2012 in Retrospect

– Posted on January 1, 2013Posted in: people

For some reason WordPress stats for a self hosted blog like this one don’t seem to match up with my StatCounter stats, and I’ve managed to break JetPack several times this year and somehow ended up reporting traffic to two different “Border Wars” variants in my WordPress login (some days neither one sees any traffic at all), but the year end report is kind of fun, so I’ll play along.

BorderWars StatCounter stats 2011-2012

StatCounter says that there were 41,565 return visits, 315,247 unique visits, and a whopping 569,730 page loads for the blog in 2012 bringing my total up to over 940,000. All traffic measures doubled over 2011 levels.

According to WordPress, this blog was viewed about 260,000 times in 2012 [up from 53,000 in 2011]. In 2012, there were 56 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 397 posts. The busiest day of the year was February 14th with 11,942 views (StatCounter claims 24,235 page loads and 12,961 visits). The most popular post that day was Westminster Rewards Cruelty.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2012:

1 Westminster Rewards Cruelty 291 COMMENTS February 2012
2 Double Merle Breeders Don’t Want You to See This 44 COMMENTS June 2011
3 No Happy Ending for Blind Dane 60 COMMENTS July 2012
4 Something is Rotten in Harlequin Danes 29 COMMENTS July 2011
5 Who’s Your Double Merle Daddy? 83 COMMENTS June 2011

The most popular posts in 2011 were:

1 The Burden of Blindness 31 comments October 2011
2 Multiple Orcasms 5 comments February 2010
3 Double Merle Breeders Don’t Want You to See This 94 comments June 2011
4 Parasite Breeders 9 comments December 2011
5 The Unfortunate Case of the Wild Australian Shepherd 77 comments March 2011

One thing that I’m actually proud to have achieved in 2012 is to drive traffic to the two blogs which have inspired me most along the way, CynoAnarchist and Retrieverman. Surprisingly this blog ranks among the top referrers to both of those great endeavors.

Top referrers to BorderWars in 2012:

Slightly different from last year:

Popular search terms this year: self pollination, inbred, australian shepherd, heterozygoats, and inbred people.

Which is better than last year due to “vore” dropping off the list: border wars, self pollination,inbred, australian shepherd, and vore.

There are 4,751 comments on the blog and these were the 5 most active commenters in 2012:

1 Kathy Bittorf 368 COMMENTS
2 LO 223 COMMENTS
3 Retrieverman 175 COMMENTS
4 Jess 123 COMMENTS
5 Sam Eykamp 119 COMMENTS

Compared to 2011:

1 Jess 63 comments
2 retrieverman.wordpress.com 57 comments
3 Peggy Richter 30 comments
4 Kathy Bittorf 13 comments
5 Dave 11 comments

All in all there’s been a rather remarkable amount of growth over the last two years from near obscurity to vigorous comments and views on some posts which I think have brought attention to issues that are under appreciated and which have significant ethical implications to the human-dog bond and hobby breeding.

More than anything I’d hope that dog culture would change and make most of the issues I’ve written about obsolete and moot. Unethical breeding schemes to maximize Merle, Harlequin, Bobtail, etc. aren’t so important to any breed that any of the most objectionable breeding practices ever need be done again. There’s no excuse and very little downside, but tradition and ignorance and callous disregard for the dogs themselves make these posts necessary.

So thanks for coming along for the ride this last year and I hope for many fine returns in 2013.

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About Christopher

Christopher Landauer is a fifth generation Colorado native and second generation Border Collie enthusiast. Border Collies have been the Landauer family dogs since the 1960s and Christopher got his first one as a toddler. He began his own modest breeding program with the purchase of Dublin and Celeste in 2006 and currently shares his home with their children Mercury and Gemma as well. His interest in genetics began in AP Chemistry and AP Biology and was honed at Stanford University.

Jess

Posted January 2, 2013 at 1:39 PM

Thanks for the kind comments, Christopher. Your blog is number five for referrals to mine.
Jess recently posted..2012 in Review

retrieverman

Posted January 3, 2013 at 7:29 PM

You’re definitely getting me quite a bit of traffic, and thank you for the kind words.

Let’s hope we can come up with even better material this year!
retrieverman recently posted..Jaguar preying on capybara

ann

Posted January 3, 2013 at 10:39 PM

re: blog stats. I’m not familiar with either package you use. But Google Analytics is the way to go. Free, easy to install, especially in WordPress, uses a unique user algorithm that is sophisticated and accurate. Most of the analytics software that comes on your server, through your ISP is very deceptive in how it counts and records traffic.


Christopher

Posted January 4, 2013 at 1:43 AM

I set up Google Analytics, but I don’t really like their interface, it’s hard to get the information I’m interested in so I rarely look at it.

This is what it says for 2012:
Visits: 138,568
Unique Visitors: 106,954
Pageviews: 263,895

Dogs Defined by Disease (33)

Anton: Many years later……..Researchi ng something and came across Chris’s article and realised I never replied to you UCC. Yes exactly, ridges are found in the general pariah type dog population. Which would be a...

Pedigree Collapse (13)

Christopher: BreedMate’s Pedigree Explorer.

Lawrence Dillard: Curious, what program did you utilize to visualize the 80 generation pedigree for ‘Mercury’?

Inbred Border Collies at Westminster (44)

Christopher: And easily corrected? Psh. There’s nothing easy about getting eugenicist morons to open their stud books and bring in new blood. History shows just how rarely it has been done.

Christopher: Having been around a lot of border collies, the show bred dogs are much more neurotic. Heck, the only aggressive nasty border collies I’ve met were inbred show dogs. I’ve seen plenty of game border collies from...

Christopher: Taking it out on the dogs? What? Border Collies are smart but they don’t read and can’t browse the internet. I don’t think a single one of them could possibly be offended by what is printed here. LMFAO.

Lech: i have no idea how i got here, but you Americans are such ignorant pricks. This article is dog snobbery at its finest. I just cannot believe there are people out there that use phrases such as panda collie and barbie collie to...

Why Dalmatians are a Train Wreck (475)

Stephanie: I do not think that the author is “demonizing” Dalmatians, as some have claimed. It may not be the individual dog itself but the concept of Dalmatians that is morally repugnant to him. I’m not sure why a...

Misconceptions about Inbred Wolves (33)

Essere: I am pro science and I’ve guinea pigged myself with a “variety” of food and different temperature environments for many years. A “variety” of food and viruses does lead to genetic diversity. My...

Christopher: I’m not sure that you can so easily say that wild animals eat a more varied diet than domestic. We might see kibble or whatnot as mush, but the realities of the modern market mean that what goes into pet food are...

Essere: Wild animals eat a varied diet and are exposed to more viruses than captive animals as viruses are airborne. Food and Viruses don’t change our genome and offer protection against inbreeding continuously in the long run?