Food Lady

Happy Birthday Piper!!

November 18, 2016 By The Food Lady 15 Comments

Today is Miss Piper’s 14th birthday! That’s right, the Grand Dame, the Matriarch, She Who Shall Be Obeyed has stalked this planet for 14 years, putting an end to noisy play fighting and raisin’ up fosters right! About once a year she tries to kill herself in a spectacularly bizarre way, but in the end, she keeps on truckin’. Here’s to many more years together, Fabulous Miss P!

This sweet, generous, kind soul has a message for everyone on this, the day of her 14th birthday:

F*ck you, don’t touch my cake.

F*ck you too, don’t touch my cake either.

And f*ck you, don’t touch my cake.

Fuck you. Don’t. Touch my. Cake.

Isn’t she just the cutest?

(Special thanks to Auntie Fiona for picking up the “f*ck you don’t touch my” cake.)

It’s my birthday too – I am exactly 30 years older than Piper. It used to be the WooTWoo’s birthday as well, until I actually read their paperwork and found out they were born in the summer. Piper is happy not to have to share her birthday with anyone else. I’m pretty sure she wishes she didn’t have to share it with me.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PIPER!!

February 6, 2015 By The Food Lady 31 Comments

Nearly a year ago in the BC Lower Mainland, a dogwalker named Emma Paulsen left her 6 canine charges in the back of a canopied pick-up truck to basically boil to death. It was about 20C outside (70F) and the dogs without question suffered immeasurably as the temperature went up in that small space, and the available airflow decreased. It was not, according to people who were close to Paulsen, the first time she had left her clients’ dogs in the back of her truck while she went socializing, or rode her horse, or shopped. But this time they died – and from all accounts, they died horribly, several of them found with chunks of blanket stuffed down their throats, maybe from thrashing around in the throes of pain and terror. Nobody will ever really know, because they can’t tell us.

When she discovered the dead dogs in her vehicle, she drove about two hours outside of the area, heaved the bodies of the dogs in a ditch in a remote location, and then drove back to Langley and concocted a story about how the dogs were stolen from her truck while she used the bathroom at a local dog park. What followed was a media and social whirlwind of frantic owners looking for their “stolen” dogs. Paulsen was seen countless times on tv sobbing as she embraced an owner of one of the “missing” dogs, holding up “stolen dog” signs, and pontificating about how low someone could be to steal these dogs. The dogs’ owners, though devastated, were supportive of their walker – their walker who, court documents later revealed, tried to extort money from them during this time for lost wages.

Rumours went around that this dog was seen in this shelter, or that dog seen in that person’s yard. With every phone call we fielded in the shelter where I work, we frowned at one another skeptically. As an Animal Control facility we are involved in all kinds of “missing dog” scenarios – dogs stolen from yards, lost dogs picked up by people who live by the ‘finders/keepers’ code of ethics, dogs sold to acquaintances for drug money … but 6 dogs stolen from a truck in the parking lot of a busy dog park? No, we told one another. This did not happen. There is mischief afoot, we whispered among ourselves.

Because it didn’t. Within days, the owner of a local lost-pet finding business leaned on Paulsen with his similar suspicions and she eventually came clean to him, and to the RCMP. She showed them where she had dumped the bodies, rotting pitifully in the heat and stagnant water of a nowhere place. An ignominious end for six lives of six beloved family members, the end of a shameful, deceitful and callous path trod by a monster.

Paulsen received a sentence of six months in jail and a ban on pet ownership. It’s the most significant sentence delivered for animal abuse in BC, a province within a country that has a notoriously poor record of prosecuting animal abuse. Many would argue that the sentence was not enough.

A few days ago, a little local newspaper ran an “opinion” piece on Paulsen’s sentencing. It starts off being dismissive, circles around being downright callous and seeps down the drain of humanity with a fading rally cry of “think of the children” a la Maude Flanders.

When I first read the “article” my brain said Clickbait. Asshole. Douche. Pathetic excuse for “news”. And I dismissed it. But it still bothered me. I shared it on FB, and several of my friends burbled up with the outrage I couldn’t muster myself over what MacNair had written about the “inconsequential” loss of these six dogs’ lives. They wrote impassioned letters to the editor about how they would never again read the publication and would not support advertisers who paid to be featured in it. And they were not alone. Comments on the “article” itself – those comments now removed by the online publication – ranged from people who fervently hoped MacNair understood how inconsequential he was, folks who purported to feel not anger but pity for his lack of humanity, and some who hoped he’d burn in a truck canopy-shaped hell for eternity. Some even offered to help him get there sooner rather than later. I understood all of their feelings, in some cases quite keenly, but something else continued to nag at me. Something entirely separate tugging at my soul. I couldn’t pinpoint immediately what it was, and I had to lay abed that evening mulling it over in the dark as I fought with Wootie for the covers, a little terrier ball of Spring pressed against my back, TWooie snoring into my feet and FaeFae wrapped around my hair.

When it came to me finally, the thing that was bothering me, I decided that in the morning I would share my thoughts with MacNair. But before I was even fully human again after my second mug of coffee, it was already too late. The editor of the paper had hit the phones early, personally calling everyone who had contacted him about this rubbish clickbait to apologize for the insensitive tone of the whole piece. The paper posted an apology for the article deeming it insensitively expressed and probably not worthy of publication. Then it published a lovely little puff piece from another writer who disagreed with MacNair about the “value of life.” At this point, adding my voice to the choir seemed redundant. And realistically, working as I do at one of the busiest animal shelters in the province, I didn’t have time to sit down and sort out my thoughts in any cohesive or meaningful fashion anyway. There’s simply too much to do right in front of me, all day long.

And there is something else that is right in front of me, all day long. It sits on my chest and threatens to squeeze the life out of me sometimes, like a trapper standing on a fox. It’s the unseen force that makes it difficult, sometimes, for me to even lift the fork to my mouth at dinner time. It pokes a hole in the fabric of my life and tries to drain all the joy right out of me. It’s called “Whatever, Just A Dog” and it’s the reason I, and my 9 staff members, have a (difficult, sad) job to every day. Whatever, Just A Dog is that thing that pays my bills and the reason I get up in the morning. Because Whatever, Just A Dog crawls over and through my professional life like a worm in a rotting log. It’s the reason that so many shelter workers, APOs and ACOs suffer from something called Compassion Fatigue, or the “cost of caring for others in emotional pain.”

Whatever, Just A Dog is a philosophy embraced by the humans charged with “caring” for so many of the horribly neglected, mistreated and abused animals that we in turn care for every day. Whatever, Just A Dog saddles those of us in the shelter system with a tax on our empathy, takes a toll from our good night’s sleep, robs us of our ability to leave our job at the building when we go home of an evening. Whatever, Just A Dog brings pain, suffering and misery to the dogs, and leaves its taint in the hearts and minds of the shelter staff.

Whatever, Just A Dog – “easily replaced … at the local shelter for $350.00” What amount of money is going to compensate that shelter’s staff for the value of the heart-sickening, gut wrenching images that burn into our brains every long day?

“(After treating) this poor guy, I went home that evening and curled around my dog on the sofa in a fetal position for the entire evening.” ~RVT at the shelter

When MacNair devalued the lives of the Brookswood Six in his “opinion” piece, he did more than just spit in the faces of the owners grieving the loss of their family members. He has the right to feel that dogs aren’t family. He did not need to share that opinion – sharing it was not consequential to this world.

When MacNair devalued the lives of the Brookswood Six, he did more than reveal how narrow is the sliver of humanity in his soul. I do not feel pity for a man who purports to not understand love for a dog, nor do I feel hatred. I feel nothing. I have nothing left to feel for MacNair, because Whatever, Just A Dog has stolen all my feelings, again and again and again.

“This is his FOOT. The entire paw pad just sloughed off in a cast of rotting skin, feces and dirt when I soaked it.” ~RVT at the shelter

When MacNair alleged to feel sympathy for Paulsen because “she might be suffering from mental illness” (yellow journalism at its finest; there is no medical or professional conclusion that Paulsen is mentally ill in any way whatsoever) he forgot to feel sympathy for the dogs and what they suffered. He forgot to feel sympathy for their owners, and how they’ve suffered. And maybe he forgot that his words were going to be read by real people, with real feelings, who do value the lives of animals. Or maybe he just didn’t care.

When MacNair wrote his “opinion” piece, he devalued me, my staff and the hard work that we do every day. He embraced Whatever, Just A Dog and became part of the endless cycle of dismissive cruelty, the wheel that we shelter workers are lashed to and tortured with in an endless, spinning array of abuse, neglect, pain and horror.

“Just elephant tusks. The nails. There’s no other way to describe them. Some had to be cut out of his paw pads, they’d grown right around again.” ~RVT at shelter

A wise woman (Beatrice Evelyn Hall) once said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” A wiser ‘journalist’ might have thought to himself “is every thought in my brain worth saying aloud?” And a truly wise editor should have said “This is garbage, go back to your desk and write something that isn’t pseudo-existentialist refuse.”

One of my friends received a reply from MacNair himself, in which he told her “I love dogs” and sent along a couple of nicey-nice videos he’d made of a senior dog rescue and a local animal shelter. What MacNair was admitting was that instead of being a journalist, he was being a troll. This wasn’t clickbait, it was just bait. MacNair was operating on the same level and principles of your average Craigslist forum basement-dweller, under the thin guise of an editorial. MacNair trolled me, even if he didn’t mean to. And it worked. His entire “article” laughed at my pain, dismissed my sorrow and ridiculed my professional integrity.

That hurts. Hurt compounded on countless other hurts.

When the time comes that humanity invents something that replaces the holes these dogs, and others like them, have burned through my very soul, maybe I’ll forgive Adrian MacNair for telling me my pain is meaningless. Until then, I will continue to value the lives of dogs, I will continue to believe they are consequential, and I will continue to suffer right along with them. Because they matter. Our species needs people who like me who believe that they matter. Or else we are just as inconsequential as MacNair claims dogs to be.

https://wootube.net/2015/02/1737/

Ender’s Game

February 21, 2014 By The Food Lady 35 Comments

What did you get for Valentine’s Day?

Ender arrived on Tuesday evening from California. He’s a 3 year old male (ACTUAL) Italian Greyhound that came to me through a series of circumstances via an internet friend in Tahoe. I first learned of Ender in November, but had just acquired Addy and passed on him, and yet here he is anyway. How does this kind of thing happen to me?

So it was fate right? To have an Iggy delivered to my doorstep?

For those of you who are counting – and I know some of you are – that makes an even 10 dogs at Casa de Food Lady. You know what it DOESN’T make? Me a hoarder. More on that later.

Ender is very sweet and can smooch me in the face by leaping from the ground from a standstill. He is reasonably housebroken. He gives the cats a wide berth. He’s very handsome and makes Addy look like a total squirt. You can really see how IG she is NOT by sitting her next to her long legged brethren.

I like Ender, but so far, I do not love Ender. Although I do love taking photos of him!

Initially, the other dogs were intrigued by Ender and seemed to like him. Winter invited him to play right away and even Dexter “I see Mommy and Tennis Balls and everything else is invisible” play bowed at him. But he’s been here for three whole days and now everybody hates him. Winter particularly hates him.

When he tries to play with Addy, Ender is over there like a shot (and he is FAST!).

He gets all up in their business.

And then he starts giving Winter the Business.

He definitely gives Winter the NO Feeling.

And when Winter tells him off …

Ender fights back and I have to break it up. I’m finding Ender a little on the passive-aggressive side … he is all needy and nervous, but he is also kind of a bully / asshole. I suspect he has never lived with other dogs before.

This would be enough to give me pause, but he also barks ALL. THE F*CKING. TIME. At everything. I bring him to work every day, where he has already pissed off all the puppies by humping them and interfering with their social dynamics, so he has to be crated. And in the crate (at work) he complains all the time.

He barks at everybody and everything that comes through the door – every visitor gets barked and yodeled at. We have Nosework classes at the shelter several days a week about 10 feet from my desk and he barks, yodels, grumbles and growls at them the whole time.

Today I took him to (insert big box pet store name here) along with Addy to buy crickets for my gecko and learned something new about Ender, which is that he is leash reactive. In the space of 15 minutes he progressed from barking/yodeling/grumbling at everything he saw to lunging, snarling and snapping at other leashed dogs. He doesn’t do this off leash (or at least he hasn’t so far) so I assume it’s leash related, but I HATE it. I am not unskilled in managing and working with this behaviour, but you know what? I don’t WANT to. If I wanted to do that, I have my choice of largely undersocialized dogs at work that I could spend hours working with. I really don’t want to come home and do it there too.

Is it so wrong to just want nice, reasonably well adjusted dogs? Haven’t I already put in my dues, over and over and over again?

I also really don’t want to upset the social balance at home, nor do I want to undo all the work I have put into building Winter’s confidence over the last year.

But I reaaalllly want to photograph Ender over and over again ;-)

So far, Ender kind of gives me the NO Feeling too :( This disappoints me, as I so want a real IG, but I am not sure Ender is the dog for me.

Also, I am thinking of throttling Addy Hole Digger and burying her inside one of her own artful creations.

ADDY!

What?

Also, Ender’s reactivity is rubbing off on Addy, in the space of just three days. She is hyper-alert anyway, and is already picking up in his barking-at-everything. Now I’M grumbly and growly.

What I really want to throttle and bury is the coyote that killed my favourite rooster this week. Mr. Roo was a very handsome BCM who slept in until 9AM and never crowed and was super laid back. Asshole coyote left me only his one, imperfect, white tail feather :(

That damned coyote makes me feel like this.

The other thing that makes me feel like that are thinly veiled / not very fucking subtle suggestions that I am a “hoarder” on social media. Especially coming from people who know piss all about me, but are obviously being fed their *ahem* ‘theories’ by people I have thought were my friends. It’s supremely irritating. But on the plus side, I suppose it’s a good way to separate the wheat from the chaff. (What is chaff anyway? Whatever it is, it’s obviously too chickenshit to come to me directly with its “concerns”.)

For the last 8 years I have blogged my dog life with what some of my (actual) friends consider a startling amount of transparency. Putting my life out there has both comedy and perils, but I’ve got nothing to hide (when it comes to dogs, that is. I WON’T TALK ABOUT MY TIME IN PRISON!*) I find it somewhat boggling that anyone can cruise through the back issues of Wootube and see my home, inside and out, the care and interest I take in my dogs, my many musings on their acquisition and my efforts to juggle a pack of divergent and challenging canine personalities, and still have the ball numbing audacity to allude to me as a hoarder.

This is a hoarder.

(photos courtesy of pawshpal blog)

This is not.

When’s the last time you read about a hoarding situation bust where the dogs were anything but filthy, diseased and starving?

Woo is definitely not starving.

Spring thinks she is, because she is on a diet, as she was looking a little porky to me these days. The thing is, she doesn’t FEEL fat – both she and Winter have “sprung” their chests, which I have to assume has something to do with maturing? Both of them are only a couple of lbs off their “normal” weight, but both of them are looking wider. Spring in particular has lost her whippety look and gotten very square all over. And Winter was always built like a tank. I’m starting to wonder what kind of terrier, exactly, they are mixed with!

The problem is, when I diet Spring and Winter they bust down the mud room babygate and eat all the cats’ food while I am at work.

But back to the whole hoarding thing … if you all recall, I work for an animal shelter. I have yet to take home a permanent resident from my shelter to ‘save” it, and spend all my days trying hard to find creative ways to convince people to adopt the dogs in the shelter. I have run a border collie rescue for the last 15 years and of the 300 odd dogs I have fostered, kept only a handful of dogs.

I have more dogs than probably you, and more than probably most people you know (but I do have friends with more dogs than me, and they aren’t hoarders either). I’m different from you, but that doesn’t mean you get an automatic pass to insult, belittle or slander me.

And for the record, my house smells of vanilla grooming spray at the moment, because the dogs were all nail clipped, foot hair trimmed and brushed this week, and all you’ll find in my kitchen sink is a plate from my dinner an hour ago. My floors are freshly vacuumed and washed, there’s dog laundry in the dryer because I obsessively wash and towel dry muddy dog feet after every lengthy exercise outing (which happen twice a day in the winter months and three times a day in the summer months).

Friends come into my home routinely. They don’t have to wear gas masks (I am dog sitting a french bulldog next week though, so I might have to hand some out … that thing can FAARRRT!) when they do. So if you are a peripheral acquaintance of mine (or an alleged friend) and you still think I am a hoarder … well, fuck you.

And if you are the coyote that ate my Mr. Roo, well fuck you too. Extra.

GOD DAMMIT ADDY!

WHAT???

It’s sobering to imagine that five years from now, my life will be radically different for my pack of beloved dogs will be significantly smaller :(

What?

(don’t worry, he didn’t hear anything. he doesn’t hear much these days)

In other news, Miss “Prognosis Poor” Gemma Bean chomped me but good the other day when I tried to physically make her sit and stay for her weekly photoshoot. Little shit obviously doesn’t *feel* like she is dying!

Isn’t she getting hairy again though? It’s sooo cute. She is so damn cute I can’t stand it. I never thought I would say that about a maltipoo.

(*I have never actually been to prison. In case you were worried for a second there.)

The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

December 6, 2013 By The Food Lady 6 Comments

Sometimes also known as “Wootie and his soccer ball.”

You know how sometimes you are so overwhelmed with a feeling of love and longing for something that you just want to ingest it and have it inside of you FOREVER?

Yeah, so does Woo.

What he didn’t love was me separating him from his beloved and bringing all the other dogs back inside, but it’s COLD out there. Like the kind of cold that could ACTUALLY freeze Hell, I am certain of it. It’s a few degrees below zero and dropping fast, and there is an icy woooo-oooing (not to be confused with Woo, or Woo wooing his soccer ball) wind outside that is finding every fissure and cranny in my house, sneaking inside and creeping up my pantlegs. Brrr.

Fortunately I have a little space heater, that goes by the name of Addy AKA TinyDog. She spends a good 80% of her time living inside my sweatshirt; even though she has her own clothes, she seems to prefer wearing mine. Of course, many of hers are ill fitting hand-me-downs.

(sorry this photo is so shitty; my go-to lens is giving up the ghost)

Poor thing. Her adoptive family dragged her out of sunny California and dropped her into the middle of what feels like the arctic! Then we dress her poorly and make her share clothes with her MOM.

I wish I was still a California girl.

But at least she has made some friends here. The terriers like her quite a bit, even though they are sometimes a bit on the rough side.

And after an initially frosty reception, even TWooie (!) has thawed (trust Mr. Contrary to thaw in the middle of a cold snap) and deemed her play-with-able.

She has a very lovely personality. She likes everyone she meets, big or small. She is not nervous or insecure like some small dogs can be. She does shiver/shake all the time, but that’s because she has no hair. And she is right into everything that’s going on like a real dog.

But she cannot tolerate the cold at all, hence why she lives inside my jacket during our morning and evening walks.

She is a pretty cool little dog, even if she doesn’t really look like any kind of greyhound.

That’s her new friend “Hot Coffee” a greyhound available for adoption at my shelter.

She even made friends with Bumble!

You know how we do Christmas photos with Santa and the Grinch every year? Well this year I wanted to do Bumble, from Rudolph The Rednose Reindeer, the stop-motion film. It’s my favourite Christmas show; I still have the LP (that’s a vinyl record for all you whippersnappers out there) narrated by Burl Ives. But you just TRY and find a Bumble costume, anywhere. It’s f*cking impossible.

So, because I am me, and I am tenacious like a terrier and obsessive like a border collie, I had one made! My coworker Mia, who is uber talented, made Bumble with a magical blend of her creativity, paper mache and some liquid latex and fake fur. And because I put my money where my mouth is, at last weekend’s sitting I became Bumble!

(excuse my appearance, but I had Bumble hair)

We’re doing another session at Triple Tree Nurseries in Maple Ridge tomorrow, so come on out and visit!

And if you want to do something else Good tomorrow, go visit God’s Little Acre Farm for their skating fundraiser. These folks donate incredible amounts of food to the local foodbanks and community members in need.

Go forth and give back, friends!

Worst Blogger Ever

November 17, 2013 By The Food Lady 12 Comments

*waves* Hi! Remember me? The Food Lady with a bunch of dogs and a really full schedule who has had no time for blogging the last several weeks?

See, tis that time of year again. HOLIDAY PHOTOS.

We did your first session of Santa Photos last weekend, and as always, it was loads of fun.

It was so much fun I brought the Santa suit to work and jollied a coworker into playing Santa, and took photos of the shelter dogs too.

Wouldn’t this photo make you want to adopt Jack, an 18 month old Pug X Chihuahua?

Or Chloe, an 18 month old Keeshond X Golden Retriever?

Or Betty White, a feisty old lady terrier dog?

Man, the light box I built at work makes for beautiful, crystal clear photos with lovely lighting. I want to build one for home, so I can take photos of my own beasts over the dreary winter, and actually, you know, blog.

I also got to take photos of some lovely doggies who required a photo session. And *I* am not fool enough to pass up the opportunity to photograph (read: play with and snuzzle) the world’s most adorable bulldog puppy, Stevie.

But Stevie would rather play with Jessie.

When it comes to playing, I’ve been busy too … I’ve been busy playing some dog sports, and trying some new ones!

Lure coursing is over for the year, which is okay, as it gives me time to put Wootie on a BIG FAT DIET and make him skinny again for next Spring.

Excuse me? A WHAT?

I think he would be really great at lure coursing, if he were not so tubby.

I also think he would be SUPER great at our newest dog sport, which is called Barn Hunt. This is a sport in which your dog (especially if it is a terrier, since they all seem – shockingly, I know – to go mental for this) has to locate a live rat that is housed in a PVC tube with air holes in it. There are other PVC tubes in play as well, that may contain rat bedding, or nothing at all. The dogs have to go through and over a course of hay bales and locate the correct rat-filled PVC tube and indicate (usually through screaming, I gather) that they have found it. As you the human do not know which tube actually contains a rat, you have to have confidence in your dog’s ratting skills and call the correct tube when your dog hits on it. If you and your dog are wrong, you get disqualified. If you are right, in the allotted time, you qualify. If your dog can find the rat the fastest, you win!

We tried Barnhunt at a seminar this weekend – I brought the whipjacks, because I thought they would excel at it. They weren’t quite as superb as I imagined they would be (reminds me of our first experience at lure coursing, actually). After initially being FAR too polite to point out to me that our hostess had – OMG – RATS, Spring eventually figured out the goal was to identify the vermin tube, and then she would delicately sit down beside it and place a paw gentle on the pvc pipe (“I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but I think there might be a mouse or something in this ‘objet’ … so sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”) She passed her instinct test with not bad time.

But at least she would go over and under the haybales, something Winter just resolutely would not do, as they were terrifying and itchy. And at first he refused to look at the rat at all, even the one in the see-through box. I suspect he thought he’d get in trouble (a la killing my chickens) if he let on that he wanted to KILL THAT THING. After lots of encouragement, he started muzzle punching the box and trying to dig through it, so I took him through the instinct test as well. His “indicator” is to glance at the correct tube and then avert his eyes and pretend he wanted nothing to do with the rat inside of it, so I had to be pretty aware. But he passed also.

I would NEVER kill a small living thing, nope. I don’t even know what a rat is. Nuh-uh.

The best dogs at the seminar were something that looked like an itty bitty airedale – that thing basically bodily hurled the hay bales out of the way and tried to eat through the PVC – and a Patterdale terrier that located the tube in under 10 seconds.

I do believe Wootie would kick some PVC-Rat-Tube ASS, so I’m enrolling him in the next seminar.

The today we went and played The Agilities. Springaling was trying for her third and final Starters Standard to get her ADC title, and move up to Advanced – and she did! She also got her first Advanced Gamble – she’ll be in Masters Gamble in no time, as she loves to Gamble.

Play agility, hunt rats, stalk my brother until he wrestles with me – it’s all fine with me!

She pooped in the box in Team Relay, after PROMISING me for a good 5 minutes of sniffing outside that she did not need to poop, nope. And she missed one tunnel entry in Jumpers (my fault) so she went 2/4. I had entered her in both Starters Standards (cuz I REALLY wanted that title!) and as she Q’d the first one, I had one to spare.

So I, umm, threw Dexter in in her place.

YES I KNOW I said I was not trialing him anymore. I have been good, haven’t entered him in the last few, but as he was there anyway in the truck, I thought – what the heck! Why waste a perfectly good, already paid for run? So I did. And damn if the sneaky f*cker didn’t Q with a perfect run.

You don’t give crazy enough credit.

Amazingly, that Q was the last one HE needed for his ADC, so both my dogs got their Agility Dog of Canada titles today. How exciting is that? I’m not getting my hopes up or anything ( have, after all, been fooled before!), but maybe this means there is hope for him yet! Of course, it takes him an average of two years to get out of a level, so he’ll be ancient by the time we get to Masters, but there you go.

In other news, Piper turns 11 tomorrow.

She is doing great, motoring around on that repaired ACL leg like nobody’s business. She is also batshit CRAZY these days – I have to keep here away from squeaky toys, as she eats them whenever she can, and if she gets the ball when we are out playing, she runs home with it and stands on the porch in a mild state of panic. Sound of body, but not quite of mind.

The WooTWoo turn eight years old tomorrow as well. Looking pretty FAT for eight!

TWooie will not play ball or anything, so he just ambles about or sits while we play ball before and after work in the dark. Sometimes I think he would be quite happy living with a little old lady who will take him for little walks around the block and feed him bon bons on the couch.

As for me, I turn 41 tomorrow. There is, in my house, 1 dog for every 5 years and 1.5 months of my life (cuz I have Holly, my foster puppy, here as well).

She’s real cute, I’m sure people will be dying to adopt her when I put her up for adoption. More power to them – she is a BUSY BUSY puppy, always into something!

And Tweed is, at 13.5, five hundred kinds of awesome :)

More Santa (and Grinch, and a secret, soon to be unveiled character) photo sessions coming up at various locations around the Lower Mainland. If you’re in the area, keep an eye on the blog and the FB page, as we’ll be announcing them soon!

Dexter VS Spring

June 12, 2013 By The Food Lady 6 Comments

Naturally we did not get his clean Jumpers run on video, but this one is almost as good – only one off course. He really has a hard time not taking what he sees in front of him, even when I am asking him to call off of it, so it’s something we really need to work on (still/more/forever etc). You can see how wide he goes when asked to turn, and how he almost took the tunnel pretty much every time he saw one after a jump. He is a wide running dog naturally, even in daily life (his recalls involve an outrun, I swear) so I need to learn how to rein him in! The good news is … no bars down like last year!

Spring, OTOH, ran this Jumpers very nice. She is still a little slow at the beginning of runs buts gets faster as her confidence grows. She and Dexter had very close times, because she’s not as fast or as LONG but jumped everything tight. By the end of the run, my good girlie is clearly having fun :) She is just a gem.

I’m a lucky girl to have such a fun little partner!

There are a few more videos I will try to upload later this week.