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A Beachin’ Good Time

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It’s a good thing “our” beach is almost always empty when we go visit, because upon arrival, this is what happens.  It’s total chaos.  And it’s like a 15 minute walk to the beach from where we park, so you’d think they have become at least somewhat blase by the time we get there!  It’s no wonder we’re social pariahs.

Usually the water looks like this – one long swimmable length of water.

But the other day there was, like, no water.  I don’t know what happened to it.  It’s not actually a beach on the ocean, it’s really just a sandy stretch along a slough.  It’s nowhere near an ocean.  So I don’t think it’s affected by tides … so where did the water go?

It’s possible that 125lbs of Alfie gallumping along its shores terrified the water into a hasty retreat.  He sounds like a herd of buffalo when he gets it into his head to cavort with his sister Betty.  It doesn’t happen often, but it’s pretty hilarious when it does!

Betty has taken to flirting wildly with Dexter lately, which is mystifying to me, as she was never much interested in interacting with him when she basically lived with me last year.  If it’s a mystery to me, it’s 12 times as mysterious to Dexter who, like an immature 12 year old boy, really doesn’t understand female flirtations.  Mostly what he does is stare at me whilst she wiggles under his chin, leaps up to smooch his eyeballs and then does somersaults under his legs trying to get his attention.  He is completely affable but unaware while she gyrates at him.

But all her clowny shenanigans does have the affect of getting Alfie excited, and he usually comes thundering over to play … and if Dexter remains oblivious to the 25lbs of butterball roiling around underfoot, he is NOT oblivious to the extra 100lbs running in his direction and he usually takes some offense.  This annoys and confuses Alfie and in the resulting melee, Betty slips away.  And I think she’s laughing.  She is one sly, wicked little shit-disturber!

Perhaps the pre-receded water had caught wind that these two devils were coming to terrorize its shores.

I miss the terrier-teeth-play of these two, it doesn’t happen often enough, maybe because they’re both getting older.   Or maybe because when they try to play like this, someone (*coughMAISIEcough*) gets involved and despite the multitude of sharp and pointies between them available to drive off intruders, they don’t really like other dogs to get in the middle of their fun and they’re kinda emo about it.

Although occasionally they do gang up on her to teach her the meaning of the word “fear.”

Very once in a while, they will temporarily allow TWooie to cavort with them.  It never lasts very long, but that’s 100% okay with him, because he’s old and he doesn’t really have the stamina for that sort of foolishness for long anyway.  It is, however, 100% adorable.  After all these years, it still tickles me pink to see TWooie happy to play with another dog(s).

His brother rarely plays at all, with anyone, these days.  Sometimes I can get him to play a bit of fetch, or a short game of “I’m Gonna Get The Wootie Stick!” but it never lasts long either.  He doesn’t seem overly tired, or depressed, he just is more interested in snuffling around for possible dropped foodstuffs, or things to pee on.  I guess simple pleasures get more pleasurable as one ages.  However, I did buy him a new “Fifa”(tm) on the way home from the beach to see if I can’t rekindle some of our old joys together :) … provided Maisie doesn’t get involved, as she’s a “PLAY WITH ALL THE THINGS” kinda dog.

(Clearly he’s thrilled at the prospect)

(his tail still looks a little (okay a lot) sad, but notice it does have some wispy growth on it.  It’s gonna be a marathon growing session to the finish, I think)

Crazy Miss Maisie remains resolutely entrenched in my home and won’t go away because everyone who wants her so far hasn’t really been ideal.  I don’t think getting one’s sport dog from rescue is the cool thing to do anymore, so she remains unwanted :(

I decided after some thought that she is probably a Springer Spaniel mix.  I got a lot of sideways looks for that when I started saying it … you know, the “Food Lady’s making up whacky theories again” look.  You’re probably even doing that right now as you read this!

Then I asked a friend of mine to come over and evaluate her for some kind of sniffer dog job, because I personally think she’d be pretty awesome at it.  I placed quite a few of those kinds of dogs from the shelter (the sniffing-for-a-living kind, not the Springer Spaniel mix kind) and got a pretty good sense of what the handlers/trainers were looking for, and Maisie ticks off all their boxes.  So I asked my friend Teresa to come over and tell me what she thought.  First thing she said whens he met her was “Is she a Springer mix?”

Now, I think Teresa would know, since she owns and trained Angus the famous “C. Difficile” Springer Spaniel who makes his living sniffing out that nastiness in hospitals!

Anyway, Maisie ticked off all her boxes too, and apparently she thinks she’d make an awesome sniffer dog.  I find nosework stuff with dogs super fascinating *in theory* – I think it’s amazing what they can do with odour and how much they enjoy it.  In practice, I find it mind numbingly boring to watch – it was somewhat more interesting when it was “my” dog figuring it out, but not interesting enough for me to to want to do it myself with any of my dogs.  I think I’ve just been generally spoiled by sports like agility which have a lot of more instant and high octane gratification for my squirrel-like attention span.  Anyway, there’s been some interest in her for the sniffing thing, so maybe she’ll be famous one day too!

And speaking of agility, I have really super good intentions of going back to the sport, usually while I am laying in bed thinking about playing.  In practice, I can’t seem to muster up the energy to actually go train, despite living right next door to a big ass facility dedicated to the sport.  I do have a handful of dogs I could be playing with – Spring’s getting up there, but hey, Tweed won Regionals when he was 12, so it’s not like she’s OLD.  Fae is delightful to play with.  In my head, Addy would be great (in reality, Addy is a trainwreck.  Ha.)  And I suppose there’s Peetie.  Pesty, stares-at-my-cookie-hands-all-the-time Peetie.

I still want to try dock diving with Peetie.  I think she could be pretty good at it.  Cuz of all the leaping.

And I really do wish I had that sort of tenacious-trainer spirit to train Addy.  She is actually awesome at all the equipment, as she fears nothing and she’ll do it all (except weaves, we haven’t gone there yet at all) but her attention span is even shorter than mine.  We might simultaneously implode trying!

But she remains the cutest little thing that ever cuted or thinged.

In my facebook “memories” thing not too long ago, a memory of Dexter’s first trial came up in my feed, when he did a 15 obstacle Jumpers course in 15 seconds.  Oh how I miss *that* Dexter; before he started going deaf, he was such an awesome dog to play agilities with.  But I love the Dexter I have now too.  Often he rides along in the front seat when my van is full (seat-belted in, of course, airbag turned off) and I have inadvertently trained him stare deeply into my eyes and place a somber paw gravely on my arm, for which he is rewarded with cookies.  Now I can’t drive anywhere without his paw resting on my arm while he tries to mind-meld me.  I can only imagine what people think at stop lights.

Anyhoo.

I know I don’t take as many photos of my own dogs / blog as much as I used to, but the more I photograph for other people and/or events, the less time I have for photographing and editing photos of my own four legged furries.  There just aren’t enough hours in the day.  I’m going to try harder!  I do run outside to try and get sunset photos whenever the conditions are favourable.

Also, for those of you not on Facebook, I’m going to be putting out a 2019 calendar soon for sale.  This is the cover:

As soon as my print lab has the 2019 template ready, I’ll make one and video it for everyone, and then take orders.  It was a fun project, looking through so many old photos of my fuzzy family, those still here and the ones that aren’t.  I miss my old dogs.  I am so glad I have all these photos to look back on :)

Won’t You Be My Neighbour

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I dunno about you, but my neighbours are SUPER nosy.  They’re always staring at me.

Sometimes they bring some friends to lay around staring at me too.

It’s rude.

Also, some of my neighbours have kids.  They’re super loud.  How can tiny kids have such big lungs?!

Tasty, tasty kids …

The stupid turkey insisted on sitting and hatching outside of the poultry pen, and still refuses to bring her kids inside the pen.  The property is pretty thoroughly fenced now (the perimeter, not my yard, which remains unfenced.  *grumble*) so I am not worried about predators except for the ones that live in my rv with me.  Because there are some certain skinny dogs and some terriorists that would eat those babies in a nanosecond.  Yesterday I found the baby turkeys INSIDE the x-penned area I have for the dogs.  The dogs were, fortunately, inside … except for Maisie, who was thinking up turkey recipes before she made her move.  I shooed them out while fending off a hoard of hungry canines, but I don’t anticipate this ending well, necessarily, until I can convince mama turkey to join the community and stop living off grid.

I’m also not unconcerned about the cats eating the poults … this giant tin tube gets REAL hot when the weather is warm, so I have taken to leaving the door open so the dogs can come in and go out at will, rather than us all crammed inside here breathing and sweating on one another.  That means I can’t keep my cats in, so for the first time in their lives, they are being indoor/outdoor cats.  I was particularly worried about Donut, because on other occasions when she has escaped whatever house I was living in, she wouldn’t ever come back inside and I’d have to live trap her.  But now she seems to have settled into the idea that it won’t be her only taste of freedom and she will happily come back inside in the evening when I tap the tin of wet cat food with the fork.  She even lets me pet her when she’s outside, which is amazing.  But if you recall from my time in the penthouse apartment in the West End, she was known as The Serial Killer Tinker Nuts, who caught and killed birds on the rooftop deck with sociopathic glee.  I would not put it past her to eat a turkey poult or two if she can sneak them away from Mama Turkey.

Cyrus is the one that’s killin’ me though.  He wanders much further afield than ‘Nutz does; she stays mostly close to home, but Cyrus goes to visit the neighbours (including the cattle and buffalo) on a regular basis.  He seems to stay away from the road, but coyotes live in them-there grasses, so I worry about him all the time.  But what I don’t worry about is feeding him, because every morning our routine goes like this:  I let everyone out into the xpen area to hang out while I go feed and water the poultry, and the cats wander off to do cat things … then I take the dogs out in small groups to potty, then I feed them breakfast and I sit down with my cup of coffee at the dining room table.  And every morning by that time, Cyrus has caught himself a fat, tasty field mouse and I watch him come ambling across the parking lot with the mouse in the mouth, so he can eat it under the rv.  If he catches something he does not like the taste of (such as shrews, or moles) he simply leaves them under the rv for safe keeping.  If he catches more than he can eat, he does the same thing, and then Addy eats it.  Blech.  So much deworming in everyone’s future.

The air quality here is really bad right now, because once again our province is on fire.  It’s been unreasonably hot this summer, again, which I’m starting to think is our new normal – pre-Apocalyptic :(  It’s all smokey and hazy outside, and I am reluctant to run the dogs in it, so I’m glad we went to our Super Secret Swimming Hole a few days ago when the sky was blue and you could see the sun.

Fae, otoh, was not impressed that I suggested she should swim to retrieve the ball if she wanted a cookie, no matter what the weather was like.

A few weeks ago, I photographed a dock diving event, which was awesome … it looked like a lot of fun for the dogs!  There’s some rumour that a dock diving pool might be unveiled ’round these parts soon, and I still think I’ve found a use for Peetie, finally, as while she sucks at pretty much everything, she is really enthusiastic about diving into the water.

…although ….

Crazy Miss Maisie would also make a hella dock diver I think.  I keep trying to shove into the faces of dog dock enthusiasts, but no luck yet.

I actually find her quite pleasant to live with – she’s developed a nice off switch, and she’s pretty easy going in the house, and will amuse herself if nobody else wants to play with her.  Although yesterday I made Winter drop a not-quite-hatched turkey egg he purloined from Off Grid Mama’s abandoned nest and she scarfed it up, maggots and all, and ran away LIKE HER ASS WAS ON FIRE, munching it down the whole time.  Can you bleach the inside of a puppy?  SO GROSS.  So clearly we need to work on “hey, how about you give me the ball of maggots in exchange for this hot dog?” or similar.

Anyway, she’s not difficult to have around, and she mostly listens pretty well, and she doesn’t run away all the time, a la Silly.  Who, by the way, is doing really well in Belize in his new home!  His human recently sent me this:

“My friend and I went to a dog show in the capital city just for fun. Decided to take Hero, Titan and Silly. They asked us if we wanted to enter into it when we were walking around with them. Figured why not? Silly ended up taking first place in obedience and the obstacle course!! I was so scared he was going to get ADD with the obedience cause there was so much activity but he did absolutely amazing ☺️ Not in the country even a week and he’s charming everyone ❤️❤️ so proud of him.“

So how much awesome is that??  I do miss his full body contact hugs though, he was greatly affectionate … but he’s landed himself a pretty cushy life. I’m a bit jealous … I would like to live in Belize, I’m pretty sure.

But back to the beach!  Spring got a cookie for hopping on and off these pilings, because it amused me, and then she wouldn’t stop doing it.  She knows an easy gig when she’s landed one!

She makes me laugh all the time, she is such a ridiculous little dog.

Addy did the piling-jumping once, but even for cookies, it paled in comparison to the satisfaction she apparently gets from digging up wet sand.  She’ll do it for two solid hours.  I love this little skinny thing beyond measure, but I really don’t think there is a lot going on upstairs in tiny-head land.

Then there’s Wootie, who is very very deaf now (whether that’s physiological or willful, only he knows) but can still hear me well enough to give me this look when I tell him I’m going to steal his Wootie Stick and chuck it in the water.

But you can’t really blame him, because his poor nekkid tail looks absolutely ridiculous when he swims.  Like a little, sad, hairless rudder.  I’m surprised he doesn’t sink; I always thought it was his Flamoyance(tm) that kept him buoyant.

And Deafter, who loves to swim…

… but also suffers some “someone might steal my ball” anxiety and spends a lot of beach time hunched over his hockey ball protectively in the sand.

He’s so handsome no matter what he does, even when his stupid tongue is hanging out.  And he’s my go-to posing dog for test shots, from sunset OCF to lavender.  He’s the best.  And he’s going to be – this will BLOW YOUR MIND – nine years old in four days.  NINE!!!!

Love my big guy so much :)

(feeling old yet??)

 

Meanie

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I am the meanest dog owner EVER.

FIRST OFF, Silly was getting on my nerves, so I drowned him.

THEN TWooie was getting on my nerves, so I drowned him too.

Drowned him DEAD!  And waited until his stiff bloated corpse washed back up onto the sand.  And then I LAUGHED!

Then I said MEAN things to Maisie about her parents, like ‘Your mama was a Golden Retriever,” and made her SAD.

Then I started a DOGFIGHTING operation!  With dogs that can FLY!

Or, you know, I took everyone swimming at the slough because it was 8 million degrees outside today and got hotter by 17 degrees each time I thought to myself “wow is it ever hot.”  It’s so hot that I wore SHORTS today.  You may not know this about me, but I **loathe** shorts.  I think they’re an insult to fashion (and I have no fashion sense!).  But I wanted to go into the water too, so I wore boy’s board shorts.  The top half of me is brown as a berry, but the bottom half is white, like TWooie’s corpse.

We like this new swimming place, because there’s usually nobody there except us, and it’s got a sandy beach, and Silly isn’t smart enough to find the path back up to the walkway and run halfway to Alberta before I notice he’s missing.  Win win all around!

Silly is actually getting a lot better about sticking around; we’ve worked really hard on recalls and lots of rewards and he’s finding it more fun to hang out with us than it is to run off to do whatever it is he does when he runs off.  He leaves for his new forever home this weekend, and I am actually going to miss the little (okay, ENORMOUS) booger quite a bit.  Also I am jealous of his new upcoming life in frickin’ BELIZE.

That will leave just Crazy Miss Maisie to find a home for.  Maisie, who has decided to become less and less border collie every day, for some reason.  She remains a super high octane doggie with an NO STOP ONLY GO attitude toward life, but physically she has decided to bulk out like The Hulk and become some kind of mystery mix.

She’s still super cute though.  And lots of fun, though still a challenge!  She is pretty independent minded and sometimes I’ll, say, call her to come and she’ll stand and eyeball me and weigh her choices before deciding whether to come get a cookie or saunter off and find her own reward.  You can actually SEE the wheels crankin’ along in her cranium while she conveyor-belts her options through the decision-making process.  She’s going to make someone laugh a lot in their life together!

And speaking of independent-minded … Mr. Woo has become rather cranky in his old age.  Tonight I asked him to come out of his hidey-hole under my chair to I could put his flea treatment on and he, while staring me bald-faced in the eyeball, refused to come out.  So when I reached under to grab his collar, he decided to snap off two or three of my fingers.  Asshole.  Maybe he’s still ashamed of his sad little penis-tail … which is growing hair and now covered in a very thin and sad little layer of peach fuzz.

He doesn’t have the same enthusiasm for swimming he did in his younger, oranger years, but he can still be convinced to go in for a paddle for his Wootie Toy(tm), provided there’s a cookie at the end of his swim.

I even convinced* his brother to go in for a dip today

(*lured him out to floating depth with a cookie and then gave him a light push, like a floaty toy, and he bobbed away further into the water before figuring out how to steer himself back to shore)

and this is how he repaid me.  He is still, 7 hours later, holding onto about 81 lbs of sand which he intends to shed onto my bed this evening, I’m sure.

Peetie + water = diving.  I should really try dock diving with Slender Dog.

Although I’m not really sure I understand what’s happening in this photo.

I feel confident she too will miss Silly, based on the expression on her face in this photo.

I plunked both Spring and Fae into the water for a swim as well, but since both of them splashed so frantically fast back to shore and I was using a long lens, I have no photographic proof of it.

My neighbour Wendy showed us this to place for swimming a couple of weeks ago.  She has a super cute Kelpie puppy, who doesn’t steal everyone else’s water toys and hoard them on the beach (I’m looking at you, Maisie)

I didn’t get any photos of Dexter today, but this one from a couple of weeks ago is a pretty accurate representation of all swimming outings with Dexter.

And then there is Miss Pants, who is allergic to raindrops, but magnetically attracted to large bodies of water.  She remains a 2D enigma.

In other news, I’ve been invited to photograph dock diving at our local fair next month (I said “local fair.”  I think I officially live in the country now.) which is exciting, because I’ve never photographed that sport before.  Also exciting is that the giant pile of dirt and logs that lives between my Big Tin Can On Wheels and the poultry pen has been almost entirely tractored away, which means I can put up a real fence and my dogs will have their own yard to play in!  Sometimes I remember that I used to live in an apartment on the 11th floor and rolled my eyes when someone said “How do you do it without a yard?”  and wonder if that actually ever was even real.

Now if you will excuse us, it’s back to sitting and sweating …

 

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!

 

 

 

Why Is It Raining?

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Its June.  Last week we broke all kinds of records all over BC for heat.  Today I had plans to hang out with Auntie Michelle … outdoors of course.  So naturally, it’s been raining since before I woke up.  Harumph.

Good thing I took photos yesterday I guess :)

This is for all y’all that think little FaeFae is so sweet.  *This* is the Fae I know and shake my fist at regularly.

Fae, sit next to your sister and pose for a cute photo.

“I don’t wanna.  She makes me look fat and I hate her.”

That’s cuz you are fat, Fae.

Fae looks like someone dropped a cocktail weenie on the carpet – sausage-like and hairy.  You know, if a bespoiled cocktail weenie could be emo.  And to be fair, Addy makes pencils look fat.

Fae was much happier once I busted out the ball and focused ALL OF MY ATTENTION ON HER.  That’s the way the chubby little princess prefers to live her life.

And I have to admit, she is *really superduper adorable* when she gets the zoomies.

My narrow little Addypants is also pretty darned adorable, especially now that she appears to be housetrained! (Lousy / cold /wet weather will remain the ultimate test of her new super hero abilities, of course).  The other day she actually *asked* to go outside and pee.  I near about fainted from the shock.  It would appear that the anti-pee-pee-pants I humiliated her with have served their purpose, and shamed her into holding her bladder in the “house.”

Saying “house” is a habit I can’t break.  Like “frisbee” for disc and “Kleenex” for facial tissue and “Flamboyance(c)” for giant fluffy dog tail.  And to be honest, most of the time it doesn’t feel much different from living in the small house I spent 8 years at.  Except for a few things, like …

It moves.  Not, like, it goes on vacations, but rather it lacks a foundation so it bounces and jiggles.  My desk is located in the big slide out and every time I move in my chair or a dog walks past, we sway and wiggle around.  I’m pretty used to it now, but I’m curious to know how flexible this place is going to be when the Big Winds come (cuz I’m smack in a wind corridor that whistles down through the pass, so all winter long it’s going to blow straight at my house.  I mean rv.)

Living in this thing involves an unhealthy amount of attention paid to liquids.  It of course has holding tanks, for the galley (kitchen – why is it called a galley?  I’m not on a fucking boat!) waste water and the grey water from the shower and such.  The tanks fill up reasonably quickly and require emptying, because if you don’t empty them, they will back up into your rv, which is all around bad news.  There are sensors in the tanks and you can check their levels on a little panel in the kitchen and I feel like I’m checking it every 20 seconds, I swear.  And, distastefully, the “other” tank, cuz …. ewww.  And as it costs me $125 every time that needs to be emptied, I encourage my guests to go use the portapotties by the agility building instead ;-)  haha, just kidding.  Maybe.  And of course the propane tanks levels, which I have to go outside to check.

There’s nowhere to put SHOES.  These rv building people think of pretty much everything, I have to admit … but I guess they think people going on vacation are going to be barefoot, because there is simply nowhere to put your shoes when you take them off.  So my shoes end up getting kicked all around the place by wrestling dogs.

All in all, other than the bedroom, which remains irritatingly small, with 100% NOWHERE to put my laundry basket, it’s not so different from living in one of the many bachelor apartments I’ve rented over the years.  Dexter and TWooie would disagree though, because they don’t like each other and feel that more rooms would be better.  Ironically, they both want to hang out on the bed in their down time, and I spend a lot of time yelling “Shut UP” at them as they growl and make snappy ugly face at each other from opposite sides of the bed.

Not that either of them hear me.  We all know that Dexter is as deaf as two doornails, and I suspected the WooTWoo were becoming hard of hearing in their old age (hard to tell though, because neither of them have ever been what you’d call “super obedient”) and yesterday it became quite clear just how much hearing they’ve lost.  I set them up for this photo, told them “stay” and then got into position to shoot.  Once I’d gotten the sitting portrait I told them “break” so I could get a photo of them running toward me.  Then I told them “okay.”  Then I told them “guys, come on!” and they both just sat there staring at me because they couldn’t hear me.  And I was only about 20 feet away :(  Why my special little guys gotta get old?  I had to actually walk up to them and tell them “break” from about 5 feet away before they’d move.

These two … are ridiculous.  As usual. And I swear Winter’s head isn’t as big as it looks.  I mean how could it be, he’s got almost nothing in there with respect to brains!

But it never fails; his melon always looks genetically modified in photos.

Here’s an obligatory photo of Peetie because she lives here so I have to photograph her.

Just kidding, she’s actually a lot less irritating than she used to be and is somewhat lovable now.  Mostly.  She still has some irritating habits, like biting her siblings at dinner preparation time, and I still hate practicing agility with her because she still spends all her time staring at my hands and crashing through obstacles rather than looking where she’s going, but otherwise she’s chilled out considerably.

These photos are all posed because we are still not fenced.  There’s still a pile of crap (dirt, logs etc) smack in the middle of where the yard will go that needs to be moved with tractor before I can put the fencing up.  I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to letting the dogs run around all together rather than two at a time.  On Regionals weekend, since I wasn’t entered, I knew the agility building would be dead empty all weekend, so I left the door open and let the dogs come and go in their xpenned area … and espied my cat Cyrus strolling around up by the front of the parking lot!!  He always comes home, but that’s not a habit I can let him get into because not everydog who uses the agility building is cat friendly.  So no more leaving the door open!

I will say though that having to set up my shots makes me take them more carefully; I can be quite lazy when photographing my own dogs, but I’ve been “working” our backdrop and I’m pretty pleased with the results.  Especially when the subject is my extra handsome special guy :)

On a whim, I even busted out one of my strobes the other evening and took this awesome sunset image.  It was totally a last minute decision, so I just used a bare strobe with a reflector rather and didn’t dig out the softbox or anything.  The sun sets in the *opposite* direction of the beautiful pastoral vista I look at (of course) but sometimes it throws back a gorgeous pink reflection on the clouds in the “good” direction … not that night (also of course).  So I made do with shooting in the actual direction of the sunset, and despite the gravel parking lot, I am super happy with how it turned out!  Look at that sky!!

I’m saving up for portable strobes, because mine are for studio and have to be plugged in, but portable ones could go ANYWHERE and then I shoot ANYWHERE and I am so damned excited about the possibilities!!

I just love photographing dogs so much, I wish it’s all I ever had to do to make a living.  I have had some pretty awesome sessions this month and all it does is make me wish I had more (I do have more, but I mean MORE MORE.  All the time more).

I mean … come on.  Puppies.  First day home puppies.  Floopsy faced squishy boxer puppies … in lavender.  Come ON.

And how about a Frenchie in a FREAKIN’ BOWTIE??  How many people’s jobs involve formally-attired flat faced doggos??

And I made this flower crown for this frenchie, because she couldn’t be outdone by her handsome date.  Folks, I bought a glue gun.  THERE IS NO STOPPING ME NOW!!

I also took advantage of living next to an agility building to take some uncluttered agility shots with the beautiful green and blue backdrop available right outside the door.  I’m hoping to offer individual sessions for people looking for specific shots on specific equipment without all the trial crap in the background, because I’m so pleased with how it worked out.

I also got a remote trigger so I could try some nifty angles.

So I’ve been keeping busy, indulging my creative side.  I am already planning my Christmas sessions because I have some really good ideas for what I want to offer this year, and I want to be well prepared :)

And the sun has come out, so we’re going to head out and take advantage of the un-rain!  Happy weekend everyone :)

 

 

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!