Wootube!

Dolittle's got nothin' on me

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Whatchoo Talkin’ ‘Bout, Willis?

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This is the face of Suspicion:

Buuuut, this is the face of FUN TIMES!

And this is the poster child for Aftermath:

On this weekend’s agenda – more fence building.  Either building fences is a long, laborious process, or I have the world’s biggest yard.  Either way, it’s not quite done yet, but we’re almost there!  One more section to go, but that section happens to be overgrown with tall grasses and I just could not convince my arms and blisters to weedwhack that length this weekend.

Also, it’s insanely hot outside, and the dogs and I had to spend some quality time enjoying the weather before it turns ugly for the next 700 years / until next Summer.

You can tell the weather is still good, because Piper has gotten what has turned into her annual hot spot, and my annual shitty shave job chasing it up her back.

hotspot

Where do these come from?  She hasn’t been swimming at all this year, so it’s not like she’s damp under all that hair.

Either way, it does not stop her from having a good time.

CRAZY good times.

This summer, my dogs have been stung by bees more times that I can recollect.  In all our years of living here, not a single dog has ever been stung by a bee, so it was sort of mystifying, until I discovered that my neighbour has started beekeeping.  I found dozens of hives on his property the other morning.  I think this would also explain the swarm box in the tree at the back of the property from earlier this year.  Thankfully none of the dogs has unusual reactions to stings (unless shrieking / shaking / twitching / throwing oneself on ones back and crying is unusual) so it’s not been a very big deal.  Just, so many bees.  So many bees they are photobombing my dogs!

Dexter is the only one I haven’t noticed getting stung (not that he would stop running long enough for either of us to notice) but I think that’s just because even bees fear The Insanity.

Spring has been stung, but she brings it on herself by chasing the bees.

Sometimes I really can’t believe Spring and Winter are related:

But even though he is a colossal dork, one of my very favourite things about Winter is that he shakes every piece of food I give him before he eats it.  At dinner time I give him a turkey neck and he stands on his hind legs and shakes it “to death” before he gets down to the business of consumption.  It’s been making me laugh every day for almost two years.  So he’s got that going for him.

I had a delightfully uneventful weekend of puttering and chores, and now I have 10 undelightful irritating canines nagging at me for dinner, so I have nothing awesome to write about this entry.  Instead, I invite you to enjoy some more photos of my dogs being them.

(especially Tweed because, you know, he’s Tweed)

The Perils of Aging

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You become a Stegosaurus!

Why didn’t anyone tell me that dogs with hair could be so much fun??  Gemma badly needed a groom as she was so shaggy I couldn’t tell her back from her front, so I took her into the marvelous folks at Markeydas Grooming who groom our shelter dogs for free, because they are awesome.  I said Gemma was a bad ass who needed a fauxhawk and a goatee, and they kindly obliged.  And now I have a tiny little Goatasaurus meandering about lookin’ killer stylin’.

Gemma is like Mork from Ork – she is aging backward, I think.  She gets more and more animated all the time and has even started running around a little here and there if the stars are in alignment.  She has also gotten very bossy, yelling at me when she thinks it’s meal time, and today she BOOFED at some people she heard walking down the road.  So much for my “palliative” foster dog!

Tweed, OTOH, only thinks he is aging backward.  Although he is in remarkable shape for an old man dog, he is nevertheless 4 days shy of 14 years and he is not the square little athlete he once was.  But he BELIEVES he is, which leads to some imagined-world/real-world conflicts sometimes.  That’s when this happens:

He was trying to join in the merry reindeer games of Dexter The Delirious and Ender The Ever Aloft, and ended up going teakettle over ass, performing a surprisingly graceful backwards somersault and ending up back on his feet again.  When this sort of thing happens – with somewhat alarming regularity, I might add – he always gets a scowl on his face and walks back to me with a body posture that is half accusatory that I let him get old and half hopeful that I will save him from aging.  It always breaks my heart a little.

But you know what’s good for a broken heart?  A PARTY.  And we are having one on Tuesday for Tweed’s birthday.  I bought party hats, and I am making a cake, which Auntie Mia will decorate, and then some of Tweed’s friends will come by the shelter and we will feed dogs cake and take pictures and enjoy the fact that Tweed is still ending up back on his feet again, after 14 long years!

Of course, much of this is predicated on my imaginary-world belief that I can make a doggie birthday cake.  Usually I just buy one, but the doggie bakery went out of business.  Got a favourite recipe?  Please share with the Food Lady!

Tweed is not the only dog getting older – Miss Piper is going on 12, and for several years I have been promising her that she would have her own personal flock of India Runner ducks, ever since the neighbour’s ducks got out of their enclosure several years ago and Piper calmly and politely put them all away again.  Ever since, I have been telling her that she would have her own ducks to work.  She has heard me say it so many times she no longer believes me.  And with her back end starting to falter on her, I decided I better make good on that promise.

This is another lofty goal that is predicated on things I like to think I can do, but can’t actually do.  Things like building a duck house.  I have a saw, and even went so far as to buy an electric screwdriver/drill thingie and built a lot of fantastic duck houses in my head, but none in the ACTUAL world where the ducks would have to live.

Stalled there for a bit until I acquired this:

A perfect duck house.  For crying out loud, it has an adorable little porch!  It weighs about 4,000 lbs though, and does not fit in my van, so I am working on getting my hands on a truck to get it home.

I was full of good intentions today and spent a long time unearthing my rolls of livestock fencing – which nature and ALL ITS PLANTS were trying to reclaim – and then remembered how tedious, painful and full of swears putting up fencing is.  I got into my dog brain and practiced all kinds of avoidance behaviours, like putting up a new shelf in my mudroom so all the stuff living on my porch since the Great Bathroom And Mud Room Renovation of ’13 could be put away again.  Then I cleaned up an entire winter’s worth of general acreage garbage, the odds and sods that get left laying around outside because I have the space, so I can.  Nice and tidy outside, but no duck enclosure. I will try again tomorrow.  I PROMISE PIPER!!

Still had time for a little fun and games, which involved Ender in the air (shocking, I know)…

Addy digging holes for IEDs (f*cking little terrorist Italian Greyhounds.  Look at her, just standing there plotting ways to destroy me and all humankind – or least steal our breakfasts)

Actually, what the little devil does is dig up a bunch of dirt madly and then throw the loose soil in the air with her nose to see if anything good comes flying out.

I thought she was crazy until the day I saw her toss a juvenile rat in the air with her nose and catch it on the way down.  Apparently there is a method to her madness.  TWooie still ate the rat in the end though.

Ender looks likes one of those fish that attach themselves to the sides of sharks, doesn’t he?

 

 

I Believe I Can Fly …

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I believe I can hump this guy ….

I dig a hole near ’bout every day…

I don’t care what The Food Lady say…

Your punny songs are boring.

*waves*

Oh hey, ‘member us?  It’s been a few weeks, I know.  The days are getting longer, but somehow there is way less time in the day to do stuff.  How does that work?  My weekend is nearly over, and I need at least one more day to get everything done.  So this entry will be a short and sweet update.

The gang is well.

Except Spring managed to slice her leg wide open running off a coyote that has been eating my chickens with reckless abandon.

Had to get her stitched up.  Two days later, she decided the cone was too small to prevent her from eating her stitches out, so … she ate her stitches out.

Got her leg restitched.  Four days later she decided the new, bigger cone was too loose to stay on her head to prevent her from eating her stitches out, so … she shook the cone off her head and ate her stitches out.

*rage*

But she’s healing up nonetheless.  Of course, it means that she has not been able to go to agility practice for a couple of weeks, which is two less weeks to get her prepped for Regionals, which is just 5 weeks away.

Dexter says he is ready.  Ready for WHAT is the question.  As is his SOP, he was stellar at the trial last night – it was first time in Masters Gamblers; he got a Q with a second place in his first Gamblers, and a Q with a first place in his second Gamblers.  Nobody came close to him on points for the second one, he was amazing.

That means he will lose his mind at Regionals, as per usual.

He’s an ass, as is Ender.

My love/hate relationship with Ender continues. I had this whole rant about how “intelligent and eager to please” clearly is a relative term, because this is not how I would describe IGs at all.  “Diabolical, willful and perpetually ravenous” seems a better breed description to me.  At any rate, I ran out of energy to write it, because the Iggies are exhausting … also THEY STOLE AND ATE MY BREAKFAST so I’m starving AND exhausted.

Tweed also finds them exhausting, and does not fall for the supplicant’s dance of appeasement.

Actually he is very tolerant of Addy, and seems to like her a little bit, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to share his Kong Boomerang toy no matter how much she knocks her head on the earth.

Eventually, of course, she will get hold of it.  It’s one of the few toys she shows sustained interest in.  She has the attention span of a crackhead.

In 10 days, Tweed is going to be 14 years old!

Which is why I don’t have to share my toys.

He is also doing really well, even though he fell face first into the wading pool the other day and had to be bodily hauled out as he couldn’t figure out which way was up.  But he’s otherwise doing marvelously for 14!

Piper has some wicked arthritis in her “good” leg, so her whole back end is failing her these days.  She falls down a lot.  But she’s still fierce.

And Gemma is even doing well!  We thought she was maybe dying, as she had a wicked cough and would sometimes fall over and almost pass out after a coughing session.  Once she had a seizure.  Turns out she still had a low grade infection left over from The Time Of Terrible Teeth and it got quite nasty, so she is on another course of stronger antibiotics to try and beat it back.  She must be feeling better, as she has been beating up the puppies at work, and even plays “chase me” games with me now sometimes!

Of course, she LOOKS ridiculous.  Captain Greybeard.

I’m going to take her in for grooming this week.  I am thinking a goatee and a mohawk would suit her nicely.  Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that dogs that require clipping could be so much fun??

Everything else around her is par for the course.

Crazy

Cute

and content :)

I will try to find more time for blogging, I promise!  It would help if you’d come over and mow my lawn ….

Hot Hot Hot!

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It’s hot.  And we love it.

We’re having a seasonally unusual hot stretch, in the upper 20s.  It’s been very sunny until today (though still hot!) so we are spending a lot of time hoarding Vitamin D in the great outdoors.  And the dogs are loving it.

ahhhhhhhhh.

Piper is loving it extra much because she had her 9 week post-op check up on Friday and Doc says everything is going swimmingly, and I am allowed to start increasing her exercise gradually, so short games of DumbBall are on the menu.

Piper could not believe her ears when I told her the good news.

But not Frisbee.  Tweed says he is now officially 13 years old and with age comes great respect, and he thinks everyone should respect his right to hoard the Frisbee.

The terriers are digging the outdoors time, with lots of zoomie terrier action happening.  Winter has decided that in order to be more aerodynamic his ears needed lifting, and he’s been carrying them this way for the past few days (whereas Spring can’t be bothered to get hers up).

However, the world is out to get the terriers!  First, I managed to bean Winter square in the mouth with a hockey ball on the up bounce. Then he was off in the neighbour’s field chasing Killdeer (they fly really low to the ground) and gleefully ignoring my demands for him to GETBACKHERERIGHTNOW! (with confidence comes bad behaviour, like EATING MY SHOES – which he does when I am present, not out of anxiety when left alone.  He’s having a second puppyhood on this Zylkene stuff) and wandered over to the dead end road and started following some people who he thought were me, but were not in fact me … what Auntie Fiona calls the “doggie version of grabbing the wrong mom hand.”  He had a minor panic over that, couldn’t figure out where home was and ended up racing through Stinky Ditch to get back to me as fast as possible, which ended in a Very Scary Bath.  (It has not, however, cured him of chasing Killdeer, who I think are nesting next door as they keep luring him away when he pops over Stink Ditch to go chase them.)  And Spring got run over by Dexter who was in full flight after his DumbBall.  I am amazed she is still alive.  Good thing terriers bounce.

I’m very excited because I have found someone who offers lure coursing in my neighboorhood, even to my lowly lurchers, so we are going to try it soon.  I think Spring and Winter will really like it.  I also think Wootie would really enjoy it, but he may be smoking too many drugs too really get into the athletic sports these days.

Not my Springaling though.  My girlie walks on air!

She’s magic!

Tweed can’t believe how high she can jump!

But mostly it looks so impressive because I am lying on the ground whilst taking those photos.  it makes her look like she is much higher in the air than she is.  Laying on the ground makes for neat perspective, you should try it.

Dexter looks dorky from just about any perspective.

Laying on the ground is always a bit of a crap shoot … it’s hard to throw the ball from a lying down position, and sometimes overtall smooth coated border collies land on your face when your aim is poor.  Sometimes you lay your ear down in dead worm, courtesy of Mr. Woo and his dig-em-up, shake-’em-to-‘death’ and roll-in-’em routine, and sometimes spiders crawl on you at inopportune moments (bad, very bad).

But you get some cool shoots from down there, so for you, dear readers, I will lay among the dead worms and spiders whilst getting trampled by Kieren.  The things we do for love (a la Jamie Lannister).

The other danger, of course, is that when laying prone you are bound to get a Winter in the face.  He means well, for he is a very love-filled doggie, but he is physically insensitive (shocking for a terrier, no?) and after a Winterlove session I end up bruised and battered See me holding him back?).

I love you so hard!

After a love mauling, he is always very contrite.

But you cannot accept his apology, for if you do, he is so grateful that you have forgiven him that he starts the whole process all over again.

It’s sure nice to see him having fun in life though!

Speaking of “fun” … I bit the bullet, and entered Dexter in Regionals again this year.  What can I say?  I am a glutton for punishment.

Oooooh … you gonna regret that, Food Lady.

Shut up Tweed.

I’m already having the cold sweats just thinking about it.  When I try to imagine the outcome of this foolish expenditure of cash and self respect, all I see is this image:

Dear doG.  What have I done?  WHAT HAVE I DONE???

Make it go away now kthanxbai

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Who wants me to list Pfeifer for adoption?

I do please.  Rightnow.

Whyever for, TWooie?

Cuz she gived me an owie and I almost died.  Make it go away now kthanxbai.

Oh TWooie.  Such a funny little beast.  I came home from work the other day and 6 dogs greeted me at the door instead of 7.  I counted them off through the doorway and realized we were missing one TWoo (ha ha.  one two).  Found him reclining on a puffy dog pillow with – no lie – one arm draped across his eyes.  “What’s up Scarlett?” is what I asked him.  He threw his head back further and wagged his Flambe™ in the sad way (half wag half wag half wag) and whimpered.

Oh clearly TWooie was dying.  Dying.  His life force was draining out of him before my very eyes, trickling down his forearm out of a puncture wound left by somedog who had clearly tired of his badassery at some point in the day and let him know it.  Probably Pfeifer is my guess, finally grown weary of being pursued around the house by the crotchety old landshark and not being allowed to have any fun.

Go away.  I HATE you.

 I guess this must be the first time TWooie’s ever really been hurt.  Or maybe he was just jealous about being left off of last week’s The Year Of The Pain Dogs list (don’t tell him, but he still hasn’t made the list).  Either way, the DRAMA of it all was pretty intense.  First of all, he was absolutely unable to walk.  Not a chance.  His injured limb was paralyzed and the rest of him was rapidly running out of power as well.  He so valiantly tried to hobble across the lawn to join the rest of us (and made Tweed’s limp virtually vanish in a side-by-side comparison) but the effort was just too great, and he collapsed in a heap-o-TWoo in the grass and cried.  He may even have wept actual tears.

It went on in this vein for the entire evening.  So on death’s door was TWooie that he couldn’t even get up for dinner – he could only bravely masticate that chicken to make The Food Lady happy when she carried it to him where he lay gasping out his last in his dog bed.  So weak was he that he couldn’t even stir when I vacuumed around him.  As he was not going to make it through the night, he dragged himself under the bed to save me the trauma of finding him dead on my pillow in the morning, and he moaned all.night.long.

Who thinks maybe TWooie was being a tad over-dramatic?

I do.

By morning, TWoo was fine.  He had a momentary set back the following evening when I changed his bandage and cleaned his wound, but he was cured (instantly and with some comedy) when I showed him the nail clippers.

However, my dreams of having The WooTWooThree have clearly been dashed.

So Miss Pfeifer is ready to find a home of her very own, sans TWooie.  She is an absolutely delightful little critter and TWoo not withstanding quite lovely with other dogs.  I did a home visit for another rescue group and brought her along to see how friendly their dog was, and she was great.  She can be a little irritating with the drivey ones and likes to chase them down when they are playing ball, but she calls off really easily.  She’s never had an accident in the house, sleeps in her crate without a peep (even puts herself in there when it’s getting close to bed time!) and comes every time she’s called, with total glee.  She’s snuggly and sweet, has never met a stranger, and other than the sheep thing, is perfect with everyone.  I am going to miss her a lot!

Am I missing?

It’s too bad, as she makes a nice bookend along with her doppelganger.

In other news, my step dad and I built a new hen house for the chickens.  By which I mean I designed it, and my stepdad did all the grunt work while I lounged around with a cocktail (not really – my mum and I fenced in the entire enclosure while stepdad built the house).

The result is a perfectly inoffensive A-Frame style hen house that fits all of my chickens and will keep them safe and dry all winter long.

Unlike the old hen house, this one has roosts for all.  And a skylight in the roof to let the dawn in, so the stupid rooster knows when to start yelling.

The back unhinges to I can get in there and clean it out, and collect eggs.  Eventually, the milk crates will be replaced with custom nest boxes, but we haven’t built those yet.

It’s also waiting for a dry spell so I can put the roofing tiles on over the roofing paper, but all in all I am quite pleased with how it turned out.  And the chickens are pleased with the yard, which more than twice the size of their old one, and has a giant woodchip pile in the middle of it for them to root through.

Tweed and I thank you for all your well wishes and insightful replies to my post last week.  I’ve thought it over carefully and decided that we’ll try the off-the-rack splint for the time being and see how it goes.  In part because in the last week or so, Tweed has been feeling a lot better and his limp has diminished quite a bit.  He still gets the owies when he does a sudden twist or sharp turn, but he’s using the bad leg regularly, and running around quite happily. If Tweed’s happy, so am I!

Also, this photo makes me happy:

I’ll be happy if you rehome Pfeifer.  Deal?

If you want to make TWooie’s day and give Pfeifer an awesome home, shoot me an email!

Too Many Dogs

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Lately my bank account has been whispering in my ear of an evening, telling me that I have too many dogs.  My bank account is right!  So I decided to do something about it, and started experimenting with some genetic mutations.

I tried splicing Dexter and Spring together.

The crazed 6 legged result was not the smooth melding I was hoping for.

I can’t recall what my goal for Piper was, but I ended up with a gimpy, half bald mutt.

Everyone say it with me: “Le sigh.”

I dunno what’s going on with my doggie universe, but we’re having another run of bad luck ’round these parts.

First there was A Wootie Hole you’ll remember from a couple of weeks back.  (And no, I’m not cleverly insinuating that Wootie is an A Hole.)(Even though he is.)  The porky little fellow is all healed up, though none the skinnier for the experience.

This would be a kind of poignant photo, if he didn’t look like he swallowed a hot air balloon.

(Though he is not as fat as these dogs, so I guess that counts for something)

He healed up just in time to pass his bad luck on to Piper, who for the first time in 10 years decided to nurture her very own hot spot.  I have never before had a dog with a hot spot, so I was very caught off guard.

The damn thing spread like wildfire in a dry BC forest too; I couldn’t keep up with it until I had shaved nearly half her back, and part of her tail and thigh for good measure.  She was ripping out her own hair in CHUNKS to get at it, so I figured I’d save her the trouble and shave it off myself.  I slathered her with a variety of topicals until we finally stumbled on something called Vetericyn, which dried it up like a hot damn and put an end to its insidious spread.  I was so impressed with how well it worked that I tried it on Dexter’s hot pink, hairless grass allergy chest and his skin returned to its regular colour after just one application.  I’m a convert!  I just wish Cesar Milan wasn’t plastered all over their website.

Between my ailing dogs, and last week’s meltdown over Phoenix my foster puppy – who is doing MUCH better now, btw.  Here’s what she looked like the day before I transferred her to her new foster home a few days after I posted about her:

So much better, right?  Even though she kinda looks like a Mexican Day Of The Dead doll.  Turns out she had a nasty staph infection, and the right combination of antibiotics and painkillers started healing her right up – well, the scabby infected bits anyway.  The gimpy legs are an other story altogether.  I transferred her to Hugabull Rescue, a fantastic local pit bull rescue group who works hard to help pitties in shelters all around BC.  I figured that a little baby pitty deserved to be raised and placed by people who are pitty pros.  As a breed rescuer, I have great respect for the knowledge that responsible, reputable breed rescues squirrel away in their overworked brains, and I think they are generally better equipped to help the dogs of their chosen breed.

And while I’m on the subject, I should take a minute to thank you all for your kind comments on last week’s rant too.  Sometimes a gal just has to have a meltdown, and since I can’t have them at work, you get to be the lucky recipients ;-)  It was a pretty shitty week or two though – Phoenix was just the scabby icing on the crap cake of inhumanity that samba’d through the shelter, and I was kind of losing hope in anything good happening ever again.

I know there are lots of good people in the world, along with the bad ones.  A lady brought the shelter staff cupcakes when her blind, ancient dog was picked up by Animal Control and spent the night in in our kennels – she was THAT grateful he was safe.  Those are nice times.  But some weeks, everyone who comes in is a giant douchebag, or at least they act like it.  And it wears a bit thin, you know?  I was starting to feel like this:

Working 6 or 7 days a week for about 5 weeks straight probably wasn’t helping either.  This week I finally got two days in a row off, and the first and most important thing I absolutely had to do was take the dogs to the beach before winter revisits us for another 9 months or however long it lasts here on the West Coast.

Dexter thought this was an absolutely fabulous idea.

He made me some wonderful photos!

The WooTWoo were happy, naturally.

Even though it was the beach, and therefore had a large watery percentage,  TWooie nevertheless enjoyed himself.

And Spring never. Stopped. Running. The whole time we were there.

Spring has the best zoomies-for-no-reason of any dog, anywhere, hands down.

What a beautiful day!  Mid September and the weather is still sunny and in the mid 20s.  There was nobody as the beach except for us.  It almost a perfect day.

Except I missed my main man, Tweedles :(

Who was at home, in a crate, feeling sorry for himself.  Probably being called names by my bank account, just to add insult to injury.

Those of you who are fans on Facebook joined me yesterday in begging the Universe not to give Tweed bone cancer.  See, about a week ago Tweed’s regular, everyday “I haz a little limp” turned into a slightly more serious “Ouch, dude, my foot really hurts.”  And with every passing day, his limp got more serious until Wednesday night when he wasn’t putting any weight on his foot at all.  I took a good look at it in the morning, and saw that it was not his foot that looked bothersome, but his his wrist, which was all swollen and puffy looking.  To me anyway.

The amazing Dr. Bowra has the same days off as me, so when I called to see if he could squeeze us in if I took off from work early, he kindly obliged.  I was REALLY hoping he would tell me it was my imagination when I explained that his wrist felt “squishy rather than pointy.”  But instead he said “oh my” when he looked down at Tweed’s leg.

That’s about as awesome as hearing your tattoo artist say “oh shit.”

We took x-rays of his wrist that showed some significant changes and/or damage to his wrist joint, but Dr. Bowra was unable to say what they might be, so he had to send them to a radiologi$t.  He said he didn’t think it was bone cancer, but he wasn’t going to totally rule that out either, and wanted a second opinion.

In the end, everyone agreed that Tweed does not have bone cancer.

Yay!

But there is definitely something wrong with his wrist.  It looks like it might be cracked/fractured, or possibly a small piece of bone has splintered off.  We had a nice long chat about various options, and Dr. Bowra said something I actually liked to hear, which was “even if you won the 649 and wanted to do all the surgical intervention possible, I would still recommend against surgery at this point, as we don’t really know what we are looking for.”  Finally, a chance to NOT spend all my money!  Because you know if Tweed needed surgery, I would sell everything I owned to pay for it.  I’d probably sell YOU if I could get away with it.

I’d *definitely* sell the WooTWoo.  BY THE POUND.

Twooie: Whaaaaat?

Wootie: Relax dude, she’s all talk.

So Tweed is in a cast/splint for a couple of weeks, hopefully rest and anti-inflammatories will heal him up reasonably well, and if not, we can at least get some new x-rays to see if we can identify the root of the problem once all the swelling has gone done.

I am bummed that Tweed missed what will probably be the last beach trip of the year.  But I am THRILLED that he does not have cancer.  Because as I have stressed many many times before, Tweed is never allowed to die.  Period.  He must live forever.

So he will :)