agility

The Red Puppy

July 30, 2016 By The Food Lady 6 Comments

I got tired of waiting for a red border collie puppy. So I got a red poodle puppy instead.

She’s ten months old and came with the name Deirdre, but ’round these here parts, we refer to her as Dodo. It was going to be Deedee, but Dexter thinks his name is Dee a lot of the time.

She’s bigger than Fae but smaller than Spring, so a nice size.

Her Royal Highness Fae’s nose is pretty out of joint about the new addition.

But that’s just too darn bad for her! Isn’t Dodo just the cutest thing? I’ve pretty much decided to get nothing but poodles from now on.

Ha! Did you believe me? You’re silly. This is not my puppy, she’s just a temporary puppy. She is boarding with me for a few months while her real family, who loves her very much, isn’t able to care for her. She’s a very nice dog with just a couple of little habits we need to fix, like barking in her crate and being a fussy snottypants about her food and not always coming when called. We can work on that. After all, I did manage to turn no-drive Peetie into a ball maniac!

She even brings the ball about 85% of the way back about 90% of the time, so we’re getting somewhere!

She has also become a holy terror of shrieking and trying to claw her way out of her crate in agility class when it’s someone else’s turn. This is a completely different dog from the one who just curled up in the back of her crate and tried to pretend she wasn’t there. Time to bust out the Manners Minder in class, I think!

But she is much nicer to Dodo than TWooie is.

I mean sure, he LOOKS happy here, but really he is a) trying to rub off the Hannibal Lecter mask residue AKA basket muzzle he wore for the first half an hour of meeting (and by meeting I mean muzzle punching) Dodo and b) doing it in something dead and stinky to get back at me. He is always such a dick for the first little while.

Addy’s already had a good play with her, because Addy is awesome like that. I am so very grateful for my Addypants.

I am extra grateful that I still have my Addypants, because about ten days ago Addy ate a big ole block of RAT POISON and I was so afraid she was going to die. We don’t put out poison here (because pets) but in the process of tearing down the old trailer on the property, one of the guys working on it tossed a full, unopened package of poison on the burn pile. Which Addy of course found and helped herself to. She had just previous to that stolen an egg from the chicken coop, and I thought that’s what she was eating while I played ball with the other dogs, until I decided she’d been eating the egg for a little too long and went to check what she was doing. I. LOST. MY. SHIT. Started screaming and freaking out, picked her and the package up and tossed them in the car, chucked the other dogs in the yard and drove to the vet as fast as I could. Whereupon I lost my composure (haha) and burst into hysterical tears.

Fortunately she was at the vet and puking within a half hour of ingesting the stuff, and I had the package so they knew what we were dealing with, and after much vomiting, Vitamin K and big scared saucer eyeballs, Addy was just fine, if a little mystified about what was going on. We went back for a clotting test 72 hours later – all good. She is on Vitamin K daily for a while as a precautionary thing, but is in no danger. So I still have my Addypants … and a big ole vet bill. I was super irritated with my landlords because we *talked* about the possibility of there being poison in the trailer, because I had seen poison pellets when it was still intact and I asked them to be careful when dismantling the stupid thing. And they weren’t. And my dog ate rat poison. Nor are they inclined to pay the vet bill because Old Skool Farm Boys who don’t really understand spending good money on a sick dog when you could just get another dog.

*grumble* This farm is trying to destroy everything I love. Two nights ago a weasel got into one of my hen houses and slaughtered a bunch of my hens too. Srsly.

But in GOOD news, I have had a lot of fun with my camera lately.

I got to photograph 16(!!) year old Josie at the lake.

She was awesome!

And I got to photograph a bunch of dogs at an agility trial.

The trial was so much fun! FaeFae made her debut-debut, and got some Qs, and some other very nice only-5-fault runs too. She is so adorable, I can’t stand her sometimes. I just wanna squish her and make squealy noises.

Spring did awesome too! She got a bunch of Qs as well and she was FAST – as in, the OPPOSITE of running her at Thunderbird. She was so fast that I messed up her first run because I was expecting her to be slow and I was in all the wrong places. She was so HAPPY. Which leads me to believe that her days of running Regionals are done, because they are at Thunderbird next year too, and she really really hates it there. So all hopes will now rest on The Fae Face.

Dexter was … ridiculous. He managed one Q and a bunch of disasters. He is a very special boy.

I also got to photograph a whole bunch of agility students doing candids, action and portrait type shots in 20 minute mini-sessions in a private agility yard, which was super fun! You can take the same shot over and over again on the equipment to get the one you like the best, and set the dogs up in places where the light is nicest. Here’s a random sampling of some of the shots from the day – I just closed my eyes and pointed at the screen to pick a few, because there were so many good ones I couldn’t choose to post them all.

Detour the Jack Russell Terrier

Juno the Papillon

Dulce the Havanese

Zappa the border collie

Dixie the poodle

And so many others! It was an excellent day, and I hope to be able to do another one. I like doing private outdoor sessions a lot, but these mini sessions were really awesome too, and a challenge to capture their personalities in such a short time frame.

But all the photographing and editing means not a lot of time to photograph my own doggies (and also a numb ass from sitting in the editing chair for so many hours, and also all the money going straight to Addy’s vet bills, le sigh). I did manage to sneak in a few though because my dogs is purdy ;-)

This is not mine. Why isn’t it mine?

(Also the font on my new watermark makes it look like it says bigairphotography.CORN which is bothering me. I’m going to have to fix that. You can’t unsee it now, can you? mwa ha ha ha)

On This, The First Day of Summer

June 20, 2016 By The Food Lady 7 Comments

I offer you a photo of Winter.

I hardly ever post photos of Winter because he’s a) boring and b) not very good looking. Unless he’s wrestling with Spring, he doesn’t do anything except lay around being stressy or hunt for rabbits in the bush. He is also probably the least photogenic of all of my dogs. And he’s low on the popularity list around here (don’t deny it – if you have lots of dogs, you like some of them better than others. Even if you won’t admit it out loud).

I also offer you a photo of Gemma, to prove I have not chucked her out a window yet. Not even after she bit me in the foot this morning for trying to stop her from sticking her head in Piper’s breakfast bowl. Sticking her head in Piper’s bowl could easily have resulted in her losing her face or maybe her whole head, but the thanks I got was three sharp little teeth in my big toe. Jerk.

Today we are reflecting upon our Regionals experience (we being me, because Spring “I’m A Terrier” Aling has already forgotten about it).

Facebook peeps already know how she did, and *what* she did, but I’ll recap for the rest of you.

SHE SHIT IN THE RING IN STEEPLECHASE II.

Argh. Those among you who follow my Regionals sagas know that this makes the third year in a row where Spring has loosed her bowels or bladder in the ring. And she ONLY does it at Regionals, and she ONLY does it at Regionals at Thunderbird Arena. This year I carefully trialed her at new and different places with new and different footing, just to see if she does it other places too. I trialed her at a new venue outdoors on grass for ASCofBC and she earned herself three titles in two days and didn’t foul the ring at all. I trialed her at USDAA indoors on sand and she didn’t befoul that barn either. But bring her to Thunderbird and she craps on the course.

Lighten up, Food Lady. Everybody poops!!

I was SUPER bummed. I very seriously considered pulling her from the rest of the competition. Which some people seemed to interpret as me being a pissy (ha ha) pouty pants. But I wasn’t going to pull her for me, I was going to pull her out for her. Because Spring is a stressy dog, and her default response to stress is to pee or poop.

When I first got her, she would shit the floor if I looked at her sideways. I couldn’t leave her alone for more than two minutes without her eliminating in the house. It took lots of confidence building to get over that. And then when we started agility, if I so much as said “Whoops” if she made a mistake, she would pee herself. Lots of more confidence building required. Now she can clearly trial and do reasonably well without losing control of her bodily functions … except at Thunderbird. Which suggests to me that she was stressed. And the point of us doing Regionals – or any competition – is to have fun. Stressing to the point of pooping doesn’t sound like one half of us is having fun, does it? (The other half of us doesn’t have much fun when she poops in the ring either, lemme tell you. But that’s not really the point).

Some folks, whom I’m sure were well meaning, said stuff like “Well, just go out there and have fun with her.” Well obviously that was my plan from the get-go. Our ONLY goal was to have her running happy and not peeing (or pooping) in the ring. Look, I’m not running a competitive dog, I know this. I don’t take agility all that seriously – if I did, I wouldn’t be running rescues with giant closets full of behavioural skeletons. I would be attending seminars instead of a loose practice once a week, which I mostly go to because it involves a Starbucks coffee. I would be doing drills in my yard instead of leaning against the fence and half-assedly asking my dog to “go jump something or something or whatever.” I’m not trying to win all the thing. I *like* to win all the things, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t like it enough to work really hard at it. I like to play agility and I like to play it with a dog that likes to play it with me (hence the reason Dexter doesn’t play it anymore, because I’m not sure he wouldn’t prefer to go out there and do it all himself, sans stupid ole me) but I’m not super competitive.

(Except when I win, at which point I am insufferable. But I digress.)

The thing is, if my partner isn’t having fun, then I’m not having fun. And I am especially not having fun if I threw almost $250 at a competition where my partner eliminates herself (on all levels) because she’s so not having fun. That makes us both miserable.

But in the end I decided that Thunderbird is not, to my knowledge, toxic, poisonous, or dangerous. It’s not going to kill Spring or me. And by doG, she has full use of all her legs and she can run 6 damn courses without crumpling up and dying so I dragged her pouty ass back to the venue the next morning and decided that even if she pissed or shitted up the whole damn joint, she was going to try her paw at every bloody course and just GET OVER HERSELF. She is not that same stressy pee-machine I adopted 4 years ago, she’s come a long, long way. And a friend of mine gave me a really good plan too – she said if Spring pooped or peed on course (for those of you who don’t know the rules: if your dog eliminates on course, you get eliminated from the run and have to leave the ring without completing it and lose all your points) to take her out of the ring and drill her on the practice jumps outside the ring, to cement in her walnut brain that she has to keep “playing” even if she “goes.”

But as it happens, we didn’t need to use that strategy. because in the end, Spring went four for six clean runs and ended up in 12th place of the 38 dogs in her division, and qualified for Nationals!

She had two clean Jumpers rounds – not super fast, but with bonus time points for each. She had a nice clean and reasonably fast Standard and one clean Gamble run. The second gamble was not Spring-friendly, which I knew from the get-go, so we concentrated on what she COULD do in the opening and racked up a decent amount of points. She got a bit stressy in her second Standard and pulled some dorky stuff like not taking equipment she knows and likes very much, resulting in some refusals. And then suddenly she decided mid course she was having fun and took off down a line of jumps so fast that I f*cked up and sent her off course because I was out of position. So in the end, we had a really good Regionals. And if she had run that second Standard clean, she would have had the points to be on the podium. Which is pretty damn impressive for a dog who shat the ring on day one!

I am proud of my squirrelly girlie for overcoming her fears and trying so hard!

And speaking of rescues with closet skeletons …

Le Peetie. Le Sigh. So Le Cute. SO Le Annoying.

She has decided that jumping up to chomp me in the face isn’t as much fun as she thought it was, which is a good thing. But she hasn’t gotten any more fun overall either. She’s boring as dirt – lovely dog, great in the house (she spent 12 hours loose in the house yesterday as I only brought Spring to the event, and she didn’t do anything naughty), beautiful recall, but absolutely no drive to speak of when it comes to toys or games with me. I brought her to the event on Saturday, and aside from her wonderful habit of puking in the van, she was also spooked at the whole thing. I hoped bringing her ringside to see the high-octane dogs would get her motor running, but she wasn’t at all interested in watching them. She just wanted to go back into her crate and drool and not talk to anyone.

Last weekend I photographed a friend’s new puppy, and was captivated by her curiosity and her keen desire to play with All The Things. Plus she is really freakin’ adorable.

Fifteen weeks old and she is already a go-go machine!

I want that in my next puppy. I don’t want to create drive artificially, I want to harness and direct what’s already there and bursting to be free. And Peetie doesn’t have it. She’s going to make someone a very nice pet, but she’s not going to make me a very nice pet. Because I have lots of pets that take up space and eat me out of house and home, tyvm. And Peetie is NEEDY – she is always trying to flop in my lap or belly crawling up to me to lick my hands while I am trying to type or whatever, and it annoys the hell out of me. There are people out there who love that, but I don’t love it at all. Winter does that same thing, and we’ve already discussed how I feel about Winter.

So does anyone want a really sweet, really obedient border collie puppy who is decidedly low octane?

Fae has decided that it is indeed time for Peetie to go.

Peetie likes to bite the Littles on the bum to make them run, and then chase them down. Addy likes it for about 35 seconds and then comes running to me to be picked up. Fae doesn’t like it for even .35 seconds and would like to kill Peetie.

Even thought Peetie is a Dexter clone, which makes it difficult to part with her, the resident Bitch has spoken, so Peetie needs to move on.

Speaking of Dexters, today I spotted one in its natural habitat.

He is, of course, “hiding” in the brush with his ball. I’m not sure where he learned to retrieve the ball to a clump of buttercups rather than to me, but it’s going on 7 years of the same behaviour that drives me crazy but I can’t change it.

Fae is trying to change it by hunting him down and barking shrilly in his ear until he gets up and moves.

And here is a photo of Piper, because I luff her. (See, I can love dogs who suck at agility. Because if ever a dog sucked at agility, it was Piper!)

And here is a photo that is bittersweet. It is a photo that memorializes my Tweedles as Regional Champion in 2012 on a permanent trophy. Unfortunately, nobody told me that this trophy existed until after he died, so I never got a chance to get a photo of him with it. And after I learned about it, nobody could even be bothered to send me a photo of the trophy when I asked, so I had to wait until this Regionals to snap one myself.

Here’s to the best dog that ever was, and the best agility dog I ever had. I miss you Tweed!!

This is NOT the best agility dog I ever knew. But isn’t he good looking though?

Professional Farmer

June 4, 2016 By The Food Lady 10 Comments

I’ve decided to plant Dexters this year. They’re coming up quite nicely, but they require an awful lot of water.

This silly beastling has decided – after months of rest, anti-inflammatories, chiro, vet visits etc. – that he can jump 22″ after all. No more stutter stepping, no more avoiding the jumps or flinging himself sideways over 16″ jumps like a crab fleeing a seagull. He just suddenly started jumping 22″ again with ease.

What a creep.

Well it’s too little, too late mister! Regionals entries closed before your mysterious recovery, so all hopes rest on Springaling this year! Not that there are any photos of Spring, as she is too busy free-feeding on rabbits to pose for photos or play with the rest of us plebs. I apologize in advance to those of you who are sensitive about rabbit consumption, but seriously, the rabbits in this neighborhood must be the stupidest bunnies on earth (and that’s saying something, as I’ve never found them particularly intellectual to begin with) because they are dropping kits in the dog play areas like crazy, and the dogs are eating them as fast as they can birth them. And it’s hard to be a connoisseur of fresh rabbit in a pack of other bonkers-for-bunnies dogs, because your siblings will steal a bunny out of your mouth as soon as look at you. So they find a nest, everyone who can grab a bunny grabs a bunny, and then they all RUN AROUND IN CIRCLES AT TOP SPEED, chewing/gulping madly as they go lest another less fortunate dog steal their prize before it disappears down their gullets. It resembles a super frantic game of musical chairs, or a Monty Python sketch and it is – sorry again lapine lovers – funny as f*ck to watch.

At least they are running off those extra calories.

Anyway, I am super looking forward to playing at Regionals. No pressure for us this year; I have ONE goal, and that is for Spring to have fun and not pee in the ring. I don’t care if we win anything or even do all that well, I just want her to run reasonably fast, enjoy herself and come out of the ring happy. She is such a MARVELOUS little dog and I love her so much, and I want us to have fun playing my favourite game together. Not particularly lofty goals, but realistic ones. After all, I have this tiny little she-devil up and coming for future competitive years.

It’s funny because I adopted Addy because I thought it would be awesome to play agility with an Italian Greyhound. It turns out it is NOT awesome, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. She has the attention span of a crack addict and anything – ANYTHING – that catches her eye must be investigated and possibly played with immediately. A twinkle in the sand, a passing bee, even a puff of dirt from her own speedy little paws, and the game of agility is immediately forgotten, or at least temporarily abandoned, while she runs off to see if it’s more interesting. And it’s not as though she doesn’t *like* agility – she loves it! She fears nothing, throws herself over the contact equipment, leaps jump bars twice her height, banks in tunnels like nobody’s business …. but she just can’t stick to one activity for more than a few seconds (except for digging in mud; she would be the WORLD CHAMPION of mud digging). If agility courses were 5 obstacles long, she would probably beat the border collies. Alas.

This probably sums up Addy the best:

(And yes, that is a real bubble, not a Photoshopped bubble. She is the only dog I live with who will play with bubbles.)

I kept Fae because I am SELFISH and she was so god damn cute that I didn’t want anyone else to have her. That’s pretty well the only reason. It’s not a very good reason, but maybe I’m not a very good person. And she is not a very good dog. Her nickname around here is “BADITTUDE” because she’s snarky, sulky, stubborn AF and requires cajoling, coddling and sometimes military discipline to keep her snotty little self in line. And I LOVE HER SO MUCH! She is hilariously bad – not naughty, like Addy, but downright bad. She’ll run like crazy to get the ball and bring it back, run right past me, lay down 10 feet away and give me the canine equivalent of the finger and bite any other dog that looks at the ball. At night I have to physically remove her from the end of the bed or she won’t let the other dogs come up and join us. And when I tried playing bubble-blowing with her, she got MAD at the bubbles for floating!

Oh but she is FIERCE. And I adore her. She has so much spunk and spirit. And she’s turning out to be a little f*cking dynamo on the agility course. She is fast and she wants to win ALL THE THINGS. She did go through a period where she was terrified of the teeter and refused to get on it. For months she wouldn’t get on it. We tried low teeter, no-tipping teeter, teeter-bangs-get-a-cookie teeter, roast chicken … nada, nothing. She wasn’t getting on it for love nor money. Then one day at practice Fearless Addy did the teeter in front of her and got a cookie. She got a boring tuna and sweet potato cookie. SHE GOT FAE’S RIGHTFUL COOKIE. And Fae was over that teeter in a flash and now she loves the teeter. She’s *that* kind of dog, and I love it.

Now she can run a full course, and at speed too! For a little sausage tube of a dog, she is very quick on her feet and she makes little huffing noises of excitement while she runs. I will have to get video of her weaving for you all, because it is the cutest thing in the entire world, it will make you want to pick her up and squeeze the life right out of her (and she will bite you in the nose when you do it too, so be careful!)

Look at her adorable little self.

LOOK AT HER!!!

You know what else is frickin’ adorable?

This.

I don’t need another dog. I don’t need another dog. I don’t need another dog.

AGH!!

Maybe I need another dog. I don’t want to talk about it, because someone of you will give me very good reasons why I don’t need another dog. Because I don’t. But shut up, I’m not listening to you.

My plan was to get a puppy in 5 years. Once some of my older dogs had gone to join Tweed and Red Dog at Valhalla and the middle aged dogs were older dogs, and there was room in the damn van to put another dog whilst traveling. And then I would get a puppy, and start from scratch, and do everything right and raise a wicked fast, drivey sport dog that would win all the things. This was my very firm, solid plan. And then I remembered that this was also my plan when I got this:

And THAT turned into THIS:

I LOVE puppies. I love training puppies, and how spongey they are, and how you don’t have to undo anything. I was watching videos of puppies learning things the other day, and marveling at how quick and fast they offer new behaviours and are willing to try anything and I was all I AM STICKING TO THE PUPPY PLAN. But then later that afternoon Dexter ran into the fence at top speed because he wasn’t looking where he was going, and I remembered how much of a crapshoot a puppy can be and I got all waffly again. Besides, I wouldn’t even know where to get a puppy from.

Plus technically Peetie is still a puppy. She just turned 8 months old. And she is so wonderful. She is all legs, with beautiful angulation in the back (people say she is too straight in the front and I nod sagely when they say it, but I still don’t know what that means) and she is a LOVELY natural jumper. Gorgeous personality. Perfect off switch in the house, housebroken totally, can leave her loose in the house for hours and she doesn’t do anything naughty. Loves food and works hard for it. Good bounce back. Beautiful recall. PIPER PLAYS WITH HER.

So shut up.

But either way, I need to fix her raging motion-sickness because driving anywhere with her is very unpleasant for both of us. She won’t even go through the front garden gate now because the van lives on the other side of that gate and she doesn’t want to get in the van. We have tried riding facing forward, facing backward and facing sideways; covered crate and uncovered crate. Dramamine. I just installed an anti-static strip on the car yesterday, so that’s the next effort. I haven’t tried ginger because whatever, frankly I don’t think a natural remedy will work where Dramamine failed, but I’ll try it too. Next stop – Cerenia along with desensitizing. But sometimes she has to come for road trips with us whether she likes it or not. The last dog I had that got this sick in the car was West. It’s yucky. Any other tried and true remedies to suggest? Hopefully that will solve it today, because I really want to take her lure coursing tomorrow ;-)

I also want to take this lure coursing tomorrow, because I know he would LOVE IT (chase all the things!) but he’s so fat I am ashamed to bring him around those skinny gazehounds.

I took him swimming the other day at the beach and he doesn’t get any skinnier when wet, so I can’t keep telling him it’s “just hair.”

He and the TWoo are 11 this month (maybe). He still knows how to have fun though!

Such a cad.

I asked Addy if she wanted to be included in this post, but she got distracted by a literal butterfly (just out of frame) and left before she could answer me.

Happy sunny weekend everyone! And I just wanted to thank you, deeply, for the many contributions those of you on Facebook have made to Dove after her tragedy last week. For those of you who didn’t hear about it, please visit the website set up to memorialize the wonderful lives lost, and to celebrate the wonderful person who suffered this great loss. And give your four legged family extra love today.

Shout At The Devil

May 24, 2016 By The Food Lady 38 Comments

^Devil Horns (ears) ^Shouting

Hi everyone. Remember me? The woman who has blogged for you two or three times a month for the last ten years, until my favourite little dog was stolen by a coyote just a few feet away from me, while I was taking photos of another dog, in the middle of the day, in my own backyard. And then I was just absolutely devastated. Destroyed. It was the singularly most terrible pet loss I have ever experienced and the guilt was overwhelming for a long, long time. It still is sometimes. It was a month before I could stop looking at lost and found sites online multiple times a day, just in case a miracle happened and he got away and was picked up by someone else. I’ve still never found any trace of him, or his collar.

I miss him every day.

It was a month or so before I could pick up the camera without feeling sad all over again. I was terrified to take my eyes off my little dogs and walked them on leashes for a long time, which was no fun for any of us. Some friends and I spent hours taking down all the blackberries and bushes along the fence line, and I spent days more with the weedwhacker, making the property edge sight lines clear so nothing could sneak up on us. It’s all grown back. There’s no way to keep up with it. A few weeks after we did that, a pair of coyotes stole a chicken at high noon right by my front door, which spurred me to completely fence my yard, so now at least the dogs can go out to pee and the chickens and ducks can come out of their pens safely. The yard’s not large enough to play in though, and I wish I could fence the whole upper and lower pasture :(

I finally had to take the camera out again to get photos of my foster dog, Tango, so he could find a home of his own. He did :)

I didn’t want to foster again because I felt so guilty about Little Man. But Tango needed somewhere to go, and I needed the coyotes to not run my life anymore. So I took him in, and I’m glad I did. He was a lot of fun, and he found a fantastic home.

I also needed to make friends with my camera again, because I had my annual gig photographing All The Aussies at the ASCofBC agility trial. So I spent two days taking hundreds of photos of dogs having super fun times!

I also got to run Spring at the trial and she earned a bunch of titles that weekend – now she’s in Elite Jumpers and Open Gamblers. She wasn’t running super fast, like in practice, but she seemed to be having fun and she didn’t pee in the ring even once, so I have hedged my bets and entered her in Regionals next month! Dexter is permanently retired from competition as he has been having difficulty jumping for many months now. We don’t know why, as he is not sore or limpy, but even at 16″ he stutter steps and sort of throws himself over the jumps, or avoids them altogether. And Fae is not ready to compete yet (though we have conquered her teeter phobia at last, and she has learned to weave!)

The competitors were super happy with their photos, and on that success I was invited to photograph a K9 Nosework trial, which is a whole other genre altogether. There sure were some cute dogs there!

Now I’ve been invited to photograph Schutzhund, which I am very excited about. And this coming weekend we return to lure coursing with Addypants, which she is very excited about, as she loves it. And I will be photographing that too, because it’s awesome!

So that’s life for us the last little while, in a nutshell. Everyone is doing well and enjoying their new fenced in yard. I enjoy it too, as sometimes when they are driving me bonkers I can just put them outside to amuse themselves.

Oh and I have a new foster dog too. Her name is Peetie, which is for PT, which is short for Pointy Thing. She is basically a tiny little girl-Dexter.

See?

I *heart* her very much.

The other day I was out playing ball with the dogs when a coyote walked right out of the bush in the lower pasture and watched us. None of the dogs noticed; only I saw it. I immediately put my Littles in the fenced yard and then sent the big dogs after it, but it simply ducked away and returned a few moments later, still unnoticed by the other dogs until I pointed it out to Woo. The Terriers and the Aussies ran it off and I haven’t seen one since, but I know they’re out there. I never feel my dogs are safe.

I want to buy my Littles each one of these, with the spikes and the zapper. That way we stand a fighting chance if a coyote grabs Fae or Addy. But they are very spendy and I don’t have the money. So I ask you, blog readers, what sorts of Wootube related items can I produce that y’all might purchase so I can raise the cash to buy these? T-shirts? Books? Prints? You tell me, and I’ll try to make it happen.

(I also want to buy one of these and take care of the coyotes altogether, but they are even spendier!)

I am going to try to returning to blogging regularly, so feel free to nag at me if you haven’t seen anything from me for a while. I miss you guys!

I miss this guy too. RIP, my sweetest Little Man.

KING OF ALL THE TOYS!

March 22, 2016 By The Food Lady 15 Comments

(I know it should be Queen of All The Toys, but that sounds …. somehow dominatrix-y)

Dexter has been learning a new trick; to stack all of these rings on this tower.

It all started when Skye‘s owner posted a video on FB of that handsome fellow calmly and neatly stacking the same plastic rings on the same plastic tower in the correct sequence like a boss. I was impressed, so I trundled off to the used toy store and returned with our own set, intending to teach Spring to do this, because of all my dogs, Spring is the one who likes to offer me behaviours the most. I wasn’t even thinking about trying to teach Dexter to play, because Dexter likes to offer me one behaviour only – chuck the new thing at me so that I will chuck the new thing for him, so he can bring the new thing back to me for me to chuck again. Once we tried “20 Things To Do With A Traffic Cone and a Clicker” and it became quite dangerous. Those things can really fly!

Anyway, to my surprise Spring only wanted to nose touch the rings and when that didn’t work she smooched me in MY nose a bunch of times and then started displacement wrestling with Winter. So I gave it a try with Dexter, and learned several things about his little walnut brain:

1) NRMs are necessary for Dexter, otherwise he will just throw the rings (and the tower!) at me over and over again, no matter how long I ignore him. I actually have to tell him to stop and try something else or he won’t stop.

2) He’s not very dexterous (which is ironic). In order to get the ring on the tower, he has to pick the ring up from the side furthest from his mouth and kind of drag it over to tip of the tower so it catches. He cannot do it any other way. Like if he holds it in his mouth like a donut because his hands were busy tying his shoelace, he can’t figure out how to get it on the tower. And if he picks it up the wrong way he has to walk in a circle around the room before putting it down and trying again. He can’t just put it down and start over.

3) Once he gets the hang of it, he can put several rings on in relative succession (the smallest one gives him fits because it gets stuck on his lower jaw). But every time we start a new session, it’s like he has NO idea what the goal is. We practice every day and every day he is utterly clueless about what I want for the first ten minutes. He’s like a goldfish – no memory retention whatsoever. This maybe explains why he can’t maintain success in agility – he forgets everything he learns!

So of course when I tried to get a photo of him putting the rings on the tower, he had no idea how to do it.

He posed a lot though.

(Look at all the frustration chomps marks in the ring!)

Eventually I just gave up. Besides, it’s hard to gets photos without the little monsters interfering with reassuring, spontaneous ear cleanings.

(Does not want)

So we just moved on to other photo ops.

Miss Posey McModelson likes to be the center of attention, until I want her to be, then she decides it’s too dull to suffer it.

Tried a different prop, but you can’t put one of these sleepy pod things down anywhere without Addy oozing into it (we have 4 or 5 around the house) whether someone has already taken up residence within or not.

This is the sad face of a sad puppy who neither understands nor enjoys posing for photos.

The Sad Season Siblings aren’t much more enthused.

The Fabulous Miss Piper was more than happy to lounge around in the studio lookin’ super fly. We’re all pretty happy in general, because (and those of you who read the FB page know this already) the ugly face nipple turned out to be a completely benign growth, nothing to worry about. Thank doG! I can’t manage this pack of hooligans without her iron paw.

She had a really hard time with the anaesthetic apparently (I mean, she IS almost 14!), and the morphine afterward didn’t help her coordination at all, but she bounced back to her normal semi-senile self in a matter of hours.

Senile? What’d you call me, beeyotch?

Geez, okay already hillybilly teeth. You’re not senile. You are going to get some dental work in the near future though!

It’s not easy getting these shots, which is pretty much strictly for your amusement.

(okay, my amusement mostly)

What I wouldn’t do for a separate room, or even a shed or something, where I could set up sessions in peace without this happening all the time.

I love my little farm and tiny house, but I have “real rooms” envy. If I had a spare bedroom, it would be a studio so fast you wouldn’t even believe it.

Would I have to go inside of it?

Of course, chaos happens outside too.

You’ll notice Dexter does not appear to be broken and is moving just fine. After some trial and error, we have discovered that he is not jumping not because something on or in him hurts, but rather because he seems to be having some trouble seeing in the rather dim barn where we train. At home, he jumps anything and everything in the clear light of day, but in the evenings in the barn, he is having some difficulties, so he tries not to jump anything. He’s not quite seven years old, but I am thinking of dropping him to 16″ Vets, as this way he will be able to see over top of the jumps and not worry. And let’s face it, it’s not like he’s a competitive dog – may as well do whatever it takes to let him have fun, because I doubt I’ll be trialing him again ever.

The Springaling has her agility mojo back and is a friggin’ rocket in practice, but fool me once etc. … I don’t think I will bother trialing her either, since she gets all afeared and pees in the ring. Only at Regionals though, because that’s what costs the most money. Why bother (literally) pissing away a $15 run when you can piss away one that costs twice that instead, right?

It’s a good thing I love the little bastards.

And here’s another Woo-with-a-mud-goatee photo to make your day that much brighter (why does he eat dirt?)

STOP. Hammer Time

September 12, 2015 By The Food Lady 4 Comments

whooaa ohhh ohhh ohhh ohhh ohhhh ohhh oh

At least he can dance to 90’s radio-friendly pseudo rap, because he SURE CAN’T PLAY AGILITY.

But first … oh hai! *waves* I haven’t been around the blogosphere at all because I’ve had like NO time off for weeks. Either I was agility-ing, or working to make up the time I took off for agility-ing, or I was photographing agility. And then there was the windstorm that cut out all our power for upwards of 30 hours. When you’re on a well, no power means no water. And no power means no … anything, except driving around aimlessly in your car to charge your phone so you can use it to tether your Kindle Fire so you can watch Netflix on your Kindle in the dark. Good times.

So. Agility. Nationals. Whut? We weren’t there, we didn’t do REALLY BADLY (cough*42 out of 48 dogs in the 26″ division*cough). What a gong show my dog is. We got through the pre-qualifier in 4.5 of 6 runs, so I had hopes that we would end up somewhere in the middle of the pack at Nationals. I WAS WRONG. Such a disaster. Refusal after off course after wherethehellishegoing?? Just ridiculous. Me and Dex, we’re done with agility. It just goes to show it doesn’t matter how much you love something, doesn’t mean you’ll be good at it!

Time to train the little gazehound … if I don’t kill her first for stealin’ eggs.

(in case it’s not clear – she jumped up on a TABLE to steal them there freshly collected eggs)

Dexter had his 6th birthday just after Nationals (he’s lucky he made it to 6) but we didn’t celebrate because F*CK YOU DEXTER.

Auntie Fiona and Rogue did pretty okay at Nationals though, you know, WINNING and everything. National Champions and all that.

I’m at a bit of a loss now what to do about an agility dog. Because Piper – ANCIENT. WooTWoo – HAHAHAHAHA. Dexter – SUCK. Winter – yeahright. Spring – SUCKYPOUTYPANTS. Fae – *!scared!* And Addy – ADHD. Only I could amass this amount of dogs and having nobody to play agilities with. ONLY ME.

For a while I thought long and hard about this:

But ultimately, I don’t have the time or energy for any more dogs right now. I would like to have fewer of them, so I could do a new puppy justice. Doesn’t stop me from looking at his photo 6,000 times a day, of course. I haz the puppy fever, bad.

I be your puppy, k?

Stop that Winter!

I’ve still got Fergus … but I don’t want to keep him because he’s some kind of hillbilly.

Just kidding. He’s a nice dog, and is mostly over the random weirdness with the odd stranger he meets. He gets to greet so many people at work that he has pretty well decided there is no point in being on his guard all the time. He’d rather climb on my desk and bark at my face to get me to play with him. If there was one thing I would encourage everyone with a puppy to do, that would be to instill impulse control from the get-go … dogs are so much easier to live with when you get tell them to stop doing something, or go lie down, or otherwise not give in to their base desires to do something naughty!!

Fergus will make someone a nice dog – he is learning to control himself, and has developed manners he previously didn’t have, like wait your turn at the door, and let someone else get the ball sometimes, and don’t grab the ball out of the Chuck-It if the Food Lady doesn’t throw it fast enough. He spends part of his time on a small horse farm with one of my staff, and has also learned he doesn’t need to be underfoot all the time in case one of the things you are about to do is pay attention to him. Instead of being All About Fergus he is is figuring out how to share the limelight with his handler and form a working partnership.

With the exception of TWooie, who still snarks in his general direction (because he’s TWooie, what else would he do??) he gets along fine with everyone here. One time he piledrived Dexter, just for fun, and I brought the Fist of doG down upon him, and now he doesn’t try to slam into my dogs anymore as a form of play. I mean, Dexter may SUCK as an agility partner, but I’d still like him to have all his ribs intact!

Everyone else in the pack is doing well. Piper seems to be getting a bit senile … she will be 13 in November, for crying out loud. How did that happen? But she has started doing this thing where, when I throw the ball for her, she gets it and then frantically runs to the porch and stands there with her pupils all dilated. You know, instead of bringing it back to me to throw again. It’s the weirdest thing.

Tweed retained most of his cognitive function right up until the end, with a couple of blips along the way. He would sometimes stand at the hinge side of the front door and ask to be let out. To be fair, the door used to open on the other side before my landlord remodeled the mud room and bathroom. Once in a while he would have a post-dinner nap and then wake up and be pretty insistent that it was dinner time again. But he never did stuff like this! But then again, Piper has never been the brightest star in the night sky.

Mr. Woo, going on 10 (also in November) retains his stellar sense of fun.

Haylo. I am Meester Oow, a gentlemanz with a snazzy brown goatee. We haz never met before, Mees Food Lady, I assure you.

His Flamboyance(tm) remains its glorious self.

I think he’s going a bit deaf … I mean, he’s never been the world’s most responsive dog, nor the best behaved one, but lately I have managed to sneak up on him a few times, or he’ll seem surprised when I get annoyed that he hasn’t come when called. Being the master of deception that he is though, it could well be all an act.

TWooie – still fat, still lazy, still hunting for his own breakfasts. When he’s not sitting around doing nothing.

Dexter is …well, we’ve already talked about how I feel about Dexter! After Nationals, The Sadist said something about how proud he was of all of us for doing so well, and I made one of my generally snide comments about how he probably didn’t mean to include US in that assessment, and he said “Hey, Niko didn’t do so great either!” And I said “But Niko’s just a baby dog.” And The Sadist said “But Dexter is DEXTER.” Which says everything you need to know about Dexter’s success in … life.

This sums him up pretty well also:

The terriers are being terriers. I don’t even have any recent photos of them because they spend all their time divesting the property of wild rabbits. Winter makes fair attempts to rid our lives of Piper’s ducks as well, but thankfully the fences hold up pretty good :)

As for The Littles; I may be disowned by the border collie community for saying this, but I just adore them so. Sure they are naughty. Yeah they poop in the house as soon as it’s not a thousand degrees outside any longer. Definitely they have all the work ethic of a couple of crackheads on a tropical all-inclusive vacation. But they are so damn funny. And cuddly. They snuggle up with me under the covers at night and they don’t kick me in the neck, or fart in my hair. That, ladies and gentlemen, is love. And all they wanna do is play, play, play. Happiest dogs on the planet.

Last weekend I got to photograph the Australian Shepherd Club of BC’s annual agility trial. It’s always so much fun, I am super glad they invite me every year. Shooting big events can sometimes be thankless, as everyone is an armchair photographer and thinks they could do better, but the ASCBC people are low key and friendly folk and they always feed me lunch. Bonus!

Also, I got to photograph some dogs who came to BC for Nationals, and I got to have a little creative post fun in the editing department with their photos :)

I have not forgotten about your old dogs that I promised to photograph; I just haven’t had any free weekends for ages. I promise we’ll get on those before the winter comes.

Anyway, now you are up to date on my life! Things should be settling back down now to a more normal routine, so hopefully I will have a bit more free time to blog.

Remember; no matter how big the challenge, face it head on.

Who knows, you just might come out on top!

(Unless you’re trying to teach Dexter how to play agility. You may as well just forget that altogether!)

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