bird

into the future!!

It is now obvious that Tweed kicked the crap out of Mr. Woo earlier this week to punish him for something Wootie had not yet done.

But let me explain.

Yesterday I threw the dogs in the van and took them to beautiful Bowen Island, which is a 20 minute ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver.

We went to visit my sister’s partner’s parents, who have a big, comfortable rambling homestead over there on a few blissfully peaceful acres. Dogs are very welcome. In fact, everything is very welcome, as the Cadys are warm people with nary an ounce of pretension. And their home is beautiful.

Tanus and Nicole wandering the property with their ever-present glasses of wine.

The barn across the creek that I feel strongly should be converted into my new home!

But Tweed is superstitious, and found the Cady house *extremely* scary. The house is full of curiosities and objets d’art and Tweed was convinced that all of them were Out.To.Get.Him.

*Afeared*

The deer antlers were obviously going to LEAP OFF THE WALL and GRAB HIM.

VERY SCARY CANARIES:

A bowl of feathers that could potentially TICKLE HIM TO DEATH!!!!!

TERRIFYING STAIRCASE

Although that last one I kind of have to give him – up those stairs lives Charlie The Killer Cat. I’m not even kidding. While we were exploring the house, Charlie leapt off a bed and ONTO a completely unsuspecting Wootie and delivered upon him a beating of world class proportions. It made Tweed’s thrashing from the other day look like an intimate embrace of true love. The screaming may haunt the Cadys for the remainder of their days.

We eventually had to close the door to that part of the house, because Charlie was laying in wait for another canine victim. Dude, that is one scary f*cking cat!

Tweed also spent a good portion of the evening barking in abject terror at the face of a statue of Buddha sitting on an end table. I got no photos of this because I was mortified – Smartest Breed In The World my arse.

Anyway, Tweed had clearly had a premonition, which became obvious when we took the dogs down to see the Indian Runner ducks (BTW – Funniest.Ducks.EVER).

Indian Runners are very flocky and like sheep, they all tend to go in the same direction on foot, all waddly with their big tall necks, making concerned quackings as they go. They are popular among working dog enthusiasts for practicing for this reason.

I thought for sure that they would capture the interest of my three, you know, herding dogs?

Tweed was (surprise!) afraid of them. Piper dismissed them as they were in a dog-free coop and therefore, of no value to her.

Mr. Woo …

Mr. Woo RAN AWAY.

And I mean, he ran the f*ck away. Not from the ducks – he just ran away.

Notice the complete absence of Wootie in this photograph of the back part of the property. That’s because he was already 400 miles away.

I don’t know exactly how big Bowen Island is, but it would not surprise me if Wootie circled it several times in his BADDOGFREEFORALL.

Wootie came to me with no recall whatsoever. The word “come” means, to Wootie, run really far and fast in the opposite direction. I have worked on his recall endlessly, and really thought we had made some headway as I can now call him off even a squirrel most of the time. He still does not have the enthusiastic about-face top-speed return of my other dogs, but I have been very smug about how much I have achieved with him. However, I have never had the opportunity to test it in the conflicting face of the intoxicating scent of BOWEN ISLAND DEER.

See Wootie Run. Run, Wootie – RUUUUUUUN!

So while everyone else at the dinner party was enjoying fine wine, good company, the warm glow of the fire etc. etc., I was fighting my way through dense forest and swamps trying to track down an extremly wayward Mr. Woo. Periodically, far in the distance of the gathering dusk, I would catch a glimpse of The Flamboyance(tm) as Woo sailed over fallen trees and crashed through undergrowth. And I sounded like a one-woman drunken camping party as I screamed his recall command (in retrospect, perhaps a poor choice, as Wootie’s recall command is “WOOOOOO-HOOOOOO!”) over and over again.

It’s obvious to me now that my failed attempts to get Woo to exercise could easily have been solved by simply dropping him off in deer country and returning for him a few days later. He’d probably be 10 lbs lighter, because he would NEVER STOP RUNNING.

Eventually he returned to my general vicinity, tongue dragging 7 feet behind him, and I tackled him like a linebacker in the Superbowl. He was covered head to toe in Bowen Island mud and his Flamboyance(tm) was decorated with Forest Stuff like a cruel and mocking Christmas Tree. I bathed him in the creek, and dragged him kicking and screaming the whole way back to the house.

Where everyone proceeded to snuggle the shit out of him. WTF?

It’s clear that Tweed knew what Wootie was plotting, and chose to beat him for it in advance. Thanks, Tweed! I am sorry I doubted you.

*Vindicated Tweed Gets Victory Snuggle From Auntie Tanus*

You can open doorz, and I can haz deer chase plz? kthnx!

Now who’s the bonehead, huh? Oh wait – still me. Nevermind.

ETA: It is 12:10 on Sunday afternoon and it is SNOWING AGAIN. Someone is in BIG trouble!!!!

“Something is following me.”

“Hellooooo!! Food Lady! Are you listening to me?”

“I think it’s down there.”

“Oh shit. It’s behind me isn’t it? I’m just going to keep smiling …”

“Oh hai! I’m not doing anything!”

Poor Tweed. Sport will not leave him alone – where goest Tweed, Sport is sure to be not far behind. It sometimes results in a beat down for Sport, because he is far from agile and woe to the Sport who is in Tweed’s path when he spins to race after a ball. He knocks Sport to the ground, and then is angry that a boney heap of dog is in his way, so he punishes him soundly. But Sport never learns, and with herculean effort he clatters to his feet and shuffles off determindely after his BFF, who is a shining beacon of love for Sporty.

Sport is to Tweed what Woo is to Piper – a flaming pain in the ass!

You may be wondering why there are photos of Tweed running, when this dog with the mangled leg is supposed to be on crate rest and leash walks. Never fear, I have a perfectly reasonable answer for you: Tweed is a bastardog!

Please love me. I’m super cute.

After two days of pathetic three-legged limping and big sad eyes, and me feeling horrible about HA HA laughing at him when he fell down, I scrounged through the sofa for the last of my loose change and carted Tweed off to our vet. Terry played with his foot for a while and thought he had broken a toe.

$200.00 worth of x-rays and drugs later, Tweed walked out of the clinic with not even a trace of a limp and damned if he hasn’t been as good as new ever since.

My theory is that he dislocated his toe, and while trying to feel for the break Terry popped it back into place. Nice.

Anyone feel like feeding the Food Lady? Tweed is determined to spend all my grocery money. It’s not like the dogs will go hungry, because when all else fails, they can just eat these:

Does anyone else’s dog eat blackberries? I spent a good portion of our hike today struggling and swearing my way through thorny bushes detaching hand-staining berries for my little four legged fan club. Piper and Woo can and do eat them off the bushes themselves, but this late in the season all the good ones are still up quite high and guess which one of the 5 of us has arms?

(in unison)“Thanks for the berries, Food Lady!” (Sport: “What?”)(he doesn’t eat the berries)

Thanks for all the comments and emails about how well Sport is doing (*shines knuckles on lapel*). He’s been with us for a couple of months now, and while still a skinny little skeleton, he is doing amazingly well. Really, it has nothing to do with my mad skillz as rehabber – it’s just a stable home, a healthy diet, a tapeworm eviction and the magic of prednisone.

I’m not much a woo-woo kind of person, but it’s hard not to think that the universe HATES ME and gave a version of Red Dog right back to me again, just when I had gotten used to being able to, oh I dunno, go for a dogwalk without my spidey senses tingling. I’m right back to where I was before, scanning the horizons for approaching dogs so I can leap on my old dog and squeeze his mouth shut before he tries to tear the other dog’s face off. Sport shares many of Briggs’ qualities – he limps, he has eyes only for me, he’s an asshole to other dogs … *sigh*

Anyway, in my paranoid scannings today at Bridgeman Park I sighted a man on a small crest, not very well hidden by bushes, who was … uhhh … “enjoying his outing” a little too much, if you get my drift. Sick. Who does that at a DOG PARK? The temptation to take a photo of him and post it on the itnernetz to shame the sicko was almost overwhelming, but I was worried Blogger would cancel my account for p0rn content if I did. Where’s an army of beefy young fast running men with a collective sense of social justice when you need them? Yeesh!

In other news, Woo found god this afternoon.
ha ha!

As you can see, he was VERY excited about it.

Woohoo!

His new faith did not give him the ability to walk on water though, so he had to utilize stepping stones instead. Woo won’t swim in the river, for some reason.

“Throw the ball for me! Plz?? I’ll swim in the river!”

It’s hard work, being such a keener.

You know, I think if I had become a photographer before I became a dog owner, I might have chosen a different breed. Weimeraners are SO awesome to photograph. No wonder Wegman got famous doing it!

Ruby was a little harder to photograph. .2 seconds before she tried to eat my camera:

This Golden was a little more cooperative.

So I need your help, readers. You may recall that last week or so I complained about stepping blithely out of the shower and straight into a pile of murdered bird, courtesy of the one and only Nutz.

A few days later, she bounced gracefully into the house and with a self satisfied “MEOW” released a flapping, screeching, blood spraying mess of seriously injured finch into my living room. It flapped, squawked and bled its way around my apartment with me in furious (and totally grossed out) pursuit until I cornered it behind the sofa with a blob of paper towels that amounts to about 37 dead trees in a rainforest.

After some whining and crying on some internet forums, I did learn of several humane ways to knock off an injured birdie at home (can also be interpretted as there are several budding serial killing sadists full of advice on the internetz! ha ha!). I also learned that the local bird population would benefit if Miss Nutz wore a bell.

I returned from work that day with a pretty pink collar with a matching dingaling, and renamed Donut “Tinkerbell.” Tinkerbell was mighty pissed off, but I admit it was fun to hear her tinkling merrily away around the building as I went to and from the elevator ;-)

Okay but so the bell worked for a total of three days. Just 10 minutes ago, I caught TinkerNutz in the bathroom trying to stuff a very much alive finch down the sink drain. Fortunately, this one was unharmed and flew out of my hands when I took it outside on the deck.

“Oh hai. Can I get a side of bird with that?”

So help me out readers. Short of releasing a press release to the local bird population about the dangers of TinkerNutz The Butcher, how do I put an end to the murders? I can’t keep her off the deck because Mr Pee Pants Sporty needs to go out and bless my garden with his bladder fairly often, and the logistics of my set up prevent me from constructing some sort of “cat area” that is bird safe. Can I affix an airhorn to her collar instead of a bell?

ZOMG! Tweed can see

Me. And My Shaaa-a-dow