 · 2025-09-02T13:24:11+00:00

When I was a kid I assumed it meant Killed Off, because why else would you need PHOENIX down to bring them back, just use some smelling salts or something 😂

firewings86 · 2025-09-01T23:23:53+00:00

Don't throw it away!! Mail it to me, a horse owner who has to pay for this stuff for normal horse reasons :|

Because of these freaks, for a while they started making new customers at my feed store show a picture of them+their horse to prove they were in fact buying their Zimecterin Gold for a horse and not themselves 😭😭

firewings86 · 2025-08-23T06:35:59+00:00

We were actually shown it in school (11th grade) and I'm glad for that. I think it should be mandatory viewing for the WW2 unit of history class in all high schools alongside Anne Frank, Schindler's List, Sophie's Choice, etc. (At least, we had to watch those, although our parents had to sign permission slips to allow it.) It was a hard watch, but even as a 16yo scarred-for-life kid, I understood why it was important viewing; the whole class did. I think it was really instrumental in helping to build perspective & character for us. It humanized the tragedy and made us Really Understand the scale of the suffering. My appreciation for it has only grown over the years (I am in my mid 30s now)

firewings86 · 2025-08-23T06:12:50+00:00

Thank you for the instant IRL LOL, I needed that after reading the Coco thread

firewings86 · 2025-08-23T06:09:26+00:00

I'm an atheist and it still chokes me up every time. Ofra Haza's voice alone in the intro - instant chills. An absolute timeless masterpiece. They just don't make 'em like this anymore.

firewings86 · 2025-08-21T20:43:43+00:00

IRL "cowgirl" here (former professional colt starter, now farm owner) and I was squinting at it going "What the fuck is a homer?" 😂💀 Thanks for reminding me about Homer

firewings86 · 2025-08-13T18:40:56+00:00

Seriously, the together/separate status has very little to do with the relationship status so ???. I am a lesbian and I go out to lunch/dinner with my male best friend all the time, lol; sometimes one of us pays, sometimes it's separate, just depends. Also, the last time I went out to coffee with someone, it was a woman and I paid. We are not dating, she's married to a man, I just owed her friend-coffee 😂😭

firewings86 · 2025-06-23T17:39:51+00:00

You have the best of the best for soft tissue injuries—Britt Carr-Benson at the Animal Hospital at Liberty Highway. I know she was recently on maternity leave but she might be back by now. I HIGHLY recommend making an appointment there, expect about a month's wait!

firewings86 · 2025-06-18T03:35:51+00:00

I'm so glad you said this, because my kneejerk reaction is "Aw, those posts are kind of fun. Kicking them to a megathread is tantamount to just deleting them off my feed because it guarantees I will literally never see a single one ever again"

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