A Most Gracious Host

Our friend Ghillie the border collie decided to come stay with us over the Christmas Holidays while her human jet-setted off to the exotic land of … Iowa.  hey man, I dunno, I’m just the dog sitter.

Pretty Ghillie Long Legs:

Ghillie is the star which orbits around the gravity of Dexter.  If you’re looking for Ghillie, just spy Dex.

Oh look, there she is.

Oh look, there she is again.

Dexter, as you can see, is thrilled with the arrangement.

Such a gracious host, Dexter is.

Don’t let his sourpuss countenance fool you; he is actually very fond of Ghillie.

She is the only one who plays the Mad Teeth(tm) Frantic “Angry” Chase game that Tweed used to play with Dexter.  Despite the look on his face, he is actually having a glorious time.

Easy doesn’t cut it – he’s too dopey-slow to keep up and I don’t think Easy has ever made Mad Teeth(tm) in his whole short life.  He tends to gallump alongside the two whackos for a bit, caught up in their excitement, but he really doesn’t understand the game.  And forgets what was happening in the first place.

What we were doing again, exactly?

And Piper, of course, is too dangerous to play with.  She gets the Mad Teeth(tm) part, but that’s just because she’s mad.  She usually ends up biting Dexter, which is only fun for her.  Plus, she can’t keep up … she is 13 years old after all, and her back end is shot.  Which might be why she’s so mad in the first place.

I’m angry.  About everything.

She falls down a lot these days.  And I have to be very careful when the lunatic hooligans are racing around because sometimes they crash into her and knock her over.  They hit her so hard yesterday that she just collapsed on to me and cried.  Breaks my heart.  In the house, she navigates carefully from area rug to dog bed, as her feet tend to slide out from under her on the laminate.  But then outside she will run so hard that she can scarcely walk after play time.  Her knees, which have always been bad, are pretty well toast.  She never did recover well from her one ACL surgery, and the other one has gone as well, but her repaired leg isn’t 100% and has trouble supporting her super bad leg.  The blind leading the blind.  I think it might be time to start acclimating her to her wheelchair, and build a ramp off the deck for her.  Because she still thinks she is a puppy, and won’t tone it down for a second, and I don’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.

Anyway.  Ghillie is here for 3 more days and then she ships out back to her real life, and Dexter will be lonely again.  The only thing he doesn’t like about having her around is that she often beats him to his beloved, won’t-drop-it-for-love-nor-money, ball.

Or the less-exciting-but-still-super-valuable frisbee.

And yes, that is a pokey branch stuck to Ghillie’s oblivious face.

It is currently bright, sunny and freezing cold outside.  This is excellent because it means the disgusting-everywhere never ending mud is all frozen, and I have been relieved of the endless paw wiping duties.  And silly Miguel, who is not a fan of the cold but prefers it to rain, will come outside with us again.  When it was peeing rain for days on end, we would all suit up to go out and play; he would look out the front door and then run away and curl up under my desk, where the space heater lives.  He really hates the rain.

Now that it’s sunny he will join us.  And teach the no-good grasses a lesson.

Addy is completely miserable – she hates the rain, and she hates the cold too.  There are not enough dog sweaters in the world to unmiserablefy her.

I hate you and your cold country.

And Easy is, well … easy.  Rain, no rain, cold, hot, whatever.  He’s fine with everything.  When the weather was *really* rainy and bad, I amused myself by photographing the dogs indoors rather than going outside.  Easy fell asleep mid-photoshoot, which sums him up in a nutshell.

And speaking of shooting indoors – I have strobes, I have backdrops – I can travel and do studio style photography on location if your house has the room to set it up.  So if you are interested, contact me :)

So it’s, like, New Year’s Eve,  That’s CRAZY.  Where did the year go??  I expect we will ring in 2016 the way we do every year … cuddled on the sofa with the tv turned up loud in case someone sets off fireworks somewhere nearby.

The best company I could ask for, really.

Here’s wishing you and your loved ones much happiness in 2016 and beyond.  Thanks for letting us (hopefully) entertain you for the last ten(!!) years!

Take a lesson from your dogs, and rush into the new year with joy friends!