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Where The Wild Flowers Are

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This afternoon I took the dogs to play at the back of the property among the long grasses and the wildflowers, because it makes for prettier backdrops than the mowed lower pasture where we usually play.

The nice grasses with hints of purples and pinks and yellows from various flowers are so pretty.

This particular colour palette flatters His Orangeness.

And TWooie blends right in.  It’s totally his environment (because bunnies).

And you know what made our little adventure today possible?

Coyote Vests.

I’ve been avoiding going back there because, well, because you know.  There are so many more places for a predator to hide if they wanted to, and it’s where I find most of the coyote scat.  Nothing has ever happened back there, but when you’ve got two Littles chasing bugs and mice and bunnies through the undergrowth, it’s too much like tempting fate.  But I felt a lot better about letting the Littles have their fun and comfortable enough to bring the camera when they were wearing their vests.

This is The Face of Happy:

(And this The Face of Fae)

I gotta ask … like, do some of y’all think before you type?  I had to delete a couple of comments on my Coyote Vest post because they were just … nasty.  Like, if you think the vests look ridiculous, that’s cool – they kinda do (it’s part of what I like about them.  I’m always down for making the dogs look silly).  Someone posted respectfully that they took issue with the company’s research into hawk protection, and that’s okay too – I appreciate legitimate critique.  Or if you have questions about them, that’s cool too.  But someone posted that they were CRUEL and TORTURE, which I found confusing.  The spikes are on the OUTSIDE, not the inside.  Someone posted that it was terrible that the dogs couldn’t lie down, which I also found confusing.  The primary point of these vests are for adventurous outings where their lives might be at risk from a predator, it’s not like they fused to their bodies the second I snapped the buckles together and they’ll have to just stand around for the rest of their lives.  And as it happens, they can lie down in them, as Fae demonstrated by having a little rest in the shade of my torso (and getting a belly rub to boot!).

I also learned from visiting the Coyote Vest facebook page that dogs can swim whilst wearing them.  We’re keen to try that on our next hike.

And speaking of swimming, I did a photo shoot earlier this week with three hilarious Aussie at the beach.  I think we managed to get some very lovely shots.  What do you think?

Sandy Shenanigans.

Sea wenches.

Ridin’ the rails.

So many pretty places to photograph where I love, including my own backyard.

Although it can be challenge.

Mr. Woo has a little growth on his eyelid that is starting to grow and bother his eye, and I guess I’ll need to get that removed. So if you are interested in doing a photo shoot with me so I can get that money together, please contact me!

Unflattering Portraits of What Are Usually Nice Looking Dogs

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You know ‘they’ always talk about the ideal handsome man and his rugged “square jaw?”  I don’t think this is what they had in mind.

I realize it looks like a did a really bad job of photoshopping a ball into his mouth, but hand to doG, this is just his face being his face.  I have no idea how he manipulated physics to accomplish this.  He is an amazing creature sometimes.

Another photo that does not flatter my poor dog.  Although you notice that Piper looks EXTREMELY pleased to once again be the best looking border collie in the house.

Piper shouldn’t be too smug though, because when she gets senior-face / the crazy eye, she’s not all that and a bag of chips either.

Winter went through a short-lived phase of deciding that The FaeFae was extraordinarily humpable.  It was short lived, because Fae was singularly unimpressed and twice as angry about it.

Is this a dagger which I see before me? The handle toward my hand?

The sheer indignity of the whole situation did nothing for what is otherwise a very adorable FaeFace.

Sister Spring is difficult to take a bad photo of.  I mean, she can bend space and time:

and she is incredibly athletic.

But when she sticks her face where it doesn’t belong ….

Oh how the mighty have fallen!

springpuffy

Poor Spring.  I don’t know what foolishness she poked her nose into last night during our evening play session, but whatever it was, it did not agree with her!  And of course I was out of Benadryl – here is my PSA for the week:  do an inventory of your first aid kit and see what’s missing!!  I apparently can treat just about anything with the stuff I have on hand, but had run out of Benadryl and failed to replace it.  Thank doG for landlords with toddlers, as I popped across the lawn to their house and they kindly gave me a bottle of children’s Benadryl to de-puffify the Springlet.  After laughing hysterically and taking a photo for posterity, of course.

My dogs threatened mutiny if I didn’t stop taking crappy / mean spirited photos of them, and mocking them on the interwebz, so I took some nice ones instead.

Oh Peetie Pocket Collie Rocket. So pretty.  SO annoying.

We are making some good gains in the training department and developing some drive.  But what I have discovered about Peetie is very irritating … she’s just not that smart.  She is lovely, and sweet, and cuddly and stuff, but she is not a scholarly dog by any means.  It’s been weeks now, and she still hasn’t caught on to simple phrases like “where’s the toy?”  I ask, all the other dogs turn and look at the toy like “it’s right there, stupid biped, are you blind?” and Peetie just stands in front of me with her head tilted and a little light bulb over her head rapidly dimming.  She has learned some stuff – she now has the most amazing recall, off of anything, that you ever saw – but when it comes to that back-and-forth between dog and handler that I expect from a border collie, I just get white noise.  I suspect it’s because she was raised with two little kids who nattered at her endlessly, so she’s not really into conversation.

And she is a Needy Peetie – she is forever trying to climb inside my skin.  When I am working at the computer, she sticks her head under my arm a thousand times an hour, and then tries to crawl up into my lap.  Ignoring her doesn’t work as I just end up with 30lbs of border collie on my knees and/or stuff on my desk knocked over because she doesn’t really fit up there.  Telling her to go away doesn’t work because |blankness|. If I get up and walk away (hard to do when I am trying to get work done) she follows me, licking my hands and then repeats the whole thing when I go sit back down again.  Just annoying stuff.  And we won’t even talk about how glued to my right arm she is when I eat (also usually at the computer).

So why haven’t I put her up for adoption yet?  Good question.  I don’t feel like exploring that too deeply right now.  And also because:

Pretty (vacant)

OH COME ON PEETIE!!

Oh well, she’s not the onlydog around here that can be annoying.  Try and get a photo of another dog jumping for a cookie and you’re bound to get an Addypants in the picture!

These two are the cutest, but also the naughtiest!

Last week (way back when it wasn’t peeing rain) we took a trip to the beach with our friend Claire and her Aussie puppy Paisley.

She rivals the Woo for Orangedness,

Everybody liked Paisley, event bitchy terriers!

And especially big-toothed swamp monsters.

And even Littles thought she was fun!

(There are no photos of TWooie thinking Paisley was fun, you notice.  Because TWooie.)

Speaking of the Littles, we really need to go oceanside more often.  They are really getting their beach on this year!

hehehe. They look like two tiny little knights singing a drunken bawdy tune after a successful battle.

Addy isn’t a *huge* fan of swimming, and prefers to walk on the water instead if at all possible.

But she does like to chase the spray and droplets she or other dogs kick up!

And since discovering the art of swimming at our previous trip to the beach, Fae absolutely LOVES the water now.

Everyone else had their usual fantastic time.

So sandy afterward.  I’m still finding sand in strange places!

This past weekend we went for a doggie walk with friends and Dexter was reunited with his most beloved Ghillie.

(Photo by Corey)

ghildex

It’s been such a lovely, laid back, friend-filled summer so far.  If the rain would just go away, that trend could continue!

Because when the weather is nice, sometimes I just stop and think “Wow.  I live here.  This is my home.”

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to walk out of my front door into this every day, my own private playground.  I need to remember to be more thankful, more often.

Too Many Dogs

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

I tried splicing Dexter and Spring together.

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

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

Everyone say it with me: “Le sigh.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dexter thought this was an absolutely fabulous idea.

He made me some wonderful photos!

The WooTWoo were happy, naturally.

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

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

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

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

Except I missed my main man, Tweedles :(

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yay!

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

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

Twooie: Whaaaaat?

Wootie: Relax dude, she’s all talk.

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

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

So he will :)

Catch O’The Day

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Oh come on TWooie.  You can do better than that.  I expect more of you.

You’re one demanding beeyotch, you know that?

Fine.  Hold on.

*Blurble* I think I got something *Blurble*

Here!  HAPPY NOW?!?!

Day-um!  This thing is fiesty!

If it bites me, you are in so much trouble lady!

*grumble* I gotta do everything around here.

Happy now???

Great Sculpin!  Only TWooie can catch the sea creatures like this.  He is a small miracle in a hairy package.

It was quite a large fish!

And kind of mean too.  It totally sliced me open with one of  its spines when I wrestled it from TWooie’s jaws in order to place it back in the water.

Of course, it was probably pretty pissed off.

What befuddles me most about TWooie’s incredibly fishing skills is that he’s from land locked Prince George, and had probably never seen the ocean before he landed at Casa de Food Lady.  Moreover, after two years with West Coast me, he remains totally phobic of the sea.

It’s too deep!  And cold!  And wet!  And SCAAAAARRRRRYYYYYY!!!

Come on, TWooie.  It’s not that deep.  Getcher butt out here.

No.  I don’t want to.  You can’t make me.

I’m going home.

I guess you can’t really blame him for being afraid.  There are scary things lurking in the ocean.

Terrifying seaweed covered monsters!

Monsters who are INSANE!

Insane monsters who eat little dogs!!!

We are absolutely loving this fantastic weather!

A sunny day at the beach playing with the Wootie Toy™ was just what the doctor ordered!

Everyone was having a super good time.

They ran themselves ragged…

Jumped for joy…

Were just generally beyond happy…

… and pooped themselves right out :)

We hope you and your dogs all get a chance to play on the beach this weekend too!

But if you do, remember … don’t touch TWooie’s fish!

Smokin’ hot

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Outside, that is.

Then again, Dexter *is* pretty smokin’ hot too.

It’s so hot we have all become lazy slugs who do not wish to be active for the camera.

So we hired some stand-ins to be active for us.  Don’t say I never did anything for you!

Remember Skye, the puppy I fostered for a little bit last year?  He’s all growed up now, and clearly is no border collie!  What he is remains a mystery though.  He’s super tall … makes Dexter look like a shrimp!

He and his brother Duffy were kind enough to take me to the beach and recreate some of my favourite my-dogs scenarios so I could take photos, without my lazy ass dogs having to haul their  summer-corpses out of the comfy dog beds.

We had Big Air:

and we had harassing our sibling because they got the frisbee first:

and we had getting-air-so-nobody-else-could-have-the-frisbee:

and we also had posing for arty looking reflective shots:

It was so much like having my own dogs there I hardly noticed the difference, except that I didn’t have to pick up any poop, and neither Skye nor Duffy wanted to kill other dogs they met at the beach (ahem*TWooie*ahem)

I think Skye turned out pretty awesome, but I cannot for the life of me guess what his genetic make up is.

WHY weren’t we at the beach, exactly??

Because there’s too damn many of you, that’s why!!!  I can handle a pack of dogs like nobody’s business, but by doG, 7 is too many to take to the beach.  I gotta downsize before there’s no summer left!

So I listed the puppy Quinn, and surprisingly, he’s not generated too much interest yet.  Maybe it’s because he’s a shark face?

Or maybe it’s because he’s so ball obsessive.  I accidentally turned him into a dumbball monster.  He is so obsessed with the ball that yesterday he dug one out of the agility bag and spent the whole morning dropping it in front of the vacuum cleaner and then the steam mop, presumably hoping one of these machines would throw it for him.  I think that’s how he views me too … as a machine designed to throw toys for him.  He’s a super nice puppy, but he’s not got much personality.  I would so love to see him in a sport home that would turn that drive into a partnership of work/play.  I think he’s got oodles of potential!

I also (*sob*) listed my Springaling (*sob*).

Why?  Don’t you love me anymore?

Oh but I do!  I love her endlessly.  It makes me so sad to put her up for adoption.  But I’ve just got so many dogs already, I just can’t think of a good enough reason to keep a SIXTH dog.  Especially now that I’m going full time at the shelter (yay by the way!) and will have even less free time (otoh, more money for things like trial entry fees.  AGH!  Shut up, me!)   And she’s going to hate being rehomed too, she luffs The Food Lady something fierce.  Le sigh.  I don’t want to talk about it, it’s going to make me cry.

Food Lady, why you cry?  It’s not because of Spring at all, is it?  It’s because you can’t get any sleep at night, isn’t it?

Well, now that you mention it, TWEED.

In my house, Dexter, Quinn and Spring are crated for sleepy time.  Woo sleeps on my bed, whether I want him to or not (6 years ago he climbed up there, said “I ain’t movin’, beeyotch, so deal with it,” and there he has snoozed ever since), TWooie goes to sleep in his dog bed, but sneaks up on my bed after I am asleep (I may or may not have gotten him a little set of carpeted dog stairs to make that easier for him.  Just sayin’).  And Tweed and Piper sleep under my bed, where they argue.  ALL.  NIGHT. LONG.  They snark, growl and snap at one another for getting in each other’s personal space.  It’s a queen sized bed, and you’d think there’s be plenty of room for them both, but apparently not.

So this morning I spent some time rearranging furniture and busting out a couple new dog crates.  My house now resembles a kennel, but damn it all, I WILL get a full night’s sleep.  Tweed now has his own crate and as soon as Quinn gets adopted, Piper will too.

I did take some time out of my busy morning to photograph this ungodly huge egg for you though, mostly just to share my own horror.

On the left we have a “size small” egg, the kind my polish cross lays.  In the middle we have the regular sized “large” brown eggs from my sexalinks.  And on the right is a godawfully huge monster of an egg that makes me pucker just *thinking* about how that must have felt to lay!

You’re welcome.

Once the housekeeping was taken care of, the dogs and I took a stroll down the acreage and back.  And since I have recently been accused of being a terrible, no good, horrible cat owner who should be banned from adopting from all shelters anywhere, or whatever, I decided to take Mr. Orange with us.  Oh yes I did!

Mr. Orange, it turns out, thinks he is a dog, not a cat.  And he has a better recall than some of my dogs (*coughWOOTWOOcough*) do as well!  He has decided that he needs to accompany us on our daily constitutionals and immediately fell into line behind the rest of the pack, and came for a walk.

Spring was a little disappointed that he didn’t want to wrestle or play chase games though.

And then sometimes we had to stop and wait for him, because he is obese (for the record, he CAME THAT WAY and has not gained any weight since I accidentally acquired him.  Because if you recall, it was me or death and he apparently chose me, so I can’t be all that bad) and all that walking was hard work.

When we got about 3/4s of the way to the back of the property, he started complaining (again) and wanted us to go back.  He was panting almost as hard as the dogs were!

I did discover earlier in the week that the secret to making him shut up in the morning was to feed him BEFORE I left for the dog walk.  Amazingly simple solution, really, no cat therapists  involved. The taking-him-with-us thing is just for my own amusement, and also to get him to lose some lard.

He’s a pretty good walking companion.  And unlike SOME dogs I know, he doesn’t jump in the drainage ditch and then jump all over me.  *ahem*

But like I couldn’t forgive that super happy face!

You should adopt her!  Although if you try, I might kill you.  Just sayin’.

Have you seen this dog?

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This is Chica, she is an adult female Boxer.  And on Wednesday, August 17th, she was stolen from her home in Coquitlam by two uniformed women posing as “Animal Welfare Officers.”  They told her owner that there had been “complaints of mistreatment to the dog” made and that they were taking the dog to a veterinarian to confirm or rule out the alleged abuse.  Unfortunately, the owner was not aware of her rights, and was unaware of what organizations in British Columbia have the power to seize a dog under the PCA act (it’s BCSPCA Constables only, and they need to have a warrant when they do:)

“The BC SPCA is not empowered to go in and remove animals from private property without a search warrant unless those animals are in ‘critical’ distress, which means they would not survive without immediate medical intervention.”

These two fake “welfare officers” loaded her dog into their vehicle and left, and have not been seen since.

This kind of thing really PISSES ME OFF, for all kinds of reasons.  It pisses me off that people take things that don’t belong to them.  It pisses me off that dog owners don’t know the laws about their rights and responsibilities as dog owners.  It pisses me off that thieves dress up like animal control officers, thus making my coworkers’ jobs that much more difficult.  And it really pisses me off that these two thieves, whoever they are, are most likely stealing dogs like Chica under the guise of “rescue” – because that makes the rest of us who rescue legitimately look really bad.

I don’t know Chica’s owner – we went to highschool together but we are not currently “friends” outside of Facebook (highschool was a really long time ago.  The Food Lady is as old as the freakin’ hills).  I don’t know her and I don’t know how Chica was housed or treated in her home.  I have never met Chica.  But her owner emailed me because she knows I am involved with rescue, and wondered if I had any lines on where her dog might be being “fostered.”  Well I surely don’t, and nobody I know and/or respect in rescue does either.

This is Kate.

“Kate is 17 years old and was stolen from a house in Tsawwassen this week.  The two women who stole her dressed up in uniform and dragged her away from the only home she has ever known. She is an outdoor dog (by her choice) and is very much loved. She has medical issues and needs to be returned ASAP.”

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON THE WHEREABOUTS OF CHICA OR KATE, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL RCMP DETACHMENT, YOUR LOCAL ANIMAL SHELTER OR SPCA SHELTER.

And keep your dogs indoors people … if you don’t, your dog could be next :(

This is Dexter:

Nobody has stolen Dexter because that would be just plain foolish of them.  After a day or so of living with the Non Stop Machine they would probably just give him right back.

One thing I really miss, living out here in the stix, is water.  I spent more than a decade of my dog owning life living at the edge of the ocean, and swimming was a regular part of our exercise routine (and by “our” I of course mean “the dogs” because there is no way in hell you will see me in a bathing suit!).  It’s bloody hard to find good swimming out here – our secret beach spot is just a half hour or so away, but it’s more of a splashing scenario than a swimming one, since the tide is either way way out, or it’s so in there is no beach to go to.  The few places for swimming I do know around here tend to be quite popular, and TWooie throws a wrench in that, being that he’s a dick.  I just want to go somewhere quiet and let the dogs swim off some energy, without running inTWooference all the time.

So Joe told us about Latimer Pond, which is just 20 minutes or so away from us, and allegedly quite empty on a weekday.  He was right!

We saw almost nobody for two blissful hours, and other than stopping the WooTWoo from taking off after some fine animal smells into the forest, we did nothing but dive, swim and fetch!

The doggies were absolutely delighted!  Except maybe for Piper.  I wonder why?

Oh Mad Teeth™, how we have missed you!

This tableau continued for some time, until Wootie tired of the game and sprang away to find something more interesting to do.

But payback was waiting for him, in the form of another little bitch.

What the hell is THAT?

Captain Sproing! visits retribution on behalf of her sister Piper!

Eventually he escaped back into the water …

…where Spring dogs fear to tread.

What the hell?  I can’t walk on this!

After some thoughtful consideration, he chose a new victim to torment, and stole Dexter’s beloved Dumbball and held it hostage.

Why do you let me him behave like this, Food Lady?

Yeah, why DO you let him behave like that?

Sorry boys and girls – can’t no man (or woman) tame the Woo!

(*insert orchestral freedomy-sounding music here*)

Lather, rinse repeat.  Some more molesting of poor Piper:

some entertaining shaking dog faces

(complete with creepy human looking teeth)

lost more action-packed repetitions of Dumbball:

while Spring did sentry-duty

and two hours later we finally made our way home, where everyone promptly crashed on various dog beds.  Everyone except Dexter, who asked to go out and do somethinganythingpleasegodlet’sdosomething!

Energy: he haz some.

Silly Dexter.  He is very difficult to thoroughly exhaust.  We did pretty good in class last night, since we are working really hard on his contacts to try and eliminate the creeping down to the 2o2o position.  We worked him so hard that by the end of class he basically dragged himself to the truck with his front legs, stuffed himself in a crate, and passed out.  I have to find where he’s hiding the recharger though, because by this morning he was once again bouncing off the walls.

Maybe I’ll tire him out tomorrow, as he’s running in another agility trial.  Actually, he’s only doing a Steeplechase – it’s Tweed’s day, and he’s doing some Standard runs.  In exchange, I’m scribing for the trial and taking some photos.  I do so love the barter system!

You should come out and see my little giraffe do his thang – the trial is at Highrun in Pitt Meadows.

But watch out … for you never know where the Woo may be hiding.