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(But poopin’ inside’s delightful)

There’s a warm (with blankies) place to go

So suck it snow, suck it snow, suck it snow.

(Addy probably)

First snowfall of the winter and Addy was having none of it. She complained for our entire walk and kept trying to turn around and head for home. I wasn’t too impressed either – I left for flyball practice this morning in the perfectly acceptable rain, emerged from the underground parking lot (where we practice) to a winter wonderland and horrible roads.

And speaking of flyball practice; I would like a less literal dog. When we started playing flyball our first problem was that Ball Is Life and in particular, only the FIRST ball we played with was life and the other balls were garbage. I spent some time convincing Maisie that she could play with all the balls, and that hurdle was overcome. The next hurdle was WHY RUN FAST when we already had the ball? So I spent a lot of time and effort convincing her that Tug Is Life. Then we had very fast run backs for the tug. But apparently we cannot love Ball and also love Tug both. So we can run really fast and get the ball and then take our sweet ass time coming back, or we can argue with The Food Lady about going to get the ball, finally go get it with reluctance and then come back real real fast and ferociously attack the tug. But we cannot do both in the same run. This dog needs to think less, play more!

ANYhoo … as unwelcome as the snow is (always) it’s also supposed to turn to rain shortly, so I thought I’d better get out there and play in it while we could. Also it was Neato’s first experience with snow. After an initial “WHAT THE ACTUAL EFF IS THIS” reaction, he took it in stride, though remained mystified (and enraptured with the fact) that it comes from the sky and falls to the earth in front of him, then effectively disappears into the collective snow. He spent a lot of time watching it happen.

He also spent a lot of time looking for snowflakes after they fell. I am pretty sure he thought that’s what Fae was doing as well (Fae was hunting snowmices though).

But after a while he decided snow was his life now, and he returned to business as usual. Business as usual is tormenting Addy until she loses her sh!t.

When we wake up tomorrow and it’s all washed away by rain, I wonder if he’ll wonder where it went?

He’s so flippin’ cute!

All of his jammies are too short for him lengthwise though and the next size up he just swims in. Why can I never get a normal shaped dog?

Springalingaling is doing well, now that we have sorted out her arsenal of medications. She is on a very minimal dose of prednisone and still perpetually hungry, but not so hungry that she will eat green beans in her breakfast (yes, green beans are our benchmark). Her kidney values have improved, although they are still not as good as they should be. And the gross thing on her bum still has to come off because it’s getting quite big and it might be cancerous. But she is happy, playful and behaving like her normal loveable self, and no more seizures. Also a big fan of hunting for snowmices. Has never caught one in 13 years of hunting, but she remains optimistic.

Peetie is also loveable, but as usual, also without thought.

Winter and Neato are MORTAL ENEMIES but only when no closer than about two feet apart. They sh!t talk each other terribly and argue about toys, but I also catch them snuggled up together in a chair when I am not home. It’s like having two perpetual adolescent brothers in the home. Also when I took this photo there was half a dog and half a turtle wading pool in the background and I asked AI to fix the background and it gave me this reasonable option. The other option was a sleigh and the third option was an overturned table, neither of which were reasonable or sensical for that matter.

And my beloved boy Dexter, he is just getting older and older. His arthritis is pretty bad, poor guy, and we are managing it as best we can with gabapentin and galliprant, but he does have some trouble walking normally, as any misstep and he face plants because his shoulders betray him, and long walks are behind him now. But he remains a snuggly bug and he still wants to play ball and disc, as long as I don’t throw them too far.

I did want to thank everyone for their lovely messages and condolences on the loss of my most precious and dearest Mr. Woo. I still can’t do a memorial blogpost for him, because it still hurts too much. He really was one in a million and if I could have had 17 more years with him, I would have been over the moon. I will never not miss him.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN?

If you’ve seen her, you call nine-wah-wah because she stole my border collie’s HAIR

hahahaha just kidding. Auntie Wendy came over to give Wootie another shave down, since he obstinately decided he needed to grow all his coat back, and we decided Dexter would probably be happier, cleaner and smell nicer without his too so we did a two-fer.

He looks a little funny maybe, but I am already used to it, and I think he probably feels a lot better too. I took him and the other old man dog both to the U Groom and scrubbed them up good first because Wootie looked like an old area rug that had not been vacuumed in a while, and Dexter smelled like I stash him in the dumpster every day when I go to work. His itches have returned with a vengeance and I don’t really want to put him back on the Apoquel, and the itchies make his coat all gross and stinky, so without it I can give him wipe downs every day with an anti itchy shampoo and also the underlying urine smell that travels with him can be more easily managed. Because of his inability to concentrate his urine he just leaks a little bit all the time and without hair he’ll be easier to clean up.

He was a very good boy and very patient while he got mowed. I miss his Man Mane, but I won’t miss the matts he gets all in his pants and neck hair and bathing suit area.

Wootie was also a good boy, though he sang the songs of his people at the U Groom when I blow dried him, and then for good measure pooped in the tub when we were done.

Although my old man is doing as well as can be expected in his very advanced age, he is starting to decline and it makes me sad. He has started pacing around in circles outside if we are not actively moving in a direction, and if we are actively moving in a direction he sometimes goes in a different direction because he is both mostly deaf and now going blind. He has started wearing a bear bell because I lose him at least once a walk in the tall grasses when he stumbles off trail and can’t get himself turned back around again. He mostly sleeps indoors and if we vary from our wake/sleep routine, he pees inside (ie if I sleep late). He also has not mastered the dog ramp my stepdad built for him; he is alright once he is on it, but can’t figure out how to get on it from the grass. He requires some navigation help from me.

It is tough to watch him grow so old and frail, but I am also so lucky and so grateful that he is still hanging around. And he still loves to eat – and he tried to steal a bully stick from the pet store today when we went for bathies.

What also makes me sad is this dog’s truly annoying bark.

She would be so much more awesome if she would just shut the hell up.

It’s a good thing she is fun to play stuff with. When she is not making god awful sounds from her face hole.

Add thinks it’s sad that we aren’t playing in her pool, because it’s too hot to do much else. Which is why there are no photos of anyone else – they were all hiding in the shade.

And I am posting this photo only because I like it, because it makes Addy look like she has long IG legs.

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!