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“I Used To Read This Blog

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…by someone named “The Food Lady” but she stopped blogging like a month ago for some reason.”

*waves*  Hello!  Remember me?  I know some of you remember me, because at Nationals last weekend I had no fewer than three different incidents of perfect strangers walking up to me and saying “Hey, aren’t you The Food Lady?  I read your blog!”  This made me feel guilty, because there has been no blog to read since early July.  Worst (extremely) minor dog-related celebrity EVER.

I have had a real busy month!!  Between clients, shooting trials, competing and the extreme heat and weird orange haze that hangs over us all here due to the history-making apocalyptic wildfires that are consuming my province, not to mention my Very Angry elbow, opportunities to take photos of my motley crew are few and far between.

So let’s get down to business and I’ll tell you what’s been happenin’ ’round these parts.

My Springalingaling went to the AAC Nationals and did WAY better than I could ever have imagined!  As you all know, Spring and the venue Thunderbird are not good friends.  For the past several years, Spring has “eliminated” in the ring due to some unknown stressor that causes her to fear Thunderbird in all its white sand glory.  So when we went to Regionals this year, our goals were simple and minimal:
– eat lots of cheese
– have lots of fun 

We were successful in both of these endeavors, and even though Spring did not hit a single contact or get a single clean run all weekend, she was pretty happy to be there, did not befoul any of the rings, and managed to qualify for Nationals.  On the basis of this success, our goals for Nationals, though still simple, were:
– eat lots of cheese                            
– have lots of fun                              
– try to hit at least some contacts

And once again, my happy, narrow little doggie pulled through!  She ate all the cheese.  She was having a good time out there.  She hit EVERY SINGLE CONTACT and she managed to pull out three clean runs out of six.  She had one bobble at the weave poles in Standard 1 and I sent her off course into the wrong tunnel mouth in Jumpers 2 (totally my bad) and in Gamblers 2, which she absolutely could have run clean, in the closing I was too tired from the heat and smoke and early mornings/long days and accidentally sent her over an off course jump.  Again, totally my bad.

BUT let’s recap – my nervous little doggie found her Brave and ran at Nationals, despite her multi-year phobia of Thunderbird and despite the fact that since the Sadist stopped teaching we have had no opportunity to train since essentially November of last year.  And despite the air quality index being somewhere between stuck-in-a-coal-mine and trying-to-breathe-on-the-surface-of-the-sun.  I suck, my dog is awesome.  Cheese is god.  And Spring even managed to pull out a podium placement in her Standard 2.  Even Tweed, winner of Regionals, never managed a podium placement at a Nationals!  And to top off what was already an amazing weekend for me, she won an award for the Top Rescue Dog in the Regular division.

I’m literally the proudest of her I have ever been. NOT because she won things (although I *do* enjoy winning things) but because she had such a good time and was so willing to work for me despite all our challenges.  So I took this shitty photo of her with her ribbon.

Such a good girlie!

This is NOT a good girlie.  Her tally for August is: one baby duck eaten, one baby chicken eaten, one homicide with her partner-in-crime Winter perpetrated against an innocent adult duck.  Of course she is happy about it though. She’s an asshole.

(Asshole #2)

All my precious babybabies went back to the rescue headquarters to be neutered and head off to their new homes.  I miss them so much!

Although I will apparently always have the “eau de puppy pee” odor to remember them by.  I took everything out of the dog room this week, scrubbed the whole thing down with the steam mop (parbroiling my arm in the process.  F*ck did that ever hurt!) and liberal vinegar, but still the stink lingers.  Any suggestions for a good, safe odor remover?

We had a houseguest for a little while who got off to a rocky start by jumping out of the car and immediately killing a chicken and putting holes in my beloved turkey Terrence.  We spent the next few days making use of a long line and reminders that killing my poultry is wrong (Addy and Winter have, obviously, still not grasped this concept) and by the end of her stay, she was pretty reliable about following the No Murders On My Property rule.  Peetie, in her innocence, thought the houseguest was wonderfully fun.

Alfie is still with me, until October.  I love him so much.  I DO NOT WANT TO GIVE HIM BACK.  Would it be wrong to flee the country with him tucked into my backpack?

July was full of photo shoots of other people’s doggies, which makes me so happy, because I love doing doggie photo shoots so very much.  Also I like paying my rent :)

This is Stanley and Brunswick, who are besties, as you can see by the way THEY ARE HOLDING PAWS (and no, I did not pose them this way, they did it themselves!)

This is Malcolm and Lila who henceforth shall be referred to only as The Goobers.

This is Texas The Tripod, whom you’ve seen before in my composite, but I love this photo so much I needed to share it.

This is Mia and Kasper, who are so photogenic that I couldn’t pick just one photo to share, so you have to look at two different ones.

(yes they are on railway tracks.  no you shouldn’t lecture me on the perils of shooting on railways tracks)

(yes they are standing in a boat that does not belong to me.  no you shouldn’t lecture me on using someone else’s boat)

This is Robbie, who is crazy-for-tennis-balls!

I have 4 or 5 more shoots lined up for this month, but would love to have more, so feel free to contact me if you want to do a session!

Everything else is 100% normal around here.  Piper is back to her old self, absolutely and completely.  No more wobbles, no more head tilt, hiking three times a week.  She is a remarkable fighter! Not even phased by bears (slash-totally-oblivious-to-the-bear)!

And now for the ultimate in OH MY GOD photos …. but first!  Some kind of blogging law says I am required to advise you all that in exchange for my testimony I received this product free as compensation.  But let me tell you that I would rave about it anyway because JUST LOOK AT IT.  LOOK AT IT!!!

Is this not the most awesome thing you have ever seen??  EVER???

Susannah of Crochet Critter Craft made this for me in the likeness of His Orangeness, Mr. Woo.  It’s a drink holder, though it has never held a drink around here because I keep putting it next to Mr. Woo, laughing until I cry, and photographing it.  It is one of the most awesome things I have ever received in my life!  IT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE HIM!!  You need one of these in your life, and then you need to take photos of it with its breathing likeness, and then you need to send me photos of that.  So go to her shop on Etsy and buy one immediately!

I mean COME ON!!!

And you know, I am always happy to help promote the products of your creativity (except porn.  Peetie has gone into heat again and I see enough humping every day that I really don’t need to see any more) so if you have something you want featured in my blog (and I promise to blog more often than once a month!) feel free to contact me!  I love to help people promote their awesomeness, so don’t ever be shy about asking!

And now me, Captain Orange and 11 of our closest friends are heading out for an afternoon hike :)

 

 

 

Rotten Eggs

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Farmer Food Lady would like to teach all y’all city folk a little lesson about the perils of non-urban living.  I mean, besides the fact that right now I really want potato chips, and the nearest store is, like, far… and all my Facebook friends are ignoring my pleas for someone to bring me chips.

Anyhoo.  When one free ranges ducks, one runs the risk of ducks laying their eggs anywhere they damn well please, because ducks are assholes.  And not only are they assholes, they are lazy and/or stupid assholes who either forget where they laid their eggs, or grow tired of sitting on them and abandon them for something better, like a piece of corn.

When one has acres of overgrowth and free ranges ducks, and one ALSO has something called A Terrier, one will periodically be called upon to remove stolen-slash-found eggs from said Terrier’s mouth.  Because one does not know when that egg was laid, and what state of decomposition it might be in.

And so begins my cautionary tale.

You know that eggs rot.  You know that rotten eggs “smell like sulphur” and that gas companies use an additive to make dangerous, odourless gas “smell” like rotten eggs. But I am here to tell you that YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A ROTTEN EGG SMELLS LIKE, ACTUALLY.  Specifically, you have no idea what a fertilized egg that has been roasting in the sun for days or even weeks smells like.  It smells like you murdered it, rolled it in decaying fish, buried it in manure, basted it with goat urine, ate it and then vomited it back up.  Oh and also you’re a rotting animated corpse that has been roaming the country feasting on human flesh for a millennia.

Eggs that go bad like this smell like nothing on earth that you have ever smelled before or will ever smell again.  The mere hint of the smell will trigger your gag reflex.  A whole egg-full of it will cause you to projectile vomit for like 9 straight days because, as an added bonus, the smell adheres to anything it comes into contact with with the tenacity of super glue.  And sometimes, when they are feeling playful, they will randomly explode.  They’re super cheeky that way.

So today when Winter popped out of the underbrush with a blue egg in his mouth I went into Happy Mommy mode and cooed at him to bring me his Precious for which I would offer cheese or gold or my first born child in exchange.  He brought the egg to my feet and dropped it … and it cracked.  And as I bent down to touch it, the delightful aroma reached my nose at the same time my fingers touched it.

So I screamed.

I scooped it up with the Chuck-It as I fought the urge to vomit and I used the Chuck-It to lob it through the air into the goat pasture where it would be safe from dogs.  As it arced gracefully against the sky, backlit by the afternoon sun, it exploded mid air like a Canada Day firework.  That was three hours ago, and if you go outside right now you can actually air scent its path through the cosmos.  I dropped the Chuck-It in the duck pool and ran for the house with my hand held as far away from me as possible and collapsed on the kitchen sink, gagging, as I scrubbed my hand with dish soap, an SOS pad, bleach – whatever was handy.  And when I rose to dry my bloody papery skin bag of a hand I looked out the window to see Spring and Mini Mama taking turns rolling in the egg stink on the gravel that the crack had left behind.

I hate this dog.

And I hate this dog.

And I especially hate this dog.

All these dogs also hate me, because they all got a bath.  Winter didn’t actually smell bad, I just did it out of spite.

For good measure I’m gonna hate this dog too, because I think he was laughing at me.

I don’t hate this dog though, because she’s my good girl.  Those of you on Facebook know that a week ago she had a vestibular attack and scared me half to death because although I am familiar with vestibular, I am not familiar with it in my own dogs as none of mine has ever had it before.  Not even Gemma, and she was born around the same time as Jesus.  So we’ve had a trying week of falling down and eyes darting back and forth and getting stuck between walls and furniture and no appetite.  But she’s improving day by day – she can get up and down the porch stairs on her own now, though sometimes she misses the door and gets stuck on the porch, and she “plays ball” with the other dogs every day. I’m not taking her hiking anymore, and I do have to trick her into eating by putting food on the floor and telling her to “quick!  Get it!”, and she has a wicked head tilt … but she soldiers on.  Thank doG.

So I’ve had my bad run of threes, right?  Cyrus blocking, Dexter trying to break a puppy, and now Piper?  Gosh it would be such a shame if something happened to Peetie.  Boy would I ever be devastated.  It’d be awful if she drowned.

Or jumped face-first into a fence full of blackberries.

Or some other horrible fate I don’t have a photo illustration of.

Actually the dog who is probably going to drown is Miss Chase The Water Droplets.  Can’t keep Addy out of the pool for anything!

Except when she’s standing on guard with Alfie.

Alfie is boarding with me off and on for the next several months.  He’s 120lbs of the nicest dog you’ve ever met in your life.  He’s super easy going, lets the puppies skitter and climb all over him when he’s in the house, which is like, almost never because he spends 99% of his time out in the yard sleeping amongst the poultry and getting up to do a tour of the property perimeter to let everyone know he’s on duty.  Even TWooie only objected to him for about 20 minutes and then decided he was totally cool.  I luff him!  I kinda wish he never had to go back to his real home.

And speaking of going home … the puppies are now EIGHT WEEKS OLD.  I can’t even believe this and have checked the calendar like 7 times to be sure I didn’t suffer a head injury and lose like a month of my life.  Soon they will be leaving for their new foster homes (in singles, rather than as a group, because while I may be talented at several (okay a couple) things, housebreaking 4 puppies simultaneously is not one of my talents.  I mean let’s face it, I had to give up area rugs because I can’t even get Addy to stop peeing on anything soft on the floor.

This little tan boogityboo was my favourite puppy from day one, but as he has grown up, his lung capacity has exceeded his small stature by an alarming amount and he NEVER F*CKING SHUTS UP.  He’s really loud and bossy, hates being left alone and is convinced that near constant shrieking will entice me to let him out of the xpen.  It’s fairly safe to say that he is no longer my favourite, and has slid way down the list to last place on the charts.

Ginormo Girl remains a third or so bigger than all her siblings, and though she started out as one of the shyest puppies, she has blossomed into this super hilarious little dog who gives me the awesome photo ops ever!  She’s absolutely hilarious and launches herself through the air at me every time she sees me.

Her black and tan brother is easily the most middle of the road puppy in the history of puppies.  He’s so average.  Like super sweet and such, just as the rest of them are, but he stands out in no way at all.  He’s just really darn nice!

But this little darlin’ is my hands down favourite now.  She is beyond sweet and cuddly, and gives me full on whole body wiggles when I call her.  She’s snuggly and hilarious and throws herself on her back, wiggling away, with a little neon sign flashing “LOVE ME PLEASE” over her.  She’s the one that will follow me from room to room, and was the first one to learn to go down the porch stairs on her own.  I love her!

The black and tan ones are very long, longer than they are tall, and pretty tube shaped, so I wonder if they have dachshund or beagle or something in them.  The brindle and white female has really long floppy ears.  The tan guy is smaller and taller than the rest, but his ears look like they might one day stand up.  I can’t even begin to guess who the baby daddy(ies) was!

They’re so small it’s easy to forget that they are the age that many puppies go to their news homes at!  So I am going to miss them a ton, but they’re ready to move on and make the transition to adolescents in their new homes.  Also I will not miss the pooping.  So. Much. Pooping.

But so much cute!

Unfortunately, because of timing and the generous folks who donated to brown puppy’s vet bill, we didn’t get a ton of suggestions for the naming fundraiser, but the ones we did get were pretty cool, so it’s time to vote on them!

  • The fairies from A Midsummer Night Dream –  Peaseblossom (big girl), Cobweb (tiny brown puppy), Moth, and Mustardseed (twins)
  • Names from Murdoch Mysteries (Canadian, albeit eastern Canada): William (or Wills), Julia, Thomas, Jonny, Emily (or variations on those names)

I should have started the contest earlier and posted it in more places, but time just gets away from me these days.  Nevertheless, post your favourites in the comments … or if you have other suggestions, why not post them too and we can do a vote at the end of the week?

Here’s a random photo of Fae guarding an egg.  After this afternoon’s escapades, she can just HAVE THE F*CKING THING.

 

And here’s a composite of four photos of puppies being weighed for deworming, which I posted on Facebook a while back.

I’ve been teaching myself to composite because I want to up what I have to offer in the photo department, and also because it’s fun to make something out of something else.  This is my latest one, which I am SUPER proud of, that I did for a client.  She’s finally seen it, so I ca finally share it!

This is the original, straight out of the camera shot, taken in the evening on the mushroom manure pile in the back field:

And this is what I turned it into through the magic of photoshop!

What do you think??

The Great Turkey War of 2017

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Fae has declared war against the poultry, for some reason, and the yard has become a battlefield.

The chickens fear her tiny high-pitched wrath.

But the turkeys … the turkeys fight back.

Look how angry the turkey is!!

But look how angry Fae Fae is!!

The turkeys aren’t too bright though, and they can’t seem to tell Fae from Addy, because they chase Addy around as well, and Addy is super offended and shocked every time.  Although right now I also want to chase Addy around, because she and Winter tag teamed one of my ducks and killed it yesterday (insert angry face here).

There are some adjustments in progress ’round the farm between the farmy animals.  Like, everyone hates the goats (except me).

This is Harvey

And this is Nibbles

Spring also doesn’t hate the goats; she really wants to be friends with them, but Nibbles keeps headbutting her every time she tries to lick him on the nose.  She keeps trying though!

Winter doesn’t much care about the goats one way or another; he just wants their apples and he only gets snarly when they try to eat the apples that he thinks belong to him.

Piper fears the goats; apparently Harvey and Nibbles are no smarter than turkeys, for they too mix up the dogs … and the other day Piper was shuffling through the yard doing her daily routine of semi-senile yard-circling when Nibbles headbutted her for no reason at all and scared the bejesus out of her.  It took all the rest of the day to convince her to go outside again, and now she goes out and does her business and then hides under the front porch stairs until I come rescue her, even when they are locked up in their own pasture.  Nibbles got a spanking for that one!  Nobody is allowed to be mean to Piper!

TWooie was at first confused by goats, and his teeny little pea brain has finally come to the conclusion that they are dogs, or at least, just as bad as dogs, so he now hates them and he will bite them.  And then he gets headbutted and that makes him even angrier.  It’s a bit of a vicious cycle.

Obviously the goats spend most of their time in the pasture, not only because I heavily supervise their yard time around the dogs (I don’t want goaty vet bills, and I don’t want a dog getting gored by goat horns) but because their job is to eat down the weeds, blackberries and knotweed in the field, and not the pots of strawberries on my porch.  So they only get to come out in the yard every other evening or so for a romp.  They quite enjoy a game of tag with me, and they also enjoy standing on my agility equipment.  I like them, even though they smell kinda bad.

Wootie does not like the goats – much like Piper, he is afraid of them (Nibbles also headbutted Wootie for no reason).  In fact, Wootie thinks he is in hell right now, because of Demon Goats, and Demon Puppies.  He can’t find anywhere safe to go.  The puppies are now SUPER mobile and busy, having just turned 6 weeks old, and they run all over the house at will, which drives Wootie crazy as he has a metaphysical restraining order of about 9 feet against all puppies.

This is his “I hate everything about my life” face.  But it’s also like my newest new favouritest photo.

Dexter likes the puppies, surprisingly, and is very gentle with them.  Although he accidentally ran one over this evening and he felt very very bad immediately.  Usually he is very careful about the placement of his feet around the puppies.

That one is the little tan and black female (#1). And this is her twin brother (#2):

This the first born female (#3) – she is like a third bigger than her siblings:

And this is my favourite puppy, the littlest one with the longest legs and the tiniest ears.  He’s a real pistol (#4)!

On Facebook a while back I suggested a naming contest for the puppies to raise money for the rescue, where people could pay like $5.00 per puppy to suggest a name and then all the suggested names would go up on the blog for everyone to vote one and the names with the most votes would win and that’s what they would be called (but NOT Puppy McPupface!)  Do you guys wanna play?  I think it sounds like fun, and also a fun way to raise donations for the rescue.  I guess Paypal would be the best way to do it … so if you want to play, you can send your name suggestions via paypal (mrsnappyone@yahoo.com) and a $5.00 donation and we can collect names through, say, July 15th and then hold a vote!

Here are more adorable puppy photos to inspire you ;-)

And here’s a photo of Addy chasing the splashes she’s making in the pool, because it’s pretty adorable!

 

So You Think You’re A Big Chicken Now?

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Yesterday we were at a USDAA trial that was held up here in Canada and someone mentioned that Fae always looks much larger in photos than she does in person, because there’s often nothing (such as a banana) for scale in photos.  So here’s Fae next to a chicken; if you know anything about chickens, then now you know how small Fae really is.

Though she be but tiny, she also be a Great Big Beeyotch.  Pound for pound, she’s a hard ass.  She’ll take on a rooster, if she thinks the rooster needs to learn a lesson.  Not that the rooster ever learns his lessons; so far he has successfully beaten up me, Auntie Michelle, and my landlord.  He really is not a very nice bird at all!

But he has not beaten up Terrence, my Personal Body Guard Turkey.  Terrence will beat up the rooster if the rooster tries to beat me up and Terrence is close enough to get involved.  I really, really like my turkey a lot.

He (with the help of his lady turkeys) made me seven baby turkeys who are right now in the a brooder on top of the washing machine.  Although one has gibbled feet, so I’m not sure he/she is going to make it … but dang, are they ever the cutest!!  I tried to get some photos, but shooting from above next to a red heat lamp just makes for lame photos.  I’m going to try and shoot them under studio lights in the next week while they are still itty bitty.  And cute.  Did I mention they were cute?  They’re almost as cute as HARVEY MY GOAT.

LOOK AT HIS ADORABLE FACE!!!

I love him so much!!  Michelle and I took turns bottle feeding him today.

He’s a big fan of feeding time!

Michelle’s mom is going to make him some fancy collars.  And I’m going to give him a bath because I think he needs to smell better, and not leave dirt on my hands after I pet him.  And I pet him a lot … after milk time, he climbed into my lap like a little dog and fell asleep having a cuddle.  I’m all a-swooning for my goaty baby!

This newborn goat was also cute:

And very tiny, like the size of Fae (see chicken above for scale).  But she is not Harvey, so she is not as cute.

Harvey isn’t allowed to come home until he drinks water from a bucket, which he is so far refusing to do.  Also he needs to be banded so his, umm, manly bits don’t come with him.  My landlord offered to grab the band and let me do it, but I don’t want Harvey to have to go into therapy because his mommy made his nuts fall off.

This is the cow that sometimes comes into my yard.  Frankly, she scares the shit out of me.  She’s just too damn big.  And she looks pissed off all the time.

We had a really nice, chill day just hanging around the farm with the dogs.  Addy did some gardening.

While Wootie did perimeter patrol for potential threats (and judging from the look of him, may have snuck out back to smoke a joint).

And TWooie took first watch.  And he took it seriously.

If the yard was fully secured in terms of fence, I think the WooTWoo would like nothing better than to spend their days out there just keeping an eye on things.  They are great little farm dogs, for their size, and they love just hanging out and surveying their property.  But the yard is not quite securely fenced, as evidenced by this pointy little face staring at me from the WRONG side of the driveway gate:

So clearly, beefing up the fencing needs to move up the priority “to do” list.  I also really need some ideas for making the front fence some kind of privacy fence, because it’s hard to enjoy the yard with the dogs when they ALL make a beeline for the fence line, barking their fool heads off, every time someone walks by.  We are quite near a popular (on leash) park with horse trails, so there are a fair number of people walking or riding by on nice days.  I was thinking of buying planks a couple at a time, whenever I have an extra couple of bucks to throw at it, until I have amassed enough of them to build horizontal slats from post to post with a very minimal gap in them, so people can’t see the dogs and the dogs can’t see people.  I just don’t want them pissing anyone off, because I have a lot of dogs, and all of them are loud.  Any other suggestions?  I probably have a couple hundred feet to do, so it will take me a long while to buy enough planks.

Dexter does not rush the fence.  Especially when he’s getting Auntie Michelle cuddles.

He likes those so much his feet don’t even touch the ground!

Except when he’s doing his impression of an ottoman.

Piper remains … slightly senile

Peetie remains annoying.

And Winter is sitting at the foot of the washing machine, staring at the brooder and wishing baby turkeys would fall into his mouth.

Happy Easter ya’ll!

Hello, My Name Is The Food Lady

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And I inhale paint fumes.

No, not because this is THE SCANDAL you’ve all been waiting for these past 11 years of blogging, but because I spent the day starting to finally fix up this old new house o’mine.  I’ve been here nearly three weeks, but as I work, like, 10 or more hours a day, there’s not been a lot of time to do stuff. And also, first it needed to be cleaned.  If ever I meet the old tenant of this house, I am going to offer her my condolences on being allergic to cleaning products, sponges, cloths and scrubbing implements, because there is NO other reason for a house to be this gross.  I have found dirt caked into places I did not know dirt could even find.  It’s almost remarkable.  I am the first to admit that my fastidiousness only extends to things I can see and I cannot guarantee that anything is sparkling behind furniture or appliances I can’t move easily, like my stove (actually I can guarantee that it ISN’T), but dear doG in heaven, how do you get dirt INSIDE your medicine cabinet?

We are on well water here too, and the water is hard, and very high in iron.  My landlord installed a very expensive filtration system on both houses when he bought the place, but former tenant failed to maintain her system (it’s, umm, super easy to maintain incidentally) so it no longer works.  The water smells like it tastes when you bite your lip.  It also stains everything it sits in.  The other morning I was waiting for my toast and *idly* took an SOS pad to the kitchen sink because the entire thing was stained orange.  I assumed I was fighting a losing battle but guess what – 5 minutes later I had a stainless steel coloured sink again.  The bathtub is another story – it’s coming off, slowly, but I am using SOS pads at an alarming rate (and WTF does CLR even do?  Not clean rust off your bathtub, that’s for sure!).  Seriously – had she taken 5 minutes even once a week to give it a quick pass with an SOS pad, it would not be taking me days and days to try and make the bathtub not look like someone murdered pennies in it.  Ugh.

So I woke up this morning and had a lie-in because I was feeling sorry for myself.  I knew starting a new business would be tough, but I guess I didn’t know how tough.  Once I land a client they absolutely love me and their dogs do as well, but I need more of them; I’m not making enough money to survive yet.  I work from 7AM – noonish for my other job, which I can fortunately do from home, but it doesn’t pay very well.  Then I leave around 12:30 and walk dogs, and get home around 5:30PM, if traffic and such favours me.  The nice part of not having many clients yet is that all or almost all of my dogs can come with me, so I don’t need to then exercise dogs when I get home, but the downside is that between gas and bridge tolls, I’m earning almost nothing.  I know it will come – I have a full time client, and one part time client that is going full time soon, and one sporadic part time client.  Not enough yet.  I advertise online wherever I can, and I know it will take time, but at the end of the day, it’s just not enough yet.

My landlord is great and basically will pay for anything I want to do, as long as he himself doesn’t have to do the work as he has own very large farm to run and take care of.  So that’s fine, I buy what I need and take it off the rent.  But my morning job covers my rent, car insurance and car payments and that’s it, so if I spend too much money on stuff before the end of the month, one of those car payments or whatever will bounce.  So that’s frustrating.  I also still have not gotten my security deposit back from my previous landlord, which is supposed to be my hydro payment because I have no other spare money.  I’m living on tomato soup and toast at the moment and I count every penny before I spend it.  It’s kinda of exhausting.  Nope, it’s super exhausting actually, and sometimes it’s so scary I can’t sleep at night.

So anyway, I lay in bed this morning feeling sad, and decided that laying around feeling sad wasn’t going to change anything, so I got out of bed and went for a short drive and dropped business cards off at all the local pet related businesses in the area.  And I picked up some primer and got to work in the bathroom.  Because the bathroom was green.  And I don’t mean a happy apple green, I mean an institutional green like it’s the 1940s and my house is a hospital for mental patients and the nation is at war and there’s no money for nice coloured paint for a class of society we want to pretend is invisible anyway.  It was mental hospital green and DIRTY.  And for some reason, full of nail holes and screw holes.  So I filled them all in, and primed the hell out of it.  Note: “Second coat in just 1 hour!” is LIES DAMN LIES.  It’s bed time and it’s still wet.  But now that the bathroom is white(ish) it looks about 3 times bigger than it did this morning.  It’s going to look pretty okay when it’s painted a) white and b) not with flat paint.  And I am just going to assume that all of the other rooms are going to look bigger when painted too, because most them are ALSO green of some kind, or else some really depressing bargain-bin beige, or – like the room that is going to become my photo studio – an acid trip of insane psychedelic swirls (not.even.kidding).  Oh primer, we are going to become very good friends for a long time, I think.

Whilst waiting (futilely as it turned out) for the primer to dry in the bathroom so I could apply a second coat, I decided to paint the dog room.  But first I had to prime the door, because all the doors in the place are ALSO filthy.  And the dog room walls were covered in what looks suspiciously like snot, so they needed to be cleaned.  And then I started painting with a can of orange paint that is supposed to be terracotta with a kick, but looked alarmingly like a pumpkin on ecstasy at a rave when I first slapped it on. I’m hoping it calms the fuck down when it dries!  I did two walls and then decided I was just plain old done with painting for the day, because it was almost dinner time.  And I grabbed my camera and took the dogs outside in the sun.  And this is where you come in :)

“Look Simba, everything the light touches is our kingdom.”

(and yes, I recycled that from my personal facebook page, so here’s my preemptive shut UP to my FB friends)

We started out playing ball in my front field, but that field is ringed with old blackberry bushes (although they are not bushy, just huge tangles of dead and thorniness) but RABBITS hang out in the thorny and RABBITS cause Spring to go berserk.  Even the thought, hint or suspicion of RABBITS cause her to go berserk.

And when Springs goes berserk, all the other bastardogs lose their collective minds and then this happens:

And when that happens, it cannot happen quietly.  It has to be accompanied by as much barking as possible, as well as the ungodly sounds of Wootie barkscreaming.  And since we live next door to, and share a fence with lots of these:

And those are guarded by a couple of – okay I don’t have a photo of them, but let’s just say REALLY BIG DOGS.  And I don’t want my new neighbours to hate me right out of the gate.  So I have to put a stop to the RABBIT insanity as soon as it starts.  So we moved to the pasture between my house and my landlord’s house to play.  Because the turkey won’t let us play in my actual yard.  Ever since we moved here, the turkey and the roosters have become crazy territorial.  They don’t f*ck with me, because I schooled them from the get go (with a shovel), but last weekend Tyrone the rooster attacked my friend Michelle!  It was a cheap ass sneak attack from behind too, the asshole.

Anyway, Terrence the turkey scares the little dogs, and also Dexter.  Because Dexter’s body is large, but his brain is little.

So we just decided to play in the field.  It has a couple of little ponds that my ducks were not using at the moment, and kindly let the dogs splash around in it.

And they raced up and down the hill, because the pasture is … well, pastoral and full of gently rolling hills and other The Sound Of Music shit.

(last weekend my landlord took me and Michelle on a tour of the rest of the 18 acres.  Dudes, there’s a LAKE at the back, like a trout lake. where my dogs can swim!  And there are cows.  And I met my baby goats.  This one many of you have seen already; I named him Harvey.  He thought my coffee cup was his milk bottle and he was REAL happy to meet me as a result.  So I named him Harvey Milk)

harvey

Anyhoo.  There was much gallumping and gleeful running around after frisbees and toys to be done, border collie style.

Look at this ole lady dog!  14.5, still tough as nails.  She comes hiking almost every day, and though she has to be lifted over logs, and  she goes up hills sideways because neither her front end nor her back end has the power to propel her up an incline, she’s determined to do it!

And still the non-border collies found tangles of thorniness to hunt RABBITS in.

They didn’t find any RABBITS though, so at least they came back when I called them.

I really have to get on the fencing and keep them from reaching that side of the field though, because it borders a path that lots of horse riders use, and as my dogs are both OBNOXIOUS and not used to horses, they tend to race over en masses and scare the bejesus out of the horses and riders both.  I really don’t want to inadvertently kill some horse rider when it gets chucked off its 1000 lb mount, so I am double fencing, so they can’t reach that fence.  Also, I want the poultry to live between those two fences, as when they are in my yard they take disgusting liberties like pooping in my porch.  And a while ago I had my kitchen door open while I was doing stuff and came into the house to get something and found like 7 chickens IN MY LIVING ROOM.  Impertinent assholes.

Anyway, that was our first real playtime on the property and I think everyone had fun, because they are all now passed out cold, about 80% of them in my office here with me now.  Piper favours the closet, while Dexter and Gemma argue over the bed under my desk (Gemma usually wins because she can’t hear or see Dexter’s ugly faces and sounds, and he’s all teeth and no trousers that one).

I think I like it here.  I think the dogs do too :)

I will like it just a teensy bit better when the wood stove finally goes in though, because when it’s cold outside, it’s COLD in here.  When the temperature drops, I can see my breath in my house.

I will also like it a little better when I can afford it.  So please, be sure to tell your friends about The Walking Dog so I can round up some more clients to walk.  We walk in some really amazing places with tons of stuff to explore, rivers to splash through, logs to leap over and stuff.  The dogs are so pooped when they get home.  It’s really awesome!  They just love it, and so do I … and I really want to keep doing it!  Even if some weirdo sent me a huge long email in response to one of CL ads that accused me and all dogwalkers of destroying wildlife habitat (I don’t EVER take dogs to areas where there is wildlife habitat risk!) and wrapped up her insane rant by suggesting I should want to kill myself for being such a horrible person.  Like, wow.  Whacko.

Also, you can really help me out by booking a photo shoot, or purchasing a print or two from me.  I have a few 18X24 prints ready to go already – if you’re interested in seeing them, contact me and I’ll send photos.  if there’s anything I’ve photographed that you’d like to have a print of, please let me know and I can make that happen too.  Soon I hope to have my photo studio IN MY HOUSE ready to roll, and can do studio sessions right here at home, which saves you the cost of me renting studio space.

Hopefully tomorrow that blasted primer will be dry enough to apply the second coat, and I can finish painting the dog room, and then get rid of the acid trip in the photo studio room.  *shudder*

Then Monday it’s back to work.  I have all three clients to walk on Monday, so TWooie gets to stay home because otherwise he beats up the 100lb Lab.  Because TWooie is small, but his ego is enormous.

Much love to you all from our slowly-being-improved stixier house in the stix (now with RABBITS)

Perpetually Pesty Peetie

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Just now I was sitting at my computer enjoying a cup of coffee when my intuition said to me “You might want to turn around in your chair right about now.”  So I craned my neck to the right just in time to see Peetie sail over the babygate at the mudroom doorway like it wasn’t even there.

She has, apparently, discovered the cat box in the bathroom.  She also took a moment to test the screen door to see if it were possibly not latched, so she could take herself on a self guided tour of the yard.  Then she popped right back over that gate and into the rest of the house again.

She likes to gather up the food bowls after breakfast and chew on them.  Every morning I take them away from her one at a time, and every morning she sets about collecting food bowls and trying to chew on them at my feet.  The first time I caught her carrying a food bowl around I commented about how charming it was, and my friend Connie warned that “the shine would wear off that real quick.”  Was she ever right.  Peetie is quite aware that I don’t like her food-bowl-chewing hobby, and has taken to hiding the odd bowl so she can chew on it with impunity.  DoDo’s bowl has been MIA for two days now; I can’t find it anywhere.  I have a really small house, so this is a mystery.

This puppy has no off switch that I can find.  Can’t reboot her.  I’d like to unplug her for two minutes and maybe do a system restore to a point in time where she wasn’t constantly on the prowl looking for mischief.  Are you a small dog trying to take a nap after we were outside playing Dumbball for an hour or so?  Peetie will poke you in the ribs repeatedly with her nose until you wake up.  If you wake up with four extra sets of teeth poised at her delicate nose skin and a rage that is unmatched in this earthly realm, Peetie will exploit it with a friendly tail wag and turn it into a wrestling match.  If you are persistent in ignoring her ‘friendly overtures’ she will take hold of your tail and drag you across the floor.  When you explode with outrage, she will play bow at you and delight in your enthusiasm for her efforts.

Are you Mr. Woo, trying to have some post-breakfast quiet time in a crate?  Peetie will  thrust her head and shoulders into the crate with you and then just stand there, tail wafting gently to and fro as though rustled by a benign autumn breeze, and stare at you 7 inches from your eyeballs while your growling escalates to a fevered pitch.  When you can no longer take the *staring* and burst forth from the crate like a freshly hatched god, she will follow you wherever thouest go in the house, tripping on her toes like your fairy godmother.

In the evenings when I’m curled up in my easy chair watching tv with a Fae noodled up against my thigh, Peetie stands on the arm of the chair (the chair rocks, incidentally, so this is double irritating) and plucks at Fae’s fur like she’s gathering material for a nest (in which, no doubt, she will hatch another plan to be an enormous pain in the ass)  while Fae gets angrier and angrier.  When I tell her to GO THE F*CK AWAY PEETIE!!!! she leaps backwards and – like a hairy boomerang – returns with yet more zest and vigor.

This dog is a PEST.  How could I have been so wrong about her?

I have fostered quite possibly hundreds of dogs in the last 20 years, so many I can’t count or recall them all.  I have seen lots of marvelous changes in shell shocked fosters as they unfold their mysteries and delightfully reveal themselves to me.  I have never been so fooled as I was by “No Drive” Peetie.  I should have named her Cerberus.  She definitely has the energy of three dogs!  And yesterday on our walk she rolled in something so vile (Michelle and I agreed, after much sniffing and gagging, that it was probably, ermm, a human “by-product”) so she definitely smelled like three dogs.

She’s staring at me RIGHT NOW.  I assume this means she is about to engage in some naughtiness I can’t even begin to fathom.

Her favouritest partner-in-shrillness is the Red Mop who is still with us for summer camp.  That’s another pest-in-training.

She doesn’t get into mischief in the house though (mostly).  She saves it for when we are outside, and she wants to chase down every single Dumbball ever thrown, and if she does not get there first, hang off the neck fur of the dog who does, or rebound off them over and over again whilst shrieking in their closest ear.

Peetie speaks this language and encourages her.

Dexter, bless his heart, tolerates it magnanimously.

This dog, however, has had quite enough thank you.

About two days ago, Fae lost her last shred of patience and beat 12 kinds of holy hell out of DoDo.  And I don’t mean she snarled and snapped at her, I mean she laid into her like a f*cking BOSS and kicked the living shit out of her.  There was red curly hair flying, flailing, screaming, voiding of bowels … and still Fae kept on coming.

My little doe-eyed darling is FIERCE.  She trounced the pesty ginger and I let her, and I laughed and laughed.  I only broke it up when the other dogs took notice and went to join in the fray, because frankly everyone but Peetie could take or leave DoDo and I was worried they’d gang up on her.

You do not want to mess with FaeFae.  Thirteen pounds of huggable, snuzzable, nose-booping, cheek-kissing futhermucking ASSASSIN is what Fae is.  In her previous incarnation, I’m pretty sure she was what they modeled The Sopranos’ characters on.

Poor DoDo.  Life’s lessons are hard.

(This is a senior-moment interlude, entitled “Why Is The Wootie Toy Not Moving?  I’m Confused.”)

One thing Peetie has gotten better about is leaving the terriers alone to their terrier games.

She used to be right in there like she thought she was an honoured guest whenever they would start wrasslin’, which would of course ruin and thus end the game immediately.  Because the terriers play on an alternate plain of existence that none of the other dogs can really appreciate.

Winter may have been an accidental addition, but he is the yin to Spring’s yang and the two of them make one whole (one whole ball of chaos, of course).  I can’t imagine them apart now.  They are twice as much trouble this way, but that’s a small price to pay.  Since I’ve taught Peetie to leave them to their shenanigans, they will now sometimes invite her to join them in a sort of modified version of their games once they have exhausted one another.  Sometimes I catch Peetie and Spring having a romp, which is nice.  Because even though Spring is a terrier, capital T, she is still a sensitive soul and for a while Peetie’s energy overwhelmed and frightened her.  She still won’t play ball unless I leash the puppies, as she doesn’t like being mowed down in the chase.

Dexter likes to play a chase game with Peetie that used to be the purvey solely of Tweed, where I yell “GO GO GO!!” and Dexter takes off at top speed barking and “snarling” while Peetie chases him.  Nobody ever played this with him except for Piper in her younger years, and then Tweed, right up until shortly before he died.  Now Peetie has taken up the mantle and Dexter is happy again.

These guys?  Off in their own world, hunting things, smelling where things were once, and actively looking for other things to smell after or hunt.  They would be happiest if the whole property was fenced, and they could spend all their days outside laying around and watching for threats to chase away.  Whilst collecting as many burrs in their coats as possible.

And this is just my delightfully naughty, super hilarious living hot water bottle.  She is Summer’s-End Barometer, as she has begun to burrow into my sweathsirts again in the last week.

And this is a chicken.

Peeetie has eaten all the dogs beds in the house.  ALL of them.  They are all outside in a pile by the fence waiting to be carted to the burn pile if/when my landlord ever returns my wheelbarrow, which he absconded with about two months ago under the guise of “borrowing it” for ” a couple of days.”  If you would like to contribute to my Replace The Dog Beds So Piper Has Somewhere To Rest Her 14 Year Old Bones Fund, feel free to throw some cash at my PayPal :)