Heaven's Gate
For our beloved German Shepherd Dogs that have passed on
(A database to further research in determining the cause of death in the German Shepherd Dog)


CONTENTS OF THIS HELP FILE

Close Window

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
Thank you for taking the time to fill out this database form and help us in our research. We know that this may be hard for you to do, but please rest assured that any details you enter will help us further our research into the causes of health problems and death in German Shepherd Dogs.

Information on any dog may only be submitted to this project with permission of the owner of the dog; if you were not the actual dog owner, please seek their permission BEFORE taking this survey - thank you.

Much of the form is self-explanatory; however a few points are worth noting:
Close Window

HEALTH PROBLEMS SELECTION LISTS
Some of the health problems have been set up rather tersely in order to save space. Here we'd like to outline what some of the less obvious health problems may cover.

Cardiovascular System Heart and Blood Vessels
Digestive System Esophagus, Intestine, Gall Bladder, Liver, Pancreas, and Stomach
Endocrine System Adrenal Gland, Parathyroid Gland, Part of the Pancreas, and Thyroid
Digestive System Esophagus, Intestine, Gall Bladder, Liver, Pancreas, and Stomach
Hematopoietic System Blood and Bone Marrow
Integumentary System Skin and Coat
Lymphatic System Lymph nodes and Lymph Vessels
Muscoskeletal System Bones, Joints, and Muscles
Nervous System Neurological disorders involving the Brain, Spinal Cord, Tissues, and Nerves
Respiratory System Bronchi, Mouth, Nose, and Trachea
Sensory System Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Throat
Urogenital System Genital Organs and Kidneys


Close Window

INSTRUCTIONS FOR UPLOADING PICTURES AND HTML FORMATTING
Here are some basic instructions for using HTML in the "Comments" area of the Heaven's Gate form.
This will enable you to do some neat things in your Comments textarea box when you fill out the form; one such trick is to insert a pic of your dog into your entry, like this...

Jack Flash


The generic code to type for inserting such an image is as follows:
<img src="http://image_url/image_file" width="W" height="H">
where:

Thus an example of the exact code to insert Jack Flash's image above is:
<img src="http://www.mzjf.info/hgate/images/jackf5b.jpg"
 width="235" height="263">
Note: Please do not insert an image that has a width in excess of 400 pixels, or is greater than 25KB in size. If you do, then we are likely to remove the image from your entry because it has a huge negative speed impact for other visitors!

If you wish to include a link to a larger picture, please use the following code instead:-
<a href="http://image_url/image_file" target="_blank">
Please click here to see a picture (new window)
</a>
where the image_url and image_file are the same as before. Thus for Jack Flash above, it will look like this:-

Please click here to see a picture (new window)

and the specific HTML code to achieve this looks like this:-
<a href="http://www.mzjf.info/hgate/images/jackf5b.jpg" target="_blank">
Please click here to see a picture (new window)
</a>
You can, of course, change the "Please click here to see a picture (new window)" to any other suitable text as and if required.

Please feel free to post links to other sites in the Comments area of the Heaven's Gate form that contain appropriate references to pages similar to the Memorial page here.

The general code to type for linking to a webpage is:
<a href="http://url" target="_blank">Clickable word(s) here</a>
where:- Thus the code to use to link to the Memorial Page above is:
<a href="http://mzjf.com/memorial.htm" target="_blank">
Memorial page here
</a>
Important: When referencing by creating any link, either to a page or an image, you MUST include the code target="_blank". That will cause a new browser window to open for that link. If you fail to do this, the new link will REPLACE the page the form is on. Such links are then subject to editing by the site administrator to include the target="_blank" clause. It will not be removed however, as would an inserted picture that doesn't conform to the rules that outlined above.

Note: Some servers prohibit "cross-loading" images from websites that are hosted at those servers. If you know that your server does this, please use the second method of linking your picture, because use of the first method will fail (the picture will not be displayed). If one of the site administrators sees that this has happened to you, they will change it to a link (second method) for you. At this time there are no facilities to actually host your picture on this site, due to webspace considerations.

Miscellaneous HTML tags you might use...
Pressing your ENTER key in the Comments area of the form will cause a line break to appear in your Comments when they are displayed on the Heaven's Gate pages. It is set up to accept HTML - the language of Web pages - and you may use this to link pictures and websites if you desire. It also allows for the following formatting to be achieved:

Please note that you must close HTML tags in the reverse order in which they were opened, or what is displayed may not be exactly what you had in mind. Thus the following example is invalid and may not work correctly:

<i><u>Incorrect method to italicize and underline some text</i></u>

None of the above HTML codes within <brackets> or "carets" will appear in the results of your submission once added to the Heaven's Gate page. You will see them as you type them in the Comments area, but they will be interpreted correctly in the final result. So please don't worry!

Close Window

IMPORTANT NOTE CONCERNING AUTOMATIC E-MAILS
Some ISPs (and any special mail client software), especially AOL but by no means restricted to AOL, filter out automatically generated e-mail as it is considered to be junk e-mail, or spam.

If you use such a service, it is quite possible that you may not readily see the confirmation e-mail sent by this site when you make a database entry. There is a spam folder into which mails that are considered to be spam are sent, and you may need to look there for your confirmation message. It will be easy to spot because it will be from "submissions" and have a subject title of "Your Heaven's Gate Database Entry: 999" where 999 is your guest ID. It may be worthwhile setting up a mail filter to accept any mail that has the words "Heaven's Gate" in the title to make sure you don't miss any important confirmation e-mails and contacts from anybody who contacts you as a result of your database entry here (any such communication will result in you receiving an e-mail with the subject line "Contact from Heaven's Gate" so you'll know exactly where it came from).

Should you not receive your confirmation e-mail, please contact the owner of this site as soon as possible.

Close Window

CONFIRMATION E-MAIL AND EXAMPLE
All entries to this database must be confirmed within 24 hours, after which time the entry will be automatically deleted. Confirmation is achieved by way of automatically sending you an e-mail to the specified e-mail address once your entry has been successfully added, and you following the simple instructions given there; don't worry, it will usually involve nothing more than clicking on a link.
This is a security measure to help us preserve the integrity of the data held on our database.

Please see this important note concerning automatic e-mails.

Here is an example of the e-mail you will receive when you fill out this database form. It will be sent in plain text format with no HTML formatting or JavaScript, and will have the subject heading "Your Heaven's Gate Database Entry:" followed by your entry (guest) number.

Subject: Your Heaven's Gate Database Entry: 123

Dear <Name>,

Thank you for taking the time to fill out the Heaven's Gate database form. Your entry has been stored in the database.

However, to ensure the integrity of the data it is necessary to confirm your entry ASAP (24 hours maximum) especially if you wish to place details of more than one dog into the database. Failure to do so will result in your entry being automatically removed.

Non AOL users only: To confirm your entry, please just click on this link:

www.mzjf.info/hgatefrm.php?mode=activate&guestid=102&activation=yeBbG6ZLqb11RBD9712R

AOL users, or if the above fails: Please click on this link instead:

<a href="www.mzjf.info/hgatefrm.php?mode=activate&guestid=102&activation=yeBbG6ZLqb11RBD9712R">Confirm Entry</a>

Should that fail also, then please accept our apologies but you'll need to follow these instructions instead:

1. Point a browser window to www.mzjf.info/hgate/hgatefrm.php
2. Click on the link labelled "Confirm Database Entry"
3. Click in the area marked "Guest ID" and enter 123
4. Click in the area marked "Confirmation Code" and enter BkeIjEt9m2D9SK12zH8f - the best way to do this is to copy and paste; the letters are case-sensitive.
5. Click on the Confirm button

You will receive a message informing you that your entry has been confirmed and your entry will then become permanent in the database.

You will not receive any further automatic e-mails from us pertaining to this dog, and you are not signing up to any newsletters; furthermore, we will not make your e-mail address available to any third parties.

Please do not reply to this e-mail or send any mails to this address; it is not manned and all mails sent here are automatically deleted.

Thanks again, and best regards,

The Heaven's Gate Team.


If you did not receive such an e-mail upon submission of your dog's details, please contact the owner of this site as soon as possible.

You will receive one e-mail of this nature for each dog submitted into the database.
PLEASE SEE THIS IMPORTANT NOTE concerning automatically generated e-mails if you have not already done so.

Close Window

WILDCARD AND 'SOUNDEX' SEARCHING

Many databases support what is known as "wildcard" searching. Just as in some card games, where jokers can act as any card the player desires, so there are two special characters you can enter that act as "search jokers", matching either as many characters as you like or exactly one character. Technically, these are known as "wildcards".

The two wildcard characters are the percent sign (%) and the underscore (_).

In addition, there is another built-in feature known as "soundex", which enables you to search for words that sound like other words. This will be discussed after the explanation of wildcard searching.

Single-Character Matching
Supposing you are searching for a database entry that was made by either a Smith or a Smyth. You cannot remember or do not know which it is. But you want to carry out a search that will stand a good chance of returning the results you want without getting too many irrelevant results.

To find all the Smiths and Smyths, you can enter the following search criterion:
Sm_th
The underscore says, "Match any one, and exactly one character in its character position". Thus Smith and Smyth will both match this search criterion because it does not matter what is in the third position; provided the first, second, fourth, and fifth characters all match, you will get a matching result.

Multiple-Character Matching
Now let's suppose you are looking for an entry that was made by either a Smith or a Smithson. It could also have been made by a Smithson-Jones or a Smith-Jones - you don't know or cannot remember: All you do know is that it was a Smith something or other.
There is a way to achieve this by using a search such as the following:
Smith%
The percent sign says, "Match any number of characters (which can legitimately be zero) at that position". Thus Smithson and Smith-Jones will both match, but not Smythson because of the "y". Smithe and Smitheson will also match.

Now let's get a bit more complex still. You know that the entry was made by someone called Smith something or other Jones, but you do not know how the "smith" is spelled, or whether in fact it wasn't even "Smythson"! Consider the following search criterion:
sm_th%Jones
The underscore says that we must match exactly one character after the "sm" and that it does not matter what that character is. The next two must be "th". After this, we can have as many characters as we like provided the word "Jones" comes afterwards. Thus all the following names will match:

Smith-Jones
Smythe-Jones
Smithson-Jones
SmithJones
Smytheson Jones

The fourth one, SmithJones, matches because the percent sign can legitimately match exactly zero characters.

Begins, Ends, Contains
In fact, the person has probably entered their first forename or a title rather than just his/her surname. Thus the above searches may not work at all! There are two things you can do to get round this problem. The first is to put a percent sign at the start of the string, thus:
%Sm_th%Jones
and the other is to use either the "Ends" or "Contains" radio button. You see, saying that the search string is to end with (or contain) the entered text is to say that you want the search engine to put a percent sign at the front for you, thus saving you from having to enter it. Thus the above search, or specifying Ends With, will match the following names:

James Smith-Jones
Smythe-Jones
Mr. Smithson-Jones
John SmithJones
Derek Smytheson Jones

However, these will not be matched...

Smith-Jones, Mr
Smythe-Jones, Derek

...because the search is actually specifying that the name had to end in Sm_th%Jones. Should we want to catch these ones as well, we need to either use a percent sign at the end of the search string, like so:
Sm_th%Jones%
and use the Ends search method, or, much better, to leave the ending percent sign off and use the Contains radio button.

The Contains radio button will cause a percent sign to be added at both the beginning AND the end of the search string, thus forming %Sm_th%Jones%.
This will cause Sm_th%Jones to be matched anywhere in the field.

Soundex
Soundex is a database-provided feature that enables you to search for words that sound like another word. Thus "hair", "heir", and "hare" will all match on a Soundex search. It cannot be used in conjunction with the wildcards described above - either the whole field matches on a Soundex match or nothing in that field does. There is one limitation to its use however, and this is not something that anything can be done about. Certain words that you would think should match actually won't. For example, "air" and "ear" will not match, neither will "heir" and "ear". The reason for this is technical: Soundex works by preserving the first letter of the words, and then working out a code to determine whether they are likely to sound similar in English. Now the initial letters of "ear" and "air" are different, thus the Soundex codes won't match, thereby leading to a matching failure. Soundex matching has been included as it may be very useful in certain circumstances, subject to the above limitation.

Close Window

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER AND LEGAL NOTICE

Please take note of the following legal information:-

  1. This is a not for profit website.
    No funds are to be sent or collected from this website, or in the name of this website.

  2. All material on this site, except where indicated, is © M. Zimmerman 2001-2024.
    No material from this site may be reproduced or copied without express written permission of the copyright holder.
    This whole site is copyrighted including the name "Heaven's Gate: a database for causes of death in the German Shepherd Dog".
    Additionally, the use of the name "Heaven's Gate: a database for causes of death in the German Shepherd Dog" for any use not in connection with this website is not allowed, unless permission is granted by the site owner.
    The copying of any material or photographs for personal, commercial, internet, publication anywhere, or any other use is specifically prohibited. However, permission to quote one or two sentences for review purposes is granted where full credits and URL are cited and notification of same is given to the owner of this site, who can be contacted here.

  3. It is not our intention to infringe anyone's copyright!
    All reasonable care and attention has been made to ensure that copyrighted material is acknowledged as such prior to publishing on this website. However, if you are the copyright holder of any other item on this site, and wish to be recognised as such (or even have your item removed) please let us know by way of email, giving appropriate references, then we will be able to make a suitable amendment.

  4. The owner and moderators of this board will not be held liable for any false information posted by another. If there is any problem with a pedigree posted to this board please contact the administrator of this board to get the pedigree removed.
    Thank you for your anticipated cooperation :)


Close Window

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Angus Cook,
How can we ever thank you for the months of work you have put into creating Heaven's Gate! Your kindness, along with your caring attitude, and the jovial way in which you accepted our endless changes to make the database perfect will never be forgotten. You didn't know us when you so generously offered to create this database. None of us had the skills to make our dreams become a reality when you stepped up to the plate, answering a post in a technical forum to which we had posted. You were the answer to our prayers.

"Thank you" is such an inadequate word for all you have done Angus! In the process of creating Heaven's Gate, and throughout the endless testing of the database, friendships were forged, which will last a lifetime. Please know that this acknowledgement of your successful efforts to create this valuable database is a heartfelt acknowledgement, and there are no words that could ever express the depths of our appreciation for all you have done...

To Vicki Kniss,
Thank you for your organizational skills, your help, support, and your endless months of testing to make certain this database would be launched to the public, *bug* free. Thank you for keeping track of the enormous amounts of emails that flew back and forth and for finding my head, whenever I lost it :)

To Bill Elliott,
Thank you for working with us, side by side, tracking down the fonts, colors and creating the beautiful banner on the Splash page of Heaven's Gate. You put the beautiful finishing touches on the site, making it a restful place to lay our fur kids to rest, in cyberworld.

To Carol Kufner,
Thank you for the beautiful Heaven's Gate graphic which graces our Splash page. When you made the graphic as a gift for me several years ago, it inspired me to make a place worthy of holding such a beautiful graphic. Each time I look at the graphic, I feel a peace of mind, allowing me to picture Jack Flash in a beautiful, peaceful place. I am sure that all who visit this site will agree that the graphic is a true work of art... Thank you for this precious and priceless gift :)

Hugs and love to you all!
Marjorie
Close Window



A huge thank you and tons of hugs to Angus Cook for volunteering his time and efforts to get Heaven's Gate working once again. This could not have been accomplished without his help. We are most grateful for your help, Angus! :)

All material on this site, except where indicated, is © M. Zimmerman 2001-2024.
Please click here for a full legal statement (new window)