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Naked And Famous

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Today I spent the morning shaving the poodle.

I realize that sounds like something out of the Urban Dictionary, but I actually, *literally* shaved the poodle today.  It’s all Auntie Michelle’s fault, because yesterday we were out all day shopping for pool noodles (successful) and beach balls (also successful) and liquid starch (no joy yet) and after all that and a giant bowl of pho, she suggested we take the dogs out for a walk on the property.  And during this walk in the rain, which was Michelle’s idea, DoDo managed to get, like, half a blackberry bush tangled up in her coat which took, like, half an hour to untangle.  And during this untangling, I realized that DoDo was a dog-awful matted mess under her friendly ginger curls.  I guess all that wet, muddy adventuring in the bush was not her friend.  Maybe a more poodle-oriented person knows a trick to saving a coat when it has reached this point, but I don’t, and my solution to everything, pretty much, is just “shave it off!”

So I did!

She looks pretty scraggly because there were some parts she was just NOT DOWN with me touching with the clippers, like near her lady bits or her armpits (ironically, areas that human women are most likely to shave!) and her feet are RIDICULOUS, but over all, I think she looks adorable all shaved short.  Much cuter than when she is poofy.  And she’s much easier to dry off too.

(although I’m not sure Dexter knew who she was anymore)

(I hope you didn’t think Naked And Famous was ME!  Nobody needs to see me naked; I’m not 24 anymore … pretty soon I’ll be 44!  Which is another blog post for another day.  Though it will still not have anything to do with me being naked.)

Ever have one of those days where you think the Universe is saving up a big dump, just for you?

Addy was pretty sure that happened to her today.  It was reasonably nice out all day, even sunny in the morning!  No rain.  This afternoon I decided we’d go play some ball on Mr. Campbell’s property and Addy said NO she was NOT wearing a shirt, thank you very much stupid human, OR a jacket if you please.  So of course as soon as we made our way over to next door, the heavens unleashed and it started torrential-rain pouring on all of us.  We all ran to stand under the giant weeping willow tree…

… but somehow the raindrops continued to find Addy, so she had to go hide in a big cement drainpipe.

And somedogs just kept hunting wabbits in the downpour.

And while somedogs were having fun in the rain:

The rest of us huddled under the tree (and in a drainpipe) until the rain eased up.

And when it slowed, it made some purdy pictures :)

It’s only November and I am already sick to death of mud, and my camera doesn’t enjoy getting wet, but still, there are some nice vistas to photograph at this time of year.

So while it SOUNDS like an exciting day (shaving the poodle, wet and naked Addy) it was actually a pretty chill afternoon.  Then it got dark at a ridiculously early hour because of the time change and we’re all hunkered down in the warm house for a group cuddle in front of the tv.

Addy hopes for either a drier day tomorrow, or at least enough sense to let me put her jacket on.

Why Hello There!

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Long time no blog

So October has been, like, the wettest one on record or something, with the most consecutive days of rain EVER.  This is not conducive to photo taking, because my camera is made of sugar and will melt in all that wet stuff.  But yesterday afternoon the sun made a brief appearance for a few crisp Autumn hours and we made the most of it with a long meandering property walk, camera in hand.

Wootie and Autumn were made for one another- their colours are more than complimentary, even if His Orangeness has a tendency to disappear into the foliage from time to time.

His brother is just as bad, because he looks like Autumn leaves AND shadows all mixed together.  He’s vanished more than I see him on our walks.  Of course, he’s mostly slogging through ditches and getting all tangled up in the poky bushes while chasing invisible critters, which is the main reason I don’t see much of him.

He’s Wootie’s shadow anyway.

He’s also a bad influence, because when TWooie smells something delicious (real or imagined) he gets VERY excited and animated and starts racing around in circles barking the most excited bark in the world.  It gets everyone else all excited too, and when he takes off, a certain percentage of BADDOGS are certain to follow him wherever he may go.  His latest protege is none other than Her Royal Pestiness, Peetie “Pocket Collie Rocket” who becomes completely deaf when she is in the presences of The Instigator.

Hears Nothing.

She doesn’t even know what she’s chasing!!  (Of course, I’m not sure TWooie does either, to be honest).  But she’s all “Peace.  Out” and gone and if I stop screeching her name in vain long enough, I can hear the dulcet and metronomic tones of TWooieBarking fading into the distance of the acreage while Peetie crashes gracelessly in hot pursuit.  Yesterday she came back so covered in mud I thought I’d acquired yet another dog (I did not photograph that mess).

Winter goes with them too.  There’s no photograph of that, because HE WASN’T THERE.  The three of them are like a crime syndicate, immune to the laws of man and beast and, you know, hearing.  So very naughty.  There’s many an afternoon where I have stomped back to the house grumbling obscenities under my breath, and half wishing the buggers never come back home, but they always make a surprise reappearance right before I am about to shut the door in all of their grimy little faces.

Addy really REALLY wants to go with them.  She tries so hard.  But they don’t let her, because she’s a nerd in a geeky sweater.

Often they wear their coyote vests, but sometimes they are too wet to put on again after our last outing, at least for Addy, who is a delicate flower.  She doesn’t like wearing “clothes” at the best of times, and she especially doesn’t like wearing damp clothes.  And woe to the person who tried to put both a sweater AND a coyote vest on The Pants.  She becomes immobilized, like that little kid in the snowsuit in A Christmas Story.

But our friend Keryn of Farm Fairy Fibre has knitted Addy a neckwarmer to keep her vital bits nice and toasty without subjecting her to a full body geeky sweater.

neckwarmer

Although I personally think she looks adorable in her bright coloured shirt :)

Maybe I should put one on Peetie, so I could at least spot her as she vanishes over the horizon in pursuit of TWoo.

I remain on the fence, somewhat, about Peetie.  That sounds awful and more ominous than I mean for it to.  She has many lovely qualities; she has a rock solid temperament when it comes to people and is happy to meet anyone, anywhere, anytime.  She is also wonderful when meeting other dogs – like every golden retriever in the history of golden retrievers, her first instinct is to invite them to play with her.  She has excellent bounce back, she likes to learn (now) and she’s pretty much perpetually happy.  She’s generous…she’ll give you the last Chuck-It Ball in the world if you ask for it.

But.

She. is. INSANE.  I know I’ve waxed about this already, but she never stops.  The only way to get her to stop (stop moving, stop bothering the cats, stop bothering the other dogs, stop eating THE ARMS OF MY CHAIRS, all fabric everywhere etc) is to give her a bone to chew on.  And this is where Peetie’s generosity ends.  Because she’s a stone cold asshole when it comes to bones and she’ll fight you (if you’re a dog) if you so much as look at her precious chunk of herbivore.  So when I leave for work in the morning, it’s not like I can leave her a bone to amuse herself with, because I’d come home to beaten up and pissed off dogs after work.  Thus do my armchairs and various fabrics suffer from her freedom/boredom.  And I’m not crating her for 10 hours a day and at bed time to – I don’t want to have that argument again, and I’m not judging anyone else for what they do, but *I* am not comfortable crating any dog that much in a day.

But.

She’s an endless source of amusement for Dexter, because she speaks his language (crazy).

She has stopped puking in the car (hurray!).  She’s a beautiful jumper and likes to work at agility … not that I have enough time to work with her as much as I’d like.  She’s funny!  I dunno.  And who else would want to live with her?  If *I* find her too much, I can’t imagine what someone else would make of her!  I think the trick is to make it through her adolescence, whereupon she will recover some her sanity (assuming I survive that long) and be a lovely adult dog.  But OMG what if she doesn’t?  What if she’s always insane?

You know, like somedog I know.

Actually, Dexter has become quite lovely to live with in his middle age.  Except for the whole hate-on-the-TWoo thing, but otherwise he’s pretty chill at home and he’s a lot more fun to play agility with now.  Not, like, in competition, but just for fun.  And of course, he is the most handsome border collie in the world.

Mostly.

And then there’s DoDo, who is still with me.  I had lots of promising interest in her, but it’s all fizzled out for one reason or another.  I got a lot of interest from people who want her as a companion for this big standard poodles, but DoDo doesn’t much care for big dogs.  Dexter is pretty much her size cut off, and even he’s a bit much for her sometimes, like the time he TKO’d her by accident.  She really needs a playmate her own size-ish.

Help me find a home for her by continuing to spread the word!  She’s a nice little thing, but she deserves a poodle home … and a break from Peetie.

Here’s a pretty sunlit Fall photo of my beautiful old lady dog, because I loves me some Piper.

And also, although this is a dog blog, I cannot resist sharing a photo of my turkeys.  I LOVE my turkeys.  My turkeys HATE me.  I am forever picking them up and hugging them, which I have on good authority that turkeys do not enjoy.  But I can’t help it.  They make the funniest noises and their heads are so soft and fuzzy.  So much for them being Christmas dinners.  However, now that they’ve grown up a bit, it looks like I have three hens and a tom, which is perfect for making MORE turkeys, which I can then in turn sell for Christmas dinners.

What’s the most awesome about this tom turkey is that so far, he rarely displays so that he looks like the turkey you drew in elementary school by tracing your hand.  Mostly he just looks like a larger hen.  But there are two occasions on which he puffs all up:  1) when DoDo is chasing him or his hens and 2) when my friend Michelle comes over.  Other people come over and he ignores them.  but when Michelle comes to visit, he gets all puffy and struts around gobbling.  We don’t know if its because he really doesn’t like her … or if he REALLY “likes” her.

Also, before you go, keep this in mind; I believe I have secured a really awesome location for Christmas themed photo shoots this year; I’ll have it nailed down by the end of the week.  I’m not doing characters-in-costume drop-in sessions this year, I’m offering individualized, studio portraiture style Christmas-themed sessions with simple but elegant sets and the option of a photoshopped background.  Stay tuned – I am really excited to try something different this year.  Sessions will happen on various weekends throughout the month of November and December :)  Be sure to check out my Big Air Photography page on Facebook to stay in the loop!

Perpetually Pesty Peetie

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Just now I was sitting at my computer enjoying a cup of coffee when my intuition said to me “You might want to turn around in your chair right about now.”  So I craned my neck to the right just in time to see Peetie sail over the babygate at the mudroom doorway like it wasn’t even there.

She has, apparently, discovered the cat box in the bathroom.  She also took a moment to test the screen door to see if it were possibly not latched, so she could take herself on a self guided tour of the yard.  Then she popped right back over that gate and into the rest of the house again.

She likes to gather up the food bowls after breakfast and chew on them.  Every morning I take them away from her one at a time, and every morning she sets about collecting food bowls and trying to chew on them at my feet.  The first time I caught her carrying a food bowl around I commented about how charming it was, and my friend Connie warned that “the shine would wear off that real quick.”  Was she ever right.  Peetie is quite aware that I don’t like her food-bowl-chewing hobby, and has taken to hiding the odd bowl so she can chew on it with impunity.  DoDo’s bowl has been MIA for two days now; I can’t find it anywhere.  I have a really small house, so this is a mystery.

This puppy has no off switch that I can find.  Can’t reboot her.  I’d like to unplug her for two minutes and maybe do a system restore to a point in time where she wasn’t constantly on the prowl looking for mischief.  Are you a small dog trying to take a nap after we were outside playing Dumbball for an hour or so?  Peetie will poke you in the ribs repeatedly with her nose until you wake up.  If you wake up with four extra sets of teeth poised at her delicate nose skin and a rage that is unmatched in this earthly realm, Peetie will exploit it with a friendly tail wag and turn it into a wrestling match.  If you are persistent in ignoring her ‘friendly overtures’ she will take hold of your tail and drag you across the floor.  When you explode with outrage, she will play bow at you and delight in your enthusiasm for her efforts.

Are you Mr. Woo, trying to have some post-breakfast quiet time in a crate?  Peetie will  thrust her head and shoulders into the crate with you and then just stand there, tail wafting gently to and fro as though rustled by a benign autumn breeze, and stare at you 7 inches from your eyeballs while your growling escalates to a fevered pitch.  When you can no longer take the *staring* and burst forth from the crate like a freshly hatched god, she will follow you wherever thouest go in the house, tripping on her toes like your fairy godmother.

In the evenings when I’m curled up in my easy chair watching tv with a Fae noodled up against my thigh, Peetie stands on the arm of the chair (the chair rocks, incidentally, so this is double irritating) and plucks at Fae’s fur like she’s gathering material for a nest (in which, no doubt, she will hatch another plan to be an enormous pain in the ass)  while Fae gets angrier and angrier.  When I tell her to GO THE F*CK AWAY PEETIE!!!! she leaps backwards and – like a hairy boomerang – returns with yet more zest and vigor.

This dog is a PEST.  How could I have been so wrong about her?

I have fostered quite possibly hundreds of dogs in the last 20 years, so many I can’t count or recall them all.  I have seen lots of marvelous changes in shell shocked fosters as they unfold their mysteries and delightfully reveal themselves to me.  I have never been so fooled as I was by “No Drive” Peetie.  I should have named her Cerberus.  She definitely has the energy of three dogs!  And yesterday on our walk she rolled in something so vile (Michelle and I agreed, after much sniffing and gagging, that it was probably, ermm, a human “by-product”) so she definitely smelled like three dogs.

She’s staring at me RIGHT NOW.  I assume this means she is about to engage in some naughtiness I can’t even begin to fathom.

Her favouritest partner-in-shrillness is the Red Mop who is still with us for summer camp.  That’s another pest-in-training.

She doesn’t get into mischief in the house though (mostly).  She saves it for when we are outside, and she wants to chase down every single Dumbball ever thrown, and if she does not get there first, hang off the neck fur of the dog who does, or rebound off them over and over again whilst shrieking in their closest ear.

Peetie speaks this language and encourages her.

Dexter, bless his heart, tolerates it magnanimously.

This dog, however, has had quite enough thank you.

About two days ago, Fae lost her last shred of patience and beat 12 kinds of holy hell out of DoDo.  And I don’t mean she snarled and snapped at her, I mean she laid into her like a f*cking BOSS and kicked the living shit out of her.  There was red curly hair flying, flailing, screaming, voiding of bowels … and still Fae kept on coming.

My little doe-eyed darling is FIERCE.  She trounced the pesty ginger and I let her, and I laughed and laughed.  I only broke it up when the other dogs took notice and went to join in the fray, because frankly everyone but Peetie could take or leave DoDo and I was worried they’d gang up on her.

You do not want to mess with FaeFae.  Thirteen pounds of huggable, snuzzable, nose-booping, cheek-kissing futhermucking ASSASSIN is what Fae is.  In her previous incarnation, I’m pretty sure she was what they modeled The Sopranos’ characters on.

Poor DoDo.  Life’s lessons are hard.

(This is a senior-moment interlude, entitled “Why Is The Wootie Toy Not Moving?  I’m Confused.”)

One thing Peetie has gotten better about is leaving the terriers alone to their terrier games.

She used to be right in there like she thought she was an honoured guest whenever they would start wrasslin’, which would of course ruin and thus end the game immediately.  Because the terriers play on an alternate plain of existence that none of the other dogs can really appreciate.

Winter may have been an accidental addition, but he is the yin to Spring’s yang and the two of them make one whole (one whole ball of chaos, of course).  I can’t imagine them apart now.  They are twice as much trouble this way, but that’s a small price to pay.  Since I’ve taught Peetie to leave them to their shenanigans, they will now sometimes invite her to join them in a sort of modified version of their games once they have exhausted one another.  Sometimes I catch Peetie and Spring having a romp, which is nice.  Because even though Spring is a terrier, capital T, she is still a sensitive soul and for a while Peetie’s energy overwhelmed and frightened her.  She still won’t play ball unless I leash the puppies, as she doesn’t like being mowed down in the chase.

Dexter likes to play a chase game with Peetie that used to be the purvey solely of Tweed, where I yell “GO GO GO!!” and Dexter takes off at top speed barking and “snarling” while Peetie chases him.  Nobody ever played this with him except for Piper in her younger years, and then Tweed, right up until shortly before he died.  Now Peetie has taken up the mantle and Dexter is happy again.

These guys?  Off in their own world, hunting things, smelling where things were once, and actively looking for other things to smell after or hunt.  They would be happiest if the whole property was fenced, and they could spend all their days outside laying around and watching for threats to chase away.  Whilst collecting as many burrs in their coats as possible.

And this is just my delightfully naughty, super hilarious living hot water bottle.  She is Summer’s-End Barometer, as she has begun to burrow into my sweathsirts again in the last week.

And this is a chicken.

Peeetie has eaten all the dogs beds in the house.  ALL of them.  They are all outside in a pile by the fence waiting to be carted to the burn pile if/when my landlord ever returns my wheelbarrow, which he absconded with about two months ago under the guise of “borrowing it” for ” a couple of days.”  If you would like to contribute to my Replace The Dog Beds So Piper Has Somewhere To Rest Her 14 Year Old Bones Fund, feel free to throw some cash at my PayPal :)

Today On Wootube

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Make your own Addy Fountain just in time for summer!

How to communicate your feelings clearly and effectively.

Get your beach body ready with this easy workout!

And how to make yourself stand out in a crowd!

Our neighbour, Mr. Campbell, sold his acreage and moved away.  The new owners haven’t taken possession yet, so we’ve been playing over at his place for a change of scenery.  I like it better for photos, because the property is level, rather than sloped, and there aren’t a jillion cottonwoods behind the field, so I can get the blue sky in the photos.  Which is prettier.  Mr. Campbell still comes and mows the lawn and doesn’t mind if we play beneath his plum trees.

It really showcases the weirdness that is my dog Dexter.

And it has shade.  Because it’s been SO HOT here the last week!  Redonkulously hot.  We can sit under the willow trees and be naughty without boiling to death.

Speaking of naughty, I am *very* proud of TWooie this week.  Because although he was – as usual – naughty, he was also an abbreviated sort of naughty.  A few days ago we were playing on Mr. Campbell’s property when this guy in the neighbourhood with a rottweiler came strolling down the street.  I don’t like this guy OR his rottweiler, because he lets it off the leash on our dead end road … which is fine, as long as it stays on the road.  But why people think those of us who live on the farms on this road want their dogs loping on and off our properties, trying to get at our chickens and pooping in our grass, is a mystery to me.  Twice I have caught his rottweiler trying to find its way through my fence to get at my ducks, while the owner keeps walking down the road completely out of sight until I yell at him to get his damn dog.  I finally told him I’d call animal control on him if he didn’t leash his dog.  So this time he had his dog on a leash while he walked down the road, and TWooie spotted him and of course went running over to be an asshole.  But you know what he did?  He STOPPED ON THE PROPERTY LINE and barked from the property, but didn’t step paw one on the road itself.  And then he came back when I called him, all chuffed with himself.

And then this morning a neighbour with a border collie we have met before stopped to say hi and TWooie ran up to the dog, barked and snarled at it from about two feet away about three times to assert his presence in the universe, and then decided to ignore him altogether while we chatted.  For TWooie, this is remarkably restrained.  Of course the border collie is used to TWooie and knows he is all spittle and ugly face and no follow through so he didn’t pay him any mind, but still.  I am proud of the little fatso.  I just want to hug his weird and grouchy little self.

Of course I can’t as he’s hiding from me right now because he tore off most of his dewclaw and I had to cut the rest of it away and then clean it up and wrap it in vet wrap.  As we know from previous entries, TWooie doesn’t handle pain well and he’s pretty sure I was trying to kill him, even though he’d only been a partial monster this week rather than his usual full on monster self.

I did create a monster though, that goes by the name of Peetie.

As I mentioned previously, all the toys are belong to Peetie.  Every throw of a ball or frisbee is for Peetie, obviously.  I finally found a Wootie Toy at a pet store today and Wootie didn’t even get a chance to play with it, because Peetie wouldn’t stop beating him (and everyone else) to the Wootie Toy.  She’s FAST.  I now have teach Peetie to turn it on AND off, rather than turn it on and leave it on ALL THE TIME.

She likes to share though – when she gets the ball she wants DoDo to chase her and try and take it.  It’s her favourite thing.

And when she has the Wootie Toy she actively shoves it at DoDo so she’ll grab it and they can play tug.  She’s become such an interactive little critter, and a very busy one.  It’s very charming.

But it encourages bad behaviour in DoDo, who can’t always tell the black-n-whites apart.  Which could, you know, lead to her untimely demise.

One thing I would really like Peetie to do is leave me alone.  She is a super touchy-feely dog and doesn’t understand “go away” signals (or orders, or shoving, or yelling obscenities).  If I sit on the ground, she tries to get in my lap 400 times, in eight thousand degree heat.  When I’m at the computer, she hooks a paw around my calf and tries to worm her way chest first onto my lap.  If I pet another dog, she’s in there like a dirty shirt (and tries to climb into my lap to boot.  Are you seeing a pattern here?).  If I get annoyed with her, she gets sucky and extra clingy.  If I try to reward her when she backs off, she backs right in again!  It’s driving me a bit nuts.  Any ideas?

It’s a couple of days early, but I’m going to take this opportunity to wish Dexter a happy SEVENTH BIRTHDAY.  Seven!

I love this dog.  I don’t love trying to play agility with him, but I do love him.  He’s the best spontaneous hugger, and so gregarious and full of enthusiasm for everything.  He might not be the dog I wanted, but he’s the dog I got, and I wouldn’t trade him for anything.  There’s no dog like him!

Well, except for this dog, who looks an awful lot like him.

How To Be Addy (a pictorial step-by-step instructional guide)

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1. Do something naughty, like digging holes in the agility practice area

2. When The Food Lady tells you off, blow her a raspberry

3. Immediately regret your impulsive sassiness

4. Decide to laugh the whole thing off

Bonus 5. If concerned that you are the only one laughing, distract The Food Lady by tackling her at top speed with wet and muddy paws

No matter how naughty she is (and Addy is VERY VERY naughty) she never fails to make me laugh.  There are times when I have to turn my head away and giggle into my sleeve when I am giving her shit for something lest she see me.  I am so very happy she is no worse for wear after the rat poison incident.

And speaking of shit, riddle me this: yesterday the dogs and I spent pretty much the entire day outside.  I built a small brooder house and pen for my week old mistral gris (them’s For-Eatin’ Chickens for you city folk) which took me all day as I am not much of a handywoman/carpenter.  Then around dinner time we played ball for an hour.  Then we came inside and we all had dinner.  Then I spent about a half hour outside locking up all the chickens and ducks for the night.  Came back inside the house and found three little piles of poop on the floor.  WHY???  Was 7 hours outside insufficient time for pooping?  Harumph.

Then later that evening, PEETIE pooped on the living floor right in front of me.  Srsly, these dogs, I swear.

In other Peetie news, I found her “on” switch and now I can’t turn it off!

As it happens, I *can* build drive in a dog (not Italian greyhounds though).  Maybe too well.  Now ALL THE TOYS ARE BELONG TO PEETIE.

She chases every ball or frisbee, no matter for whom the toy is thrown.  She’ll take dogs out and send them ass over tea kettle in her quest to get there first.  Most dogs have figured out to keep one eye on the ball, and one eye on her and get out of the way quick.  But not everydog. Poor DoDo.

WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?!?!

I love the new and improved Peetie, though the carsickness had failed to get any better.  I am not sure if the other dogs like the new and improved toy-crazy Peetie though.

It’s like looking in a mirror, isn’t it Dexter?  A younger, svelter, less weird mirror.

Although to be fair, everyone harasses Dexter at play time.  Probably because he just takes it.

Except for the terriers, who prefer to bother one another in weird and physics-bending ways.

And Wootie, who has eyes only for bothering Piper.

DoDo likes to play ball / frisbee and likes to hang off Dexter’s ruff too, whichever is available.

She is an interesting puppy.  Much like Peetie, she has all this untapped drive – but unlike Peetie she is not shut down, but rather obnoxious about it.  Today whilst letting the dogs outside one by one through the babygate (to prevent free form chaos) she bit me in the toe when I used my leg to body block her from running through when it wasn’t her turn.  Little turd!  When she first arrived she came with the following “issues”:

  • barked in crate at 5AM, demanding a walk. Fixed that.  Grouchy Food Lady is grouchy in the morning.  Now she stays quietly in her crate until I let her out.
  • Played keep away when called.  Fixed that.  Hard to play keep away on a long line, when The Food Lady will reel you in like a swordfish.  She doesn’t even have to wear the long line now and comes running at top speed when called.
  • Fussy about her food/anorexic.  Fixed that.  Lots of daily exercise builds a good appetite.
  • Wasn’t food motivated / refused to eat kibble.  Fixed that.  Now she’d eat sticks or cardboard as cookies if I offered her one.  Loves to perform for food now.

I think sometimes people underestimate poodles’ capacity for having boundless energy (Gemma not included in this statement).  Maybe little toy poodles are lazy things, I dunno, but DoDo is a Moyen poodle and she is bouncing off the walls energetic and needs somewhere to put it.  Running with a pack of collies every day is a good place to put it.  And she really just needs some boundaries and some manners, which she is quickly developing here.  In her first couple of days she chased the chickens, and the rooster chased her right back and she ran SCREECHING from the hen yard, while I laughed and laughed.  She has also learned to pick blackberries off the plant rather than stand around pathetically whining while everyone else feasts.  I think she’s just not had very many rules in her life.  Her owner says he bikes to work with her every day (she’s in a trailer) and she barks the whole way.  She tried barking in my car for like 30 seconds and I turned around, gave her the stink eye, and told her in no uncertain terms how lovely an orange poodle mat would look in my kitchen and she’s been quiet ever since.  She’s not stupid!

This is pretty stupid.

Kidding, kidding!  You know I love me some Dexter, crappy agility dog though he may be.  He’s a special blend of .. special.  And he will be seven years old in 12 days.  SEVEN!!  I don’t even know how that happened!

Then there’s Winter.  He actually is kinda stupid ;-)

In other completely unrelated news, I am thinking of getting/raising some turkeys.  I don’t have any yet, so there are no photos of them.  Instead, here’s a photo of her royal tiny highness FaeFae, contemplating ways to murder dogs who get the ball before she does (buh bye Peetie and DoDo!).

The Red Puppy

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I got tired of waiting for a red border collie puppy.  So I got a red poodle puppy instead.

She’s ten months old and came with the name Deirdre, but ’round these here parts, we refer to her as Dodo.  It was going to be Deedee, but Dexter thinks his name is Dee a lot of the time.

She’s bigger than Fae but smaller than Spring, so a nice size.

Her Royal Highness Fae’s nose is pretty out of joint about the new addition.

But that’s just too darn bad for her!  Isn’t Dodo just the cutest thing?  I’ve pretty much decided to get nothing but poodles from now on.

Ha!  Did you believe me?  You’re silly.  This is not my puppy, she’s just a temporary puppy.  She is boarding with me for a few months while her real family, who loves her very much, isn’t able to care for her.  She’s a very nice dog with just a couple of little habits we need to fix, like barking in her crate and being a fussy snottypants about her food and not always coming when called.  We can work on that.  After all, I did manage to turn no-drive Peetie into a ball maniac!

She even brings the ball about 85% of the way back about 90% of the time, so we’re getting somewhere!

She has also become a holy terror of shrieking and trying to claw her way out of her crate in agility class when it’s someone else’s turn.  This is a completely different dog from the one who just curled up in the back of her crate and tried to pretend she wasn’t there.  Time to bust out the Manners Minder in class, I think!

But she is much nicer to Dodo than TWooie is.

I mean sure, he LOOKS happy here, but really he is a) trying to rub off the Hannibal Lecter mask residue AKA basket muzzle he wore for the first half an hour of meeting (and by meeting I mean muzzle punching) Dodo and b) doing it in something dead and stinky to get back at me.  He is always such a dick for the first little while.

Addy’s already had a good play with her, because Addy is awesome like that.  I am so very grateful for my Addypants.

I am extra grateful that I still have my Addypants, because about ten days ago Addy ate a big ole block of RAT POISON and I was so afraid she was going to die.  We don’t put out poison here (because pets) but in the process of tearing down the old trailer on the property, one of the guys working on it tossed a full, unopened package of poison on the burn pile.  Which Addy of course found and helped herself to.  She had just previous to that stolen an egg from the chicken coop, and I thought that’s what she was eating while I played ball with the other dogs, until I decided she’d been eating the egg for a little too long and went to check what she was doing.  I. LOST. MY. SHIT.  Started screaming and freaking out, picked her and the package up and tossed them in the car, chucked the other dogs in the yard and drove to the vet as fast as I could.  Whereupon I lost my composure (haha) and burst into hysterical tears.

Fortunately she was at the vet and puking within a half hour of ingesting the stuff, and I had the package so they knew what we were dealing with, and after much vomiting, Vitamin K and big scared saucer eyeballs, Addy was just fine, if a little mystified about what was going on.  We went back for a clotting test 72 hours later – all good.  She is on Vitamin K daily for a while as a precautionary thing, but is in no danger.  So I still have my Addypants …  and a big ole vet bill.  I was super irritated with my landlords because we *talked* about the possibility of there being poison in the trailer, because I had seen poison pellets when it was still intact and I asked them to be careful when dismantling the stupid thing.  And they weren’t.  And my dog ate rat poison.  Nor are they inclined to pay the vet bill because Old Skool Farm Boys who don’t really understand spending good money on a sick dog when you could just get another dog.

*grumble*  This farm is trying to destroy everything I love.  Two nights ago a weasel got into one of my hen houses and slaughtered a bunch of my hens too.  Srsly.

But in GOOD news, I have had a lot of fun with my camera lately.

I got to photograph 16(!!) year old Josie at the lake.

She was awesome!

And I got to photograph a bunch of dogs at an agility trial.

The trial was so much fun!  FaeFae made her debut-debut, and got some Qs, and some other very nice only-5-fault runs too.  She is so adorable, I can’t stand her sometimes.  I just wanna squish her and make squealy noises.

Spring did awesome too!  She got a bunch of Qs as well and she was FAST – as in, the OPPOSITE of running her at Thunderbird.  She was so fast that I messed up her first run because I was expecting her to be slow and I was in all the wrong places.  She was so HAPPY.  Which leads me to believe that her days of running Regionals are done, because they are at Thunderbird next year too, and she really really hates it there.  So all hopes will now rest on The Fae Face.

Dexter was … ridiculous.  He managed one Q and a bunch of disasters.  He is a very special boy.

I also got to photograph a whole bunch of agility students doing candids, action and portrait type shots in 20 minute mini-sessions in a private agility yard, which was super fun!  You can take the same shot over and over again on the equipment to get the one you like the best, and set the dogs up in places where the light is nicest.  Here’s a random sampling of some of the shots from the day – I just closed my eyes and pointed at the screen to pick a few, because there were so many good ones I couldn’t choose to post them all.

Detour the Jack Russell Terrier

Juno the Papillon

Dulce the Havanese

Zappa the border collie

Dixie the poodle

And so many others!  It was an excellent day, and I hope to be able to do another one.  I like doing private outdoor sessions a lot, but these mini sessions were really awesome too, and a challenge to capture their personalities in such a short time frame.

But all the photographing and editing means not a lot of time to photograph my own doggies (and also a numb ass from sitting in the editing chair for so many hours, and also all the money going straight to Addy’s vet bills, le sigh).  I did manage to sneak in a few though because my dogs is purdy ;-)

This is not mine.  Why isn’t it mine?

(Also the font on my new watermark makes it look like it says bigairphotography.CORN which is bothering me.  I’m going to have to fix that.  You can’t unsee it now, can you?  mwa ha ha ha)