Let there be light

It was a busy busy summer for the Food Lady, who was either photographing an event and neglecting stuff at home, or catching up on the stuff she’d neglected at home while photographing stuff. And the winter arrived JUST LIKE THAT – no autumn at all. One day it was 28 degrees and then the next it was 5 degrees and dark at 2pm. Bah.

I took somewhere in the neighbourhood of 60,000 photos this summer sport season, so blogging was pretty low on the list of things to get around to, and I was pretty sick of photoshop. And today I loaded all my doggos in the van, but not the camera, because keeping track of all these hooligans and taking photos is sometimes just too much for my tired brain, and I drove the dogs to our favourite seasonal off leash park in a neighbouring city … and found it closed. WTAF. So we came back home and played in our own field for an hour or so and I didn’t have any real excuse not to bring the camera out.

I photographed an agility trial last weekend that had a Swap Box for dog stuff and I idly rifled through it at the end of the weekend to see what was left. In it I found a kinda beat up Jolly Ball that I thought my gang might enjoy, so I pilfered that and brought it home. I thought Wootie might enjoy it as a replacement Fifa. (I tried to link to that blog entry, with the original Fifa, but I can’t find it – can you?)

Apparently in his advanced years, Wootie does not appreciate the challenges that come with trying to pick up a Fifa, a fake Fifa, or anything larger than a tennis ball.

At first he was pretty enthusiastic

Then he was like, kinda annoyed with it.

And then he was like “meh, too hard” and just sat down.

In his own way, old Wootie is just as entertaining as young Wootie. I hope I have old Wootie for as long as I had young Wootie!

Now tiny Fae, on the other hand, decided to start a brawl with it. She can’t pick it up, obviously, being of Tiny Mouth, so she yelled at it a lot, and punched it with her paws a bunch of times, and then eventually headbutted it back to me accompanied by a lot of little ferocious growling. She is full of spunk!

Because Spring is a very good girl who always tries her best, Spring tried her best but the ball bested her.

Dexter just plain loves it, because Ball Is Life, no matter what size it comes in.

I can’t tell you what a joy it is to see him put something in his mouth after that terrifying abscess ordeal. He’s got no problem picking it up, because even for an older fella, he still has some serious jaw strength.

Oddly, the one dog who hates the blue ball is Maisie – for all her Labby-mouthedness, she cannot for the life of her figure out how to pick up the Big Blue Ball. Maisie excels at basically everything she tries her paw at, so the fact that a junk box Jolly Ball defeats her is probably really embarrassing for her.

Winter, Addy and Donut, obviously, do not play with the ball.

Buuut speaking of exceling, Maisie and I have to head off to Disc League in a few minutes, so this blog entry is a short one. I will leave you with this family photo, which perfectly depicts Life With A Very Old Dog.

I don’t think there are many more beautifully composed family photos in our future, not if Wootie has anything to say about it!