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Bridgeman

Hugs For Food Lady!!

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… orrrr, hail the cookie Gods. Take your pick.
Tweed picks cookies.

You always think the worst of me. Maybe I’ll kill you for that.

So, wow … I was really overwhelmed with your response to Red Dog’s Memorial Post. What a great bunch you are! I am sorry I made a bunch of you cry too … I’m trying to figure out a way to exploit this underused talent and make a bazillion dollars from it. Then I can pay for all the dental work Piper is going to need, after a large metal caribiner hit her in the face and split one of her teeth in half last week (long story, don’t ask).

But I won’t need it for agility entries, because tomorrow Tweed is going to get his last Masters Snookers Q for his Almighty ATCh. Right?

I said, RIGHT?!

I’m not sure. I think my foot is broken. See?

To be fair, Tweed did have some kind of crazy, whine-and-cry-and-limp inducing crashbang with Nate today. You all know Nate as Boomer from our rescue. We had a chance meeting with The BoomBoom today, and he took Tweed down.

Who, me?

Tweed was going to beat the crap out of him for it with a Really Big Stick …

…but Piper and Woo staged an intervention. At least, I think that’s what they were doing.

I don’t know if this happens to you very often, but on a fairly regular basis someone wants to breed one of my dogs to their dogs. I am thinking about traveling with a soapbox from now on, because that’s a topic that can get me on it in a hurry! Today it was the owner of this cute little Australian Shepherd.

She wanted to breed her to Tweed (Hah! Good luck with that. Not only is Tweed neutered, but he also doesn’t like girls. Tweed only likes underage boys, and the occasional pant leg).

I said that there are literally thousands of Australian Shepherds in rescues/shelters all across North America and that breeding your dog to a certified weirdo mutt you meet in the park is probably one of the worst ideas a person could come up with and –

HEY! GET OUT OF THE SHOT, RANDOM DOG!

We are really, really tired of the snow snow snow everywhere snow.

It’s pretty and all

But we are all pretty bored with it now, I think.

Who wants to see grass again?

Me!ME!Me!ME!Me!ME!

Blargh. Stupid snow.

Wish us luck tomorrow! It could be Tweed’s big day!!

Ready?

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Are you ready Mr. Woo?

Ready???

Get set ….

GO!!!!

…. lie down and eat snow.

Le sigh. World’s Laziest Dog.

We hooked up with The Boy and his dogs today for a snowy walk. Piper was excited.

So was Hayden.

We all met up because I needed to take photos of his foster puppy, who is MINE ALL MINE MINE MINE MINE!!!

Actually, her name is Daisy and she is 6 months of cuddly snuzzle cuteness. She is almost ready for adoption … unless I scoop her first!

But Daisy doesn’t want to live with me; she wants to stay with The Boy and his dogs, because she only has eyes for Jackpot.

Wait for me Jack! I wuv you!

Yay! Me and Jack, Jack and me! Lemme give you smoocheroonis!

What the -? Where’d this thing come from? I CAN’T SEE MY JACK!!

Jack is sooooo sexy.

So if you are looking for puppy adorableness to add to your pack, look for Daisy on our website in 2009.

Moooommmm! Hayden’s tongue is abnormally long!

… and Jack’s in my photo!

This dog could not believe we crossed paths! (Owner recognized the two woofs, and The Woo, from the blog. Fans – my dogs haz some.)

Not a bad way to bid adieu to the old year … good company and a pack o’border collies in the snow.

Except … where’s lazy pants Woo??

What?

Happy New Year to all of you, from all of us!

We Are Family

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Here’s a photo to warm the cockles of your heart (whatever those might be). A touching snapshot of a boy and his dog.

WTF?

Hold the phone, sister – that’s not that boy’s dog. That’s MY dog!!

And that boy has his own dogs! He has Hayden:

And he has Jack!

Once upon a time, we were family, and Piper had all her brothers (and me).

Piper has to look twice as tough as she really is amongst all those boys; that’s why she sits like a bulldog. Grrr. She’s SO tough.

Can’t you tell?

At least she can still outrun them.

Tweed was so happy to see his ex stepbrothers, as even though he lacks uppy-ears, they still let him be part of the gang.

I’ve missed my boys! Although, if I’m being honest, I suspect Hayden is clinically insane.

Also, he didn’t seem like he missed me. Jack, OTOH, was ecstatic. He probably remembers how good I taste, and was waiting for the opportunity to take a bite out of me. Again.

Awww, Jack. I’m too smart to turn my back on you!

You know how when you go back and revisit something that you did, or who you were, you are sort of transported momentarily right back into that moment and you sort of live it all over again?

Do you think dogs experience that as well? We have not seen The Boy and His Dogs for a couple of years, at least. We arrived at Bridgeman a few minutes before they did, and when they met up with us, Piper was both excited, and confused. She behaved almost like she was lost, or guilty, and glued herself to The Boy’s leg with her tail plastered to underbelly like she’d done something horribly wrong, or felt terrible. I wonder if she had a When World’s Collide experience, doggy style?

She’d always had a crush on The Boy, and was his virtual slave.

“I’ll carry your Chuck-It for you, Boy! Can I do anything else to make your day brighter?”
I have no idea what Tweed’s doing here.

Maybe he had lost his mind.

The reunion family portraits didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, mostly because a) Jack and Hayden no longer listen to me (“you’re not my mum!”) and b) Tweed was all NO TOUCHING!

And Woo was all “this photo is all about me. I’m going to take up as much of the frame as doggedly possible.”

And then he just … left.

Tweed was so excited about seeing The Boy and His Dogs that he was still in a euphoric mood when we got home. He was in such a good mood, that he even deigned to play with a somewhat skeptical Wootie.

But pretty soon he totally crashed.

And Mr. Woo, who didn’t remember anyone in his old family, was like “Why’d you make me hang out with those whacknuts anyway?”

So I sat down to edit photos and Nutz said “Step away from my computer desk, bitch.”

Christ! What a grump!

“Whatever could you possibly mean? I’m an ANGEL!”

My Dogs Are Creepy

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I’m not posing them for group pictures anymore. They freak me out. They’re all Children Of The Corn and shizzat.

I’m afeared!!

When I saw Piper coming at me through the viewfinder, I shrieked like a little girl and ran away. I’m sure all the onlookers at Bridgeman Park thought I was mentally challenged. I don’t care! It was, like, the last thing someone in a horror film would see before they were chopped (or chewed) to pieces by a smiling psychopath!

“Vut seemz to be ze problem? You appear … dis-turbed.”

Today we did a marathon hike at Bridgeman, with our friends Sandy, her adorable TDBCR adoptee Heidi, who is an itty bitty basenji X border collie (no kidding)
Heidi is SO cute. But she has a great big bossy boots for a teeny little dog. Remember this, it’ll be revisited later in the blog.

And they brought their foster guest, Cassie, who is available for adoption on our website.

Cassie doesn’t look much like what people think of when someone says “border collie” but she is all BC in personality – she is super keen, and super fun, and super smart and just an all around super puppy of about 9 months. She has a great temperament. You should probably adopt her.

Speaking of you … it never fails to amuse me when when “you” the stranger identify me as The Food Lady when I’m out in public. I mean, I know it’s my own fault for obsessively photodocumenting every walk and plastering it all over the internetz, but it still catches me off guard because in my head, I am still anonymous.

*Waves at today’s “You’re The Food Lady!” guy* Hai! Now you’re famous and I’m stalking you.

And hey, while I’m talking to strangers I came across in today’s travels … to the guy honking at me in his Mercedes on 16th Avenue today: Hai! The reason I didn’t go around the car in front of me that was making a left is because I could not fit my giant van between it, and the sidewalk. I really appreciate the “snakey” motions your plastic surgery model cum trophy wife was making with her hands to indicate how I could execute the go-around-the-car-in-front-of-me manouever – thanks for that! But while I could have rammed the little honda in front of me, or driven onto the sidewalk to get around her, I did think either of those options was a bit overly dramatic, just to allow you the freedom to resume travelling at 35km per hour in a 50km zone. I want you to know, though, that your incessant honking was music to my ears, and very nearly inspired me to exit my car and paint your lapels with the little ketchup packs in my glove comparment in an artistic fit if my own. You have no idea how close you were to feeling my tomatoey wrath!

“She’s ranting again. Everyone stay very still, and don’t upset her. Eventually she will run out of steam. Feel free to look exasperated while waiting it out though. Gawd knows I will.”

We arrived at the park a little early (which is how the scary Posed Creepy Dogs idea came to life) and I was randomly taking photos of passing dogs by bribing them with cookies.

Like this Cheseapeake Bay Retriever

Who felt I did not hand over the cookies fast enough, and was not shy about telling me as much.

And this Lab, who looks very sweet in his photo, but tried to eat my camera, and the pocket that held the blessed cookies. I’m really starting to rethink the Cookie Strategy.

This sweetie, who is a BC X Rottweiler, sat politely, posed cutely and waited patiently for her promised cookie. Good dog!

Tweed and Heidi were pretty impatient with all the stopping and photo taking.

Tweed wanted to be on his way.

Cassie too!

I bet they didn’t know that they’d meet a Dandie Dinmont Terrier whilst on the road though. I mean, I sure didn’t. I wasn’t even totally sure they actually existed in real life, just on the internetz. But then we saw this one, who is apparently the Champion Of Everything Plus Something Else Fancy He Just Won Last Week. I’m not a dog show person so I didn’t understand any of it, but he sure had really big eyes for a really small dog.
He was pretty cute.

As we ambled down the road, I was musing over what kind of Huff I’d like to storm off in, and decided that if at all possible, I think I’d like to storm off in a beat up old early 1970’s farmer style pickup truck Huff. But in order to do that, I think I would need a dog like …

this.

Everybody sing it with me now …

MAYBE TOMORROW, I’LL WANNA SETTLE DOWN.
UNTIL TOMORROW, I’LL JUST KEEP MOVIN’ ON.
UNTIL TOMORROW, THE WHOLE WORLD IS MY HOME….

I think she was a WolfDog, and she was super cool looking. And huge. 90 lbs of huge, to be exact.

90lbs of huge, however, is no match for 20lbs of Very Bossy Boots.


I told you!

“And don’t even THINK about bothering that poor mastiff either!”


After the last entry, someone asked me why Mr. Woo’s soccer ball, which is clearly labeled “Adidas” is called Fifa (tm). So if I may take you back in time, to the days of The Very First Fifa. Fifa The First was a soccer ball we found abandoned in an alley, and Woo tenderly adopted it. That soccer ball happened to say “FIFA” on it and so has every subsequent replacement ball been called Fifa (tm). And there have been a few, starting with the very sad loss of Fifa The First and the garish subpar replacement ball.

“And He who walks behind the rows did say; I will send outlanders amongst you… a man and a woman, and these outlanders will be unbelievers and profaners of the holy and the man will sorely test you. for he has great power, even greater than that of the blue man!”

AHHHHHH! RUN AWAY RUN AWAY!

We’re Movin’ On Up

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… to the East Side.

etc.

We have been incommunicado for a week, blog readers, because the Food Lady has been packing, cleaning, moving and unpacking again. Last week, 3WAAW, Nutz and the Food Lady too, moved to a bigger, better apartment. I wasn’t kidding about moving to the East Side!

Our new home is more than double the size of the old one. We lost our magical private deck, but gained floor to ceiling windows, and a gas fireplace, and in-suite laundry! We are no longer quite so close to ocean, but as the Food Lady’s car (right now parked in one of the *ahem* two underground spots that come with the condo) can always drive us there.

Another view of the place from the other side of the suite.

Such a lot of hard work, moving is! And the dogs don’t know what to make of the new place. It’s so different from the old place, but it has all our furniture in it. They are a little weirded out. Mr. Woo snapped at a friendly neighbor dog in the parking garage, which is something Mr. Woo never does, unless he is feeling extremely stressed out.

Mr. Woo is not the only one who is stressed out. As if moving is not bad enough in and of itself, I had the additional fun-and-good-times experience of losing Donut in the move. I realized on moving day that her carrier was on loan to my sister and I foolishly thought that I could just carry her to my car in my arms. The punctures on my thighs and my scratched up hands and wrists will remind me for some time that I was WRONG! My 5lb kitten morphed into something like a oversized Smilodon and clawed her way out of my grasp just as I reached my car, then she vanished in an instant. Seconds after it began to rain. Argh!

I found her about 5 hours later, wet, oily and very scared under a garbage bin in an alley. This was after I had run all around my old neighborhood crying, calling all my friends and recruiting people to help me look for her, finally having to leave to escort the movers to my new place and convinced I would never see her again. Poor Nutz – a nice guy (with 5 cats!) working on the leaky condo next door helped me get her out from under the bin, and she went into a crate in the car with Mr. Woo, who cleaned her up for me.

Gah.

And Donut was not all I lost. I also, sadly, said “farewell” to our friend Sporty.

Sometimes I forget that my job as a foster home is prepare the doggies for a new and better life somewhere else. It’s especially hard to remember that when they were almost dead when you got ’em, and made a miraculous recovery, and stayed for 3 months … and thought the sun rose and set wherever you were standing too :(

If I had not been in a position where I had to move, I would have put exactly 0% of my efforts into finding Sport a new home and he would have lived out his life with me. But it didn’t work out that way – in a city that is experiencing a housing shortage for renters, there was just no room for Sport in my apartment hunt. Finding a home for my own dogs was my priority, and Sport just was not my dog. No potential landlord wants to hear the sentence “I have 4 dogs.”

Fortunately, the foster home who sprung Sporty from the shelter for me a few months ago had told me at the time that if they had not been leaving for Australia within days, they would have just kept Sport. And so they were delighted to have him back – fatter, cleaner and way less stinky – as a permanent guest who will spend the remainder of his retirement with them.

Bye bye, old buddy.

To make up for the endless days of packing and cleaning and moving, during which the only words directed at my poor dogs were “OMG Would you please get the f*ck out of my way!?!” I loaded them in the van and hauled them to Bridgeman Park for a good two hours of play time today. It’s beautiful in the Fall.

Mr. Woo has still not forgiven me for upsetting his life, and in every photo of him that I take, he looks extremely pissed off:

Or else he just won’t look at the camera.

Tweed, bless his heart, tried to make up for Woo’s bad manners, but all he managed was

Portrait Fail:
(I’ve enlarged the expression on his face so you can’t miss it)

I also caught him in his favourite “I think I’m about to sneeze” pose:

As well as snapping a private moment between him and his licker!

And Piper’s 24/7 thought bubble, as usual, simply reads

Ball?

Ummm …. Ball?

Oops. Another private licker moment, caught on (digital) film!

This is what Mad Teeth ™ look like without a ball in Piper’s mouth!

More Wootie cold shoulder:

But finally I got a family portrait!

So now you know why I have been neglecting our fans this week. In fact, I had to (steal) internetz to post this week’s entry as my internet is not hooked up yet and won’t be for several more days! But now that we are mostly settled in, I should be back to more regular updates.

If the bike ride home from work doesn’t kill me, that is … more than 30 continuous uphill blocks. Oh dear. If I don’t make it, I bequeath Tweed to you!

Love,

The Food Lady.

Me. And My Shaaa-a-dow

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“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?