dog beach

A Beachin’ Good Time

September 19, 2018 By The Food Lady 3 Comments

It’s a good thing “our” beach is almost always empty when we go visit, because upon arrival, this is what happens. It’s total chaos. And it’s like a 15 minute walk to the beach from where we park, so you’d think they have become at least somewhat blase by the time we get there! It’s no wonder we’re social pariahs.

Usually the water looks like this – one long swimmable length of water.

But the other day there was, like, no water. I don’t know what happened to it. It’s not actually a beach on the ocean, it’s really just a sandy stretch along a slough. It’s nowhere near an ocean. So I don’t think it’s affected by tides … so where did the water go?

It’s possible that 125lbs of Alfie gallumping along its shores terrified the water into a hasty retreat. He sounds like a herd of buffalo when he gets it into his head to cavort with his sister Betty. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s pretty hilarious when it does!

Betty has taken to flirting wildly with Dexter lately, which is mystifying to me, as she was never much interested in interacting with him when she basically lived with me last year. If it’s a mystery to me, it’s 12 times as mysterious to Dexter who, like an immature 12 year old boy, really doesn’t understand female flirtations. Mostly what he does is stare at me whilst she wiggles under his chin, leaps up to smooch his eyeballs and then does somersaults under his legs trying to get his attention. He is completely affable but unaware while she gyrates at him.

But all her clowny shenanigans does have the affect of getting Alfie excited, and he usually comes thundering over to play … and if Dexter remains oblivious to the 25lbs of butterball roiling around underfoot, he is NOT oblivious to the extra 100lbs running in his direction and he usually takes some offense. This annoys and confuses Alfie and in the resulting melee, Betty slips away. And I think she’s laughing. She is one sly, wicked little shit-disturber!

Perhaps the pre-receded water had caught wind that these two devils were coming to terrorize its shores.

I miss the terrier-teeth-play of these two, it doesn’t happen often enough, maybe because they’re both getting older. Or maybe because when they try to play like this, someone (*coughMAISIEcough*) gets involved and despite the multitude of sharp and pointies between them available to drive off intruders, they don’t really like other dogs to get in the middle of their fun and they’re kinda emo about it.

Although occasionally they do gang up on her to teach her the meaning of the word “fear.”

Very once in a while, they will temporarily allow TWooie to cavort with them. It never lasts very long, but that’s 100% okay with him, because he’s old and he doesn’t really have the stamina for that sort of foolishness for long anyway. It is, however, 100% adorable. After all these years, it still tickles me pink to see TWooie happy to play with another dog(s).

His brother rarely plays at all, with anyone, these days. Sometimes I can get him to play a bit of fetch, or a short game of “I’m Gonna Get The Wootie Stick!” but it never lasts long either. He doesn’t seem overly tired, or depressed, he just is more interested in snuffling around for possible dropped foodstuffs, or things to pee on. I guess simple pleasures get more pleasurable as one ages. However, I did buy him a new “Fifa”(tm) on the way home from the beach to see if I can’t rekindle some of our old joys together :) … provided Maisie doesn’t get involved, as she’s a “PLAY WITH ALL THE THINGS” kinda dog.

(Clearly he’s thrilled at the prospect)

(his tail still looks a little (okay a lot) sad, but notice it does have some wispy growth on it. It’s gonna be a marathon growing session to the finish, I think)

Crazy Miss Maisie remains resolutely entrenched in my home and won’t go away because everyone who wants her so far hasn’t really been ideal. I don’t think getting one’s sport dog from rescue is the cool thing to do anymore, so she remains unwanted :(

I decided after some thought that she is probably a Springer Spaniel mix. I got a lot of sideways looks for that when I started saying it … you know, the “Food Lady’s making up whacky theories again” look. You’re probably even doing that right now as you read this!

Then I asked a friend of mine to come over and evaluate her for some kind of sniffer dog job, because I personally think she’d be pretty awesome at it. I placed quite a few of those kinds of dogs from the shelter (the sniffing-for-a-living kind, not the Springer Spaniel mix kind) and got a pretty good sense of what the handlers/trainers were looking for, and Maisie ticks off all their boxes. So I asked my friend Teresa to come over and tell me what she thought. First thing she said whens he met her was “Is she a Springer mix?”

Now, I think Teresa would know, since she owns and trained Angus the famous “C. Difficile” Springer Spaniel who makes his living sniffing out that nastiness in hospitals!

Anyway, Maisie ticked off all her boxes too, and apparently she thinks she’d make an awesome sniffer dog. I find nosework stuff with dogs super fascinating *in theory* – I think it’s amazing what they can do with odour and how much they enjoy it. In practice, I find it mind numbingly boring to watch – it was somewhat more interesting when it was “my” dog figuring it out, but not interesting enough for me to to want to do it myself with any of my dogs. I think I’ve just been generally spoiled by sports like agility which have a lot of more instant and high octane gratification for my squirrel-like attention span. Anyway, there’s been some interest in her for the sniffing thing, so maybe she’ll be famous one day too!

And speaking of agility, I have really super good intentions of going back to the sport, usually while I am laying in bed thinking about playing. In practice, I can’t seem to muster up the energy to actually go train, despite living right next door to a big ass facility dedicated to the sport. I do have a handful of dogs I could be playing with – Spring’s getting up there, but hey, Tweed won Regionals when he was 12, so it’s not like she’s OLD. Fae is delightful to play with. In my head, Addy would be great (in reality, Addy is a trainwreck. Ha.) And I suppose there’s Peetie. Pesty, stares-at-my-cookie-hands-all-the-time Peetie.

I still want to try dock diving with Peetie. I think she could be pretty good at it. Cuz of all the leaping.

And I really do wish I had that sort of tenacious-trainer spirit to train Addy. She is actually awesome at all the equipment, as she fears nothing and she’ll do it all (except weaves, we haven’t gone there yet at all) but her attention span is even shorter than mine. We might simultaneously implode trying!

But she remains the cutest little thing that ever cuted or thinged.

In my facebook “memories” thing not too long ago, a memory of Dexter’s first trial came up in my feed, when he did a 15 obstacle Jumpers course in 15 seconds. Oh how I miss *that* Dexter; before he started going deaf, he was such an awesome dog to play agilities with. But I love the Dexter I have now too. Often he rides along in the front seat when my van is full (seat-belted in, of course, airbag turned off) and I have inadvertently trained him stare deeply into my eyes and place a somber paw gravely on my arm, for which he is rewarded with cookies. Now I can’t drive anywhere without his paw resting on my arm while he tries to mind-meld me. I can only imagine what people think at stop lights.

Anyhoo.

I know I don’t take as many photos of my own dogs / blog as much as I used to, but the more I photograph for other people and/or events, the less time I have for photographing and editing photos of my own four legged furries. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. I’m going to try harder! I do run outside to try and get sunset photos whenever the conditions are favourable.

Also, for those of you not on Facebook, I’m going to be putting out a 2019 calendar soon for sale. This is the cover:

As soon as my print lab has the 2019 template ready, I’ll make one and video it for everyone, and then take orders. It was a fun project, looking through so many old photos of my fuzzy family, those still here and the ones that aren’t. I miss my old dogs. I am so glad I have all these photos to look back on :)

Won’t You Be My Neighbour

August 19, 2018 By The Food Lady 6 Comments

I dunno about you, but my neighbours are SUPER nosy. They’re always staring at me.

Sometimes they bring some friends to lay around staring at me too.

It’s rude.

Also, some of my neighbours have kids. They’re super loud. How can tiny kids have such big lungs?!

Tasty, tasty kids …

The stupid turkey insisted on sitting and hatching outside of the poultry pen, and still refuses to bring her kids inside the pen. The property is pretty thoroughly fenced now (the perimeter, not my yard, which remains unfenced. *grumble*) so I am not worried about predators except for the ones that live in my rv with me. Because there are some certain skinny dogs and some terriorists that would eat those babies in a nanosecond. Yesterday I found the baby turkeys INSIDE the x-penned area I have for the dogs. The dogs were, fortunately, inside … except for Maisie, who was thinking up turkey recipes before she made her move. I shooed them out while fending off a hoard of hungry canines, but I don’t anticipate this ending well, necessarily, until I can convince mama turkey to join the community and stop living off grid.

I’m also not unconcerned about the cats eating the poults … this giant tin tube gets REAL hot when the weather is warm, so I have taken to leaving the door open so the dogs can come in and go out at will, rather than us all crammed inside here breathing and sweating on one another. That means I can’t keep my cats in, so for the first time in their lives, they are being indoor/outdoor cats. I was particularly worried about Donut, because on other occasions when she has escaped whatever house I was living in, she wouldn’t ever come back inside and I’d have to live trap her. But now she seems to have settled into the idea that it won’t be her only taste of freedom and she will happily come back inside in the evening when I tap the tin of wet cat food with the fork. She even lets me pet her when she’s outside, which is amazing. But if you recall from my time in the penthouse apartment in the West End, she was known as The Serial Killer Tinker Nuts, who caught and killed birds on the rooftop deck with sociopathic glee. I would not put it past her to eat a turkey poult or two if she can sneak them away from Mama Turkey.

Cyrus is the one that’s killin’ me though. He wanders much further afield than ‘Nutz does; she stays mostly close to home, but Cyrus goes to visit the neighbours (including the cattle and buffalo) on a regular basis. He seems to stay away from the road, but coyotes live in them-there grasses, so I worry about him all the time. But what I don’t worry about is feeding him, because every morning our routine goes like this: I let everyone out into the xpen area to hang out while I go feed and water the poultry, and the cats wander off to do cat things … then I take the dogs out in small groups to potty, then I feed them breakfast and I sit down with my cup of coffee at the dining room table. And every morning by that time, Cyrus has caught himself a fat, tasty field mouse and I watch him come ambling across the parking lot with the mouse in the mouth, so he can eat it under the rv. If he catches something he does not like the taste of (such as shrews, or moles) he simply leaves them under the rv for safe keeping. If he catches more than he can eat, he does the same thing, and then Addy eats it. Blech. So much deworming in everyone’s future.

The air quality here is really bad right now, because once again our province is on fire. It’s been unreasonably hot this summer, again, which I’m starting to think is our new normal – pre-Apocalyptic :( It’s all smokey and hazy outside, and I am reluctant to run the dogs in it, so I’m glad we went to our Super Secret Swimming Hole a few days ago when the sky was blue and you could see the sun.

Fae, otoh, was not impressed that I suggested she should swim to retrieve the ball if she wanted a cookie, no matter what the weather was like.

A few weeks ago, I photographed a dock diving event, which was awesome … it looked like a lot of fun for the dogs! There’s some rumour that a dock diving pool might be unveiled ’round these parts soon, and I still think I’ve found a use for Peetie, finally, as while she sucks at pretty much everything, she is really enthusiastic about diving into the water.

…although ….

Crazy Miss Maisie would also make a hella dock diver I think. I keep trying to shove into the faces of dog dock enthusiasts, but no luck yet.

I actually find her quite pleasant to live with – she’s developed a nice off switch, and she’s pretty easy going in the house, and will amuse herself if nobody else wants to play with her. Although yesterday I made Winter drop a not-quite-hatched turkey egg he purloined from Off Grid Mama’s abandoned nest and she scarfed it up, maggots and all, and ran away LIKE HER ASS WAS ON FIRE, munching it down the whole time. Can you bleach the inside of a puppy? SO GROSS. So clearly we need to work on “hey, how about you give me the ball of maggots in exchange for this hot dog?” or similar.

Anyway, she’s not difficult to have around, and she mostly listens pretty well, and she doesn’t run away all the time, a la Silly. Who, by the way, is doing really well in Belize in his new home! His human recently sent me this:

“My friend and I went to a dog show in the capital city just for fun. Decided to take Hero, Titan and Silly. They asked us if we wanted to enter into it when we were walking around with them. Figured why not? Silly ended up taking first place in obedience and the obstacle course!! I was so scared he was going to get ADD with the obedience cause there was so much activity but he did absolutely amazing ☺️ Not in the country even a week and he’s charming everyone ❤️❤️ so proud of him.“

So how much awesome is that?? I do miss his full body contact hugs though, he was greatly affectionate … but he’s landed himself a pretty cushy life. I’m a bit jealous … I would like to live in Belize, I’m pretty sure.

But back to the beach! Spring got a cookie for hopping on and off these pilings, because it amused me, and then she wouldn’t stop doing it. She knows an easy gig when she’s landed one!

She makes me laugh all the time, she is such a ridiculous little dog.

Addy did the piling-jumping once, but even for cookies, it paled in comparison to the satisfaction she apparently gets from digging up wet sand. She’ll do it for two solid hours. I love this little skinny thing beyond measure, but I really don’t think there is a lot going on upstairs in tiny-head land.

Then there’s Wootie, who is very very deaf now (whether that’s physiological or willful, only he knows) but can still hear me well enough to give me this look when I tell him I’m going to steal his Wootie Stick and chuck it in the water.

But you can’t really blame him, because his poor nekkid tail looks absolutely ridiculous when he swims. Like a little, sad, hairless rudder. I’m surprised he doesn’t sink; I always thought it was his Flamoyance(tm) that kept him buoyant.

And Deafter, who loves to swim…

… but also suffers some “someone might steal my ball” anxiety and spends a lot of beach time hunched over his hockey ball protectively in the sand.

He’s so handsome no matter what he does, even when his stupid tongue is hanging out. And he’s my go-to posing dog for test shots, from sunset OCF to lavender. He’s the best. And he’s going to be – this will BLOW YOUR MIND – nine years old in four days. NINE!!!!

Love my big guy so much :)

(feeling old yet??)

Meanie

July 23, 2018 By The Food Lady 3 Comments

I am the meanest dog owner EVER.

FIRST OFF, Silly was getting on my nerves, so I drowned him.

THEN TWooie was getting on my nerves, so I drowned him too.

Drowned him DEAD! And waited until his stiff bloated corpse washed back up onto the sand. And then I LAUGHED!

Then I said MEAN things to Maisie about her parents, like ‘Your mama was a Golden Retriever,” and made her SAD.

Then I started a DOGFIGHTING operation! With dogs that can FLY!

Or, you know, I took everyone swimming at the slough because it was 8 million degrees outside today and got hotter by 17 degrees each time I thought to myself “wow is it ever hot.” It’s so hot that I wore SHORTS today. You may not know this about me, but I **loathe** shorts. I think they’re an insult to fashion (and I have no fashion sense!). But I wanted to go into the water too, so I wore boy’s board shorts. The top half of me is brown as a berry, but the bottom half is white, like TWooie’s corpse.

We like this new swimming place, because there’s usually nobody there except us, and it’s got a sandy beach, and Silly isn’t smart enough to find the path back up to the walkway and run halfway to Alberta before I notice he’s missing. Win win all around!

Silly is actually getting a lot better about sticking around; we’ve worked really hard on recalls and lots of rewards and he’s finding it more fun to hang out with us than it is to run off to do whatever it is he does when he runs off. He leaves for his new forever home this weekend, and I am actually going to miss the little (okay, ENORMOUS) booger quite a bit. Also I am jealous of his new upcoming life in frickin’ BELIZE.

That will leave just Crazy Miss Maisie to find a home for. Maisie, who has decided to become less and less border collie every day, for some reason. She remains a super high octane doggie with an NO STOP ONLY GO attitude toward life, but physically she has decided to bulk out like The Hulk and become some kind of mystery mix.

She’s still super cute though. And lots of fun, though still a challenge! She is pretty independent minded and sometimes I’ll, say, call her to come and she’ll stand and eyeball me and weigh her choices before deciding whether to come get a cookie or saunter off and find her own reward. You can actually SEE the wheels crankin’ along in her cranium while she conveyor-belts her options through the decision-making process. She’s going to make someone laugh a lot in their life together!

And speaking of independent-minded … Mr. Woo has become rather cranky in his old age. Tonight I asked him to come out of his hidey-hole under my chair to I could put his flea treatment on and he, while staring me bald-faced in the eyeball, refused to come out. So when I reached under to grab his collar, he decided to snap off two or three of my fingers. Asshole. Maybe he’s still ashamed of his sad little penis-tail … which is growing hair and now covered in a very thin and sad little layer of peach fuzz.

He doesn’t have the same enthusiasm for swimming he did in his younger, oranger years, but he can still be convinced to go in for a paddle for his Wootie Toy(tm), provided there’s a cookie at the end of his swim.

I even convinced* his brother to go in for a dip today

(*lured him out to floating depth with a cookie and then gave him a light push, like a floaty toy, and he bobbed away further into the water before figuring out how to steer himself back to shore)

and this is how he repaid me. He is still, 7 hours later, holding onto about 81 lbs of sand which he intends to shed onto my bed this evening, I’m sure.

Peetie + water = diving. I should really try dock diving with Slender Dog.

Although I’m not really sure I understand what’s happening in this photo.

I feel confident she too will miss Silly, based on the expression on her face in this photo.

I plunked both Spring and Fae into the water for a swim as well, but since both of them splashed so frantically fast back to shore and I was using a long lens, I have no photographic proof of it.

My neighbour Wendy showed us this to place for swimming a couple of weeks ago. She has a super cute Kelpie puppy, who doesn’t steal everyone else’s water toys and hoard them on the beach (I’m looking at you, Maisie)

I didn’t get any photos of Dexter today, but this one from a couple of weeks ago is a pretty accurate representation of all swimming outings with Dexter.

And then there is Miss Pants, who is allergic to raindrops, but magnetically attracted to large bodies of water. She remains a 2D enigma.

In other news, I’ve been invited to photograph dock diving at our local fair next month (I said “local fair.” I think I officially live in the country now.) which is exciting, because I’ve never photographed that sport before. Also exciting is that the giant pile of dirt and logs that lives between my Big Tin Can On Wheels and the poultry pen has been almost entirely tractored away, which means I can put up a real fence and my dogs will have their own yard to play in! Sometimes I remember that I used to live in an apartment on the 11th floor and rolled my eyes when someone said “How do you do it without a yard?” and wonder if that actually ever was even real.

Now if you will excuse us, it’s back to sitting and sweating …

2018

January 28, 2018 By The Food Lady 7 Comments

2018 – just like 2017, only with more rain, and less sleep.

Ugh.

If it could just. stop. raining for like a few days, I would be ever so … much drier. I know I live in The Rainiest Place On Earth and everything, and have for pretty much all my life, but I’M SICK TO DEATH OF IT. In October we had two whole days with no rain. In November, three whole days. In December it snowed, just to break up the monotony of rain, and now in January it has rained 20 out of 28 days so far. But that’s only because everything was frozen for the first week of January and it was too cold to rain.

DOUBLE UGH.

Near constant rain means nothing is ever *quite* dry, including the ends of the sleeves on my coats (which I have to switch out sometimes twice a day because apparently “waterproof” is just a suggestion, not a fact) and the collars and/or hoods of the sweatshirts I’m wearing, and my ever rotating gang of shoes and boots that live pretty much permanently up against the heater with the sincere hope they will dry out before I have to rotate back to them again. Plus there’s soaking wet dog and the never ending cycle of dog laundry of wipin’- towels and wet dog blankets and let us not ever not remember the peed-on dog beds, because tiny dogs with tiny bladders that go on strike as soon as the sky starts spitting at them. You can never get totally warm when the damp permeates everything like this. Dear Mother Nature, please turn the faucet off!

There are no good photo opportunities in the grey and rain either. Even when I get a rare afternoon off from the streaming skies and bring the camera out, it’s still grey and dreary and darkish and I am totally demotivated by the photos I do manage to take. That makes blogging kinda difficult, unless I start posting reruns.

Right now the dogs are all asking to go out for a run and I don’t wanna go! Well, Addy isn’t asking…she’s in my shirt (making typing difficult) and doesn’t wanna go outside as much as I don’t.

But I have to go, because while adult dogs can coexist tolerably in the house without exercise for a day or two, this cannot.

THAT eats my furniture when he’s bored. And staying inside is boring, even when we play games of tug and clicker. At this exact moment he is laying with his head on Dexter’s thigh and I can see that he is eyeballing Dexter’s tail which is wiggling in his sleep, and thinking of biting it. Which means we gotta go out before there is bloodshed. BRB

Annnnnd, we’re back!

It’s the Year Of The Dog so I suppose it was only fitting that everyone get puppies and leave me seething in a green fit of jealousy.

Ann got a puppy.

This is Fever, she’s a border collie X whippet and is itty bitty!! And so flippin’ cute.

And The Sadist got a puppy.

She’s an Aussie with a tail. She’s basically just a carbon copy of Niko. Also itty bitty … and also flippin’ cute!

And this is Dorothy’s Sonic, who is not a puppy, but he’s super adorable.

And what did I get?

THIS.

He is not itty bitty. He is 26lbs at 16 weeks old(!!!) He is extremely Silly, so that’s how he got his name.

A person bought Silly as a smaller puppy and decided he was a “monster” and tried to make his breeder refund her money. When that didn’t happen, a friend of a friend heard about him and was so horrified by the lack of like the person had for the puppy that she bought him from her and then surrendered him to me. Other than his gargantuan size, he is definitely not a monster! But he is kinda crazy, so it’s fitting he ended up with my oddball crew.

(The breeder is aware – and pleased – that I have him and has even invited me to come meet his parents. Please don’t send me messages about contacting the breeder)

He’s a pretty smart dude – pretty well housebroken, fairly well mannered for the most part (though he does like to put paws on my counter and snarf up everything that comes within reach of his pointy face) and he isn’t even all that whacky in the house. He has already adjusted to our routine – get up and go outside for about half an hour, have breakfast and then nap until we go hiking in the early afternoon. He does tend toward a bout of craziness about 9pm when he thunders and gallumps around the house throwing toys in every direction, but that’s pretty normal puppy stuff.

He figured out very quickly that TWooie is mostly all bark and very little bite and TWooie figured out pretty quickly that even as a clumsy-limbed, legs all akimbo wherever he goes, adolescent Silly can out-maneuver TWooie the butterball, so he has given up trying to pull out clumps of Silly hair altogether.

Nobody else seems to mind Silly at all, except poor Mini Mama, who seems to lack the ability to convince him of her intent to kill him when he pounces on her. I mean, even Addy and Fae clued him into that right away, but somehow Mini Mama can’t quite drive the point home, so we’re working on that. She is such a nice dog. I am forever confused about how she still isn’t adopted.

I never thought this sentence would come out of my mouth/off my fingertips, but thank doG for Peetie. She is endlessly tolerant of Silly and will play with him as often and for as long as he wants to wrassle or chase or tug. She keeps him entertained when I cannot.

Because I’m fairly busy. I’m also boarding these little ladies until the middle of February, while their parents are off having fun in the SUNSHINE of Costa Rica. Usually I quite like their parents, but as I sit here with the ends of my hair dripping rain down into my sweatshirt, not so much. Fortunately, Kita and Lupa are the nicest and easiest dogs ever, I am always happy to have them to visit.

You’re probably thinking “hey, that looks like sunshine in that photo and you keep complaining about non stop rain!” Well don’t be fooled, I made the sunshine in post. That’s how bad I wanted sunshine.

I made it up in this one too.

Silly is even respectful of Piper (but she has Mad Teeth(tm) so he doesn’t have a lot of say in the matter) and doesn’t ever knock her over or otherwise make her life difficult. Which is a good thing, because her life is difficult enough :( She is not bouncing back this time like she did last time and is still having a great deal of difficulty walking. We’re at three weeks now since she lost her back end, for the most part and she’s just not really improving. It’s frustrating to not know what the problem is too, at least for me. For her it must just be frustrating because her back end gives out on her after a few moments of standing or walking, and she has a definite problem with circling to the left … sometimes she just circles endlessly to the left. I make sure she gets at least a small amount of exercise by walking around the acreage with us in the mornings, but more often than not I end up carrying her because she will end up laying down in the mud somewhere and when I try to herd her back to the house, she wanders off to the left and falls down again :(

Her cognitive function also seems impaired, but it’s kind of a chicken or egg thing and I can’t really tell if her cognitive decline is a result of her physical decline or the other way ’round. She gets stuck in weird places at odd hours of the night, like in a corner of the bedroom where she wouldn’t normally go at 3AM, and wakes me up crying for help. Sometimes she wakes me up 3 or 4 times a night, which is really messing with MY cognitive function in the daytime hours, because I can’t get a solid night’s sleep. Sometimes she gets stuck because she slips on the laminate or lino … the other day I came home and found her asleep on a pee pad in the dog room presumably because she couldn’t get to her feet on the slippery surface. I tried confining her to xpen and that stressed her out so much I couldn’t do it again.

I *think* we are managing her pain well enough – it’s hard to say of course, but she isn’t groaning as much as she was and she isn’t all hunched over either. She is still continent, though it’s difficult for her to squat to eliminate, but she only pees herself when she gets stuck somewhere and I can’t get there fast enough (like when I’m, you know, asleep). And show her a hockey ball and her eyes light up and she’s after it like a … well, maybe not like a *shot*, and more like a three legged hamster on a whiskey bender, but still she wants to play. And oddly, she will join a game of tug with the Flying Squirrel and stay on her feet no matter which way Peetie whips her all around. It’s the craziest thing.

But I want her to get better, because I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing waiting (hoping) for her to get better or not. I mean, this can’t be much of a life for her, fiercely independent as she is. Whenever I have to pick her up (which is fairly often, given the frequency with which she falls down) and she doesn’t fight me as I carry her, my heart breaks a little, because she HATES being carried. It’s like she knows how vulnerable and helpless she is. I am afraid to make a decision because what if I make it a day too soon and she would have spontaneously recovered like she did last time? But how long do I wait?

These are the questions that would keep me up a night, if I weren’t so freakin’ tired from being awoken several times a night. As awful as it was to lose Tweed so suddenly, I had no other choices to make with him – he had a very terminal cancer. Even Gemma went from fine to unable to breathe overnight, and she was suffering, so I had no other choice to make. But this I think is worse … especially with her bloodwork being so great and radiographs being so damn useless.

*sigh*

In other news …

Dexter. “Hiding” behind one blade of grass. Some things really don’t ever change.

Mr. Woo, best poser ever (now that Tweed no longer holds the title). This was the beach on a very foggy day, and I am so pleased with how it turned out!

Fae can give him a run for his money though.

Even the turkeys are excellent posers! Like father, like son … Terrence and Philip.

It’s so tempting to keep this puppy, guys, even though it would be the stupidest thing ever for me to do, given what’s going on with me right now … but so tempting, because he is SO RIDICULOUS.

However, he is going to be pretty huge. I’m not sure he’ll fit in my lifestyle (ie, where am I going to put him in the dog hiking van??)

But that FACE! LOL

And This Is Why I Hate You

June 12, 2017 By The Food Lady 2 Comments

Dexter hates Peetie because she doesn’t give him a moment’s peace.

Addy hates Winter …

… because Winter would rather play with Spring, and Addy can’t keep up.

(btw, this is my new favouritest photo EVER)

Dexter hates Winter and Winter hates Dexter because both of them are ornery and weird.

Peetie hates my client dog Diezel, because on land

and at sea (aka the waterin’ hole), Diezel won’t leave her alone.

(What’s that Peetie? You find it annoying to be pestered constantly and shadowed around? BOO FREAKIN’ HOO)

My boarding dog Cao hates Peetie

because Peetie climbs out of the water and shakes all over everydog nearby.

Of course, so does Diezel. And he spends a LOT of time getting in and out of the water!

Mini Mama hates me

because I insist on bringing her puppies outside every afternoon for a romp.

ZOMG right? So cute?!?! They turned 4 weeks old on Saturday. I started feeding them mush meals, which they find very exciting, and which I find adorable.

They’re so FAT. I love them!

BTW, in the photo up above, Mini Mama is in the crawl space under my house and staring at me through some weird random little window that exists in the crawl space. I don’t know why she does this – she seems to really like it under there, with what I assume are a multitude of spiders and other creepy crawlies. She asks to go out often so she can sit in the crawl space. The window is like the icing on the cake, so she can sit in there but still watch everything. She’s an odd little dog.

I don’t usually bring my Big Girl Camera on hikes/walks because I feel like it’s more important to keep an eye on dogs that belong to other people than it is to be framing and setting up shots. Also, my camera hurts me/my neck/my arm, because it’s HEAVY. Lugging it around for an hour and a half gives me a wicked head/neck ache and lately my right arm has been going numb. Some people in one of the photography groups I’m in swear by this nifty gadget and I’m thinking I might need one!

I never bring the camera when I do a forest hike, because I think I’d die trying to climb hills with an extra 9 lbs of camera hanging from around my neck, but today was easy terrain and an easy group of dogs (ie, mostly my dogs!).

Also the scenery is very pretty on this walk, which makes for nice dramatic backdrops for portraits.

(This photos makes me like Peetie! Even though she is not wearing a collar in it because she rolled in cow poop AGAIN)

I also brought my camera to Regionals, but I didn’t take very many photos because there’s a professional photographer for the event, and I don’t think it’s cool to scoop her business. However, I also don’t have any spare money, so I was unfortunately also not going to pay her to take a photo of Springles with her ribbon for qualifying for Nationals (did you like that slick segue?)

Yeah, we managed to qualify by the skin of our teeth. Well, actually we had quite a bit of wiggle room, but it was definitely not a podium-worthy performance, or even an impressive-placement-performance. As I went in with no expectations except to keep it fun for her and keep her stress-level to a minimum to prevent poopage (because she hates Thunderbird, if you recall, and every year she shits or pisses in the ring there, and ONLY there) it was kinda fun to just run for the hell of it. But it also meant that I had to not take it very seriously, and I have not found that happy compromise between taking it seriously and stressing out my poor overly sensitive terrier, and having a lark and therefore handling like an idiot. It was interesting to note just *how easy* it is to stress Spring out though … in our second gamble, which she could have gotten (she is a gambling fool), she bounced every so slightly off my foot when I sent her out to the final obstacle, and I’m not even kidding, that slight bounce of her paw off my sneaker was enough to turn her to the right and cause her to take a different obstacle instead. Because the closing gamble is timed, and one tends to get a little panicky, and that may have been the first time all weekend I showed her any kind of stress and WOW, what an effect that had.

I love my Springaling very much, and she has come a long way from the dog that used to stress pee and poop in the house if I left her alone for as much as 45 seconds, but she’s still super duper sensitive, and I am super duper a spaz, so we are not destined to be a super duper competitive team.

As Dexter is pretty much stone deaf, and Fae is The Most Emo Dog Ever, I guess I’m going to have to start training Peetie if I want a new agility dog.

Oh, I also took a photo of Fiona and Rogue on the podium in first place blah blah blah, I should just recycle the same text every year since they win EVERY YEAR pretty much.

Here’s a photo of Addy that I find adorable, because she is obviously smiling in it!

And here’s a photo of Miss Piper because she’s started having quite a bit of trouble walking lately, and I’m not sure how many more hikes she has left in her :(

Look Ma, No Hands!

May 10, 2017 By The Food Lady 4 Comments

(or at least the doggie versions of hands, which can also be called “feet.”)

I guess it’s been so long since we’ve been to the beach that they were literally walking (running) on air?

Because Miles didn’t touch the ground.

And Addy didn’t touch the ground.

And Hollie Smallz didn’t touch the ground.

And Spring REALLY didn’t touch the ground.

Winter may have touched the ground a little bit, but I think he mostly touched water. Also, I think this is the nicest photo of Winter I have ever managed to take, because Winter is just not very photogenic.

Miles touched Piper, which could have gone badly for him, but fortunately in her old age Piper’s reaction times are slow ;-)

TWooie, who is just not a fan of the beach (unless he’s catching Things From The Sea), made sure to touch the ground thoroughly. This is about the deepest water he can handle, poor weirdo.

Unlike his brother, who likes the beach a lot. Although Wootie’s leg is very sore, so he hasn’t been enjoying much of anything lately. I can’t remember which cruciate he tore so I don’t know if it’s finally gone or if the other one went. I still haven’t quite finished unpacking so the vet records are around here somewhere, but not sure where. Poor old man. Why are all my dogs getting old? I wish that wouldn’t keep happening. Fortunately, his ears remain absolutely fabulous.

It really was a glorious day to spend at the beach – not too hot. Although Heather complained about it not being hot enough for no-shoes. I forgot the Chuck-It (I remembered to check if I had a BALL, but not the stupid ball throwing implement, so the ball was useless … which anyone trying to throw a ball with their hand and then putting that sandy hand on their expensive camera equipment will know) so the dogs just had to run around willy nilly for 1.5 hours. Which they did gleefully.

This is Miles, one of my client dogs. His mum is super pregnant, so sometimes she FB messages me and says “Come take them away before I murder them!” and I rush to oblige ;-) Miles has CEA which is a genetic disorder that causes blindness in collie type breeds, because his breeder didn’t do any genetic testing and believes either that CEA is “rare” in border collies (it is when you test for it, and don’t breed carrier to carrier, or anything to affected!) and/or that his owner “caused” the blindness and/or is “lying” about him having considerably limited vision in order to discredit her. And is still breeding from the same lines. This is shameful. Miles compensates pretty well for his vision loss, and I am always surprised how well he can navigate, even at top speed. Although he doesn’t always see my legs, and I’m not entirely sure that’s unintentional.

This is Ammo, Miles’ brother. Ammo is a very nice dog who can see perfectly well (because he comes from a different breeder who tests for things like genetic disorders that commonly affect the breed) but unfortunately for Ammo, his handsomeness does not translate on camera. In virtually every photo I have taken of him, he appears extremely dorkish. Sorry Ammo.

This is not unlike another handsome black and white border collie, whose completely embrace of The Derp ruins an otherwise perfectly lovely shot of athletic dogs racing each other into the waves.

Here’s Peetie, in a rare instance where she is not annoying the crap out of me.

Some of you on Facebook have already met Minnie, my very pregnant foster dog! Minnie is my solution to puppyitis (her radiographs suggest she will give me FOUR puppies to fawn over) and also to feeling like I’m not doing very much in the way of rescue since I no longer work in a shelter and my rescue is no longer busy, ever. So I offered to foster this little lady for another rescue, because I have the time, and I have the space, and I really like puppies! She’s been with me almost a week and now thinks her name is “Mini Mama.” She’s a sweet little thing who is a bit shy, but when she gets comfortable she starts showing some personality. Today I got her to play biteyface with my hands for the first time, and got her excited about the Bum Pinching game … which was a mistake because then she got all excited and started bouncing around and bit me in the back and in the face before I could stand up (I was sitting on the grass chucking the ball for the big dogs)! Little imp. I’m not sure when her puppies are due, but I swear her belly gets bigger by the hour!

She doesn’t share well though. She doesn’t share food, she would rather not share my lap and she really, really didn’t want to share this empty crab shell that she found and rolled on to forever mark it as Hers.

I’m going to need lots of socializing volunteers when the puppies arrive, so I hope lots of you are up for visiting Casa de Food Lady in coming weeks! I will work on getting more photos of her too. Until recently, she has simply glued herself to my heels wherever I walk, but she’s starting to relax and explore the farm now when we are out.

Mini Mama came at a good time, because it feels like EVERYONE except me is getting a puppy! I keep getting these FB messages from friends who are like “I’m getting a puppy, but don’t tell anyone, it’s a secret still” and it’s a good thing I can’t punch anyone through the computer screen because I am SO JEALOUS. *I’m* not getting a puppy, I only got Peetie, she sucks donkey balls.

Like, my friend Christine told me a while back that she was getting a puppy, and then sure enough, she shows up at my house on the weekend with this SUPER F*CKING ADORABLE PUPPY.

Gah!! His name is Pip, and he is a purpose bred border collie X whippet (I think they’re the new borderjack). His big brother is Skye, whom you may remember from many years ago when he had The Whole World In His Mouth. Yes Skye turned out enormous, and yes Pip is still quite teeny (he’s just 12 weeks old) and pair of them are just SO FREAKIN’ AWESOME.

I have coveted other people’s border collie/whippets for a long time now, and Pip only made me want one even more! Until I introduced him to Addy, and the two of them WERE EXACTLY THE SAME. The started speaking “sighthound” to one another right away, and got the simultaneous ‘craze’hounds.

And then I remembered that although Addy is one of my most favouritest dogs ever, she is also REALLY REALLY NAUGHTY and she only gets away with it because she’s a whopping 11 lbs. If she were 40 lbs, there’s a good chance I’d drop kick her into the next solar system.

Still though … so much cute in a whippety looking package. It’s very hard to resist.

If you like, you can see more photos of Pip and his Combo Session on my photography website, under “client galleries” (and yes, I redesigned the site again. It’s a compulsion, I can’t help it!)

Here’s a photo of Fae, because I totally omitted her snotty little self from the blog today.

And here’s a photo of Piper, because she’s awesome, and who knows how many beach trips she has left in her anyway?

She found a lady at the beach who had NOT stupidly forgotten her Chuck It, and she decided she liked her better than me and was never coming home. It took quite a lot of convincing to get her to leave the stranger and head back with the rest of us! That’s gratitude for you – 14 years of life I give her, and I forget the Chuck It ONE time, and I’m dead to her. Harumph.

This weekend I am at my annual gig shooting the ASC of BC trial in Tsawwassen. If you’re of a mind, come out and visit! If you want me to like you the nanosecond I meet you, come bearing a Frappucino. Or this Tweedlet. Either one is cool ;-)