Prowling Sheep - folie à plusieurs since 2007 (part 2 of 2)

Like we said in the last post, we shattered our goal of 2,000 site hits for last year. Want to know by how much? In fact, we met our goal in February, 5 months early! Last year's total hits was 4,683 (Grand total over the years is 7,700). If you want to know what that looks like you only need to look below.

ClustrMaps' Big Dot Map for 2010 Prowling Sheep blog.
(a.k.a. a little more clustering leading to fewer, bigger dots.)

ClustrMaps' Big Dot Map for 2010 Prowling Sheep blog.
(a.k.a. a little less clustering leading to more, smaller dots.)

If dots' aren't your thing, than maybe numbers are. In 2009, our blog was viewed in 52 countries. Last year, our blog was viewed in 108 countries. The following are the countries coupled with the number of site hits for the year.

United States (US)	2,254
India (IN)	464
Canada (CA)	175
Brazil (BR)	174
United Kingdom (GB)	166
Spain (ES)	144
Indonesia (ID)	82
Germany (DE)	80
Malaysia (MY)	75
Italy (IT)	62
France (FR)	61
Mexico (MX)	53
Greece (GR)	42
Australia (AU)	41
Singapore (SG)	40
Argentina (AR)	36
Colombia (CO)	34
Austria (AT)	30
Netherlands (NL)	29
Turkey (TR)	27
Chile (CL)	26
Russian Federation (RU)	24
Thailand (TH)	23
Taiwan (TW)	22
Portugal (PT)	22
Poland (PL)	22
Romania (RO)	22
Philippines (PH)	21
Japan (JP)	21
Sweden (SE)	21
Finland (FI)	17
Saudi Arabia (SA)	15
Peru (PE)	14
Vietnam (VN)	13
Switzerland (CH)	12
Venezuela (VE)	12
Hungary (HU)	12
Slovakia (SK)	12
Hong Kong (HK)	12
Belgium (BE)	11
Ireland (IE)	10
Nigeria (NG)	10
New Zealand (NZ)	9
Israel (IL)	9
Korea, Republic of (KR)	9
Ukraine (UA)	9
Czech Republic (CZ)	8
Serbia (RS)	8
Egypt (EG)	8
Pakistan (PK)	7
Lithuania (LT)	7
Norway (NO)	7
South Africa (ZA)	7
Iran, Islamic Republic of (IR)	7
Kuwait (KW)	6
Estonia (EE)	6
Morocco (MA)	5
Guatemala (GT)	5
Bulgaria (BG)	5
Bangladesh (BD)	5
United Arab Emirates (AE)	5
Ghana (GH)	4
Latvia (LV)	4
Croatia (HR)	4
Costa Rica (CR)	4
Trinidad and Tobago (TT)	3
Malta (MT)	3
Dominican Republic (DO)	3
Tunisia (TN)	3
Denmark (DK)	3
Oman (OM)	3
Uruguay (UY)	2
Jamaica (JM)	2
Slovenia (SI)	2
Kenya (KE)	2
Iraq (IQ)	2
Guadeloupe (GP)	2
Algeria (DZ)	2
Nepal (NP)	2
El Salvador (SV)	2
Panama (PA)	2
Netherlands Antilles (AN)	2
Cambodia (KH)	2
Sri Lanka (LK)	2
Jordan (JO)	2
Luxembourg (LU)	1
Faroe Islands (FO)	1
Belarus (BY)	1
Bahrain (BH)	1
Brunei Darussalam (BN)	1
Suriname (SR)	1
Togo (TG)	1
Ecuador (EC)	1
Tanzania, United Republic of (TZ)	1
Zimbabwe (ZW)	1
Bolivia (BO)	1
Angola (AO)	1
Senegal (SN)	1
Sudan (SD)	1
Syrian Arab Republic (SY)	1
Azerbaijan (AZ)	1
Georgia (GE)	1
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (LY)	1
Qatar (QA)	1
Myanmar (MM)	1
Belize (BZ)	1
Puerto Rico (PR)	1
Moldova, Republic of (MD)	1

Okay, so that is where we are at. Now, where do we want to go? Well, as you may have noticed, the map located on the right side column has started over in dots and in counting. So we are basically back to square one. This year we figured we would go crazy and up the stakes again. Everything that was counted, that can be counted, will be counted. We set our goals high with the hopes of getting 125% more site hits, more counties viewed in, more followers, and of course 125% more posts.

What? Too easy? Well if it is too easy for you, than we're on board to go for 150% more! Let's see where that goal takes us.

Are you wondering why we set goals? I know a few people have told us they are. Well, we set goals to keep the sheep motivated to share and to hopefully entertain you. Are you entertained? We hope so, because we sure are.

Let us know what you think. Please, feel free to comment. We don't bite...hard (except D.J.) Or email us at sheep.4225sc@gmail.com. We're always looking for more friends, new ideas/suggestions, and good stories. Here's to a new year with hopes of many great adventures to share with many wonderful friends. Now go make that map look sick with chicken pox!

Prowling Sheep - folie à plusieurs since 2007 (part 1 of 2)

Happy, Happy birthday to Prowling Sheep! Yes, another year older and wiseerrr...well another year older at least. For those new to the blog who may not know, July 23, 2007 was the official start of the blog. And although this is not a traditional sheep post, we still like to break away around this time and reflect on the previous year. To remember all our good fortune. And with that in mind, we look towards the future with high hopes.

This last year was a wonderful year for the blog. We started out with the goal of collecting 2,000 site hits. Which would have been 150% more hits than the year before. Seemed ambitious, but than again we never have been known for our realistic thinking.

We started our year off with some of our good friends Marty and Jeremy. Whom hold a special place on our blogs (upper right corner to be exact). They have been with us from the beginning or at least very early on. And we appreciate their support.

This year turned into the year of friends. We made so many new ones. It started with Baby from Singapore. And then continued on with some other very NICI friends. Raquel, one of our most prized commenters, brought us a new language (not that we were doing so hot with English). It is still good to know that some sheep can manage a healthy multilingual therapy career.

Raquel was one of the first of many friends from around the world that would that would support us despite a language difference. With the help of Google Translator (and other sheep being smarter than us) we have been able to enjoy the tales of other sheep's lives like Herdenleben, Mähmet's Blök - Alles, was Schaf macht, and Schmusibus-Welt.

At the beginning of this year we had no followers :-(, but now we have 21! Ya! Many of whom have their own blog that we encourage you to check out (see Followers in right side column) and many other blogs that link to our site. Thank you all. We're sure that your support has allowed us to shatter our goal of 2,000 site hits for last year.

Changing of the Maps

Looking back on the past year we have had many visitors to the blog. Well, we had 1333 visitors to be exact from many different countries. including:

United States (US)	1,113
United Kingdom (GB)	68
Canada (CA)	45
Germany (DE)	10
Sweden (SE)	8
Australia (AU)	6
Netherlands (NL)	6
Austria (AT)	4
Finland (FI)	3
Malaysia (MY)	3
South Africa (ZA)	3
Italy (IT)	3
Norway (NO)	3
Mexico (MX)	3
Brazil (BR)	3
Denmark (DK)	3
Costa Rica (CR)	3
Greece (GR)	2
Japan (JP)	2
Ghana (GH)	2
Romania (RO)	2
Spain (ES)	2
China (CN)	2
India (IN)	2
Serbia (RS)	2
Belarus (BY)	1
Russian Federation (RU)	1
Estonia (EE)	1
Ireland (IE)	1
Poland (PL)	1
France (FR)	1
Ukraine (UA)	1
Slovakia (SK)	1
Turkey (TR)	1
Nigeria (NG)	1
Philippines (PH)	1
Vietnam (VN)	1
Colombia (CO)	1
Singapore (SG)	1
New Zealand (NZ)	1
Argentina (AR)	1
Chile (CL)	1
Hong Kong (HK)	1
United Arab Emirates (AE)	1
Portugal (PT)	1
Albania (AL)	1
Georgia (GE)	1
Pakistan (PK)	1
Egypt (EG)	1
Kuwait (KW)	1
Jordan (JO)	1
Macedonia (MK)	1

Wow, that's a lot. And if you don't know where all those places are, look on the map.

1333 Visitors to Prowling Sheep from July 22, 2008 to July 23, 2009.
(Click to view full map.)

Please, welcome the new map and add many many more red dots. We don't want it feeling left out from the other maps, do we?

Welcome to the Prowling Sheep

Welcome to the Sheep Prowling Blog. You have haphazardly stumbled upon what is, or will be, a collection of stories about a flock of Serta sheep and their companions. Many of the entries will be posted by the individual sheep as they tell their harrowing tales of adventures throughout the wild blue yonder. Occasionally, the narrator will step in to clarify things as necessary. This being one such case. I pity the fool who reads a sheep entry without some background info.

The first issue we should probably address is just what will be on this blog, which corresponds with what is the significance of Prowling Sheep. Well as any sane sheep knows one can not be all work and no play. These sheep work very hard, but thankfully they also play equally hard. The Prowling Sheep Blog is a chronicling of their various trips and leisure activities.

So know that we've discussed the purpose behind the blog, what other questions do you have? I suspect at least some of you out there are wondering just how did these sheep all come together to form this flock. Which is closely followed by just how many mattresses do you folks own, and just what do you use them all for. As it plays out only 1.5 of the sheep were adopted through the conventional mattress purchase program, the .5 sheep will be explained during the relevant sheep introduction. The rest have been adopted via various methods, one even was brought to us in a bubble wrap uterus...bet you can't wait for that picture. So why all the sheep you ask. Well the story will become more clear as each sheep describes their individual characteristics, but in general the purpose of the sheep is to serve as therapists. Not only are sheep soft and cuddly, but they are quite adept at talking even the most crazed grad student off a ledge.

We (the adopters) are an interesting bunch and so we apologize for any oddities you find in the entries. One thing we have gone to great lengths to assure is that the sheep remain sexless. You see despite our vast backgrounds (medical school, growing up on farms) we have not been able to identify the sex of the sheep. They haven't produced babies for us, do not feel the need to relieve themselves, and in general seem to draw some pride in not revealing this detail to us. For this reason the sheep have all been given asexual names so we didn't have to worry about insulting them, we patiently await like you folks do to see if one of the sheep slips up in its narrative and reveals this information. Until then we will continue going to therapy to solve one of our many complexes. Hmm, wonder if there might be a conflict in interest there...our therapists are giving us complexes...we just might have to talk this one through with them.

Without further ado we shall commence on introducing the team of therapists to you all. I would name them all for you here, except the flock is currently under expansion. They are even looking for a "herding" dog to join the group. I can't really imagine what they expect it to herd, as none of these sheep would even dream of letting some inferior canine have control over their lives. At least they don't let us homo sapiens have any say in things. It should be an interesting story to hear just what role the dog will play within the flock. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, sheep and whatever else, we are pleased to introduce the flock...