Wootube!

Dolittle's got nothin' on me

Nowhere Particular

And The Results Are In!

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But first …

Today is the 6th Addyversary of The Pants flying in from sunny California to make my life even more chaotic than it was before (which is sayin’ something!)

This itty bitty shitty TWIT whom I love more than anything is perpetually naughty, has a weird and twisted ongoing deathwish and is the snuggliest, cutest, most adorable thing to ever happen to me.

HAPPY ADDYVERSARY!

My plan was do a whole blog post a la … the me of yesteryears, but I have come to the conclusion that it’s pointless trying to take photos of the dogs around here because there are no lovely woodlined paths or lovely fall colours to frame them, just a bunch of dead grass. And taking them all somewhere is an exercise is SHEER FRUSTRATION. And I have only two days off a week now because I gave up dogwalking and got a “real” job that has stupid, hateful hours and The Food Lady is unaccustomed to fitting in all the things she has to do in two tiny stupid windows called “days off.” Jobs suck and I hate them. I will be forever bitter that I can’t just photograph things all day long and make a kabillion dollars doing it. Or at least a good living.

Anyway, I wish I could blog more, but it’s going to take some creative planning to get blog-worthy photos so there’s actually some content and not just me rambling on and on.

So.

Now, the moment you have all been waiting for…

WHAT THE F*CK IS THE WOOTWOO?

What breed(s) are they?

Are they related?

Has this question kept you up nights for the past 10 years?

ALL IS REVEALED.


So despite coming from the same area of the province, with the same date of birth, and immediately taking to one another on first meeting and being basically inseparable for a decade, DNA suggests they aren’t related.

DNA also suggests Wootie is made up largely of breeds that were apparently shrunk in the dryer prior to mating. Because I don’t know about you and where you come from, but where I come from, there are no 30lb Malamutes or Golden Retrievers.

They do share some breeds in common, including Sheltie (which I guessed) and Collie (which I also guessed) as well as Cocker and GSD (which I never a million years would have guessed) but I was VERY surprised to learn there was no Aussie in Mr. Woo AT ALL!

So … thoughts? Was it what you expected? Do you think the results are bunk? SPILL YOUR THOUGHT TANKS, B*TCHES!

And on the 23rd of August..

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doG said “There will on this day be born a puppy.

“And he will be a pain in the ass to his littermates.


“And he will eat your underpants.

“And he will stand on stuff.

“And he will totally BOMB OUT as your agility dog.

“And he will appear in and on weird things and places.

“But although he may not turn out to be the sport dog you were hoping for, he will become your bestest buddy.”

And so it came to pass that Dexter “Longstride” Morgan turned 10 years on this day. And he’s the best dog ever.

(Even if his mom’s photshopping is poorly executed because she is crunched for time)

Can you believe my special little guy is 10 years old today??

We went to the Super Secret Swimming Hole for a couple of hours to run and swim and get as sandy as we wanted. Then we celebrated with a cake from Auntie Fiona a mini photo shoot in my tin can’s “living room.” And then we took a group photo, because it looks hilarious with the wide angle lens ;-)

So please say Happy Birthday to Dexter, because there were years where I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to make it to the ripe old age of ten without me punting him off the edge of the universe ;-) Fortunately he turned into a really super wonderful dog, and I can’t imagine my life without him.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DE-MO!!

Food Lady Who??

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I know, I know. I’m the worst blogger in the history of blogging. It’s been MONTHS since I posted anything. I have totally been phoning it in with cheap one offs on the FB page. You probably all think about me and feel like this:

But you probably don’t have grass seeds on your forehead while you do it. Or maybe you do, who am I to judge your life choices? After all, I live with NINE FREAKIN’ DOGS, which is in large part why the blogging is on the back burner…I’m sick to death of dogs at the moment. I feel like we all live in kinda roomy cardboard box together and everywhere I turn, there’s another damn dog underfoot. I’ve stepped on them, accidentally punted them down the stairs, slammed noses and tails in the STOP-SNEAKING-INTO-THE-BATHROOM-AND-EATING-THE-CATS’-FOOD babygate and one memorable time I yanked up my bed quilt in a fit of pique and sent Fae flying through the air. Those big, sad-kid eyeballs do NOT forgive.

They’re driving me a bit batshit right now, probably because I am with them 24/7 and don’t ever get a chance to miss them. Except, you know, when one of them squeezes out of the yard and goes walkabout (Addy in particular appears to be made of liquid and can ooze on out of anything bigger than a quarter) and then I have to go hunt them down. And when I do leave them at home, all I do is worry about what havoc they are wreaking on my home while I’m gone. Apparently being crammed into this tin can is as stressful for them as it is for me.

So naturally, I did the sensible thing, and brought in a foster dog to round out this insanity to an even ten.

Everyone is getting a puppy but me.

The Sadist’s wife got a puppy.

And my friend Dorothy got a puppy.

And Harold got a puppy.

(Although to be fair, his puppy might be an alligator)

And then random puppies keep popping up ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE at trials.

Even Auntie Fiona got a puppy! It would be more dramatic if I had a photo of her puppy for here, but I haven’t gotten around to taking any yet. But trust me – SHE’S REALLY FUCKING CUTE!!

So I got a foster puppy. Because even though I currently hate dogs, I have massive puppy envy. Yes, I am aware I have a problem.

But she only lasted a week with me, because she is so adorable and sweet that everybody wanted to adopt her and she went to her new home right away. I barely had a chance to take photos of her before she was gone again. It wasn’t very satisfying. Harumph.

Meanwhile, my stable/solid “puppy” has turned into a freaky idiot. Today’s phobia was banners flapping in the wind, even though yesterday was windier and those same banners went unnoticed. Also, submissive peeing is our new favourite activity in public, apparently.

The other reason I haven’t been blogging is because my yard is ugly – it does not inspire me to pick up the camera and document anything, as it’s just a bunch of gravel and dirt with three dogs chasing a ball, Wootie whining because he’s bored and Addy liquifying through livestock fencing to run around the parking lot and trying to get into the training building to beg for cookies.

We have to wait until the building is not in use and go use the off leash area, and that hardly ever happens. This weekend is Regionals though, so everybody is competing and nobody is using the property, so we got to enjoy some quiet time in the grass instead of loud time in the gravel. I think they were pretty happy about this.

Even Wootie played fetch with his obnoxious yellow frisbee, and he hardly ever plays fetch anymore, he just patrols the fenceline making pathetic whining sounds.

He also does this thing where when I try to get him to come inside and he shoots under the deck and won’t come back out. I think he’d be quite happy to spend all of the nice weather outside chilling – the WooTWoo definitely miss being farmdogs. But I don’t trust them to not find a way out of the yard if they tried hard enough, and also TWooie takes offense to EveryDog in the parking lot and I could do without the barking.

Whereas these idiots could care less about anything other than playing ball. Especially Maisie. I wish I had the same relationship with Maisie that Maisie has with her faded Chuck it ball that she squishes into a non ball shape. She’s got a set of chompers on her!

I like to say that Maisie is just Tweed visiting in a much bitchier body. She shares some of his same traits – her personal space bubble from other dogs is large, especially when she is sleeping. She likes to smell other dogs’ bathing suit areas, but they aren’t allowed to sniff hers as she snaps at them when they do. And she only plays with ONE ball and refuses to play with anything else, also a Tweed trick. She is also thinkie like he was, but she has less focus, which is mostly my fault as I haven’t really done anything of note with her, training wise. I’ve been a really lazy, unmotivated trainer/handler for a long time now. I feel like just getting through every day sucks up all my energy, and it’s impossible to do any training in this place because there’s nowhere to lock up all the other dogs and they’re all up in our business. And when we’re all out together, it’s a chore and a half just to keep track of them all, never mind work with them. Honestly, it’s just exhausting.

Maybe I’m just bummed because Facebook reminded me yesterday that it has been 4 years since Tweed went to the Big Naughty Dog Box in the great ether. I miss my good boy. But I also miss living in a house. Never thought I’d wax nostalgic for the tiny house with the mystery mini river running through the yard in coyote country.

Miss this face!

After Tweed died, I had an overwhelming desire to get another boy puppy, like immediately. Which made me feel instantly bad. And I never did … I got myself 4 more girl dogs instead. That’s so weird. I keep eyeballing BC/Aussie litters, but even if I did want to saddle myself with yet ANOTHER annoying, underfoot hairy family member, I am not convinced that I would find a good one. I meet so many of this cross that end up with a tiny BC head and a big fluffy Aussie butt, or they ended up being 65lbs, or they have a weird snarky temperament. I guess Mr Square was a once in a lifetime dog!

The OneMindSameDog terrier siblings spend all their time hunting mices. They generally are not successful, but they have incredible amounts of optimism that they one day will be. I wish I had their sunny outlook on life! I got Spring to play exactly ONE frisbee throw and then she was back to sticking her nose through the fence, smelling the invisible mices on the other side.

Meanwhile, crazy Miss Maisie will go until she drops. And when she drops, she will still have her beloved ball wedged firmly in her teefs.

Fae also wants the ball, but only because Deafter has it and won’t give it up. So her favourite activity is yelling in his face to make him drop it. Joke’s on her though, cuz he can’t hear her ear splitting barkshrieks.

Can you believe Dexter “Longstride” Morgan is going to be TEN this August? TEN! It blows my mind. I feel like he went right from being a crazy adolescent straight to being on the verge of being a senior. I don’t even know what happened to the time in between. Maybe it’s because he’s still as crazy and intense as ever.

He is so deaf now. And the funny thing about it is that he KNOWS he is deaf. I never know how to explain this in a way that makes sense, but … like, so he prefers to poop far far away, always has (it’s a trait of his litter. Such a weird genetic thing to pass down through generations). Whenever possible, he likes to leave the yard and go way over to the other side of the property to drop a log. Of course, he mostly can’t do that as he’s fenced in. When the buffalo aren’t on the property, we do play ball out in the field behind us (they’re back now, so we aren’t playing back there). And then when it’s time to go back inside, I give him the hand signal to come and heel … as we walk back to the yard, he slowly drops further and further back until he’s out of my peripheral vision, and then he turns and BOOKS as fast as he can in the other direction so he can go to his preferred toileting area. And I know he knows that calling him is ineffective, because as soon as I notice he’s gone I will turn around and see him glance back EVERSOQUICKLY to see if I’ve noticed, but not long enough to make eye contact because then I would give him his sign to come again, and he’s a good dog fundamentally and would ‘listen’ to me, but he’s figured out if he doesn’t make eye contact, he doesn’t have to listen. It’s actually kind of ingenius, if a little creepy.

He’s also super smart – if the training building is empty, he will take his time coming back, squeeze through the gate on the other side of the parking lot and meander through the parking area, marking various areas before ending up at my front gate. But if there are vehicles in the parking lot, he knows it’s off limits and he will come home around the back through the field and wait patiently at my back gate to be let back in. I love that he’s worked this out for himself. He’s another once in a lifetime dog.

Maisie and I did some agility training last weekend with The Sadist … I had forgotten (blocked out/had PTSD) how much yelling and belitting is involved training under that Mad Man! I am still hearing “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” and “WHY AREN’T YOU RUNNING FAAAAAAASTERRRRRRR???” was involved. My calves ache just thinking about it. But I brought DeMo in to try a gamble and damn if he didn’t just figure it out first try, even if he can’t hear my verbals.

He’s also still super duper handsome.

Spring had a go too and did a marvelous job at it. She is also awesome when we do club practice. I went ’round Regionals on Friday to cheer on my friends who were entered in the steeplechases and had a momentary pang of regret that I hadn’t entered her … then I went back to my van to get something and she was curled up in a teeny little ball way in the back of her crate, because she KNEW we were at Thunderbird. She really hates that venue so very much. Poor sensitive little mices hunter.

Pants remains eternally adorable and equally as annoying. She spends her time figuring out new and creative ways to escape the yard, or off leash area, and doesn’t care if I notice or not. (She also is a killing machine – yesterday I heard her eating something on a dog bed and looked over my screen to see what contraband she’d scored this time, and it was a baby chicken. Because her current life goal is to eat all of them. So far we are Baby chickens-14, Addy-2)

Periodically I scream “PANTS! PANTS! PANTSPANTPANTS!” and she comes flying over for a cookie.

Then she resumes her flagrant disregard for my wishes and continues looking for a way to be bad, until eventually she grows tired of arguing with me and turns into a cat-in-a-sunbeam.

She had her sorta-annual epileptic seizure last week. I hate seeing those :( She is so confused when it happens. Fortunately, she bounces back very quickly and then goes about her business of being naughty like nothing ever happened. As awful as it is, I am just glad she doesn’t have it worse.

I also haven’t been blogging as much because I was pretty busy with sessions for other people, and the more of those I have, the less time I have to take and edit photos of my own beasts. I did sunrise tulip sessions in April and May and they were a big hit. The results were fantastic, even though it was freakin’ hard to drag my ass and all my gear out at 4:30 in the morning.

I even snuck mine in one evening for a couple of quick shots :)

I’ve stopped shooting general agility trials, and have myself available only for big or major events, like the annual ASCofBC trial, and UKI cups. It’s just so much work for so little return otherwise, and a lot of wear and tear on my gear. But I’ve been asked to do a rally and conformation event next weekend … I don’t know from conformation, so I’m a bit worried about how well that’ll turn out. I tried my hand at it on Cruz in the tulips and think it turned out pretty okay though!

And I’m still working on perfecting my sunset shots, mostly because I just love them so much!

I just love my strobe so much, it’s the best thing I’ve bought in a long time. It’s totally changed my photo game. My next goals are to get a full frame camera, and a wider lens as well. So many toys, so little money!

I’ve also got some pretty exciting news that I can’t share yet (no it’s not the WooTWoo’s DNA results; we got TWooie’s back, but the Woo’s sample – much like Woo himself – was naughty and had to be re-processed. But I will definitely blog those when they come in!) but check back for that in a month or so.

In the meantime, I will be working on putting up my new solid wood fence. My goal this summer is to make the yard secure enough that I can leave the dogs out in it without worrying they will plot a get away. I am hoping having the freedom of the yard will ease up the close-quarters stress. The solid fence will go across the front of the yard so they can’t see the parking lot, which will cut down on that trigger, as they still have never really gotten over seeing tons of people and dogs in “their” territory. And also it will be nice to be out in my yard without people looking at me all the time. I have lived in the stix for far too long to be comfortable being sociable with people before my coffee. My stepdad replaced a fence for a client and gave me the old fencing … it’s worn and needs a sand and a stain, but it will do the trick.

Now I am going to go run some errands and then pop into Regionals and hopefully catch some of the awards ceremonies. Would you like to play some frisbee with Mr. Woo while I’m gone?

GOTCHA

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On this day in 2010, a FAT asshole joined the WooCrew.  He eschewed the other four legged members of the family, and took out a hit on Dexterpuppy, but took a shine to His Orangeness and that’s remained his MO for the last 9 years.  Except he’s much slimmer now.

Happy Gotcha Day, TWooie (formerly known as, *gag* Harley)!!!

It would be so much more satisfying to be able to include his DNA results here, along with the reveal of whether or not he is actually related to his brother Wootie, but those results won’t be back for a couple of months.

For his Gotcha Day he got me yelling at him at 1:30AM to “SHUT UP AND LET ME SLEEP I LET YOU OUT BEFORE BED ALREADY!!” because he had some “bad bottom” and had to go, which he did, allll across the living room floor.  Blech.  Maybe too many goldfishie crackers?

But you gotta admit that the flying goldfishie crackers make for some super hilarious photos, so … worth it!

I recently got myself a portable strobe in an attempt to up my photo game.  I want to be able to light doggies anywhere, any time, and take advantage of locations where extension cords cannot go, like the beach and the mountains and at sunset and sunrise.  And also, apparently, in my living room, with the backdrop pinned over the TV slide out, whilst throwing fish crackers at my dogs.  And what I have discovered is that most of my dogs suck at catching cookies I throw at them.

Addy is shocked – SHOCKED I TELL YOU – that I would have the audacity to hurl crackers at her.

Winter’s strategy is to entrap the flying fish within Mouth Bars of Gooey Substance.

Wootie confused them with a game of soccer, and tried to head them into the goalie net.

But Dexter, dear, darling Dexter, was the worst of them all.  He has exactly zero concept of how to catch anything.  At all.  Cookies are no exception.

Fortunately, he is very good at other things, like being extremely handsome and – more importantly – stationary, for minutes at a time, while I fiddle with position and power output of my new strobe to get the perfect sunset shot.

He really is such a very good boy.  Sometime within the last year, he has unfortunately been afflicted with a nasty, biting parasite :(

Its scientific name is Maisie ChompsHisNeck.

This parasite seems benign … even kinda cute.  But it is relentless, and whenever Dexter tries to run, the parasite attaches itself to his neck.

Getting upset with the parasite just causes it to become more aggressive.

Maisie is becoming quite the little pest!  When she was a small puppy and I wrote up her adoption profile, one of the things I warned people about was that she had the potential for dog on dog aggression as a direct byproduct of over arousal.  The number of applicants who failed to grasp what that could even mean was depressing.  The number of applicants who dismissed this possibility as me being overly dramatic was just annoying.  I got a lot of condescending nods and discreet eyerolls.  And here we are 7 or 8 months later, and when Maisie gets really wound up, she likes to redirect onto one of her playmates and bite them in the neck or face.  This is a good place to insert an “I told you so,” I think.

Poor Dexter, for all his creeping around and flashing Mad Teeth(tm) at things, is at heart a pacifist and couldn’t bite another dog if his life depended on it.  I’ve said many times that if he had just kicked the living shit out TWooie once, TWooie would have a lot more respect for him.  But instead he does the creeping/teeth thing while TWooie snaps and him and pulls out his hair, and never takes it any further than madmouth.  He does the same thing with Maisie – as much as he would like her to stop losing her shit and biting him, he doesn’t know how to get her to quit it and leave him alone.  So, bless him, he tries to get her to knock it off by using the universal hand signal for STAHHHP.

It doesn’t work of course, and Maisie just thinks he’s boxing with her and gets more amped up.  So she is now learning to wear a basket muzzle, so that when we are going for a walk (she doesn’t do this when playing ball, and sticks very diligently to her own ball and doesn’t chase anyone else’s) she won’t leave holes in my poor boy’s neck and shoulders.  He used to really love playing the run-and-snap-teeth game with her, the same one he played with Tweed for years, but then she started attacking him and now he’s all huffy about it and doesn’t want to run with her anymore.  We’re hoping the muzzle means they’ll be able to play that game again.

She is an awesome puppy in most ways, but she’s kind of a dick when it comes to getting all worked up about stuff.  She is also a dick when it comes to her Jolly Rope Ball.  Doesn’t matter what other toy she has, if someone else picks up that particular toy, she turns into a raging bitch.  Poor Dexter can only play with it if Maisie is on a leash.

Poor Wootie is so scared of her that he won’t even try to play with it anymore, so I had to buy him his own and we only play with it when Maisie is in a crate in the house … otherwise we have one terrified Wootie and one Rage-ie Maisie with TWO Jolly Rope Balls to snarl over.

He is, however, allowed to play with his frisbee unmolested.

And did you notice in the previous photo that his Flamboyance(tm) is growing back in nice and full?  Finally!  It’s still a pale shade of the gloriousness that it once was, but at least it has some heft and volume again.  It’s thicker even than The Flambe(tm) of his brother’s, at last!

Fae Fae (also known by her stage name, Poops On The Floor Every Night While Everyone Else Is Sleeping) is (was) allowed to play with Maisie’s frisbee, mostly because everyone fears her tiny warbly wrath.  Until Maisie and her stupid sister Peetie pulled the blue frisbee into tiny rubbery bits by arguing over who got to hold it.

Fae is such a little bag.  Everyone thinks she is so sweet and adorable and full of hair, but that’s because they never see her flashing her pearly whites at everyone and stalking around with scorpion tail being a total hag.  She won’t even play with Addy anymore, and Addy’s mostly too scared to try to attempt it … though once in a while her silly sighthound side gets the best of her and she gives it a go.  They get along fine, they just don’t really play or snuggle (well, nobody snuggles with Fae, cuz she’s mean).  Like right now Addy is snuggled up in a dog bed with Spring, while Fae is curled up on TOP of Addy’s snuggle sack in the chair next to me, so Addy can’t use it.  Super bitch.

Don’t feel too bad for Addy though.  Because she is super spoiled.  Since the warm weather beat back the snow (seriously, Mother Nature is on crack … we went from well below zero and two feet of snow to 22+ tank top weather in the space of about 4 days), her frog-shaped splashing pool is back in business and she spends a good deal of time out there yelling at me to throw water with the chuck it so she can chase the droplets, or toss pebbles in the pool so she can try and find them with her little feetsies.  And a friend of mine just gave us a second plastic pool shaped like a crab, which we are about to fill up with damp sand, so she can dig in it to her heart’s content.  Because she is just THAT spoiled that she gets her own waterpark and her own beach.  If I could get her to transfer her love of chasing water droplets and/or wet sand to a frisbee, she would be the world’s most adorable disc dog, but Addy don’t play that.

As I have no disc dogs of my own, I instead did a model call for disc dogs just so I could take some photos of them.  Other people’s dogs are just that much more talented than mine.  Also bendier.

This one was my favourite.  Did so many cool things with the frisbee!

But this guy here, Dylan, I just love.  I first met him when I was photographing dock diving last August at the fair.  He’s a border collie/whippet mix and he is super athletic, super hilarious and generally just really really nice.  One day he might be a daddy, and I’m hoping the timing is right for me to get a puppy from him!  I am also hoping that is a long way away, because currently I have 80 million dogs and I don’t need any more.

 

Photographing disc was a fun way to spend a Sunday.  I have never tried disc with my dogs, because I have only a couple of dogs that are leapers and they aren’t the same ones that really like frisbees.  Maisie likes frisbee a lot, but she’s more of an on-the-ground dog.  I have started doing some agility foundation work with her and she is catching on super quick.  I think she will be a nice little agility dog – not crazy fast (or just crazy), like, say, Lavish:

(funny story – I posted this photo on my Big Air page and when I showed it to Lavish’s owner, she said “ASSHOLE” … and I still don’t know if she meant me or Lavish.  Either way, I was delighted!  LOL)

… but rather I think Maisie will be more like Tweed – reasonably fast, concise and think-y on the course.  She is just generally a think-y dog (except when she is being a parasite).  I really miss playing agility with Tweed (also I just miss Tweed).  Dexter was like trying to stop that train from that movie with Denzel Washington.  Spring is like trying to to get a rock in a slingshot without arms, and then suddenly achieving it and shooting it across the planet.  Fae is like trying to get a mouse on speed to concentrate.

Mr. Woo was like trying to smack a particularly irritating mosquito.  doG love him.

But I think Maisie is going to take her “job” seriously and understand what the end game is.  She’s just that kind of dog.

Until then, my handsome Dexter will keep me busy posing beautifully for beautiful photos :)

I’m a lot more chipper these days, you may have noticed.  Now that I’m not trapped in 12 freezing-cold square feet without water or a working toilet, with 9 super bored dogs, life is a lot less stressful.  Thank you all for sticking with me through the dark times :)

Also, save your pennies because I have some truly amazing themed photo sessions coming up in the next few months, at some truly amazing and STUNNING locations!  To make sure you’re kept in the loop, be sure to like and follow my photography page on Facebook.  You won’t want to miss these, if photos of your doggos are what you’ve been craving!

There’Snow Winter, like A Cold Winter …

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When everything is frozen.

We got hit with some CUH-RAZY weather the last couple of weeks, after an unusually mild winter.  I was feeling pretty pleased at not having to contend with anything exceptionally brutal my first winter in the stupid tin can, but Mother Nature showed us!  After nearly two weeks of below zero temperatures, both day and night, and days/nights on end of endless winds ranging from 50-90 KMs an hour, everything froze. And I do mean everything. The water was the first to go – the first day it froze, my drinking water hose committed suicide, and I was forced to  to go buy an ungodly expensive heated water line (still paying that off, actually).  I was apparently not the only one caught off guard, as it was the last one in stock.  By the time I got it hooked up, it was too late… the water lines in my trailer had frozen.  Then the underground waterline froze.  You have no idea how much water you go through every day until you’re using bottles you have to fill up at your neighbour’s place every other day.

You also have to be super cognizant of how much of that bottled water you’re emptying into your grey water tanks when they are frozen/frozen shut and you have no means of emptying them.  And speaking of emptying … black water tank frozen too.  Enough said.

The first night of the bad windstorms, two panels of my poultry shed blew right off the frame.  My poor, tropically-inclined Mexican stepdad had to come out and brave the tundra winds to fix the shed so my birds didn’t freeze.  We then stuffed the whole shed with straw up to their eyeballs in an effort to keep them warm.  Turns out bales of straw expand a LOT when you untie them, so the second bale of straw was somewhat superfluous.  We put up boards all around the underside of the trailer in a (as it turns out) wishful attempt to insulate the underneath and used the extra straw bale to close one of the gaps.  The gap that happened to be at the intake and outtake flow of the furnace.  Which, as it turns out, gets really, really hot.  And straw bales and heat aren’t super good friends, so it caught on fire.  Which is a cool thing to see happen when you have no running water.

Which makes you paranoid forever after about running the furnace, so you don’t turn it on at night.  So when your power goes out because of the wind, so does your space heater.  And when you get up in the morning and can see your breath in your living room, and you try to put your shoes on to take the dogs out only to find that your shoes are frozen to the floor, you realize that you pretty much hate everything that ever existed.

And then it snowed.

In some places there is no snow, and in others, the drifts are over 3 feet high.  The poor poultry exit their house every morning and stare at a wall of snow, which confuses and depresses them. Addy faces a similar wall of snow when I force her to go outside to pee, which confuses and depresses her.  Actually it doesn’t depress her, she’s irrepressible.  But she sure doesn’t like it.  I think I’m not going to like it when it melts.  I just hope it does it slowly, or we’re all gonna drown.

At least the snow managed to time itself around some important big commutes I had to make the last couple of weeks, and didn’t interfere with my ability to travel into The City.  Dexter and I have this job we do from time to time, where we go to casting calls for tv commercials and Dexter (and sometimes Maisie) spend the day interacting with actors auditioning for parts in which they would have to interact with a dog in the actual commercial.  This way the casting director can see if the actors are actually comfortable with dogs.  It’s actually a pretty fun way to spend a day or two – the dogs get a million pats and hugs and snuggles and cookies, and I get paid money.  And then sometimes the director likes my dog so much he gets a part in the commercial too, which is what happened to Dex, so last week we went and he “acted” and I “animal wrangled” him, for which I also get paid.  I didn’t ask if I was allowed to share what he’s in or doing, so I won’t, but if I ever happen to see the commercial once it airs, I will post it on the blog!  All I can say is that he got to do one of his favourite things ever, and he didn’t get yelled at to STOP THAT!! for it while he did it, so he was in heaven!

I wasn’t even sure he was going to be able to do the commercial for a minute there, because in the days in between, he suddenly LOST HIS MIND.  He was FRANTIC, couldn’t lay down for more than a few seconds; he’d spring to his feet and start racing around the ‘house’ and then stop and scratch frantically.  He’d leap up and race down the hallway to the bedroom and back, was scared of the dog beds, was falling asleep standing up in between bouts of being frantic and he did it ALL NIGHT LONG.  None of us got any sleep.  The next day, driving to our hike, he was exactly the same except he was seatbelted in the front seat and couldn’t go anywhere, so he thrashed around and kicked the dashboard and flung himself from side to side.  It was extremely unnerving.  When we got home that evening, I checked him over and discovered this terrible, awful rash across his shoulders and under his armpits.  I washed them, and slathered them in a cortisone spray, then put him on an old t-shirt so he couldn’t scratch and watched as he visibly calmed down and finally fell asleep.  I realized that the rash was in the exact place his seatbelt harness sits – he hasn’t worn it since, and it hasn’t happened again.  I don’t know why he is suddenly reacting to the harness he has been wearing forever, but I’m just glad he is back to normal.  “Normal” being a relative term, when it comes to Dexter.  Or any of my dogs, really.

The dogs don’t seem to care whether it’s snowy or not (Addy being the very notable exception – when it’s time to go potty, her thrusters engage and she goes into warp drive, flies down the stairs, skids into her snow-free spot in a 90 degree corner where the wind is at its weakest, and empties her bladder like someone turned the valves on a geyser, and is back in the trailer and in her sleepy sack before you can blink.  I’m actually surprised she can pee at all; she clenches so hard that she runs around basically on her front legs.

I don’t think Maisie has seen snow before, given her age, but it didn’t give her pause at all.  She was in it up to her eyeballs without a second of hesitation.  There was just one night when I let her out to pee and the gale force winds just blew her right back inside.  She eyeballed the doorway for a second, and decided she didn’t have to go that bad after all.  But other than that, it seems the snow is just one more thing for her to revel in.  She really is a lot of fun!

At our most recent casting call gig, I brought her out of the van to pee before bringing her inside, and a homeless guy lurched at her and tried to grab her (dude appeared outta nowhere!  He must have been a ninja) and that was it for her for the day – everyone was terrifying, she couldn’t relax in the building at all (everyone clumping down the hallway in their snowboots scared the bejesus out of her) and I realize that living out here in the sticks means she’s not socializing enough in unfamiliar locations.  She is super comfortable in the middle of a trial in the building, because I bring her there all the time for that purpose, but the Big City streets are something else altogether.  So something we need to work on.

The snow has now mostly frozen, so everyone is skipping lightly across it rather than plowing through it.

But periodically there is a soft spot under the crust and a dog disappears for a second.  Yesterday Maisie sliced up her carpal pad in the icesnow, so after playtime I wrapped it in cotton and then covered it in vet wrap to prevent her from bleeding all over my furniture.  The vet wrap is the kind that tastes bad when they try to chew it off, but there as an *itty bitty* piece of cotton sticking out from under it, which she made diligent efforts to remove by unraveling it … I would hear her chewing at it and look over the top of my computer screen and she would make eye contact with me, with a cotton string in her mouth … she’d slowly lower her head until her chin covered her whole bandaged foot, then she would blink at me innocently, like she hadn’t been doing anything.  She’s so funny.  And smart as a whip.  A few months ago, I was rating chips while watching a movie, and I noticed she had found a piece of paper that had fallen off my desk that I didn’t want her to destroy.  I was covered in dog, and didn’t want to get up, so I asked her to bring it to me and I traded her a potato chip for it and told her what a good girl she was.  The following evening I was in pretty much the same position (I’m a creature of ritual, what can I say?) so she ran around the place looking for paper, finally found a small piece of some kind of wrapper sticking out of the garbage, and she finagled it out of the can and brought it to me for another potato chip.  There were lots of toys and stuff she could have brought me, but she had decided that chips were only traded for paper products.  Brainy little thing!

The WooTWoo and the Seasons seem to believe that there is a veritable sea of small critters who exist in a hidden mouse city underneath the surface of the snow, because they spend all of our outside time hunting for small furry things while the rest of us play dumbball.  I think this is because about three weeks ago Winter found ONE mouse in a dirt pile and since then, it’s Good Hunting for everyone who enjoys that sort of thing.  It seems to exhaust them as much as playing ball, so whatever floats their collective boat.

Us:

 

Them

Winter seems to have recovered as much as he’s ever going to.  His hind end is still a little weird, and he’s still a little weak on the left.  He can’t Be People anymore unless he’s holding onto something, like my leg.  But he comes hiking and runs around like a crazy thing without issue.  The deep snow gives him a little bit of trouble because the surface is unpredictable and one afternoon he started crying a little bit, made his way over to me, shoved Addy off my knees and tried to climb into my lap, which was our cue to cut our playtime short.  But he’s been fine since then, so probably he just tweaked something in the snow.  I have to wonder if he had an FCE, like Piper did, given the lack of pain and the continued weakness on the one side.

Even though snow makes my life difficult for a bit, I’m always excited at first for snow photos.

But now I’m tired of snow photos.  My knees get wet when I kneel down and I’m too lazy to dig out my waterproof pants every time we go outside.  I am counting down days to spring, when things bloom and the entire world isn’t either just white and/or or grey and brown.  But first I imagine everything will turn to approximately 3 feet of mud thanks to the snow drifts.

In the meantime, I will have to amuse myself with having the WooTWoo DNA tested!  I was contacted by a reader who works for a science project that offers, among other things, DNA testing.  In exchange for some behavioural studies I entered them in, the lab is going to try and figure out what they are, and if they are related.  So exciting.

What could they beee no-ow?

I’ve had their swab kits here for a bit, but have not had the motivation to do them and send them back, because honestly, right now I’ve just been sort of … struggling a little bit to get through every day.  I’ve been super stressed about money (I need to borrow $400, if anyone can lend me $400.  LEND), bummed out because I feel overall crappy about my life, bored because photo sessions this time of year are not abundant, and I lack a creative outlet, and definitely cabin fever because for nearly two weeks we were mostly stuck inside as it was frostbite-risk weather, with no water and just general all around suckiness.

Although this puppy photo session was a bright spot in my otherwise dreary life!  Her name is Friday and she is super itty bitty; in this photo she is 11 weeks and a whole 9lbs.  SUB ADDY in weight!  I have the Puppy Envies!

Now that’s cute!

Not doing a very good job of blogging more often in 2019 (Another new year’s resolution shot to hell) but I’m going to keep trying.  Promise.

 

New Year … Same Old Sh*t!

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Happy year that is pretty much like all the other recent years so they’re just blending together in a cesspool of crapola and irritation.  How’s that for starting things off with cheer?  I feel the need for an emoticon that means “meh.”

But first – a New year’s family photo!

Woulda been a beautiful day to take all kinds of photos in this beautiful location, but apparently the entire lower mainland felt the same way and the place was freakin’ packed!  I’ve never seen so many people there – we kept abruptly about-facing and going in different directions to avoid them, because not everyone appreciates all of my dogs running full tilt of them in a spasmodic tidal wave of greetings.  (Hell, I don’t even appreciate it, but have no idea how to make them stop immediately rushing and loving everyone they see.)  Eventually I threw up my hands (figuratively, not literally) and marched all the dogs back to the van and left.

The more perceptive among you will notice that this photo is short one funny little face.  THIS funny little face.

That’s because 2018 wasn’t only determined to merely be shitty, but to be shitty to THE BITTER END.  And because 2018 keeps its promises, the day after Boxing Day I got out of my new, more comfortable bed (because SantaParents got me a memory foam mattress topper that makes the Is-This-F*cking-Thing-Made-Of-Plywood-Or-Something-?-? rv mattress bearable to sleep on), and let all the dogs out into the yard.  They tend to exit the “house” (aka tin can) the same way they approach people they see in public – en masse and as quickly and chaotically as possible.  So I don’t know what happened next except that I heard screaming and screaming and I threw myself outside to find Winter hollering his head off and trying to run away from himself, but he couldn’t, because his back legs weren’t working (although his poop generator was, because he was shooting out poop like a canon).  I picked him up, poop and all, and ran for the phone to call the vet.

Within literal minutes he could walk again, albeit sorta sketchily, and with a brand new swagger in his hieney that had nothing to do with confidence.  My vet couldn’t fit him in, but another nearby(ish – nothing is actually “near” me) vet could, so I bundled us into my van and headed out.  Which is when Act II started – stepped on the gas and the van would rev like crazy, but no acceleration.  The gas pedal was nothing but dirty art on the floor of my vehicle.  I lead a really angry parade of cars down the road at 40kmh to a gas station, where I coasted into a parking spot and gently laid my head against the steering wheel and wished really hard I could go back in time to, say, before birth, and choose a completely different life, one in which dogs and cars both work like they’re supposed to.

Anyway, a friend came and picked me up and took us to the vet, where it was determined that something happened to Winter but we don’t know what, but I was to go home and put him in a crate and leave him there for a week with some anti-inflammatories.  BCAA towed my van to same-friend’s mechanic boyfriend’s shop where it was determined ($300 later) that the transmission in it was GOING BYE BYE (A-F*CKING-GAIN) and I should get rid of the piece of crap asap.  He got it running again, but suggested I sell it, trade it in or set it on fire as soon as humanely possible because the transmission was going to fail at any moment.

So my parents came to the rescue and we traded in the van for a slightly newer van two days later.  Just in time too, because my last finance payment on that thing WAS YESTERDAY.  Thank goodness I can literally go no time at all without a vehicle payment – that would really have messed with 2018’s  plans to screw with me.  PHEW.

Tonight, I zipped out to the store to get a snack and my check engine light came on in the “new” van.  Excellent.  I didn’t have the van mechanically inspected before I bought it because a) time was of the super-duper essence and b) I spent all my money on Winter and the previous van.  Seems 2019 has spoken with 2018 and has Big Plans for me.

Yay.

I am tired of seeing New Year’s memes about “365 new opportunities” and “looking forward not back” and other drivel, because quite frankly this last year has sucked balls and I really don’t anticipate anything changing just because 2018 changed its name to 2019.  I hate living in this tin can, I hate living in a parking lot, I hate the mudpit that is my “yard,” I hate never having enough money, I hate that my dog is gimpy, I hate that my Piper dog died (though I’m glad she did it before she had to move into this stupid tin can in a parking lot) and I’m just plain old grouchy about everything.  GROUCHY GROUCHY GROUCHY.

Also it’s impossible to find a comfortable position in my chair to make this blog, because Fae insists on laying behind me and I’m thinking of hurling her like a football into one of the many lake-sized puddles waiting outside for unsuspecting sneakers to sink into.  She is both uncomfortable and SASSY.  This is her giving Dexter shit for not dropping the ball so the Food Lady’s magic blue throwing stick can make it go again.

Worst part is she usually gets her own way too.

We cut a “gate” into the fence that separates Us from The Buffalo the other day … ostensibly so that the poor mud-logged poultry can free range in some grass and plants (another thing I hate about living here is their poultry pen, which is disgusting.  Also their poultry house, which broke in the windstorm.  I also hate windstorms.  And wind), but also so that the dogs and I have somewhere to play.  The gravelmud yard is not enough, and when I throw the ball, 7 times out of 10 it ends up bouncing through the livestock fencing and Maisie dives through after it and ends up out there anyway.  There are no buffalo out there in the winter months, so we’re taking advantage of the space.

There’s a fenced off leash area for the agility building and we use that sometimes, because it does provide for some nice photo ops.

But 4/9 dogs can get under the gate (I’ll let you guess which ones), so we can only use the play yard when nobody is using the building, which feels like is NEVER.  We won’t talk about the never ending barking that is the soundtrack to my home life and we really won’t talk about parking on trial days.  *grumble*

So the field at least has some potential for nice photos ops too, when it’s not peeing rain (which is all it seems to do these days … and my tin can is leaking somewhere as a result.  Also awesome).

There’s still some tall grass, until the chickens get ahold of it anyway, and that makes for some pretty photos too.

Also some silly ones.

Winter is still wobbly on his hind legs, but he’s been going squirrely in the crate – yesterday he ate a goodly portion of his bankie, and when I took him to the vet for a recheck, he had gained a whole lb from all that confinement and snacking (not on blankets, just FYI – like actual snackies to keep him occupied) so today I let him come out with us so he could desquirrelify his acorn sized brain a bit.  We still aren’t sure what happened – the vet said “spinal nerve damage from a traumatic injury” (like maybe leaping off the porch without using the stairs like a normal dog?) but the good news is he is no longer in pain when his back is touched.  He’s just wobbly.  And it’s not like I’m in a position to get him an MRI to make a definitive diagnosis.  I figure if he’s not in pain any more, we’ll work our way back up to full exercise over time.

The tall grasses, lovely as they are, comprise only a small portion of a very tempting, full-of-bunnies area for my bad dogs to run amuck though!  It’s worse than herding cats – I am constantly losing a goodly portion of them to the siren song of HUNTING.  Like, here’s Addy mid-bunny-chase.  You can tell by her ears, which only ever reach for the heavens when she’s trying to channel lightning (speed) so she can be fast enough to catch the wabbits.

I guess its a good opportunity to work on her recall, as well as practice dog-running-straight-at-me shots.

Here’s Peetie.  She’s still really, really annoying.

Here’s Dexter.  He’s still really, really deaf.

He got to play some agility at our club Christmas Party / practice and he was SO HAPPY.  I should really take advantage of the stupid building full of equipment I live next door to and play with my dogs some more.  But honestly, I lack the motivation and the energy.  Probably because I hate everything.

When Wootie’s not doing this:

He’s doing this.  Because possible rats.

You can see a little bit in the back there that his Flamboyance(tm) is working hard to make a comeback, though it still has a long way to go.

In the meantime, TWooie’s Flambe(tm) is doing a pretty reasonable job as a stand-in.

Fae Fae doesn’t find the new field access very exciting because she fits through the livestock fencing quite easily and goes out there all the time anyway.

This is still here too.  Can’t seem to get rid of it.  She’s basically a big, hairy (and barky!) tick.  With blackberry stems stuck in her tongue.

My only real “new year’s” resolution is to blog more frequently than I did last year.  First I have to find out how to be in a better mood though, because I know y’all don’t want to read about my being grouchy all year long.  I figure my first step is to find a real job, because I will probably be less grouchy if I’m not worried about money all the damn time.  And I need money to improve/increase my equipment … I have been saving for a portable strobe for what feels like forever, and every time I have some extra money together, something comes along that needs it and I’m back to square one.  Believe me, I know most/everyone has this same issue, on either bigger or smaller scales, and I know wanting a portable strobe is a first world problem.  I also know that I have great friends and I’m not living in my van and THERE ARE ALL KINDS OF THINGS I KNOW and don’t need to be reminded of.  I’m still grouchy about it.  So baby steps / one thing at a time / etc. BLAH BLAH BLAH.

BAH.

I guess my first goal is to figure out how to be more like Woo and less like TWoo in this photo.