And the winners are ..

In first place, with a whopping 191 votes, TESS! In second place with 113 votes – MAEVE! In third place, her devotees gave 96 votes to – BOSS!  Fourth with 71 votes – SPORT! Fifth with 70 votes – PIPER(2)!   Sixth with 65 votes – WOO(2)!  Seventh with 56 votes – MAGGIE!  Eighth with 53 votes – JAZZ!  Ninth with 51 votes – ALLY!   Tenth with 49 votes – GINNY! Eleventh with 48 votes – BANDIT!  Twelfth with 37 votes – COOPER!  (Tied for twelfth with 37 votes – DEX!)  And thirteenth with 34 votes – TWOOIE!

Since you are likely to see Dex again in other calendars, I’m thinking to eliminate him from this one.  Ditto for TWooie, and in his place I could put Gus who was very close behind him with 33 votes. What do you think?  There will still be a 3Woofs calendar as well as Peanuts calendar, so you will see my critters again :)

I know there were other dogs adopted this year, and I got a lot of questions about “Where is so-and-so.”  So just to clear up any confusion …. I had to go through approximately 10,000 photos to make the selections I did.  I would easily have missed some dogs, and for that I apologize.  It was not an oversight on the dogs, but rather just that their folder or individual photos may have gotten missed while I was flipping through my external drive.  Also, I only entered photos that I had taken myself, due to time constraints and not wanting to have to hunt down photographers, so many photos you may have seen on the website did not get entered.  Lastly, if you voted on Facebook or Flicker, those photos did not count; if you voted 400 times for a particular dog in one visit, only the 1st five counted.

Next year, time permitting, I would like to do another voting contest with member driven submissions, and I will wrangle up some auto-voting software, because manually counting all the votes has tweaked my poor wrist into overdrive pain!

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS OF THE 2011 TDBCR RESCUE DOGS CALENDAR!

In other news …

Those of you who like border collies but LOOOOOVE Aussies should check out these two sweethearts that are available through the local Aussie rescue.  I believe they are 10 and 11 years old, and while they have been together their whole lives and might wish to stay that way, they may also be separated if the right homes came along.  Check out how lovely they are!

The male, Ronin, has the most coat I have ever seen on a dog.  The poor female in the back there had to be shaved when she came into rescue, but I assure you, when her coat grows back she is gorgeous.

She is very lovely and affectionate.

And Ronin is very goofy and silly.

If you are interested in giving one or both of them a retirement home, message me for Kim’s contact information!

I had more to write about, and more photos to share, but for some reason WordPress won’t let me type any more in this post.  How bloody strange!  I am typing line by line and hitting “preview” to see if it works.  It’s a very slow posting process.

West is still ensconced at Casa de Food Lady and it feels like he is never going to leave.  Which, by him, would be just fine.  He loves me, and when it’s just us he is wiggly, silly, affectionate, responsive and smart.  If he could spend his whole life hiding out here on the farm, he’d be happy as a clam, I think.

Alas, I do not want / cannot afford / do not have the time for yet another full time dog.

I will try to update you on West in another post, WordPress doesn’t want me to talk about him for some reason!

Also, I really want to take the dogs to the beach, but I cannot wrangle both West and TWoo.

What?  No beach because of West?

As you can see, Piper still has Earectile Disfunction going on up there atop her head.  Because of the way her ear was sewn back together, the ear cannot stand.  I admit there is a small part of me that wants to tape a popsicle stick inside there to hold it upright whilst the cartilage mends itself (which I hear can take months) so it stands up proud and true once again.  The other part of me is practical and says it doesn’t matter what her ears look like – which is true, but I miss the pointy princess I have grown accustomed to over the last nearly 8 years of my life.

Is that so wrong?