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!