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Koa

Pickle Pr0n

July 25, 2009 By The Food Lady Leave a Comment

So ya’ll will stop whining about “Where are the Pickle pictures, the ones where he has his shirt off?” and stuff, and because I like to make you all happy, please enjoy some Pickle Pr0n.

(but if Mrs. Pickles starts taking names and kicking ass, don’t blame me! I’m still jobless and rapidly becoming broke, so if she tosses me a few dollars, I will give all ya’ll perverts up!)

Mr. Pickles decided The Sofa needed to learn to swim, so he donned some ocean going pants and did the deed.

All things considered, I do believe Sofa enjoyed being HURLED TO HIS DEATH FROM THE DOCK more than this experience. Oh the things a dog will do for a tennis ball.

Le sigh. Life was so much simpler then…

Fortunately, there was a lifeguard on duty.

I know this photo is out of focus, but for a moment when I was downloading I thought Red Dog had come back to pay me a visit. I took these photos about a week ago and had largely forgotten what was on the card or why I took them. It was too eerie not to share this, blurry or no!

Hey look at me! Look at me! I’m in the air!

Poor Wootie is feeling undervalued. We are at an agility trial all weekend and he is not getting the attention he feels he needs and/or deserves, since Tweed and Piper are running the show.

Harumph. My Food Lady went to an agility trial and all I got was this lousy dead stuffie.

Today’s star is Miss P, who got her first Advanced Jumpers Q!!

Yay, me! Wait, what?

This is no small achievement for Her Highness. Just a few short months ago, Piper did not understand the game of agility despite a year or so of lessons, and could not even navigate a series of more than 2 jumps. Today, she did 3 runs and the ONLY thing she garbled was her nemesis, the Evil Weave Poles. If it were not for weaves, she would have run clean every time. HUGE improvement.

Oddly, the weaves haunted Mister Masters today as well. Tweed ran a gorgeous Standard, but he bobbled the weaves – and he did it so smoothly that I, running right beside him, didn’t even notice! It was not until I reviewed the tape that I noticed his little shimmy-skip. Unfortunately, the judge noticed it in real time. We also played a new game called Challenge, which is exactly what it sounds like – challenging! And I am apparently challenged when it come to remembering the name of the Frame, because I called it “TunnelNONOImeanPlankNOIDON’TWhyCan’tIRememberWhatThisIsCalled?!!” while doing a little dance of frustration that messed us all up :) But he ran like stink. I am so very proud of my dogs!

We do so well now because MY INSTRUCTOR IS A SADIST!! I know I say that a lot. It’s mostly cuz he reads this, and it drives him batshit when I call him that.

Payback’s a bitch ;-)

He has a two lovely Aussies. There is the very handsome and masculine Cisco:

Who would like me to give him the cookie, and get my facebox all out of his bizness.

Get lost. But leave the cookie.

And Biscuit, who is darling. I love Biscuit, because when she gets mad at Gerhard, she bites him in the pants! Actually, I was a little worried she was going to bite me in the pants too. She doesn’t appreciate picture time.
I brought my camera today, but mostly just to get the odd shot, because I was too busy running to take photos. However, I did get this one of Calen the Beagle, and I am very very glad I did.
ha ha ha!!!

She is going to kick some serious ass in the handstand competition.

We’re at the trial all day tomorrow too. Come by and visit us! You can play with Noodles and the Wootie Toy, as he is ever so lonely…

And on your way, please come get these other cats. I hate them.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: agility, big air, dog beach, Donut, Koa, Mr. Pickles, Mr. Woo, Piper

Rinky dink dink

July 17, 2009 By The Food Lady Leave a Comment

Two kittehs in a sink!

tee hee hee.

The news cats and the old guard (AKA Nutz) are still unimpressed with one another. And yet, they are united in their distaste for their living-sharing.

Behold – Donutz is pissed off.

So is the kitten. Except she looks exactly like Donutz.
Hmmm.

While I had hoped that one of these little cutiepatooties would be a partner in crime to Her Majesty, it looks like Donutz prefers to fly solo. So these little devil kittens are looking for homes of their very own.

Yes please, find them new homes. They make me so darn tired.

What are you talkin’ about?

I totally never unraveled your toilet paper! I never did!

Yes she did.

Now get that camera out of my face. I’m trying to figure out how I can replicate myself.

Speaking of replicants … The Sofa is one step ahead of kitten on that one. He replicated himself at the beach today.

Eerie, no?

It’s kind of to be expected though. I mean, there’s a lot of things to get accomplished in a day when you are The Sofa, and there needs to be more than one of you if you want to get it all done.

So many puppies to NOM NOM NOM

NOM!

Dee-lish!

Also, if you are The Sofa, you must steal Harriet’s ball at least 8 / 10 times it’s thrown in the water.

Too far I think.

Agh! Agh! Definitely too far!!

That sucked!

STOP STEALING MY BALL, A$$HOLE!!
(tiny dog. BIG voice)

I’ll take that, thankyouverymuch.

The Sofa seems to have settled down and is back to his friendly, playful beach self. He can even share toys, as long as they are not HIS toys. Seems he is over his snit.

Tweed however, was in a snit because Fergus was not sharing.

Damn it, Fergus.

The Biggest Snitty Of Them All was Rogue, aka The Scorpion.

She did not want to swim.

No! DO NOT WANT!

NO NO NO NO!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!1

When she paddled back to shore, she took out her bad mood on some random passing terrier. Poor little thing didn’t know what hit ‘im.

I’m just glad it wasn’t me!

Yo, She is lucky it wasn’t ME.

As for Woo, well … there is no dock at Spanish Banks.

But Woo can get air anywhere.

So here’s a question for you … does your breed of dog recognize or behave differently around other dogs of the same breed?

Today Sofa met two dobermans. One of them (his doppelganger) totally ignored him. The other one beat the living snot out of him. I thought maybe they would bond or something.

My border collies recognize other border collies and relax around them. They don’t mind other border collies joining them in their reindeer games, and if they see them from a distance they wag their tails. They are not particularly interactive with other border collies – or any dogs at all, actually – but they do seem to enjoy their company. Other dogs are not worthy of their attention at all, and sometimes are snapped at if they are too pushy. But it’s really obvious that they recognize their own “kind” – Tweed even recognizes border collies on television, though he otherwise totally disregards television.

Is this true of your breed as well?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: big air, dog beach, kittens, Koa, Mr. Woo, Parker and Harriet, Piper, Tweed

Oh, the DRAMA

July 8, 2009 By The Food Lady Leave a Comment

Sofa is such a drama queen.

“Oh! You gods, why do you make us love your goodly gifts, and snatch them straight away?“

Yeah yeah. Tell it to the judge.

I am Cashew. I am the judge.

See how serious looking I am?

As you can see, Sofa has recovered perfectly from his near drowning of last week (:eyeroll:).

However, he has lately come to display a brand new behaviour that neither Mr. Pickles, nor anyone else at the park, appreciates. It’s kind of complicated, so I’ll see if I can explain it in simple terms …

Oh yes, here we go.
The Sofa is an asshole.

He has taken up a new hobby of being a randomly aggressive nincompoop and getting quick tempered with other dogs. As near as I can figure it appears to be a form of ‘possession aggression.’ The things he found valuable enough to aggress over today include: dad’s truck, a stick, my pocket (where cookies sometimes live) and occasionally whatever dog he was currently playing with. Normally the Sofa is a very goofy guy who enjoys playing games my dogs find abhorrant, like ear tugging and wrestling, grappling over toys and “chase me” games.

This is the “normal” Sofa, playing gently with an 8 week old Lab puppy (so cute, right?)

But as of just lately, he has been fighting with other dogs (never people) over resources and perceived insults. Is this common in dobermans? Is it a function of his oncoming maturity? Any suggestions for nipping it in the bud, so to speak?

You all were so helpful with the recall issue, maybe you have some insights for Mr. Pickles.

Who needs to GET OUT OF THE SHOT, PICKLES!! Yeesh. He’s as bad as Tweed!

Speaking of the recall, I was interested to hear all your suggestions and insights. Someone asked how The Food Lady would work on this problem, and I was sort of surprised that nobody offered anything similar to the approach I would take.

Liam’s recall issue is not a “fear” of coming when called, nor is it a communication problem – eg., it’s not that Liam does not understand his recall command, but rather that he chooses to disregard it in favour of his freedom. To me, this makes Liam a very smart dog – one who can make decisions on his own. But it also makes him a frustrating dog, especially if you’re in a hurry, or he escapes the leash in a dangerous situation. That’s why in my world, “come” is not negotiable*.

*unless you’re Mr. Woo. Because if you are Mr. Woo, you look like this and therefore, are immune to all directives:


Over the last decade, I have fostered a couple hundred border collies, and I have without fail taught every one of them a fairly reliable recall within about two days. And I have done this using the age old art of putting pressure on the dog.

Pressure is the language that a working dog understands. There’s a reason Open handlers don’t clicker train their sheepdogs – for centuries, shepherds have used pressure to make their dogs understand what they want and need them to do. When a dog is working sheep, he is putting pressure on the sheep, and the shepherd is putting pressure on the dog, and the dog is constantly adjusting his stance, pace and position in relation to the pressure of the environment he’s working in – gates, fences, escape routes, panels etc. Border collies are very sensitive to pressure of all kinds, and it’s pretty easy to make it work for you.

When I teach a dog a recall, I loose him somewhere and let him do his thing for a bit, and then I call him, ONCE. If he does not immediately respond, I then proceed to “walk the dog down.” Purposefully, and silently, I walk straight toward the dog – I do not run, I walk. I do not change my pace, and I do not get angry and I do not yell – I simply walk. If the dog goes left, so do I. If he skips off to the right, so do I. If he takes off in the other direction, so do I. I am relentless in my pursuit of the dog. But usually I only need to be relentless for a couple of minutes, because pretty soon, the dog always – ALWAYS – stops. Usually he lies down and waits for me to reach him. This is pressure – the dog feels the pressure of me coming for him, and succumbs to that pressure. Border collies were bred to be very sensitive to this.

When I reach the dog, I take his collar and say nothing. I lead him back to where I originally called him from, sit him down and look him in the eye, and quitely repeat “come.” Then I loose him again. Almost without fail, the next time I issue the recall, the dog comes flying back to me as fast as he can, to avoid the pressure of being “walked down” again. Then I throw a party for the dog’s success and rewards aplenty are issued – praise, food, a toy or whatever it is the dog likes.

I’ve found over the years that this only takes 2 or 3 repeats over 1 or 2 days before I can reliably have the dog coming to me on the first command every time. They are smart dogs, and they learn quickly how to avoid the consequence of not coming when called. I suppose that in the vogue of positive reinforcement, this would be something negative, but I have to stress that it is not punishment. My dogs LOVE to come when called, and they LOVE the praise they receive for it. But they instincitvely understand pressure, and yield to is appropriately, as they were bred to do.

Interestingly, toward the end of our photo shoot, Liam’s mum got annoyed with her dancing-out-of-reach wayward canine and without knowing she was even doing it, she walked him down. She walked him down straight into the Fraser River, where he sat down, and then he lied down, and then he walked up to her and did a *perfect* front-finish sit and let her put his leash on.

Oh Liam knows what a recall is, there have just been too many rewards for ignoring it, and not enough consequences for disobeying it ;-)

Did you call me?

You know, faces like this:

…do NOTHING to abate my puppy lust. NOTHING.

This one didn’t help either.

Oh and look what else I saw! An Irish Setter. I didn’t even know they made those anymore.

Thanks to you all who offered to help be Cataxis for a day to get Donut’s American cousins over the border. It looks like we have all the legs in place and as of Saturday night, the kitteny goodness will be upon us!

Donut has her own song (as do all my pets). It goes:

You’ve got kitteny goodness
So much kitteny goodness
You’ve got kitteny goodness
In those kitteny eyes!

I realize it makes no sense, but she likes it when I sing it to her. I think. It’s hard to tell with these damn cats.

I hope you’re all ready for some kitteh pictures!!

Also, on Saturday I hope to be in Laidlaw, BC (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say!) at the ASC of BC Stockdog Trials. I’m hoping to take photos of Aussies doing their thang. There’d better not be any puppies there! Come on by if you’re in the area and say hello! The Trio Of Terrible will be with me. Mr. Woo wants to get in touch with his Aussie roots.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: dog beach, Donut, Koa, Mr. Pickles, Mr. Woo, Tweed

Bad, Mr. Pickles, BAD!

June 30, 2009 By The Food Lady Leave a Comment

Do you know what Mr. Pickles is doing in this photo?

Here’s a hint:

RUN SOFA, RUN AWAY OR HE’LL DROWN YOU!!

Poor Sofa. He did not run fast enough, so Mr. Pickles threw him in the lake!

I guess he was jealous of The Fantabulous Dock Diving Woo. When you see images like this:

You get The Envies. And then your poor Doberman pays the price for your wounded pride.

At least he hauled him back in again.

Which is something that Dougie the Jack probably wishes he hadn’t done, after he was subjected to The Sofa Experience.

Frickin’ doberman! I’m outta here!

Agh! Holy cow! Get OFFA me!!

(*borrows Piper’s Mad Teeth(tm)*)

‘Scuse me, but those are MY Mad Teeth(tm). How will I keep this ball in my mouth without them?

Piper has had no more episodes of drunk-walking / overheating since the last one, but I have been very careful to not run her in the middle of the day without access to swimmable water. Thanks for all the insight and suggestions about what could be ailing her! She’ll be going to the vet later this week for some bloodwork and an overall check up.

She also had a pretty good agility trial, and earned herself a Starter’s Snooker Q. It doesn’t seem like much – after all, she had 3 runs and only Q’d in one of them, but for Piper this is a BIG accomplishment. Not too long ago, she was so all over the place on the course that she couldn’t do more than a few obstacles before her brain fell out of her head and she became The Saucers-For-Eyeballs Tornado of Doom on the course. Thanks to the hard work of Gerhard (“Again, FASTER”) we saw some notable successes in our runs – she took almost every obstacle on the first try, instead of running past them in a frenzy, she held her start line stays reliably and she nailed her 2o/2o contacts every time. Good girl!!

Tweed had a beautiful Masters Standard run with a first place and a Q, but he did a faceplant in his Gamble opening and then sulked his way through the rest of the course, and didn’t want to do the Gamble. Poor old man :(

Speaking of things Tweed did not want to do … this included jumping off the dock.

WTF? Off THIS thing? You been smokin’ that crack, Food Lady.

Since Tweed would not jump, and Piper NEVER jumps, that left just the Woo to impress all the park goers with his sexy moves.

I am too sexy for this dock, too sexy for this dock …

SPROING!

Holy shit, the orange dog can FLY!

This presents a whole new crop of recall training challenges. Figures.

Even he seemed a little amazed by his new talent of flight.

Dude. Whoa.

This is awesome.

I’ll just fly home. See you there, Food Lady!

Yesterday I did a photo shoot for some friends out in Maple Ridge, and took photos of oh-so-many adorable doggies, but the one that stole my heart was this pittie, Sienna:

She was a rescue off a reserve here in the Vancouver area and she has the sweetest personality of all time.

And she gets pretty big air too!

Tomorrow I get to photograph some border collies, including Bear (now called Rhys) who will be up for adoption soon.

And I try to upload photos from every session on my Big Air Photography website within a couple weeks of shooting, so don’t forget to check there often for new pictures!

Oh and my little sister got married last week to her long time love. The wedding was a small ceremony of just family, and happened on Bowen Island (the site of the Very Bad Woo Runs Away adventure). Congratulations to my little sister!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: agility, big air, big air photography, Bowen, dog beach, Food Lady, Koa, mad teeth, Mr. Pickles, Mr. Woo, Piper, Tweed

My hands are such jerks!

June 13, 2009 By The Food Lady Leave a Comment

Today I took the dogs to Kits Beach for some swimmin’. I didn’t bring the camera, cuz I was just going to enjoy the beautiful sunny weather.
Fat chance of that. I forgot that Kits Beach is populated by overcoiffed and under-intelligent yuppy yahoos with ‘tude and their brain dead, underexercised and barely trained dogs.

So I throw the ball in the water for Piper and she swims furiously after it. A fat (of course) Lab (of course!) who already has a ball of his own (of course) overtakes Piper and steals the ball. Leaves his in the water after trying and failing to have BOTH balls while Piper paddles around in terror at the thought of losing her precious ball.

As he exits the water, I grab his collar. I have done this dance before – if I don’t grab the dog, it runs off waaaay down the beach with my ball, in the general direction of its owner, who is talking on her cell phone or making mascara googly eyes at some studly shirtless wonder – anything but paying attention to her thieving dog. Of course. Even fat labs can outrun me on sand, and it ends up taking forever to get the ball back. So now I just don’t let them go anywhere until I have my ball back.

So, collar in hand, I tell the dog “drop it.”

Nothing happens. OF COURSE.

I send Piper to go get the other dog’s ball while I wrestle with a big fat slobbery Lab mouth to get my ball back. Finally I prise it out of his stupid mouth, take his ball from where Piper has left it at my feet, and then try to convince him to take back his original ball. Of COURSE, he doesn’t want it, he wants the one that does not belong to him and does a little darting dance and barks nonstop in my face.

The owner saunters over from whatever make-up ministrations she has been busy with, or whatever, and says in her haughtiest tone “I’ll take that.” So I smile and hand her the ball. I then turn to walk away so I can restart Piper’s game of fetch.

As I am walking away, the damn fat Lab launches at me from behind and grabs my WHOLE FREAKIN’ HAND , the one which is holding *my* ball. He grabs it HARD, hard enough to puncture the nail bed on my thumb, which immediately begins to bleed.

I, of course, scream “OUCH!” at the top of my lungs. Because, you know, it hurts?

(here comes the really awesome bit. you know I wouldn’t let you down)

Miss Elton John sunglasses looks at me and says “are you kidding me?”

Now, I don’t know about you, but my response to one of my dogs biting someone hard enough to make them bleed and scream out loud would probably be something along the lines of “OMG!! Are you okay? I am so sorry!!” followed by my theoretical biting dog being shoved facefirst into the sand for a remedial lesson in Being Nice. Of course, my dogs would simply NOT EVER BEHAVE like this, but I imagine – as a human being on this planet who feels responsible for her dog’s actions – that I would be apologetic in such a situation. Really apologetic.

Needless to say, I found her response sort of unsatisfactory. I say “No I’m not kidding! Your dog just grabbed four of my fingers really damn hard, and made me bleed.”

Now that she has started down the path of complete idiocy, she is apparently committed to seeing it through to the bitter end because she gets up all in my face and says “Touch my dog and I’ll Fuck You Up.”

???

I repeat, rather incredulously, “You’ll … fuck me up?? Really?” Did she actually just tell me she was going to fuck me up? REALLY? Who says that?

By now her dog has made a second grab at my ball (DENIED) and has taken off to steal another dog’s rubber frisbee type toy. She starts to swagger after her dog, and screeches over her shoulder “I will FUCK YOU!”

“I don’t swing that way, sweetie, so good luck with that,” was my auto-response. I can’t help it, she was sounding like a total douche. She turns to look at me, and I added “You can try, but you’re going to have to get past Animal Control once I call them to report this dog bite.”

She then opted to leave. Smart move, Chesty. I was starting to get pretty steamed with your attitude. I hope you’re reading this, and I hope you’re completely embarrassed about your ill manners, and overall dumbness. I really do. I am not sure I can go on as a participant in this world if people are so incredibly stupid that they cannot feel remorse for acting like a total dick.

Can people really be THIS stupid? Well of course they can – it just happened. But … really? I am a 36 year old woman and some snotnosed little huffy weiner just told me she was going to “fuck me up” because HER dog bit ME.

People, dogs can be taught some basic rules of thumb (pardon the pun). A good place to start is “Drop it.” I promise you, dogs can learn this. Even Mr. Woo, the World’s Least Trainable Dog, will reliably drop pretty much anything as soon as I tell him to. Why just today he dropped a miscellaneous knuckle bone he found at the park on, on my request (the idiocy of bringing hig value raw food items to the dogpark is a discussion for another day). That was a mighty big prize to let go of, yet it happened. Amazing I know.

Your dog can also learn “leave it” and “take it” and distinguish between the two, which goes a long way toward preventing people getting bitten through their nailbeds and bleeding all over the place. I know this sounds monumental, but Hand To doG, canines all around the world learn this all the time, and go on to lead productive, happy, non biting lives amongst the bipeds.

Now, it will take a little bit of effort on your part. You’ll have to get off your cell phone for a couple of minutes, and it will require interacting with your dog in a meaningful way. The payoff, however, is huge. Your dog will never be reported to Animal Control for biting someone because of your negligence, and people will like him more. And you, dear dog owner, will never have to behave like a total asshat at the dog beach to another human being who is bleeding down her thumb.

Doesn’t that sound just wonderful, when you think it through and weigh the pros and cons?

Thank you for listening to my rant. As a reward, I give you …

Half of a doberman.

I’m sorry it’s not the smarter half. Actually, it might be – it is, after all, The Sofa.

Last weekend I got to photograph dogs at a Fun Match, doin’ their agility thang. You can check out the photos on my website. Please enjoy!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: dog beach, Koa

A Flock of Seagulls

June 9, 2009 By The Food Lady Leave a Comment

Another episode of Life’s Lessons with The Sofa:
You can’t always get what you want.

In this case, you cannot “get” seagulls if you yourself do not have wings. That did not stop The Sofa from trying though.

Mr. Pickles had to go retrieve him, and was none too happy about it as he had to first wade through, and then RUN through, a bunch of water to catch his little miscreant. *I* was amused, and also impressed with how fast Pickles can run!

YES YES, female readers of TWAAW, Mr. Pickles is indeed wearing a shirt in this photo. I can hear your collective laments from here. But never fear, he soon removed the shirt. Going to the beach with Pickles is liking going to the beach with a toddler – he just can’t keep his clothes on.

Speaking of not always getting what you want, here’s another life lesson for you – if you do not meet the requirements in an adoptable dog’s profile, and you choose to apply anyway and get denied, who’s fault is that? Really now. People. You can’t always get what you want. That includes rescue dogs, so please, read the profiles BEFORE you apply. If you are denied for not meeting the requirements, have some grace. And FTR, lunacy and vulgarities are not the same as grace!

And speaking of rescue dogs, on today’s adventure we were joined by the ever blossoming Sky Dog.

Sky was one of the Yakima 7 we saved a few months back. Sky was the one who was pregnant, and having some troubles adjusting to her new life as a family pet. Her foster home turned out to be too chaotic for her maybe, and her stress levels went through the roof! So we moved her to a quieter foster home, and got her started on an anti-anxiety medication (Clomipramine).

Do you think it’s working?

Sky’s foster mum is out of town, so Sky is boarding at the kennel since we had nowhere else to put her because Sky has some special needs due to her anxiety. It’s only for 3 days, but I felt so guilty that I couldn’t take her (because my neighbors include Satan, Satan’s Wife and several of their minions) that I have been trekking out to the kennels every day to take her on beach and hiking adventures.

Today it was Spanish Banks, and the tide was out. Way out.

Sky learned to swim today! It was not entirely on purpose, as she didn’t seem totally aware that “water” and “sand” are not the same substrate.

But she’s a smart cookie.

She figured it out really fast!

Sky is coming along so nicely! She is still scared of strangers, but she also really wants to meet them very badly as she LOVES affection. It’s sad to see her frightened of the thing she wants most, but it’s so rewarding to see her coming around, thanks to the anti-anxiety meds, a strict routine of asking her to explore her own independence sometimes. She has met lots of strangers in the past couple of days and has even started to approach them when asked. She is going to make someone a GREAT dog one day soon! She is so willing to try.

For example, she was willing to try Mad Teeth ™ on a pesty doberman puppy.

it worked!

Sofa’s obsession with Sky left Tweed free to play ball without having to get up all in his face, yo.

Piper was not so lucky. She was ever-shadowed by Guess W(h)oo?

Dunh dunh duuuunh

WTF? This isn’t a ball!? I’m not bringing that back.

Maybe you’d like to throw the ball for me instead??
*bats eyelashes*

Thank you, rescue lady!

Sky will be going up for adoption soon on our website, so don’t forget to check back for updates!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: dog beach, Koa, mad teeth, Mr. Pickles, Mr. Woo, Piper, Tweed

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