mad teeth

GOTCHA

March 27, 2019 By The Food Lady 2 Comments

On this day in 2010, a FAT asshole joined the WooCrew. He eschewed the other four legged members of the family, and took out a hit on Dexterpuppy, but took a shine to His Orangeness and that’s remained his MO for the last 9 years. Except he’s much slimmer now.

Happy Gotcha Day, TWooie (formerly known as, *gag* Harley)!!!

It would be so much more satisfying to be able to include his DNA results here, along with the reveal of whether or not he is actually related to his brother Wootie, but those results won’t be back for a couple of months.

For his Gotcha Day he got me yelling at him at 1:30AM to “SHUT UP AND LET ME SLEEP I LET YOU OUT BEFORE BED ALREADY!!” because he had some “bad bottom” and had to go, which he did, allll across the living room floor. Blech. Maybe too many goldfishie crackers?

But you gotta admit that the flying goldfishie crackers make for some super hilarious photos, so … worth it!

I recently got myself a portable strobe in an attempt to up my photo game. I want to be able to light doggies anywhere, any time, and take advantage of locations where extension cords cannot go, like the beach and the mountains and at sunset and sunrise. And also, apparently, in my living room, with the backdrop pinned over the TV slide out, whilst throwing fish crackers at my dogs. And what I have discovered is that most of my dogs suck at catching cookies I throw at them.

Addy is shocked – SHOCKED I TELL YOU – that I would have the audacity to hurl crackers at her.

Winter’s strategy is to entrap the flying fish within Mouth Bars of Gooey Substance.

Wootie confused them with a game of soccer, and tried to head them into the goalie net.

But Dexter, dear, darling Dexter, was the worst of them all. He has exactly zero concept of how to catch anything. At all. Cookies are no exception.

Fortunately, he is very good at other things, like being extremely handsome and – more importantly – stationary, for minutes at a time, while I fiddle with position and power output of my new strobe to get the perfect sunset shot.

He really is such a very good boy. Sometime within the last year, he has unfortunately been afflicted with a nasty, biting parasite :(

Its scientific name is Maisie ChompsHisNeck.

This parasite seems benign … even kinda cute. But it is relentless, and whenever Dexter tries to run, the parasite attaches itself to his neck.

Getting upset with the parasite just causes it to become more aggressive.

Maisie is becoming quite the little pest! When she was a small puppy and I wrote up her adoption profile, one of the things I warned people about was that she had the potential for dog on dog aggression as a direct byproduct of over arousal. The number of applicants who failed to grasp what that could even mean was depressing. The number of applicants who dismissed this possibility as me being overly dramatic was just annoying. I got a lot of condescending nods and discreet eyerolls. And here we are 7 or 8 months later, and when Maisie gets really wound up, she likes to redirect onto one of her playmates and bite them in the neck or face. This is a good place to insert an “I told you so,” I think.

Poor Dexter, for all his creeping around and flashing Mad Teeth(tm) at things, is at heart a pacifist and couldn’t bite another dog if his life depended on it. I’ve said many times that if he had just kicked the living shit out TWooie once, TWooie would have a lot more respect for him. But instead he does the creeping/teeth thing while TWooie snaps and him and pulls out his hair, and never takes it any further than madmouth. He does the same thing with Maisie – as much as he would like her to stop losing her shit and biting him, he doesn’t know how to get her to quit it and leave him alone. So, bless him, he tries to get her to knock it off by using the universal hand signal for STAHHHP.

It doesn’t work of course, and Maisie just thinks he’s boxing with her and gets more amped up. So she is now learning to wear a basket muzzle, so that when we are going for a walk (she doesn’t do this when playing ball, and sticks very diligently to her own ball and doesn’t chase anyone else’s) she won’t leave holes in my poor boy’s neck and shoulders. He used to really love playing the run-and-snap-teeth game with her, the same one he played with Tweed for years, but then she started attacking him and now he’s all huffy about it and doesn’t want to run with her anymore. We’re hoping the muzzle means they’ll be able to play that game again.

She is an awesome puppy in most ways, but she’s kind of a dick when it comes to getting all worked up about stuff. She is also a dick when it comes to her Jolly Rope Ball. Doesn’t matter what other toy she has, if someone else picks up that particular toy, she turns into a raging bitch. Poor Dexter can only play with it if Maisie is on a leash.

Poor Wootie is so scared of her that he won’t even try to play with it anymore, so I had to buy him his own and we only play with it when Maisie is in a crate in the house … otherwise we have one terrified Wootie and one Rage-ie Maisie with TWO Jolly Rope Balls to snarl over.

He is, however, allowed to play with his frisbee unmolested.

And did you notice in the previous photo that his Flamboyance(tm) is growing back in nice and full? Finally! It’s still a pale shade of the gloriousness that it once was, but at least it has some heft and volume again. It’s thicker even than The Flambe(tm) of his brother’s, at last!

Fae Fae (also known by her stage name, Poops On The Floor Every Night While Everyone Else Is Sleeping) is (was) allowed to play with Maisie’s frisbee, mostly because everyone fears her tiny warbly wrath. Until Maisie and her stupid sister Peetie pulled the blue frisbee into tiny rubbery bits by arguing over who got to hold it.

Fae is such a little bag. Everyone thinks she is so sweet and adorable and full of hair, but that’s because they never see her flashing her pearly whites at everyone and stalking around with scorpion tail being a total hag. She won’t even play with Addy anymore, and Addy’s mostly too scared to try to attempt it … though once in a while her silly sighthound side gets the best of her and she gives it a go. They get along fine, they just don’t really play or snuggle (well, nobody snuggles with Fae, cuz she’s mean). Like right now Addy is snuggled up in a dog bed with Spring, while Fae is curled up on TOP of Addy’s snuggle sack in the chair next to me, so Addy can’t use it. Super bitch.

Don’t feel too bad for Addy though. Because she is super spoiled. Since the warm weather beat back the snow (seriously, Mother Nature is on crack … we went from well below zero and two feet of snow to 22+ tank top weather in the space of about 4 days), her frog-shaped splashing pool is back in business and she spends a good deal of time out there yelling at me to throw water with the chuck it so she can chase the droplets, or toss pebbles in the pool so she can try and find them with her little feetsies. And a friend of mine just gave us a second plastic pool shaped like a crab, which we are about to fill up with damp sand, so she can dig in it to her heart’s content. Because she is just THAT spoiled that she gets her own waterpark and her own beach. If I could get her to transfer her love of chasing water droplets and/or wet sand to a frisbee, she would be the world’s most adorable disc dog, but Addy don’t play that.

As I have no disc dogs of my own, I instead did a model call for disc dogs just so I could take some photos of them. Other people’s dogs are just that much more talented than mine. Also bendier.

This one was my favourite. Did so many cool things with the frisbee!

But this guy here, Dylan, I just love. I first met him when I was photographing dock diving last August at the fair. He’s a border collie/whippet mix and he is super athletic, super hilarious and generally just really really nice. One day he might be a daddy, and I’m hoping the timing is right for me to get a puppy from him! I am also hoping that is a long way away, because currently I have 80 million dogs and I don’t need any more.

Photographing disc was a fun way to spend a Sunday. I have never tried disc with my dogs, because I have only a couple of dogs that are leapers and they aren’t the same ones that really like frisbees. Maisie likes frisbee a lot, but she’s more of an on-the-ground dog. I have started doing some agility foundation work with her and she is catching on super quick. I think she will be a nice little agility dog – not crazy fast (or just crazy), like, say, Lavish:

(funny story – I posted this photo on my Big Air page and when I showed it to Lavish’s owner, she said “ASSHOLE” … and I still don’t know if she meant me or Lavish. Either way, I was delighted! LOL)

… but rather I think Maisie will be more like Tweed – reasonably fast, concise and think-y on the course. She is just generally a think-y dog (except when she is being a parasite). I really miss playing agility with Tweed (also I just miss Tweed). Dexter was like trying to stop that train from that movie with Denzel Washington. Spring is like trying to to get a rock in a slingshot without arms, and then suddenly achieving it and shooting it across the planet. Fae is like trying to get a mouse on speed to concentrate.

Mr. Woo was like trying to smack a particularly irritating mosquito. doG love him.

But I think Maisie is going to take her “job” seriously and understand what the end game is. She’s just that kind of dog.

Until then, my handsome Dexter will keep me busy posing beautifully for beautiful photos :)

I’m a lot more chipper these days, you may have noticed. Now that I’m not trapped in 12 freezing-cold square feet without water or a working toilet, with 9 super bored dogs, life is a lot less stressful. Thank you all for sticking with me through the dark times :)

Also, save your pennies because I have some truly amazing themed photo sessions coming up in the next few months, at some truly amazing and STUNNING locations! To make sure you’re kept in the loop, be sure to like and follow my photography page on Facebook. You won’t want to miss these, if photos of your doggos are what you’ve been craving!

There’Snow Winter, like A Cold Winter …

February 17, 2019 By The Food Lady 3 Comments

When everything is frozen.

We got hit with some CUH-RAZY weather the last couple of weeks, after an unusually mild winter. I was feeling pretty pleased at not having to contend with anything exceptionally brutal my first winter in the stupid tin can, but Mother Nature showed us! After nearly two weeks of below zero temperatures, both day and night, and days/nights on end of endless winds ranging from 50-90 KMs an hour, everything froze. And I do mean everything. The water was the first to go – the first day it froze, my drinking water hose committed suicide, and I was forced to to go buy an ungodly expensive heated water line (still paying that off, actually). I was apparently not the only one caught off guard, as it was the last one in stock. By the time I got it hooked up, it was too late… the water lines in my trailer had frozen. Then the underground waterline froze. You have no idea how much water you go through every day until you’re using bottles you have to fill up at your neighbour’s place every other day.

You also have to be super cognizant of how much of that bottled water you’re emptying into your grey water tanks when they are frozen/frozen shut and you have no means of emptying them. And speaking of emptying … black water tank frozen too. Enough said.

The first night of the bad windstorms, two panels of my poultry shed blew right off the frame. My poor, tropically-inclined Mexican stepdad had to come out and brave the tundra winds to fix the shed so my birds didn’t freeze. We then stuffed the whole shed with straw up to their eyeballs in an effort to keep them warm. Turns out bales of straw expand a LOT when you untie them, so the second bale of straw was somewhat superfluous. We put up boards all around the underside of the trailer in a (as it turns out) wishful attempt to insulate the underneath and used the extra straw bale to close one of the gaps. The gap that happened to be at the intake and outtake flow of the furnace. Which, as it turns out, gets really, really hot. And straw bales and heat aren’t super good friends, so it caught on fire. Which is a cool thing to see happen when you have no running water.

Which makes you paranoid forever after about running the furnace, so you don’t turn it on at night. So when your power goes out because of the wind, so does your space heater. And when you get up in the morning and can see your breath in your living room, and you try to put your shoes on to take the dogs out only to find that your shoes are frozen to the floor, you realize that you pretty much hate everything that ever existed.

And then it snowed.

In some places there is no snow, and in others, the drifts are over 3 feet high. The poor poultry exit their house every morning and stare at a wall of snow, which confuses and depresses them. Addy faces a similar wall of snow when I force her to go outside to pee, which confuses and depresses her. Actually it doesn’t depress her, she’s irrepressible. But she sure doesn’t like it. I think I’m not going to like it when it melts. I just hope it does it slowly, or we’re all gonna drown.

At least the snow managed to time itself around some important big commutes I had to make the last couple of weeks, and didn’t interfere with my ability to travel into The City. Dexter and I have this job we do from time to time, where we go to casting calls for tv commercials and Dexter (and sometimes Maisie) spend the day interacting with actors auditioning for parts in which they would have to interact with a dog in the actual commercial. This way the casting director can see if the actors are actually comfortable with dogs. It’s actually a pretty fun way to spend a day or two – the dogs get a million pats and hugs and snuggles and cookies, and I get paid money. And then sometimes the director likes my dog so much he gets a part in the commercial too, which is what happened to Dex, so last week we went and he “acted” and I “animal wrangled” him, for which I also get paid. I didn’t ask if I was allowed to share what he’s in or doing, so I won’t, but if I ever happen to see the commercial once it airs, I will post it on the blog! All I can say is that he got to do one of his favourite things ever, and he didn’t get yelled at to STOP THAT!! for it while he did it, so he was in heaven!

I wasn’t even sure he was going to be able to do the commercial for a minute there, because in the days in between, he suddenly LOST HIS MIND. He was FRANTIC, couldn’t lay down for more than a few seconds; he’d spring to his feet and start racing around the ‘house’ and then stop and scratch frantically. He’d leap up and race down the hallway to the bedroom and back, was scared of the dog beds, was falling asleep standing up in between bouts of being frantic and he did it ALL NIGHT LONG. None of us got any sleep. The next day, driving to our hike, he was exactly the same except he was seatbelted in the front seat and couldn’t go anywhere, so he thrashed around and kicked the dashboard and flung himself from side to side. It was extremely unnerving. When we got home that evening, I checked him over and discovered this terrible, awful rash across his shoulders and under his armpits. I washed them, and slathered them in a cortisone spray, then put him on an old t-shirt so he couldn’t scratch and watched as he visibly calmed down and finally fell asleep. I realized that the rash was in the exact place his seatbelt harness sits – he hasn’t worn it since, and it hasn’t happened again. I don’t know why he is suddenly reacting to the harness he has been wearing forever, but I’m just glad he is back to normal. “Normal” being a relative term, when it comes to Dexter. Or any of my dogs, really.

The dogs don’t seem to care whether it’s snowy or not (Addy being the very notable exception – when it’s time to go potty, her thrusters engage and she goes into warp drive, flies down the stairs, skids into her snow-free spot in a 90 degree corner where the wind is at its weakest, and empties her bladder like someone turned the valves on a geyser, and is back in the trailer and in her sleepy sack before you can blink. I’m actually surprised she can pee at all; she clenches so hard that she runs around basically on her front legs.

I don’t think Maisie has seen snow before, given her age, but it didn’t give her pause at all. She was in it up to her eyeballs without a second of hesitation. There was just one night when I let her out to pee and the gale force winds just blew her right back inside. She eyeballed the doorway for a second, and decided she didn’t have to go that bad after all. But other than that, it seems the snow is just one more thing for her to revel in. She really is a lot of fun!

At our most recent casting call gig, I brought her out of the van to pee before bringing her inside, and a homeless guy lurched at her and tried to grab her (dude appeared outta nowhere! He must have been a ninja) and that was it for her for the day – everyone was terrifying, she couldn’t relax in the building at all (everyone clumping down the hallway in their snowboots scared the bejesus out of her) and I realize that living out here in the sticks means she’s not socializing enough in unfamiliar locations. She is super comfortable in the middle of a trial in the building, because I bring her there all the time for that purpose, but the Big City streets are something else altogether. So something we need to work on.

The snow has now mostly frozen, so everyone is skipping lightly across it rather than plowing through it.

But periodically there is a soft spot under the crust and a dog disappears for a second. Yesterday Maisie sliced up her carpal pad in the icesnow, so after playtime I wrapped it in cotton and then covered it in vet wrap to prevent her from bleeding all over my furniture. The vet wrap is the kind that tastes bad when they try to chew it off, but there as an *itty bitty* piece of cotton sticking out from under it, which she made diligent efforts to remove by unraveling it … I would hear her chewing at it and look over the top of my computer screen and she would make eye contact with me, with a cotton string in her mouth … she’d slowly lower her head until her chin covered her whole bandaged foot, then she would blink at me innocently, like she hadn’t been doing anything. She’s so funny. And smart as a whip. A few months ago, I was rating chips while watching a movie, and I noticed she had found a piece of paper that had fallen off my desk that I didn’t want her to destroy. I was covered in dog, and didn’t want to get up, so I asked her to bring it to me and I traded her a potato chip for it and told her what a good girl she was. The following evening I was in pretty much the same position (I’m a creature of ritual, what can I say?) so she ran around the place looking for paper, finally found a small piece of some kind of wrapper sticking out of the garbage, and she finagled it out of the can and brought it to me for another potato chip. There were lots of toys and stuff she could have brought me, but she had decided that chips were only traded for paper products. Brainy little thing!

The WooTWoo and the Seasons seem to believe that there is a veritable sea of small critters who exist in a hidden mouse city underneath the surface of the snow, because they spend all of our outside time hunting for small furry things while the rest of us play dumbball. I think this is because about three weeks ago Winter found ONE mouse in a dirt pile and since then, it’s Good Hunting for everyone who enjoys that sort of thing. It seems to exhaust them as much as playing ball, so whatever floats their collective boat.

Us:

Them

Winter seems to have recovered as much as he’s ever going to. His hind end is still a little weird, and he’s still a little weak on the left. He can’t Be People anymore unless he’s holding onto something, like my leg. But he comes hiking and runs around like a crazy thing without issue. The deep snow gives him a little bit of trouble because the surface is unpredictable and one afternoon he started crying a little bit, made his way over to me, shoved Addy off my knees and tried to climb into my lap, which was our cue to cut our playtime short. But he’s been fine since then, so probably he just tweaked something in the snow. I have to wonder if he had an FCE, like Piper did, given the lack of pain and the continued weakness on the one side.

Even though snow makes my life difficult for a bit, I’m always excited at first for snow photos.

But now I’m tired of snow photos. My knees get wet when I kneel down and I’m too lazy to dig out my waterproof pants every time we go outside. I am counting down days to spring, when things bloom and the entire world isn’t either just white and/or or grey and brown. But first I imagine everything will turn to approximately 3 feet of mud thanks to the snow drifts.

In the meantime, I will have to amuse myself with having the WooTWoo DNA tested! I was contacted by a reader who works for a science project that offers, among other things, DNA testing. In exchange for some behavioural studies I entered them in, the lab is going to try and figure out what they are, and if they are related. So exciting.

What could they beee no-ow?

I’ve had their swab kits here for a bit, but have not had the motivation to do them and send them back, because honestly, right now I’ve just been sort of … struggling a little bit to get through every day. I’ve been super stressed about money (I need to borrow $400, if anyone can lend me $400. LEND), bummed out because I feel overall crappy about my life, bored because photo sessions this time of year are not abundant, and I lack a creative outlet, and definitely cabin fever because for nearly two weeks we were mostly stuck inside as it was frostbite-risk weather, with no water and just general all around suckiness.

Although this puppy photo session was a bright spot in my otherwise dreary life! Her name is Friday and she is super itty bitty; in this photo she is 11 weeks and a whole 9lbs. SUB ADDY in weight! I have the Puppy Envies!

Now that’s cute!

Not doing a very good job of blogging more often in 2019 (Another new year’s resolution shot to hell) but I’m going to keep trying. Promise.

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 :)

“I Used To Read This Blog

August 10, 2017 By The Food Lady 8 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Such a good girlie!

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

(Asshole #2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mean COME ON!!!

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

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

Rotten Eggs

July 8, 2017 By The Food Lady 12 Comments

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

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

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

And so begins my cautionary tale.

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

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

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

So I screamed.

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

I hate this dog.

And I hate this dog.

And I especially hate this dog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except when she’s standing on guard with Alfie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But so much cute!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think??

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 :(