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Happy Valentine’s Day

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Okay, so it’s not Valentine’s Day anymore.  Just pretend.  I’m a busy Food Lady and time gets away from me.

For Valentine’s Day this year, we got the gift of snow.  Snow is apparently TWooie’s soul mate, and that’s why he’s so darned happy.

We got quite a lot of snow where I live, so I brought my camera along on our hike, thinking to get some dogs-in-snow photos, but there was hardly any snow where we hiked.  It was oddly warm out, and melting faster than the ground could keep up with (my driveway was basically a swimming pool when got home) so mostly it’s just photos of dogs being mostly wet.

 

Check out The Silly!  He’s growing so fast – he’s almost as tall as Peetie is already!  And starting to look more like a dog and less like a puppy.  Until he does something …well, silly.

Like when he saw his first helicopter (and I don’t mean me!  I’m not a Helicopter Mom, like Auntie Fiona is!)

He’s a pretty great puppy.  He’s goofy and kinda laid back, but he’s got a great work ethic and is a little bit bossy/demanding when he wants something, but he’s learning to curb that a bit.  He also has a weird (kinky??) fondness for shoes, which I love a little less, but he doesn’t eat them, he just stashes them all over the house so that I am forever looking for a shoe’s mate.  The funniest thing is that he *worships* Old Lady Mad Teeth(tm) and falls all over himself bowing to her and licking her when she comes in from one of her (prednisone-induced many) staggering, lost-in-a-fog pees.  She, of course, “hates” him and get all pissed off, but it’s the most animation I see from her these days, so it warms my heart.

Piper is actually doing okay – better than I’d hoped after weeks of no improvement, but not as wonderful as before this latest episode.  But the prednisone has made enough of a difference that I’m pleased.  My vet says it is possible that she has a brain tumour, which is sad, but in a way is better – I mean, I would rather she has something tangible that will eventually lead to making a decision I cannot question, rather than just kind of falling apart for no reason, and her physical health waxing and waning, because that makes it much harder to make a decision, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, right now she seems relatively happy.  The snow pleased her very much, because her whole life, her most favouritest game EVER has been for me to kick snow in her face so she can jump up and bite at it.  Her front legs don’t really leave the ground anymore when we do this, but she still is thrilled.  She is also – for a dog who can barely walk – remarkably able to stay on her feet when she indulges in a game of tug with one of the other dogs.  I am continually shocked at just how determined she is – she NEVER loses a game of tug, even when she plays with the Grim Reaper of tugging (AKA Peetie) who will tug so fiercely that a) she nearly kills the dog on the other end of the toy and b) will actually kill toys in her quest to win the game.  But she never wins against tiny 25lbs of old lady Piper dog!

Peetie herself remains resolutely annoying AF.  We’ve had a couple of incidents lately of her fighting with my other dogs – she started a brawl with Winter recently, and then she decided to fight Spring (who fights terriers?  Honestly).  In both cases, I have no doubt that the terriers instigated it in some backhanded way … Winter was, if I recall, laying on a dog bed growling for no good reason (because Winter = weird).  And Spring was standing behind me in my computer chair when the Peetie-and-Silly roiling ball of play bumped into the chair and Spring snarked at them.  But the worrisome thing is that rather than just giving the offender a wide berth, which is the preferred course of action in this house (I mean, when you have this many dogs, someone is always getting snippy about their personal space) she launched at the dog and started a brawl.  I DON’T find this acceptable (especially when I’m in the chair they are brawling in!).  And a couple of times since I have found her side-eyeing and bristling at Spring, which I also DON’T find acceptable.  As such, I have been chatting up a former adopter of mine who is potentially interested in adopting Peetie.  She doesn’t have any terriers, and just one other elderly dog.  It might be a good fit.  It’s funny because Peetie is actually super social with other dogs 99.9% of the time and happily greets and plays with anyone new, but I just can’t have her scrapping with my terriers.  I guess she’s just maturing, and maybe she isn’t cut out for a multi-dog household.  And I am sure Dexter won’t miss her biting his back legs whenever he is in motion, a habit I cannot break stupid Peetie of.

Pretty, but also pretty damn annoying.

The puppy would miss her, and I would too, but only because she’s good at keeping him entertained when I’m busy ;-)  The other day I gave Silly a smoked chicken foot someone gave me a package of, because he was gallumping around the house being generally irritating and there was still an hour to go before we left for hiking.  Peetie wanted that smoked chicken foot REAL bad, but there’s one thing Silly is pretty firm about and that’s that One Does Not Try To Take His Food.  Even FightyPeetie knows better than that.  So she weighed her options after staring at him for a while, and finally decided to offer him something in trade.  What Peetie finds valuable, and what other dogs find valuable, are not always the same thing … so Peetie tried to trade him the smoked foot for an empty food bowl.  Worse, she tried to trade him his own empty food bowl.  He may be Silly, but he’s not stupid, and he did not fall for it ;-)

Springaling is no worse for wear after her scrap with Peetie, though she was a bit extra clingy for a couple of days, because for all her terrier snark, she is a very sensitive and emo little creature.  But I found her a new jacket at the thrift store, so she’s stylin’ at least.

 

Everyone else is pretty much as you’d expect.  Dexter is getting soooo deaf now …. the other day he was napping on my bed and I walked by the bedroom, popped in to give him a smooch on the head and I startled him so bad he jerked awake and bashed me right in the nose.  **stars**  Also, apparently I can never, ever get a photo of him without his tongue hanging out, so I have just given up even trying.

 

The WooTWoo are getting old :(  I always think of them as kind of ageless, but lately I have noticed that TWooie loses his footing / balance sometimes – like I bumped him with my knee the other day and he just … fell over.  And Wootie is either losing his hearing, or losing his desire to bother listening to what I have to say – it’s really tough to tell which one it is.  It’s very possible that in his advanced age he just doesn’t give a shit about listening to me.  At least he still makes for pretty portraiture:

 

Whereas his brother just gives me stink eye.

Addy “my legs fell asleep!” Pants remains her delightfully naughty self :)  These are her ‘THERE’S A RABBIT!!” ears, which are ridiculous.

 

And this is Alfie, just because I liked this photo (drool not withstanding)

 

I could probably blog some more (and will!) but I also have to get ready to go to work, so instead I will just leave you with this valentine’s gift of a group photo (minus Silly, who has no “stay” yet, and Piper, who was at home).  But since it’s the day after Valentine’s, I’ll give it to you for 50% off ;-)

2018

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2018 – just like 2017, only with more rain, and less sleep.

Ugh.

If it could just. stop. raining for like a few days, I would be ever so … much drier.  I know I live in The Rainiest Place On Earth and everything, and have for pretty much all my life, but I’M SICK TO DEATH OF IT.    In October we had two whole days with no rain.  In November, three whole days.  In December it snowed, just to break up the monotony of rain, and now in January it has rained 20 out of 28 days so far.  But that’s only because everything was frozen for the first week of January and it was too cold to rain.

DOUBLE UGH.

Near constant rain means nothing is ever *quite* dry, including the ends of the sleeves on my coats (which I have to switch out sometimes twice a day because apparently “waterproof” is just a suggestion, not a fact) and the collars and/or hoods of the sweatshirts I’m wearing, and my ever rotating gang of shoes and boots that live pretty much permanently up against the heater with the sincere hope they will dry out before I have to rotate back to them again.  Plus there’s soaking wet dog and the never ending cycle of dog laundry of wipin’- towels and wet dog blankets and let us not ever not remember the peed-on dog beds, because tiny dogs with tiny bladders that go on strike as soon as the sky starts spitting at them.  You can never get totally warm when the damp permeates everything like this.  Dear Mother Nature, please turn the faucet off!

There are no good photo opportunities in the grey and rain either.  Even when I get a rare afternoon off from the streaming skies and bring the camera out, it’s still grey and dreary and darkish and I am totally demotivated by the photos I do manage to take.  That makes blogging kinda difficult, unless I start posting reruns.

Right now the dogs are all asking to go out for a run and I don’t wanna go! Well, Addy isn’t asking…she’s in my shirt (making typing difficult) and doesn’t wanna go outside as much as I don’t.

But I have to go, because while adult dogs can coexist tolerably in the house without exercise for a day or two, this cannot.

THAT eats my furniture when he’s bored.  And staying inside is boring, even when we play games of tug and clicker.  At this exact moment he is laying with his head on Dexter’s thigh and I can see that he is eyeballing Dexter’s tail which is wiggling in his sleep, and thinking of biting it.  Which means we gotta go out before there is bloodshed.  BRB

Annnnnd, we’re back!

It’s the Year Of The Dog so I suppose it was only fitting that everyone get puppies and leave me seething in a green fit of jealousy.

Ann got a puppy.

This is Fever, she’s a border collie X whippet and is itty bitty!!  And so flippin’ cute.


And The Sadist got a puppy.

She’s an Aussie with a tail.  She’s basically just a carbon copy of Niko.  Also itty bitty … and also flippin’ cute!

And this is Dorothy’s Sonic, who is not a puppy, but he’s super adorable.

And what did I get?

THIS.

He is not itty bitty.  He is 26lbs at 16 weeks old(!!!)  He is extremely Silly, so that’s how he got his name.


A person bought Silly as a smaller puppy and decided he was a “monster” and tried to make his breeder refund her money.  When that didn’t happen, a friend of a friend heard about him and was so horrified by the lack of like the person had for the puppy that she bought him from her and then surrendered him to me.  Other than his gargantuan size, he is definitely not a monster!  But he is kinda crazy, so it’s fitting he ended up with my oddball crew.

(The breeder is aware – and pleased – that I have him and has even invited me to come meet his parents.  Please don’t send me messages about contacting the breeder)


He’s a pretty smart dude – pretty well housebroken, fairly well mannered for the most part (though he does like to put paws on my counter and snarf up everything that comes within reach of his pointy face) and he isn’t even all that whacky in the house.  He has already adjusted to our routine – get up and go outside for about half an hour, have breakfast and then nap until we go hiking in the early afternoon.  He does tend toward a bout of craziness about 9pm when he thunders and gallumps around the house throwing toys in every direction, but that’s pretty normal puppy stuff.

He figured out very quickly that TWooie is mostly all bark and very little bite and TWooie figured out pretty quickly that even as a clumsy-limbed, legs all akimbo wherever he goes, adolescent Silly can out-maneuver TWooie the butterball, so he has given up trying to pull out clumps of Silly hair altogether.

Nobody else seems to mind Silly at all, except poor Mini Mama, who seems to lack the ability to convince him of her intent to kill him when he pounces on her.  I mean, even Addy and Fae clued him into that right away, but somehow Mini Mama can’t quite drive the point home, so we’re working on that.  She is such a nice dog.  I am forever confused about how she still isn’t adopted.

I never thought this sentence would come out of my mouth/off my fingertips, but thank doG for Peetie.  She is endlessly tolerant of Silly and will play with him as often and for as long as he wants to wrassle or chase or tug.  She keeps him entertained when I cannot.


Because I’m fairly busy.  I’m also boarding these little ladies until the middle of February, while their parents are off having fun in the SUNSHINE of Costa Rica.  Usually I quite like their parents, but as I sit here with the ends of my hair dripping rain down into my sweatshirt, not so much.  Fortunately, Kita and Lupa are the nicest and easiest dogs ever, I am always happy to have them to visit.

You’re probably thinking “hey, that looks like sunshine in that photo and you keep complaining about non stop rain!”  Well don’t be fooled, I made the sunshine in post.  That’s how bad I wanted sunshine.

I made it up in this one too.

Silly is even respectful of Piper (but she has Mad Teeth(tm) so he doesn’t have a lot of say in the matter) and doesn’t ever knock her over or otherwise make her life difficult.  Which is a good thing, because her life is difficult enough :(  She is not bouncing back this time like she did last time and is still having a great deal of difficulty walking.  We’re at three weeks now since she lost her back end, for the most part and she’s just not really improving.  It’s frustrating to not know what the problem is too, at least for me.  For her it must just be frustrating because her back end gives out on her after a few moments of standing or walking, and she has a definite problem with circling to the left … sometimes she just circles endlessly to the left.  I make sure she gets at least a small amount of exercise by walking around the acreage with us in the mornings, but more often than not I end up carrying her because she will end up laying down in the mud somewhere and when I try to herd her back to the house, she wanders off to the left and falls down again :(

Her cognitive function also seems impaired, but it’s kind of a chicken or egg thing and I can’t really tell if her cognitive decline is a result of her physical decline or the other way ’round.  She gets stuck in weird places at odd hours of the night, like in a corner of the bedroom where she wouldn’t normally go at 3AM, and wakes me up crying for help.  Sometimes she wakes me up 3 or 4 times a night, which is really messing with MY cognitive function in the daytime hours, because I can’t get a solid night’s sleep.  Sometimes she gets stuck because she slips on the laminate or lino … the other day I came home and found her asleep on a pee pad in the dog room presumably because she couldn’t get to her feet on the slippery surface.  I tried confining her to xpen and that stressed her out so much I couldn’t do it again.

I *think* we are managing her pain well enough – it’s hard to say of course, but she isn’t groaning as much as she was and she isn’t all hunched over either.  She is still continent, though it’s difficult for her to squat to eliminate, but she only pees herself when she gets stuck somewhere and I can’t get there fast enough (like when I’m, you know, asleep).  And show her a hockey ball and her eyes light up and she’s after it like a … well, maybe not like a *shot*, and more like a three legged hamster on a whiskey bender, but still she wants to play.  And oddly, she will join a game of tug with the Flying Squirrel and stay on her feet no matter which way Peetie whips her all around.  It’s the craziest thing.

But I want her to get better, because I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing waiting (hoping) for her to get better or not.  I mean, this can’t be much of a life for her, fiercely independent as she is.  Whenever I have to pick her up (which is fairly often, given the frequency with which she falls down) and she doesn’t fight me as I carry her, my heart breaks a little, because she HATES being carried.  It’s like she knows how vulnerable and helpless she is.  I am afraid to make a decision because what if I make it a day too soon and she would have spontaneously recovered like she did last time?  But how long do I wait?

These are the questions that would keep me up a night, if I weren’t so freakin’ tired from being awoken several times a night.  As awful as it was to lose Tweed so suddenly, I had no other choices to make with him – he had a very terminal cancer.  Even Gemma went from fine to unable to breathe overnight, and she was suffering, so I had no other choice to make.  But this I think is worse … especially with her bloodwork being so great and radiographs being so damn useless.

*sigh*

In other news …

Dexter.  “Hiding” behind one blade of grass.  Some things really don’t ever change.

Mr. Woo, best poser ever (now that Tweed no longer holds the title).  This was the beach on a very foggy day, and I am so pleased with how it turned out!

Fae can give him a run for his money though.

Even the turkeys are excellent posers!  Like father, like son … Terrence and Philip.

It’s so tempting to keep this puppy, guys, even though it would be the stupidest thing ever for me to do, given what’s going on with me right now … but so tempting, because he is SO RIDICULOUS.

However, he is going to be pretty huge.  I’m not sure he’ll fit in my lifestyle (ie, where am I going to put him in the dog hiking van??)

But that FACE!  LOL

 

 

Dashing Through The Snow …

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This is the kind of snow I like!  Sure it’s cold and stuff, but it snowed one big-enough dump to make the world fluffy and pretty, but the roads remain clear and driveable.  My landlord plowed my driveway so I can get up and down it, and the dogs have fun in it*, but it has not trapped me on my property.  All good things!

(*Addy doesn’t have quite as much fun in it.  Yesterday I took everyone out and she complained mightily that despite a sweater AND a winter coat, it was intolerably cold and she was miserable.  So I put her back in the house with a chewy which made her happy for a while, but then she decided that everyone was having fun without her and she was intolerably lonely, so she yapped and howled her little head off until I went inside, redressed her and brought her back outside.  Lather, rinse and repeat.  I love my little fair-weather diva, even if she does turn her nose up at warm clothing, and then turns into a ridgeback when she goes without it.  I have no idea how she manages this with no hair!)


I bought her an adorable little turtleneck sweater at the feed store, because it was only $10 and because it was long enough to cover her bum and the neck flips up to cover her throat. I thought she would appreciate the warmth.  Instead I just walked past the bedroom and found her naked under my covers (heated blanket is still on!) and her turtleneck in a tiny heap on the floor.  I don’t know why she is so allergic to clothes.

But she is not allergic to COOKIES, which is convenient for me, because I did a fun little session with my doggies where I put one in a sit stay and then threw a cookie at them so I could capture the moment before and during the leap for the cookie.


There were a lot of photobombs until everyone figured out they’d each get a turn.  But some of them turned out awesome!

I like this one of Wootie; I even caught his curly orange locks in motion just as he was preparing to “leap.” His actual leap was more of a faceplant, but the pre-leap was pretty adorable!

I didn’t get any of his brother, because he would sit and watch the cookie land, then haul his fat arse out of the snow and saunter over to consume it as his leisure.  TWooie does not believe in wasting perfectly good energy.

Winter was adorably frantic.  The one uppy ear is his anxiety tell.   WHATIFTHECOOKIEDISAPPEARSOHMYGODOHMYGODWHEREDIDITGO?WHYWOULDYOUTHROWACOOKIEAWAY???

And then the mad scramble to get the cookie before the snowmonsters gobbled it up.

Springaling looks like a fox pouncing on a hare in a nature documentary.
(Yes her nails are recently trimmed.  No, after all these years, I can’t get them any shorter than this!  She has the world’s longest quicks)

Fae won the whole day though.  As if her obsessive tracking of the cookie’s arc through the air wasn’t adorable enough …

… the “Meercat” pose that preceded it was KILLER cute!

She may be a rotten, spoiled, hateful little beast, but man is she ever cute.  I went to my parents’ for Christmas dinner and when I came back home, Fae practically turned herself inside out with glee.  She kept trying to scale my body to get at my face so she could lick it, but when I picked her up she was so excited she would thrash around and hurl herself to the floor.  I was afraid we were going to end up in the Animal ER if she kept that up, so I eventually just sat on the floor so she could reach my face.  Unfortunately, I sat in Piper pee, because old dogs and continence aren’t always super good pals.  Merry Christmas to me!

Speaking of cute … a friend of mine is fostering 7 border collie X whippet puppies and asked if I could get some photos of them.  So brought the entire pile of the little suckers over on the weekend and I got to indulge in some serious puppy lovin’s!

Look at these impish little faces!  Also, look how lovely my landlord’s chicken barn door is for photos!

Also, look how they mob poor Addypants!

Addy’s not stupid though … she indulged in her favourite activity for a while (puppy humping – she channels Puppy Uncle Tweed sometimes) and then her second favourite activity, which is running away from puppies who cannot catch her speedy little self, and then she’d had enough of being mauled by puppies and she led them straight into a pack of Terrifying Turkeys which stopped them in their tracks so she could make her escape.

Our goal was to get individual shots of them and composite them altogether for a group photo.  I wish I had photographed them inside, because it was a bright sunny late afternoon and the sun and shadows change so quickly while wrangling recalcitrant 8 week old puppies that it didn’t turn out awesome, technically.  There is just no consistent shade on the property for this kind of shot at that time of day.  Not my best work, but still really flippin’ cute.

ALSO super cute … Mini Momz!  Why on earth has she not been adopted yet?  She is such a wonderful little dog.  When I woke up this morning she was spooning me, with her head sharing my pillow and her body under the covers with me.  She is SO MUCH LOVEBUG.  She can also convince ANYONE to play – even TWooie!  Even FAE, who has finally caved to her charms and has a good wrassle with her every afternoon.  I just don’t understand how everybody could not want her.  If I could, I would just keep her all for myself.


This guy is pretty cute too, although I am a little tired of virtually every photo I take of him being this Crazy Face.  He used to be such a charming poser when he was a pup … now in his middle age he is like that crazy uncle that makes rabbit ears with his fingers in every family photo.

Although he mostly behaved himself for our group Christmas photo.

And here’s Peetie.  I still have nothing good to say about Peetie.  The passing months don’t make her any less annoying, and there were no Christmas miracles that turned her into a pleasant-to-live-with dog.  At least she is consistent.

Now Christmas is over.  Living alone sometimes sucks because I didn’t get anything for Christmas as my dogs are lazy freeloaders without any spending money.  Got a little tired of seeing all the fabulous cameras and lenses and gear that people in my photo groups got from their families for Christmas, so now I’m staying away from facebook for a bit until I get over my snit about it.  Because inside me there is a 9 year old girl who really, really likes unwrapping presents.  What did you all get for Christmas this year?  I hope it was awesome!

Terrence got another pardon, so he thinks Christmas is fabulous :)

Welcome Back

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No, not ‘welcome back’ to you … or even to me!  Although I *have* been MIA for a long time.  For a month now, pretty much all I’ve managed to do is wake up, edit, go to work, come home and edit until way too late at night, get a few hours sleep and start all over again the next day.  I had a Fun Match in the middle of September and then right after that an entire day of mini sessions, and then on the heels of that I had another day of mini sessions in early October and then I photographed the UKI Fall Cup the following weekend.  Just non stop shooting and editing – which I LOVE, don’t get me wrong!  If I could make my living doing nothing but photography, I would make it my full time career in a heartbeat.  But I remain perplexed about how people make a living out of doing pet photography without a financially comfortable partner picking up the bills-n-groceries slack in the background somewhere.  And doG knows my 4 legged partners aren’t pulling in the big bucks to support me!  This relationship feels a bit one-sided.

Anyway, as much as I love photographing other people’s dogs, it does have the extreme side effect of having no time at all to photograph my own, much less blog.  Plus, we haven’t done anything interesting to blog about, because according to my dogs I am “the most boring person in the world” and “my ass is glued to the computer chair.”  They aren’t too wrong either, except they omit the fact that they get to go hiking every day and until one of them learns to drive a car, they can thank me for that perk!  And also, blogging about how I’m in my office yelling “stop picking on the damn cat!” and “no we aren’t going outside yet, leave me alone!” isn’t all that scintillating.

However, I am almost entirely caught up on my deliverables and so despite the fact that I have a wicked cold that snuck up on me this morning, I thought I would take this evening to prove that I’m not dead, and have good intentions to blog more regularly again.  And also to welcome this adorable little face back to Casa de Food Lady!

Do you recognize that gleeful little snoot?  Miss Mini Mama has not been adopted yet :(  All her puppies found homes, of course, but Minnie remained at the rescue.  And when the rescue posted asking for foster homes for a litany of needy doggos, and I saw her name on the list, I offered to take her back to foster.  And here she is!  I think she’s pretty happy to be back (although she puked in my van today, so we are going to have to relearn not-getting-carsick) and I am happy to have her back!  She’s such a character; I can’t believe nobody has adopted this sweet little thing.

Not sure if my dogs are quite as happy to have her back.  They were just getting used to Alfie and Betty finally having gone back to their own home.  *I* miss those two, even if my hounds do not.  I do not, however, miss Alfie’s drool.

He is such a nice dog, but his copious amounts of drool is not nice at all.  You could always tell where he had slept in my house, because he left a Great-Pyrenees-head shaped outline on the floor in a mixture of drool and mud that is harder than cement and could be used to cheaply build affordable housing and maybe even roadways.  Even the steam mop can’t get that stuff up without scrubbing!  Also, the drool has found its way onto surfaces you would not expect, such as the microwave door and the top of my front door, thanks to the magic of head shaking, which causes the drool to soar higher than a commercial airliner and with a velocity previously only experienced by jet propelled spacecraft.  And we won’t even talk about what it’s done to the one window ledge where he would peer out if I left him indoors to go out somewhere (one afternoon he figured out how to push part of my fence down  – the shitty one that was already here when I moved in, not the awesome ones I put up myself! – and he went visiting the neighbours across the street, so he lost outside privileges if I wasn’t home to keep an eye on him) – I am pretty sure it’s eating through the wood itself.

However, while Alfie was here I lost exactly zero poultry to aerial predators, while my landlord’s poultry was picked off one by one (I swear he is down to just 5 hens).  And since he has been gone, I have lost two roosters (RIP Paquito), a hen and a duck.  If I could afford to feed an enormous dog, I would get my own LGD, he was very useful that way!  And I know exactly what’s been picking off my birds too.

Can you spot the bugger in my neighbour’s pine tree?

I’m not entirely sure what it is, some kind of eagle I guess.  I kinda wish I could catch it in the act and KICK IT, because that worked for the bald eagle that was stealing my chickens, maybe it would work again!

I still get to see Alfie and Betty three times a week because I hike them – last time I went to pick them up Betty was so excited to see me she pulled me inside the door by the string on my hoodie!  haha – but I miss having Great White around to protect my birds.  But as I say, my dogs were pretty chuffed to have me all to themselves again, when Mini Mama showed up.  TWooie just rolled his eyes in exasperation and hasn’t even bothered to snark at her.

(Happy place, counting to five, whatever)

The border collies were and are oblivious to her presence, because she is not a tennis ball.  Winter tried to play with her and then remembered that he was above playing with her, and now he and Spring are Mean Girls and leave the room when she enters it.  Addy of course made friendly overtures (ie she humped her) right away and remains delightfully pleased to see her all the time.  But Fae … oh Fae.

FIRST, Fae made ugly face at her and stalked around after her with Scorpion Tail, then got pouty and emo when I gave her shit for being a bitch, and lay down in her crate with her face to the wall.  If she were a human teenager she would have The Smiths or something blasting on her iPod whilst laying in her bed with her back to the door.  You know, I don’t need to experience being a human parent, I already own shithead toddlers (Addy), moody teenagers (Fae), and possibly some special needs kids (Dexter, Peetie).

Once she got over her snit, she decided she would make Mini Mama as unnecessary as possible by being The Only Dog I Need.  This afternoon she decided to play with Addy – she NEVER plays with Addy and is a downright bitch when Addy tries to play with her.  But today she was all flirty and trying to entice (a terrified) Addy into playing chase and wrestle – “look at me!  I’m the perfect small dog!  You don’t need anymore small dogs!” – and when that didn’t work, she was all “I’ll chase the ball, as many times as you want!  Don’t throw it for Minnie, throw it for me!”

But.
Whereas Mini Mama did this with the ball when I threw it:

Fae did THIS when she got the ball:

This is not a posed shot.  This is what I turned around to see when I wondered where she and the ball had gotten to.  Look at that stinky side-eye!  Look at that perfect blend of pouty/emo and possessiveness!  She is a master of The Beeyotch!  This is why I both love her and want to put her in the blender at the same time.

But I also love her because she makes photos like this:

And also because when I pretend to toss her a cookie, she makes faces like this:

Peetie also makes pretty pictures, but without the lovable bits.  She has nothing but super irritating bits.

Whereas Dexter has nothing but weird bits.  He is, truly, an odd dog.

 

Squirrel hunting season is over, and now apparently it’s rabbit hunting season again, so I never see the terriers as they spend all their time thrashing around in the pokies looking for bunnies.  I resent this, because they carry pokies home embedded in their skin and then shed them in my bed, where they become embedded in MY skin.  However, I can distract the terriers temporarily with cookies, at least long enough to get a decent photo of them :)

The Dirt Duo, on the other hand …

Miss Piper, who will be 15 years old in approximately 19 days (and will be exactly 30 years younger than me, which makes me feel old, especially since as of late I realized I cannot read my kindle with both eyes unless I hold it waaaaay far away from my face) has her good days and her bad days.  She has recovered very well from her FCE, except one of her hind legs drags just a little and she falls over very easily so I am forever yelling at the other dogs to stop banging into her.  She can’t come hiking anymore though … a couple of weeks ago Michelle and I took all the dogs for a walk out at Pitt Lake and while Piper managed really well, only getting super tired at the last little stretch, she can’t handle being in the car at all.  What started out as some mild anxiety and panting/drooling in the car has morphed into a full blown panic attack complete with thrashing around and screaming.  So her fun-outing days are over, but on the plus side, when we go hiking she gets to stay home with a Kong full of wet Kangaroo food (gross). Although if Peetie KEEPS EATING THE ACTUAL KONGS, that fun pastime will also have been ruined for poor Piper.  Stupid Peetie.

Piper still plays ball though, by which I mean she totters around with her own ball in her mouth while the rest of us play fetch, and she is made happy by the illusion that she is playing ball.

And there you have it, you’re all up to date on what’s going on with us!  Now that the weather has mostly turned shitty (we had a couple of lovely days sandwiched between the daily torrential downpours which is now just called The Weather for the next 8 months) there will be less photo-ing of other people’s dogs, and more time for my own.  They are calling for snow this weekend, so I bit the bullet and went and bought snow tires, which I could not afford … but I can afford to not-be-able-to-leave-my-house-because-my-shitty-bald-8-year-old-tires-suck-on-regular-pavement-never-mind-snow-covered-pavement even less :(  I do have two photo projects for this winter lined up, one being my annual Holiday Photos with a *twist* this year that I am really excited about, and one being a project I am working on with rescue that I am also really excited about.  To be successful in the latter venture, I need to master my studio work (which will in part involve selling my current lighting and replacing it with something more suited to my needs – anyone interested in some monolight/strobes?) and to that end, I have begun practicing.  In honour of Halloween, I leave you with this image burned into your brain forever.

I’m Nuts, You’re Nuts

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We’re all nuts for walnuts!

Addy plays with exactly 4 things – water spray, dirt tossed in her direction, a tiny little stuffed sheep I find hidden around the house in various places when she is finished playing with it, and walnuts.

I don’t really understand the appeal.  I mean, it’s not like they can *eat* the walnuts … the walnuts are in their shell, wrapped in this weirdly aromatic / fragrant green husk, and all the dogs do is throw them around and/or guard them from other dogs.  But for some reason, they are the best toys going on the farm.  Very popular with dogs under 15lbs.  I need to find a way to market this.

But as much as these nuts love their walnuts, their attention span for them is extremely short, so I’ve taken to stalking them with my camera, hoping to catch them in the act, because it’s pretty hit or miss if I try to entice them with a walnut.  Maybe I’m just picking the wrong walnuts because I don’t understand the system.  But I was doing this exact thing (stalking Fae, who had a walnut) and because of that I missed ADDY GETTING INTO A FIST FIGHT WITH THE ROOSTER OVER A DEAD MOLE.  I cannot tell you how upset I am that I missed photographing this, because no matter how funny you *think* it sounds, I guarantee you it was a million times more hilarious to actually see it.  She was boxing him like she was a kangaroo, and he was flying at her sideways, feet first, like a feathery little ninja.  But they were in the shade, and I was shooting in full sun, so by the time I turned around and adjusted my settings, the fight was over and Addy was running away with the mole.  I’m so disappointed.

Wootie was not though, because he ended up stealing the mole.  Wootie does not eat moles, but he does like to possess them and bury them somewhere so nobody else can have them (like, his version of a walnut I guess). So I waited until he’d buried the mole in a pile of mushroom manure, then I hid behind a tree and screamed “I’M GONNA GET THE WOOTIE MOLE!” and he lost his tiny little walnut sized brain and started freaking out, trying to figure out where the disembodied voice of mole-theft-threats was coming from, and that’s how I got this picture.

And this is him about 10 minutes later … now he’s at the other end of the orchard, so quite far from his hidden mole, but he’s still worried someone is going to find it.

I love the orchard and all it has to offer when taking photos, but I wish it was carpeted with something other than dead leaves and grass.  Of course, with the summer we had, everything is dead grass, everywhere, all the time.  This is what the entire goat pasture looks like.

But the front yard – oh my!  Though from a landscaping perspective it would probably be considered an eyesore, it has very lovely Fall colours going on that are awesome when the sun shines through the leaves and plants (aka weeds).

But if there is dirt *anywhere* Alfie will find it, and he will drool in it, and then he will lay in the soothing droolmud he has created.  I’m sure his mom thinks I’m just chucking mud at him for entertainment when she comes to visit him.

His little sister Betty came to stay with me for a week earlier this month.  They are HILARIOUS when they play.  Actually, Alfie is just hilarious when he plays no matter who he’s playing with.  He thought he was playing with Peetie the other day, which was so charming because Peetie didn’t realize they were playing (she was waiting for me to throw the ball) and he was bouncing all around her and play bowing and he had no idea she wasn’t actually in the same game as him.  But Betty knows what’s what and he grabs her by the … well basically the whole body, because she’s the size of his mouth, and he pins her down for a minute, then he lets her go and she takes off like a bullet while he lopes along eagerly after her.  It’s pretty hilarious.

While my personal preference is for pointy dogs (I mean, I do have Addy, the pointiest of pointy dogs) there’s no denying Betty takes a pretty picture!  Here she is modeling my new tiny, dog sized divan that a friend salvaged for me from a movie set.

My cat Cyrus also takes a nice picture.  Here HE is, modeling the tiny dog sized chair I bought off Craigslist.  New, tiny, animal sized furniture is my latest obsession.  Cyrus looks shocked, but he actually really enjoys hanging out in front of the studio lights.  Because he’s weird.  But he’s a cat, and cats are weird, so that makes sense.

Here’s Dexter looking mildly perplexed, which is is pretty much his Life Motto summed up in one word (“Huh?”) since the deafness set in.  But he’s still having fun … mostly because he doesn’t know how to do anything else.

And then there’s my awesome girlie, who is doing so SO much better than I thought possible!  Those of you who follow us on Facebook know that about two weeks ago she was on one of our client hikes when she lost the ability to use her hind end shortly after we started our outing.  I ended up carrying her in a fireman lift her for the remainder of the walk because it was too hot to leave her in the car, and I had playing clients that needed their exercise.  It was pretty sad to watch her trying to get around without the use of her hind legs, and I was not looking forward to the news from the vet.

It turns out that she suffered an FCE (a fibrocartilaginous embolism, which is basically a blockage in a blood vessel in the spinal cord).  This is basically diagnosed by ruling out other things, and there’s nothing you can really do for it other than physical therapy.  Lots of dogs have partial to full recovery beginning in about 2-6 weeks after the event.  Piper, because she is ornery, has decided she will have 100% recovery and it also that it would start within 3 days of developing the FCE.  Within 48 hours she was getting around again and here we are two weeks later and she is walking – even running, sorta! – around like nothing happened at all.  She only has difficulty at one end of the living room because it’s laminate and it slopes, so sometimes she falls down, but she has learned to avoid this by walking on dog beds and the area rug (which SOMEONE *coughADDYcough*) keeps peeing on that I put down in front of the sofa.  She is one TOUGH cookie, this dog!!  She is going to be 15 in about two months and she is determined she is going to be in shape to party when that day comes.

I just admire her tenacity so much.  She has a ton of heart, this little dog.  Looks like we’ll have to get Mia to make us another cake with bacon rosettes for Piper’s birthday!

There are no photos of the Wondertwins, because they are never anywhere to be found!!  Turns out out little squirrel friend from the last blog entry has about … ummm … 77 squirrel friends.  And all of them are partying with the walnuts in the orchards – the one beside me and the one by my landlord’s house – so Spring and Winter spend all their free time hunting squirrels.  I’m not sure how they actually get any exercise, because as far as I can tell they just pick a spot in an orchard and stand motionless staring up into the trees for upwards of 45 minutes at a stretch.  They seem to be waiting for the squirrels to forget they are there, and come down to the ground where they will be available for eating, but the squirrels, though stupid, are not THAT stupid. And yet the terriers are TIRED when they come inside after all that being motionless.  Maybe their necks are sore from staring up.

I asked Spring if she would maybe stop squirrel hunting and pose for a photo and she gave me this face, which can only be interpreted as her “fuck you” face.

What a sweet thing she is.

And here’s a turkey face.  Literally.  This is one of my juveniles from this Spring and he’s going to rival his dad in the handsome department (not evident from this photo, I know).  I now have 7 turkeys, so next year the ones I hatch will be sold for eatin’.  Although if this feller keeps hopping the fence, running across the road and eating my neighbour’s berries, I might eat him and start fresh next year.  I had no idea turkeys were such a pain in the ass!  They get into more trouble than my goats and that’s saying something!

Have You Ever

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wanted to be friends with someone real, real bad, for reasons you can’t even really articulate, but everything you do or say seems to cause a greater rift between you and them and you have no earthly idea how to close that massive chasm of simultaneous hope and dread?

Spring is experiencing this existential crisis right now with the goats.

She keeps making overtures to Harvey, Bonky, Nibbles and Moe (AKA “The Firm”) but always, somehow, she makes a misstep and the fragile tendershoots of friendship crumble to dust beneath her pawtips and like The Phoenix rising from the ashes, the cycle begins anew.

To be honest, I don’t know if she wants to meet them or MEAT them … and I don’t think they know either, which is probably why after she makes some friendly bum-and-nose-sniffing overtures, the terrier wailing begins, The Firm gets panicky and the chaos ensues.  She’s gonna get the daylights headbutted right out of her if she doesn’t figure it out.

(Not to worry, goat-field time is always supervised because I don’t want her to get ruined by litigious goats).

She’d probably have better luck making friends with the squirrel that likes to taunt my dogs from the walnut orchard.  I like the squirrel; it exercises my dogs for me every day.  It has this nifty little path from the orchard on the one side, across the power lines in the front yard and into the pear and apple trees in the goat field and it leads the dogs on a merry chase back and forth, chattering away while it harvests walnuts.

Climbing the trees to make “friends” with the squirrel is not as successful as it sounds, actually.

This tree climbing dog does not want to befriend the squirrel, it wants to murder the squirrel, for the squirrel is stealing walnuts.  Fae, like a feudal lord, believes that all the bounty in her forests belong to her, and that harvesting any of it by lowly fluffy tailed serfs is punishable by death.  Preferably beheading.

For though there be thousands of walnuts with which to play, and to make weird faces at …

… Fae is hunting for That Elusive Magical Walnut, the Special Walnut, the Walnut That Will Change Her Life.  The power of the walnuts can be found in their bland uniformity, that they are indistinguishable, one from the next, so the Special Walnut could be hidden anywhere, amongst any of its nutty comrades, and therefore, All Walnuts Are Precious.

If you ask me, *Fae* is the “Special Walnut” around here.  This is her face when she is guarding *A* walnut from everything.

When it comes to friendships some creatures are simply antisocial.  My blue turkey hen, for example, has a serious hate-on for my small dogs.  She will take any opportunity to chase them around the yard (also good, free exercise, IMO).  But lately Peetie has decided to become the champion of small dogs pursued by rabid turkeys and has taken to bodyguarding The Littles so they can in turn guard walnuts in peace.

This turkey has only herself to blame.  I had no idea Peetie was a superhero, but at least we’ve finally found a use for her!

(She doesn’t want me to tell you that right now she is sporting a pair of boy-cut lady’s underpants with a hole cut out for her tail, and a belly band wrapped around her waist to keep it in place, because she is in season and Winter wants to “help her out” in the worst way and we are trying to foil his efforts)

Addy, friend to everything except ducks and newborn poultry, is currently making woo (not Woo) with the water droplets from the dog pool, as tossed by the Food Lady with the help of the Chuck it.  I’m going to have to recruit a friend to help me though, because my camera/lens combo is way too heavy to manipulate with one hand/arm – especially my chronically injured elbow arm – and it’s nearly impossible to get photos of her doing her water ballet as she chases the airborne droplets.  I did manage to snap a couple:

This one pleases me.  She wears the same expression I imagine I do when someone offers me pie.

But when it comes to friendship, nobody holds a candle to these two.  They look like a buddy-comedy pilot advertisement.

And then there is Gemma.  Who refuses to make friends with the Grim Reaper.  Do you guys realize that Gemma has outlived her PROGNOSIS VERY POOR diagnosis by THREE AND A HALF FREAKING YEARS???  She is the most ornery creature on the planet.  She guards her life force harder than Fae guards a walnut.

After a brief (read: exhausted) hiatus I’ve embarked on another home improvement streak.  In part this involved installing baseboards in my living room, rather than leaving them artfully leaned up against the wall in a precarious and bendy fashion in the kitchen.  I first had to scrub the daylights out of the entire living room, because a) this house is old and therefore slanty and b) Gemma likes to leave pee bombs strewn randomly around the house, often in the wee hours of the morning when my pee-radar is off duty (and dreaming of clean floors) which then meander fore and aft around the floor like lazy midwestern rivers of piss, pooling in corners and leaving trails of cold urine for my unsuspecting feet to slosh through when I get out of bed.  Although I spend a pathetically inordinate amount of time wiping up pee trails, some of them are sneaky and escape my notice.  So the entire living room had surprise old dried puddles of pee under sofas and collecting around the bottoms of my curtains.  I took everything out, washed it all, scrubbed the floors and walls and installed the fresh white (and slightly bendy) baseboards.  And when I finally sat down in a sweaty pool of Food Lady to admire my handiwork, I realized that all I had effectively accomplished was to supply Gemma with a 6 inch tall bulls-eye at which to aim her piss efforts.

So I then installed a small xpen in my office, where Gemma spends 99.92% of her time sleeping, and in that Gemma is now confined at all times.  She hasn’t really noticed, because as I say, she spends almost all her time sleeping, with brief forays into wakefulness to eat anything you put in front of her nose (which is the only one of her senses that actually function now) and to pee on my floor.  But *I* feel bad about it, because what kind of life is life in an xpen 24/7?  Thus I have now made a point of making her come outside with us for at least 10 minutes a day so she can experience a different environment … kind of like a prison warden.  And like a prisoner, Gemma spends her allotted exercise time shuffling around in a big circle because she can neither hear nor see and let’s face it, Gemma never liked being outside anyway.

I sometimes really do think she is going to outlast everyone.  Including me.

The other task I accomplished was to fence the poultry off from the rest of the yard, for so very many reasons.  There’s the reason where I am tired of tracking bird shit into the house on the bottom of my shoes.  The reason where I am sometimes inadvertently terrified by the sight of 50 damn farm birds standing on my porch screaming at me to bring them more food, because they are voracious and insatiable velociraptors who KNOW the bird food lives in the kitchen.  The reason where twice in one week Addy jumped out of my truck on our return home from a hike and killed a baby bird, and the one where Winter killed a duck and stashed it under my house and has been pulling out disgusting gooey rotting duck bits to snack on for the last couple of weeks.  But mostly I did it because Old Lady Dog Piper has developed a phobia of the poultry in her senile years, and is scared to go outside if they are milling around.

I feel like, having reached the ripe old age of almost-15, Piper deserves to go outside to relieve herself (are you listening Gemma?  No wait, of course you’re not, you’re deaf) without creeping around in terror of turkeys and other assorted poultry.  So I spent another hot, sweaty weekend pounding metal posts and putting up fencing so that the borders between Chickens and Dogs are safeguarded.  A wall, if you will.

She is so much happier now!

And on the topic of aging … in three days, Dexter is going to be EIGHT YEARS OLD.  Eight insane, powered-by-adrenaline, years old.

Piper barely looks like she has aged a day, but Dexter is half her age and twice as grey.  With his giant bushy Einstein eyebrows and everything.  And still batshit crazy (why is that expression even a thing?  What’s so crazy about batshit?  Someone enlighten me.)

Still love him though. He will get something delicious for his birthday celebration.  Although what he should really get is a vibrating collar so I can teach him not to vanish whilst we are out hiking.  I’ve had a few scares with him recently – he must go far, far away to poop (this is a family trait, weird as it is – but what about Dexter and his family is NOT weird??) and then sometimes he has no idea where we are when he’s finished taking care of business.  He can hear certain pitches, but can hear almost nothing at a distance.  Between him and Piper, I feel like I spend half my life screaming their names at the top of my lungs in a variety of pitches – kind of like a poor man’s Pentatonix – as I try to find the perfect harmonizing that reverberates properly in their broken ear canals!

Anyhoo, this had been a snippet of life in Turkey Territory with my band of Very Special Walnuts.  Now back to photographing other people’s dogs for the rest of the month.  But here’s a photo of TWooie being extraordinarily happy, because he chased the squirrel and found some goat poopies to roll in, and because despite the fact that he is an evil little shit, I love the butterball and I love when he looks happy.