Wootube!

Dolittle's got nothin' on me

Mr. Woo

Oh You Haven’t Lived Until …

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I’m going to begin today’s blog post by telling you all that Addy was so excited about her dinner tonight that she inhaled it.

Literally.

So she choked.  Her ground duck and green beans went down the wrong pipe.  She couldn’t breathe.  The big old slimy mass of foodstuffs was stuck in her throat but apparently her own gag reflex wasn’t enough to bring it back up to earth (my sofa).  So you know what she did?  She howled.  It was the saddest, thinnest little sound you’ve ever heard.

So you know what I did – I opened her skinny face and jammed my finger down there and dislodged it.  She immediately upchucked it onto my sofa and then cheerfully reconsumed it, lest one of her siblings steal her double-dip bounty.  At least she chewed it this time.

Never a dull moment ’round here.

And as I apparently thrive on chaos, I now have TWO high-octane puppies in my “house.”

The big puppy is on a leash, because he is a naughty ADHD run-away puppy.  The little puppy is the Police and The Discipline of Everything so she routinely makes sure he can’t sneak away by holding onto his leash.  Also, he might run off with her frisbee, and that’s Not Okay.

Meet Crazy Miss Maisie, 15 weeks of DON’T STOP ALWAYS GO.

A very nice lady was filling up her gas tank in Washington on her way home to Canada and some sketchy looking fella shuffled up to her car and asked her if she wanted to buy his poop-covered puppy.  She said yes without hesitation, and brought Maisie home.  But she’s a senior dog person, not an INSANE BORDER COLLIE PUPPY person, so she knew she had to pass Maisie on to someone who likes INSANE BORDER COLLIE PUPPIES and so here we are :)

She is a very interesting little beastie.  Although she is affable with everyone she meets, it also took her about 2.5 days to decide I was worth paying attention to because she is a Strong Independent Woman Who Don’t Need No … human.  She is like the anti-Silly in that she has fairly laser focus (already!) and her brain is constantly engaged in making decisions (Silly’s is engaged in flying unicorns in the clouds over Candystuffiecookieland).  She is intelligent but willful, and I need to show her why she should do what I’m asking, otherwise she just levels me with a stare of mild haughtiness.  She will fetch ANYTHING and forever. She will tug EVERYTHING and a little past forever.  She fears nothing – “dock dives” into the water off the riverbank and beats Dexter to the hockey ball.  Took on a turkey.   Accepts no discipline from the adult dogs when they get annoyed with her, even though she’s the pain in the ass.  Actually, that’s not *entirely* true … she fears Addy’s wrath.  Of all dogs.  Though she be but tiny … I guess this dictate also applies to Adrenaline.

She’s also a demand barker and is constantly telling me off (“come back here!” “give me the Chuck-It” “throw the ball, moron!” etc).  She doesn’t like being on a leash so she tries to tug it right out of my grasp.  Growls when you go near her food, so we’re going to work on that one.

Oh but I like her.  She’s FEISTY.  She is a LOT of dog.  She is going to make someone a killer sport dog!

She’s about the same size as Winter / Spring right now, and the same coloration, so now I can’t figure out who anyone is, especially at a distance.  Auntie Michelle and I took the entire pack for a hike in the woods on the weekend and we just kept saying to one another “Ok I see Dext-no wait, I think that’s Peet-no, that’s definitely Silly.  But there’s Winter-wait, I think it’s Mai-shit, is that Spring?”  Told you – chaos.

The hiking trail was next to a gun range … I was worried about the dogs being startled by the near constant sound of gun shots, but nobody batted an eyelash except Auntie Michelle, who hiked in a state of near-constant certainty that a stray bullet was going to kill one of us.  haha.  The good news is that Dexter is so deaf they didn’t bother him at all.  The other good news is that he is starting to understand that the vibrating collar I got for him means it’s time to check in when he feels it against his neck.  I press the remote, he comes to see what the f*ck I want now, and he gets a cookie, which he likes very much.  I hope this means I won’t lose him on hikes anymore!

Wootie is probably going to need one at some point too, though right now his biggest problem is his sad tail.  He got limber tail a few days ago, no idea why … it’s definitely getting better now.  It was a very sad thing to see The Flamboyance(tm) at way less than half mast.  It’s like it was mourning itself.  But today it’s operating at about 3/4 of full power and he almost wagged it for me.  Of course, he doesn’t need a full Flamboyance(tm) to pose pretty for photos.

Actually he kind of does … it was a bit painful if he sat the wrong way.  It took some convincing to get him to sit for the obligatory group photo.  Notice I got Silly in this one (though he is gazing off into the distance, where he wished to be running), but Maisie is still a work in staying progress.  Maybe next time.

(TWooie also doesn’t hear so well, but he is happiest when plodding along at my heels, so I don’t ever worry about losing him)

These three are very good at entertaining one another at least, which gives me a bit of a break, if not peace and quiet.  Their three-ways are extremely.loud.

This evening I finally put this face, as well as the rest of her, outside with a beef marrow bone so the other dogs could have a break.

Did they take advantage of this downtime to have a relaxing nap?  No they did not … they stood at the screen door and watched her chew on her beef bone, and complained about not having one as well.  Can’t win for losing!

I’ve been working on using my strobe outside, in my quest to capture the elusive perfect sunset shot.  I gave it a whirl with Fae last week – I think I have mentioned before that the sun sets not in the direction of the lovely pastoral vista that I epsy out my window, but rather it sets on the other side of the parking lot, with a background of oh-so-charming portapotties.  But sometimes the setting sun throws very nice pink and orange at the clouds in the other direction, which reflect the colours and it looks quite nice.  I was hoping for one of these evenings, and instead, as I set up my lights and such, the weather snuck in the start of a thunderstorm and I looked up to see a most ominous sky of ragey looking clouds instead of pink ones.

I still think it worked though, and I was pretty pleased with the end result!  Especially as the wind had picked up and was trying to blow my light over, so I did some very impressive yoga to keep everything upright and get this image.

However … I still wanted a dramatic sunset photo.  So it rained for the last week because OF COURSE IT DID.  But then last night Mother Earth smiled on my creative efforts and gave me this.

And I like it.  Some feedback from fellow photographers was that the sky needed to be exposed a bit more, and I get what they’re saying, but I actually wanted it to turn out more in this vein, so I’m okay with it :)  Also I found an errant patch of grass in the parking lot to help me complete my mission,

It’s a toss up between that image and this one for which I liked the best.  I’ve been trying to get this starburst sun image for a while and when I finally saw my opportunity, I made poor Dexter stand still for an obscenely long time until it was in the right position.  He is SOOOO patient.  I am a lucky woman.

Also really glad I got my lazy butt out of my recliner to try these last night, because the sky tonight is cloudless and the sunset far less dramatic.

I’d love to do these for other people, but I am limited in locations by the need for a power source.  “Come to the parking lot!” is not a good sales tactic ;-)

Now it’s time to take this face out for bed time potties.  I will leave you with this parting image so that you can dream about adopting her!

 

 

 

We’re Back Babies!

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Yesterday marked the one month anniversary of living in my new digs, and I tried to do a blog post about it, but my internet is … mercurial at best out here, which is kind of annoying seeing as how it cost me about $600 to set up in the first place (which goes in the “less-than-awesome” category) and refused to let me upload to flickr.  This is probably all very confusing for all of you who only read the blog and don’t follow 3Woofs on FB, so let me explain.

When my lovely Goat Herder of a landlord couldn’t pass up the siren song of sweet, sweet cash and sold the farm for a massive financial windfall (and who could blame him really?) I couldn’t find a place to live.  Like, nada in the rental market.  It’s truly – and not in the internet-meme kinda way – BRUTAL here for renters.  I heard this sentence a LOT in my search from (well-meaning?) friends:

“Well yeah, I guess it must be tough to find a place to rent with all those dogs.”

I’m here to give you a quick primer on renting in the BC Lower Mainland – dogs or no dogs, THERE’S NOTHING TO F*CKING RENT UNDER $2500 A MONTH.  Not even kidding.  The handful of places I looked at that were in/*sorta* in my price range included:

  • A $1200 trailer with rat shit on the floors, broken windows and no doors on the kitchen cupboards (with no plans to install any).  And a full on 9 people/families applying for it 6 minutes after the open house started.  People with little kids :(
  • A $900 park model trailer on a very sketchy property owned by a man who went there on weekends to escape his family, and was also occupied by a close-talker alcoholic man who lived in a shack that he built himself that was approximately 20 feet from said trailer.  Me and Auntie Michelle noped the fuck on out of there as fast as we could!
  • A house that had been abandoned for 9 YEARS on an island accessible only by small ferry/barge, with no working well (and no such thing as city water), and no idea if the septic worked, and no internet, which was offered to me for a paltry $1450 a month … which they lowered to $1050 a month “for the first year and then we’ll revisit.”  I will say again – it had been abandoned and unlived in for 9 FREAKIN’ YEARS.  “I wouldn’t open that fridge” is the phrase that haunts me from my visit to that place.

It has nothing to do with the dogs.  Yes I have a lot of dogs.  No I didn’t get far enough into the rental process for them to be an issue, because there wasn’t anything to rent.  If you aren’t actively trying to find a rental property in my area right now, please for the love of doG, contain your inclination to make a judgy comment on how many dogs I have, because you really have NO IDEA.

/rant.

So at the 11th hour, I made a decision that will follow me around for the next 20 years of payments, and has its pluses and minuses to be sure, but means I was not forced to live in my van.  I bought a 40 foot long 5th wheel rv.  Say “hi” to my new home!

She doesn’t look like much, maybe, but she’s all mine, for better or for worse.

It is surprisingly roomy inside, thanks to the slide outs … I dragged Michelle around looking at rvs for far longer than probably either of us wanted to engage in that activity, and as soon as we stepped inside this one I knew I could make it work, layout-wise.  I mean yeah, the bedroom is small, but the living room area is quite spacious, everything in it is brand spankin’ new – furniture, appliances etc. – and it has storage up the wazoo, so there’s lots of places to put all my copious amounts of crap.  Except for the rest of the copious amount of my crap which is in a storage facility about 10 minutes away, costing me a fortune every month.  I threw away/gave away/sold a TON of stuff, and the rest got …. well, we’re country people so let’s just admit it.  We burned it in a giant bonfire of epic proportions.  However, there was still lots of stuff I couldn’t burn (ie: the discontinued Ikea cabinets I spent two full years collecting off sites like CL and refuse to part with) because I hope to one day live in a house again.  I’m looking into getting one of those mobile storage containers and installing it next to the rv and moving all my stuff into that … but it has to wait until I have some extra $$$ because the move cost me a lot more than I anticipated it would.

And it was a NIGHTMARE of a move.  The original plan was to move all the stuff-going-to-storage on Saturday early afternoon, and spend the rest of the day packing up the remainders of the household.  But the company f*cked up and gave my rental truck to someone else so when we arrived to collect it – no truck.  The weekend before moving day.  There went Saturday.  Sunday was designated for building the poultry shed (which you amazing blog readers made happen, because I wouldn’t have been able to afford to buy it without your help – the shed and fencing was about $1500) and fencing their area at the new place … I’d read on the internet that these sheds can take 2 people up to 6 hours to build.  It took 3 people like 8 hours – into the darkness of Sunday evening, because the morning of Sunday was spent moving stuff into storage after the company finally secured us a replacement moving truck.

Monday morning I spent a good hour or two catching poultry and putting them into my van to move them to their new digs, which actually went fairly smoothly.  The plan was to move them, then do a couple of loads of moving the last of my stuff into my friend’s garage overnight, as the rv was being delivered on Tuesday, and I’d spend Monday night in a motel with the dogs sleeping in the van.  After moving the poultry, I stopped to get gas on the way back to my place and a man walking by said “you know the gas is pouring out from under your car as fast you as put it in, right?”  NOT A JOKE.  Some kind of … pipe? had rusted through and rather than going into my gas tank, the gas was just pooling under my vehicle.  So you know what I did?  I SAT DOWN ON THE CURB AND STARTED SOBBING HYSTERICALLY.

A nice and very concerned fellow gasser-upper slid under my van and taped up the pipe(?) with some duct tape and told me it would get me to the nearest mechanic.  And it did.  But the nearest mechanic advised that the particular part my van needed was difficult to acquire.  So I had to rent a van, and the rental company was pretty adamant that NO DOGS WERE ALLOWED in it.  Yeah well fuck that.  I ended up spending the night at a friend’s, the dogs (and cats) spent the night in the van, which I cleaned out real well and the rental company was none the wiser, and I did actually end up getting my van back the next day because the mechanic found the part at a wrecker’s.  But that was an unfortunate and unexpected expense.  And delay – I didn’t actually get out of my old place until after midnight of the last day.  Thank doG for Michelle’s brother and his truck, otherwise I’d probably still be moving shit out my old place!  MOVE FROM HELL, you have no idea.

But anyway, here we are in our home.  With internet, which takes us full circle back to the start of my myriad of complaints ;-)  I’ve a friend who has a big building that is used for agility and other dog sports on his property.  This is where my rv is parked, so basically I live in the corner of a parking lot for what is often an extremely noisy building.  I have already learned for the most part to tune out the barking, and remarkably, so have my dogs (mostly).  The only time it really does suck is when there’s a trial here, as the parking lot becomes jam packed, and not every attendee is pleased that my *home* takes up what they consider to be valuable parking real estate.  Nor are they pleased when I don’t let them park in front of my van, effectively blocking my ability to come and go.  We’re going to call this an “adjustment period” for everyone.  Don’t misunderstand me – I am grateful I have somewhere to live!  But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.

Because I live in a parking lot, I don’t actually live here, nudge nudge, wink wink.  I’m quite far from the road, which contains no power poles on this stretch anyway, because it was previously all empty land.  Since I’m “not actually here” and there’s no poles on the road, I couldn’t get any internet company to install internet here, so I had to get creative … I eventually convinced the internet company that I lived in the basement of the property owner (who is close to the road AND has power poles), and they installed a modem at his place, and I then purchased wireless range extenders (and paid some professional nerd a lot of money to set them up, because it was beyond even my nerdy capabilities) and I essentially beam internet from his place to my rv.  Which is great, except that sometimes it’s slow/impossible to upload stuff during peak hours, and my microwave interferes with my Netflix streaming.  And it was yet another unexpected expense!  On top of other expenses I didn’t figure in, like potable water hoses and drain hoses and parking blocks and other stuff that as someone who has never owned an RV before wasn’t prepared for.

Which leads to my last complaint, which is that I ran out of money, and have to wait until I can save enough to afford to fence an area for my dogs that will go from the rv to the poultry, so they can run and play and poop in peace.  Right now we get up really early in the morning and play frisbee in the parking lot, before other people arrive to use the building.  But my dogs are accustomed to many acres of fenced free-roaming, and they are finding this a bit challenging to accept and keep wandering off.  A friend lent me some xpens to create a small “yard” but they mostly refuse to poop or pee in it, and taking them out to do their thang on leash two at a time is getting real old real fast.  Once I can get a fence up, they can at least have about 100 feet in every direction to be dogs … the WooTWoo in particular are really jonesing for a place to go outside and nap in peace.  They’re old, and believe they are farm dogs, and also believe they should spend several hours laying under a tree or bush in a shallow scraped burrow surveying their territory.

Some of the younger dogs believe they should be chasing rabbits in the field behind us.  But the field behind us contains cows and water buffalo, and those ungulates like to chase dogs with the same intensity and ferocity that the terriers chase rabbits.  And all the separates US AND THEM is some electric fence that doggies can walk right under, so …

Also, since we aren’t fenced, and it’s difficult to keep an eye on everyone when we are out, I don’t bring the camera out almost ever.  Because then I have to take my eyes off somedogs, and Silly might end up in another province if I do.  So all of these photos involved taking dogs out one or two at a time and setting up some shots before returning the reluctant doggos to the rv.  You can see quite clearly how Peetie feels about that.

Yesterday afternoon a coyote grabbed a baby turkey that had wandered outside (through) the poultry fence – mid day!  I chased the bastard off with a stick.  I had forgotten how much I hate coyotes, since they weren’t a problem at my previous fully fenced place :(  So now I am back to being worried about The Littles again – really need a fence, cuz this face is precious to me!

The background isn’t the best for photos out here either, though with a little ingenuity I can make it work … I took this one with my studio strobes, but outside, and I was pretty pleased with the result!  I bet I can get some really nice ones at sunset time, when I get around to it (this one was take mid day).

Anyway, as I say … not perfect.  Definitely some challenges, including losing my studio (*sob*) and the fact that it costs me $125 every time I have to hire the company to come and empty out the, umm, pooper.  But we are safe, and warm, and dry, and I know there’s a lot of folks in the world that have it worse, and I’m lucky that I have good friends and the means to buy myself a “home” such as it is.

I tried to take a photo of everyone in the rv looking happy in their new home, and instead got a photo of a bunch of suspicious spaced out meth addicted zombies.  Well except for Dexter, my good boy, who always tries very hard.  But how is Wootie looking in two different directions??

Also, remember those puppies I photographed last month for the breeder?  A friend of mine bought one of them, and I got to photograph him on his first day home.  With a little photoshop magic, even the background out here can be charming ;-)

Lastly, after living in the rv for several weeks, I made the difficult decision to surrender Carl the cat to SAINTS.  (Don’t worry, Donut is still here!  As is Cyrus) Carl is not a very … confident cat.  She doesn’t adapt well to change, and she’s kinda weird.  When I moved from Vancouver out to the first house in the sticks, she had difficulty with that and became very reclusive.  When we moved to my last house, she didn’t adjust well at all and spent most of her time hiding under my bed, only venturing out at night to cuddle with my legs, though she would run away if I opened my eyes.  When we moved in here, she lost her mind completely – she took to living under a recliner in the living room, and wouldn’t even come out for food.  I had to feed her under there.  The cats’ litterbox lives in the bathroom behind a babygate and the only way to access it is through the bedroom.  Carl was too scared to use it except in the dead of night, and even then she sometimes couldn’t muster up the courage to do it.  When she peed on the carpet behind the recliner, I knew I couldn’t ask her to live like this, so SAINTS kindly took her into their sanctuary, where she can be as weird and reclusive as she wants and needs to be for the remainder of her life.  As I have not actually touched Carl in several years, except to catch her and get peed on whilst moving, I can’t say I miss her really, but I did want her to not have the shittiest life ever, so I hope she’s happier there than she was here.  As soon as I have some extra moolah I am going to throw some money at SAINTS as often as I can.  They do amazing work, and if you feel like donating money to a good cause, consider donating to SAINTS so they can continue that amazing work :)

Now that I’m back online, I will hopefully be able to start blogging again more regularly, especially once I get the dog fence up!

And Then There Were Eight

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Getting real tired of losing doggos :(

Only a week after I lost my bestest girlie, Mini Momz got herself adopted.  I was hoping for acreage home for her because she does so love roaming around rollin’ in things and stealing eggs and getting into little tiny escapades of naughty, and she found that in spades, on 150 acres.  Lucky girl!

Going to miss my three-pack of Littles though.  They were such an itty bitty force to be reckoned with!  Plus Minnie was the bomb at getting other dogs to play with her – Fae and Addy don’t usually play with each other, but both of them played with Minnie all the time.  Fae, of course, played with her “in secret” because Fae is a bitch and has a reputation to maintain.  But Minnie even got TWooie to play with her, and that’s something special, because I’m pretty sure TWooie is on the spectrum and he doesn’t make friends too easily.

Mini Momz was here for almost a year!  Her little puppers were born the middle of May last year in my spare room, shortly after she came into foster care with me … can you believe how fast that time went by??  Remember these little faces?

For a dog who was dumped outside a shelter in a box with her partially grown pups, and already pregnant again (surprise!) when transferred to rescue, she sure experienced a life turn around.  I like to think that once we raised those pups right and sent them off to their forever homes, she and I helped her remember what it was like to be a happy doggo and not a puppy-making machine over these last seven months.  I sure do miss her.

I like little puppy faces though and fostering that litter was pretty awesome.  I like little puppy faces so much that I went ahead and photographed a whole passel of ’em last week!  If you follow my photography page, you probably already saw these, but they are so adorable they are worth revisiting!

The Sadist’s wife’s dog Cruz is the Baby-Daddy to this litter, and most of them just look exactly like little Cruzes.

Cruz has a simply *amazing* wiggle bum, so it was only fitting that we showcase his bum genetics* in his offspring!
(*to be clear, that’s “genetics of the bum” and not, like, lousy or “bum” genetics)

What with the lousy month I’ve had, cute puppies was the most welcome tonic!  Also, if you want to have some real fun, pick up a puppy and speak these words aloud in the presence of several hard-core Aussie people: “I hope this one’s ears stand up!”

You’ll receive a deafening round of “NOOOOOOOOOS” in quadraphonic stereo.  We were in Chilliwack, but I’m pretty sure the audio response was recorded at Vancouver International Airport as a possible earthquake and thunderstorm simultaneously.

Addy, bless her pointy/boney little self, tried to accommodate my wish for uppy ears.  She looks so silly!

 

I took this image last night at the back of the property.  Did you know we have a huge pond back there?  Neither did Dexter and he was AH-MAZED that this had been under his nose all this time and he had no idea.

We never went back there because to reach it we had to pass through 40 goats and a couple of cows, and a significant majority of my four-legged arseholes lack the self control to safely mingle with anything with hooves and horns that could stomp them into smithereens and then gore their corpses.  But the goats and cows have all been sold, so now we can wander around for 6 more days to at our leisure.  It makes for some lovely backdrops!

I wish we could have taken advantage of it sooner.

After the first rolling pasture and before the pond is where I took the group photo.  Such lovely scenery and light!  You’ll notice Silly is not in the photo … partly because unless I’m standing with one foot on his dinner bowl there’s a snowball’s chance in Hell of making him down-stay, and partly because the little (little.  HAH!) bugger was nowhere to be seen.  Silly has an attention-scan problem, in that he thinks I’m not all that worth paying attention to and he is too busy scanning his environment for something to be reactive to.  I in part blame the neighbour’s dog, who likes to instigate an extremely irritating game of run-the-fence with my dogs, most of whom ignore her 99% of the time – but not Silly.  Fence running with Sophie is his favourite thing ever.  He likes it so much he has expanded the game to fence running with anything on the other side of any fence, anywhere.  All the neighbourhood horses hate us, as do their surprisingly foul-mouthed riders.  Silly now spends all his outside time actively seeking out fences to patrol so he can yell at and chase anything on the other side of them.  And his recall turns to absolute shit when he’s doing this, and I have about as much patience right now as Silly has recall, so long story short – I hate him.

It’s not his fault, he’s a nice dog with oodles of potential.  He just needs someone who can put that one-on-one time into him to curb these tendencies and convince him that his person is better than no-climb fencing and the wonders that can be found on the other side of it.  I have neither the time nor the motivation to do these things with him, so he is officially for adoption.  I think he’s going to be an awesome dog when he grows up, and despite his size, he is shockingly athletic … Deafo Dexter wandered in front of him once when Silly was running full-bore and Silly hopped over him IN STRIDE as though he was’t even there, much less a good 3″ taller than he.  I think he’d make a powerhouse of an agility dog.  But not for me.  I have too much on the go and too many other things to worry about, so Silly needs his own person.  If you want a pretty awesome border collie puppy, hit me up!

His ear went back up so they are uppy again (to the disgust of Aussie people everywhere, I’m sure)

Seriously, come get him.  But only if you have experience with border collies.  I think he could go sour in the wrong / inexperienced hands.  He really is a lot of dog.  And I really don’t want to live in my car with him, since we are 7 days away from being homeless and still no prospects in sight :(  April is my least favourite month in the history of months.

But this is my favourite border collie (now).

I imagine this will be my last blog entry for the foreseeable future, because I won’t have the ability to take, edit or post photos for who knows how long.  Hopefully the cute puppy bums will tide you over :)

It’s been great friends!  See ya on the other side.

 

 

 

 

Snow Day Part II

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After we played in the snow yesterday, it continued to dump snow all night long and we had about a foot of snow when we got up this morning.  But it stopped snowing and the sun came out so it was clear and bright and shiny and that means it is of course going to rain and ruin everything.  So we made time for Snow Photos The Second, since we are unlikely to get snow again, plus it will probably just pee rain until, like, June.

Since my suggestion of a second snow photos post received an enthusiastic YES from y’all, here you go.  This time I made sure I got shots of every dog so nobody is left out.  We’ll showcase them alphabetically, just for fun.

 

ADDY has a look of grim determination on her face.  Is it because she’s trying to break through snow that’s almost as tall as she is?  Is it because The Food Lady forgot to put a sweater on her before we went out and she’s freezing to death?  Is she being pursued by bear?

No.  I offered her a cookie, and she is coming to get it as fast as she possibly can.  It’s serious business, cookies.

 

DEXTER cannot apparently have a photo taken of him where his tongue is not lolling out of his mouth as though he were a halfwit (*whistles innocently*).

… unless you shove something in his mouth, so I did.

(Peetie ruined the Wootie Toy (surprise surprise) but it still flies straight!  It’s a good toy, we’ll have to get another)

 

Retrieving this toy is FAE‘s version of tap dancing for attention.  When she gets it, she does the zoomies with it and flings it around to be sure I have noticed what a Good Retrieving Girl Who Needs A Cookie Or Ten she is before bringing it back.

There are these “sticks” sticking up all over the property.  They are the remnants of some dead plants and they plague me.  They ruin more shots than I care to count, by virtue of being in the way.  I edit them out when I can, but sometimes it’s just more trouble than it’s worth.  In this shot, however, there were only two “sticks.”  Just two in a vast stickless atmosphere, and MINI MAMA chose to run right between those two sticks.  But hey, it worked, and it’s a good photo!

PEETIE has started picking fights with my other dogs.  I don’t know why.  This morning she decided to kick seven kinds of shit out of Winter, and he wasn’t even interacting with her – he was playing with me at the time, and this apparently offended her.  It’s not the first time she’s done it and it’s not just Winter; she has also tried to kick the crap out of Spring for no really good reason.  AND she knocked Piper ass over teakettle when she did it.  AND she tried to bite me when I hauled her ass out of that scrap.  I cannot have this in my household/life … Peetie is going to meet a person this week who is thinking of taking her home.  This was a tough decision for me, but I cannot risk her hurting one of my other dogs and for the life of me I cannot figure out why she has taken up this new hobby now, two years into her life with us.  If the woman does adopt her, Peetie will be moving to Belize.  So not only has she driven me crazy for the last two years, and started beating up my other dogs, and making me feel like a monster for rehoming her, she is also going to have a much cooler life than I do.  THANKS, PEETIE.

PIPER is doing much better on the steroids than off, so we are leaving her on them.  Notice she doesn’t need to wear her harness anymore because I don’t need to haul her to her feet or help her walk!  She can get along just fine on her own, even if her gait is a bit weird, as her right hind leg doesn’t work super well.  And she can’t wag her tail anymore (?).  And she gets stuck in a left-turning loop sometimes if I am out of eyesight, but less and less often as the days go by.  And when she goes outside to potty she gets a bit confused and I have to put on my shoes and a coat to go retrieve her.  But all in all, she’s holding it together pretty well, and I am very happy about that.

 

SILLY needs no explanation.  Really.

 

SPRINGalingaling, while initially pretty traumatized by spontaneously having her ass handed to her by Peetie for no reason, has bounced back and is her very happy self.  After all, when she is outside she gets to hunt all the bunnies, real and imagined, that she wants, and inside she gets to share my tv watching chair with me under the heated blanket.  Not a bad life!  And I love that provides me with “Look ma! No feet!” photos like this.

 

TWOOIE is becoming lazier by the measurable second.  I cannot believe how expertly this dog can conserve energy (and thus body fat.  No diet in the world will slim this chunk-o down).  The ONLY thing that can motivate him to run is a bunny.  Otherwise he spends the entire time we are outside laying down and pretending he’s scanning the property (but his eyes are usually closed) or dogging my heels making his snapping-turtle face for cookies.  Deep snow makes him even lazier, if that’s possible.  Cold be damned, he’s going to sit his ass down in one place and stay there until he can get back to the sofa.

 

Poor WINTER who this morning just wanted to play the “Don’t steal my apple!” game with me this morning (I have told you, haven’t I, how every morning he sneaks over to the landlord’s side of the property and steals a single apple from the goats?  My landlord says he’ll be drinking coffee and see the goats startle, look out the window and then says “Oh it’s just Winter getting an apple.”  He kills me).  When he (Winter, not landlord) brings the apple back, I start stalking him and telling him I’m going to steal his apple and he growls at me and gets all hunchy over his prized fruit and then runs away with it so I will chase him.  It’s a very innocent game that delights him, so it was super mean of stupid Peetie to attack him mid-game.  And hard for Winter to fight back with an apple in his mouth.  Winter also is built like a tank and cannot get Spring’s air, but he tries his best, my brave little weird soldier.

 

And last, but never least, we have WOOTIE.  So distinguished, so photogenic, so full of poise and suaveness.

Oh FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, Wootie!!

 

In other news, if you happen to have a spare washing machine, can I have it?  Mine died last week and there is a frightening, mounting pile of dog laundry in my kitchen.  It smells bad, and pretty soon it’s going to all have to go live on the porch, which will make me more white trash than I am keen on experiencing.  I keep trying to buy a cheap one off craigslist but these things get snapped up like a hot damn, as fast as they are posted!  And given how the liquid-iron-I-mean-water here kills appliances, I am not keen on spending a lot on a brand new one.  If you have a line on a cheap washing machine I can get my hands on, hit me up!

 

A Real Snow Day

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It snowed soooo much and soooo hard that it was difficult to take photos because the camera couldn’t find my subjects through the blizzard.

Addy is so over it before it even began.  She wouldn’t come out of the barn.

This is the face of a be-sweatered and be-snooded skinny little dog who hates me for taking her out of sunny Southern California, I’m pretty sure.

I’m not sure the WooTWoo were all that much happier, because they have all the hair and they get all the snowballs.  So they don’t appreciate being made to pose in the snowfall.

And then there’s Silly.

That right there is an “OMGOMGYAY!” face if ever I saw one.

In rather sharp contrast to the “I will kill you in your sleep” face that Spring is currently sporting.

Maybe it’s the sweater.  Which she managed to take off, and which I promptly put back on her again right before I took this photo.

And since I was pissing off dogs, I decided I may as well piss all of them off by making them sit in the doorway of the barn so I could get this photo.  In for a penny, etc.

Addy is conspicuously missing, because she was inside the barn with me and never leaving unless tucked inside my coat.  Silly was off somewhere else being ALL LEGS.

Actually, he was probably across the pasture barking at horses.  He’s a real ass about barking at and fence running with the horses (as well as the neighbour’s super irritating german shepherd on the other side of the pasture).  I’m working on getting him to call off, and that’s coming along, but now he thinks the game is to run at the horses and bark and then get called off and recall for a cookie.  I tried a long line for a while, but he can still outrun me even dragging 20 feet of leash.  He definitely needs some work in the recall department, as he quite an independent streak!

And Mini Mama was off having the zoomies (and losing her coat) because for a little kinda naked dog, she LOVES the snow.  She can get FaeBitch to play with her when it’s snowing outside.  She had a meet and greet with a potential family but they decided she was not the doggo for them.  She has another one coming up, assuming I can ever get out of my driveway again with all this snow.  I wish I could just keep her, I love her very much, in spite of all the goat poop she consumes.

I even managed to get a photo of Piper that I really like a lot.  I may clean it up a little more and have it printed.  This is how I will always remember her best – bulldog legged and wearing a slightly judgmental / slightly confused expression on her face.  She’s still chuggin’ along and of course she loves the snow, so this is her happy place, even if she doesn’t really look like it is.

Anyhoo.  No stories this time, just snowy photos.  But if you want to, you can all think “I hope you get diarrhea” thoughts about WebJoe, because as I type this snuggled up beside my portable heater and shivering under a blanket, he’s in Hawaii posting photos on facebook about how he’s trapped on a sunny beach somewhere.  Snowy Fae thinks he deserves the diarrhea.

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 ;-)