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Spring

Dashing Through The Snow …

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This is the kind of snow I like!  Sure it’s cold and stuff, but it snowed one big-enough dump to make the world fluffy and pretty, but the roads remain clear and driveable.  My landlord plowed my driveway so I can get up and down it, and the dogs have fun in it*, but it has not trapped me on my property.  All good things!

(*Addy doesn’t have quite as much fun in it.  Yesterday I took everyone out and she complained mightily that despite a sweater AND a winter coat, it was intolerably cold and she was miserable.  So I put her back in the house with a chewy which made her happy for a while, but then she decided that everyone was having fun without her and she was intolerably lonely, so she yapped and howled her little head off until I went inside, redressed her and brought her back outside.  Lather, rinse and repeat.  I love my little fair-weather diva, even if she does turn her nose up at warm clothing, and then turns into a ridgeback when she goes without it.  I have no idea how she manages this with no hair!)


I bought her an adorable little turtleneck sweater at the feed store, because it was only $10 and because it was long enough to cover her bum and the neck flips up to cover her throat. I thought she would appreciate the warmth.  Instead I just walked past the bedroom and found her naked under my covers (heated blanket is still on!) and her turtleneck in a tiny heap on the floor.  I don’t know why she is so allergic to clothes.

But she is not allergic to COOKIES, which is convenient for me, because I did a fun little session with my doggies where I put one in a sit stay and then threw a cookie at them so I could capture the moment before and during the leap for the cookie.


There were a lot of photobombs until everyone figured out they’d each get a turn.  But some of them turned out awesome!

I like this one of Wootie; I even caught his curly orange locks in motion just as he was preparing to “leap.” His actual leap was more of a faceplant, but the pre-leap was pretty adorable!

I didn’t get any of his brother, because he would sit and watch the cookie land, then haul his fat arse out of the snow and saunter over to consume it as his leisure.  TWooie does not believe in wasting perfectly good energy.

Winter was adorably frantic.  The one uppy ear is his anxiety tell.   WHATIFTHECOOKIEDISAPPEARSOHMYGODOHMYGODWHEREDIDITGO?WHYWOULDYOUTHROWACOOKIEAWAY???

And then the mad scramble to get the cookie before the snowmonsters gobbled it up.

Springaling looks like a fox pouncing on a hare in a nature documentary.
(Yes her nails are recently trimmed.  No, after all these years, I can’t get them any shorter than this!  She has the world’s longest quicks)

Fae won the whole day though.  As if her obsessive tracking of the cookie’s arc through the air wasn’t adorable enough …

… the “Meercat” pose that preceded it was KILLER cute!

She may be a rotten, spoiled, hateful little beast, but man is she ever cute.  I went to my parents’ for Christmas dinner and when I came back home, Fae practically turned herself inside out with glee.  She kept trying to scale my body to get at my face so she could lick it, but when I picked her up she was so excited she would thrash around and hurl herself to the floor.  I was afraid we were going to end up in the Animal ER if she kept that up, so I eventually just sat on the floor so she could reach my face.  Unfortunately, I sat in Piper pee, because old dogs and continence aren’t always super good pals.  Merry Christmas to me!

Speaking of cute … a friend of mine is fostering 7 border collie X whippet puppies and asked if I could get some photos of them.  So brought the entire pile of the little suckers over on the weekend and I got to indulge in some serious puppy lovin’s!

Look at these impish little faces!  Also, look how lovely my landlord’s chicken barn door is for photos!

Also, look how they mob poor Addypants!

Addy’s not stupid though … she indulged in her favourite activity for a while (puppy humping – she channels Puppy Uncle Tweed sometimes) and then her second favourite activity, which is running away from puppies who cannot catch her speedy little self, and then she’d had enough of being mauled by puppies and she led them straight into a pack of Terrifying Turkeys which stopped them in their tracks so she could make her escape.

Our goal was to get individual shots of them and composite them altogether for a group photo.  I wish I had photographed them inside, because it was a bright sunny late afternoon and the sun and shadows change so quickly while wrangling recalcitrant 8 week old puppies that it didn’t turn out awesome, technically.  There is just no consistent shade on the property for this kind of shot at that time of day.  Not my best work, but still really flippin’ cute.

ALSO super cute … Mini Momz!  Why on earth has she not been adopted yet?  She is such a wonderful little dog.  When I woke up this morning she was spooning me, with her head sharing my pillow and her body under the covers with me.  She is SO MUCH LOVEBUG.  She can also convince ANYONE to play – even TWooie!  Even FAE, who has finally caved to her charms and has a good wrassle with her every afternoon.  I just don’t understand how everybody could not want her.  If I could, I would just keep her all for myself.


This guy is pretty cute too, although I am a little tired of virtually every photo I take of him being this Crazy Face.  He used to be such a charming poser when he was a pup … now in his middle age he is like that crazy uncle that makes rabbit ears with his fingers in every family photo.

Although he mostly behaved himself for our group Christmas photo.

And here’s Peetie.  I still have nothing good to say about Peetie.  The passing months don’t make her any less annoying, and there were no Christmas miracles that turned her into a pleasant-to-live-with dog.  At least she is consistent.

Now Christmas is over.  Living alone sometimes sucks because I didn’t get anything for Christmas as my dogs are lazy freeloaders without any spending money.  Got a little tired of seeing all the fabulous cameras and lenses and gear that people in my photo groups got from their families for Christmas, so now I’m staying away from facebook for a bit until I get over my snit about it.  Because inside me there is a 9 year old girl who really, really likes unwrapping presents.  What did you all get for Christmas this year?  I hope it was awesome!

Terrence got another pardon, so he thinks Christmas is fabulous :)

Welcome Back

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No, not ‘welcome back’ to you … or even to me!  Although I *have* been MIA for a long time.  For a month now, pretty much all I’ve managed to do is wake up, edit, go to work, come home and edit until way too late at night, get a few hours sleep and start all over again the next day.  I had a Fun Match in the middle of September and then right after that an entire day of mini sessions, and then on the heels of that I had another day of mini sessions in early October and then I photographed the UKI Fall Cup the following weekend.  Just non stop shooting and editing – which I LOVE, don’t get me wrong!  If I could make my living doing nothing but photography, I would make it my full time career in a heartbeat.  But I remain perplexed about how people make a living out of doing pet photography without a financially comfortable partner picking up the bills-n-groceries slack in the background somewhere.  And doG knows my 4 legged partners aren’t pulling in the big bucks to support me!  This relationship feels a bit one-sided.

Anyway, as much as I love photographing other people’s dogs, it does have the extreme side effect of having no time at all to photograph my own, much less blog.  Plus, we haven’t done anything interesting to blog about, because according to my dogs I am “the most boring person in the world” and “my ass is glued to the computer chair.”  They aren’t too wrong either, except they omit the fact that they get to go hiking every day and until one of them learns to drive a car, they can thank me for that perk!  And also, blogging about how I’m in my office yelling “stop picking on the damn cat!” and “no we aren’t going outside yet, leave me alone!” isn’t all that scintillating.

However, I am almost entirely caught up on my deliverables and so despite the fact that I have a wicked cold that snuck up on me this morning, I thought I would take this evening to prove that I’m not dead, and have good intentions to blog more regularly again.  And also to welcome this adorable little face back to Casa de Food Lady!

Do you recognize that gleeful little snoot?  Miss Mini Mama has not been adopted yet :(  All her puppies found homes, of course, but Minnie remained at the rescue.  And when the rescue posted asking for foster homes for a litany of needy doggos, and I saw her name on the list, I offered to take her back to foster.  And here she is!  I think she’s pretty happy to be back (although she puked in my van today, so we are going to have to relearn not-getting-carsick) and I am happy to have her back!  She’s such a character; I can’t believe nobody has adopted this sweet little thing.

Not sure if my dogs are quite as happy to have her back.  They were just getting used to Alfie and Betty finally having gone back to their own home.  *I* miss those two, even if my hounds do not.  I do not, however, miss Alfie’s drool.

He is such a nice dog, but his copious amounts of drool is not nice at all.  You could always tell where he had slept in my house, because he left a Great-Pyrenees-head shaped outline on the floor in a mixture of drool and mud that is harder than cement and could be used to cheaply build affordable housing and maybe even roadways.  Even the steam mop can’t get that stuff up without scrubbing!  Also, the drool has found its way onto surfaces you would not expect, such as the microwave door and the top of my front door, thanks to the magic of head shaking, which causes the drool to soar higher than a commercial airliner and with a velocity previously only experienced by jet propelled spacecraft.  And we won’t even talk about what it’s done to the one window ledge where he would peer out if I left him indoors to go out somewhere (one afternoon he figured out how to push part of my fence down  – the shitty one that was already here when I moved in, not the awesome ones I put up myself! – and he went visiting the neighbours across the street, so he lost outside privileges if I wasn’t home to keep an eye on him) – I am pretty sure it’s eating through the wood itself.

However, while Alfie was here I lost exactly zero poultry to aerial predators, while my landlord’s poultry was picked off one by one (I swear he is down to just 5 hens).  And since he has been gone, I have lost two roosters (RIP Paquito), a hen and a duck.  If I could afford to feed an enormous dog, I would get my own LGD, he was very useful that way!  And I know exactly what’s been picking off my birds too.

Can you spot the bugger in my neighbour’s pine tree?

I’m not entirely sure what it is, some kind of eagle I guess.  I kinda wish I could catch it in the act and KICK IT, because that worked for the bald eagle that was stealing my chickens, maybe it would work again!

I still get to see Alfie and Betty three times a week because I hike them – last time I went to pick them up Betty was so excited to see me she pulled me inside the door by the string on my hoodie!  haha – but I miss having Great White around to protect my birds.  But as I say, my dogs were pretty chuffed to have me all to themselves again, when Mini Mama showed up.  TWooie just rolled his eyes in exasperation and hasn’t even bothered to snark at her.

(Happy place, counting to five, whatever)

The border collies were and are oblivious to her presence, because she is not a tennis ball.  Winter tried to play with her and then remembered that he was above playing with her, and now he and Spring are Mean Girls and leave the room when she enters it.  Addy of course made friendly overtures (ie she humped her) right away and remains delightfully pleased to see her all the time.  But Fae … oh Fae.

FIRST, Fae made ugly face at her and stalked around after her with Scorpion Tail, then got pouty and emo when I gave her shit for being a bitch, and lay down in her crate with her face to the wall.  If she were a human teenager she would have The Smiths or something blasting on her iPod whilst laying in her bed with her back to the door.  You know, I don’t need to experience being a human parent, I already own shithead toddlers (Addy), moody teenagers (Fae), and possibly some special needs kids (Dexter, Peetie).

Once she got over her snit, she decided she would make Mini Mama as unnecessary as possible by being The Only Dog I Need.  This afternoon she decided to play with Addy – she NEVER plays with Addy and is a downright bitch when Addy tries to play with her.  But today she was all flirty and trying to entice (a terrified) Addy into playing chase and wrestle – “look at me!  I’m the perfect small dog!  You don’t need anymore small dogs!” – and when that didn’t work, she was all “I’ll chase the ball, as many times as you want!  Don’t throw it for Minnie, throw it for me!”

But.
Whereas Mini Mama did this with the ball when I threw it:

Fae did THIS when she got the ball:

This is not a posed shot.  This is what I turned around to see when I wondered where she and the ball had gotten to.  Look at that stinky side-eye!  Look at that perfect blend of pouty/emo and possessiveness!  She is a master of The Beeyotch!  This is why I both love her and want to put her in the blender at the same time.

But I also love her because she makes photos like this:

And also because when I pretend to toss her a cookie, she makes faces like this:

Peetie also makes pretty pictures, but without the lovable bits.  She has nothing but super irritating bits.

Whereas Dexter has nothing but weird bits.  He is, truly, an odd dog.

 

Squirrel hunting season is over, and now apparently it’s rabbit hunting season again, so I never see the terriers as they spend all their time thrashing around in the pokies looking for bunnies.  I resent this, because they carry pokies home embedded in their skin and then shed them in my bed, where they become embedded in MY skin.  However, I can distract the terriers temporarily with cookies, at least long enough to get a decent photo of them :)

The Dirt Duo, on the other hand …

Miss Piper, who will be 15 years old in approximately 19 days (and will be exactly 30 years younger than me, which makes me feel old, especially since as of late I realized I cannot read my kindle with both eyes unless I hold it waaaaay far away from my face) has her good days and her bad days.  She has recovered very well from her FCE, except one of her hind legs drags just a little and she falls over very easily so I am forever yelling at the other dogs to stop banging into her.  She can’t come hiking anymore though … a couple of weeks ago Michelle and I took all the dogs for a walk out at Pitt Lake and while Piper managed really well, only getting super tired at the last little stretch, she can’t handle being in the car at all.  What started out as some mild anxiety and panting/drooling in the car has morphed into a full blown panic attack complete with thrashing around and screaming.  So her fun-outing days are over, but on the plus side, when we go hiking she gets to stay home with a Kong full of wet Kangaroo food (gross). Although if Peetie KEEPS EATING THE ACTUAL KONGS, that fun pastime will also have been ruined for poor Piper.  Stupid Peetie.

Piper still plays ball though, by which I mean she totters around with her own ball in her mouth while the rest of us play fetch, and she is made happy by the illusion that she is playing ball.

And there you have it, you’re all up to date on what’s going on with us!  Now that the weather has mostly turned shitty (we had a couple of lovely days sandwiched between the daily torrential downpours which is now just called The Weather for the next 8 months) there will be less photo-ing of other people’s dogs, and more time for my own.  They are calling for snow this weekend, so I bit the bullet and went and bought snow tires, which I could not afford … but I can afford to not-be-able-to-leave-my-house-because-my-shitty-bald-8-year-old-tires-suck-on-regular-pavement-never-mind-snow-covered-pavement even less :(  I do have two photo projects for this winter lined up, one being my annual Holiday Photos with a *twist* this year that I am really excited about, and one being a project I am working on with rescue that I am also really excited about.  To be successful in the latter venture, I need to master my studio work (which will in part involve selling my current lighting and replacing it with something more suited to my needs – anyone interested in some monolight/strobes?) and to that end, I have begun practicing.  In honour of Halloween, I leave you with this image burned into your brain forever.

I’m Nuts, You’re Nuts

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We’re all nuts for walnuts!

Addy plays with exactly 4 things – water spray, dirt tossed in her direction, a tiny little stuffed sheep I find hidden around the house in various places when she is finished playing with it, and walnuts.

I don’t really understand the appeal.  I mean, it’s not like they can *eat* the walnuts … the walnuts are in their shell, wrapped in this weirdly aromatic / fragrant green husk, and all the dogs do is throw them around and/or guard them from other dogs.  But for some reason, they are the best toys going on the farm.  Very popular with dogs under 15lbs.  I need to find a way to market this.

But as much as these nuts love their walnuts, their attention span for them is extremely short, so I’ve taken to stalking them with my camera, hoping to catch them in the act, because it’s pretty hit or miss if I try to entice them with a walnut.  Maybe I’m just picking the wrong walnuts because I don’t understand the system.  But I was doing this exact thing (stalking Fae, who had a walnut) and because of that I missed ADDY GETTING INTO A FIST FIGHT WITH THE ROOSTER OVER A DEAD MOLE.  I cannot tell you how upset I am that I missed photographing this, because no matter how funny you *think* it sounds, I guarantee you it was a million times more hilarious to actually see it.  She was boxing him like she was a kangaroo, and he was flying at her sideways, feet first, like a feathery little ninja.  But they were in the shade, and I was shooting in full sun, so by the time I turned around and adjusted my settings, the fight was over and Addy was running away with the mole.  I’m so disappointed.

Wootie was not though, because he ended up stealing the mole.  Wootie does not eat moles, but he does like to possess them and bury them somewhere so nobody else can have them (like, his version of a walnut I guess). So I waited until he’d buried the mole in a pile of mushroom manure, then I hid behind a tree and screamed “I’M GONNA GET THE WOOTIE MOLE!” and he lost his tiny little walnut sized brain and started freaking out, trying to figure out where the disembodied voice of mole-theft-threats was coming from, and that’s how I got this picture.

And this is him about 10 minutes later … now he’s at the other end of the orchard, so quite far from his hidden mole, but he’s still worried someone is going to find it.

I love the orchard and all it has to offer when taking photos, but I wish it was carpeted with something other than dead leaves and grass.  Of course, with the summer we had, everything is dead grass, everywhere, all the time.  This is what the entire goat pasture looks like.

But the front yard – oh my!  Though from a landscaping perspective it would probably be considered an eyesore, it has very lovely Fall colours going on that are awesome when the sun shines through the leaves and plants (aka weeds).

But if there is dirt *anywhere* Alfie will find it, and he will drool in it, and then he will lay in the soothing droolmud he has created.  I’m sure his mom thinks I’m just chucking mud at him for entertainment when she comes to visit him.

His little sister Betty came to stay with me for a week earlier this month.  They are HILARIOUS when they play.  Actually, Alfie is just hilarious when he plays no matter who he’s playing with.  He thought he was playing with Peetie the other day, which was so charming because Peetie didn’t realize they were playing (she was waiting for me to throw the ball) and he was bouncing all around her and play bowing and he had no idea she wasn’t actually in the same game as him.  But Betty knows what’s what and he grabs her by the … well basically the whole body, because she’s the size of his mouth, and he pins her down for a minute, then he lets her go and she takes off like a bullet while he lopes along eagerly after her.  It’s pretty hilarious.

While my personal preference is for pointy dogs (I mean, I do have Addy, the pointiest of pointy dogs) there’s no denying Betty takes a pretty picture!  Here she is modeling my new tiny, dog sized divan that a friend salvaged for me from a movie set.

My cat Cyrus also takes a nice picture.  Here HE is, modeling the tiny dog sized chair I bought off Craigslist.  New, tiny, animal sized furniture is my latest obsession.  Cyrus looks shocked, but he actually really enjoys hanging out in front of the studio lights.  Because he’s weird.  But he’s a cat, and cats are weird, so that makes sense.

Here’s Dexter looking mildly perplexed, which is is pretty much his Life Motto summed up in one word (“Huh?”) since the deafness set in.  But he’s still having fun … mostly because he doesn’t know how to do anything else.

And then there’s my awesome girlie, who is doing so SO much better than I thought possible!  Those of you who follow us on Facebook know that about two weeks ago she was on one of our client hikes when she lost the ability to use her hind end shortly after we started our outing.  I ended up carrying her in a fireman lift her for the remainder of the walk because it was too hot to leave her in the car, and I had playing clients that needed their exercise.  It was pretty sad to watch her trying to get around without the use of her hind legs, and I was not looking forward to the news from the vet.

It turns out that she suffered an FCE (a fibrocartilaginous embolism, which is basically a blockage in a blood vessel in the spinal cord).  This is basically diagnosed by ruling out other things, and there’s nothing you can really do for it other than physical therapy.  Lots of dogs have partial to full recovery beginning in about 2-6 weeks after the event.  Piper, because she is ornery, has decided she will have 100% recovery and it also that it would start within 3 days of developing the FCE.  Within 48 hours she was getting around again and here we are two weeks later and she is walking – even running, sorta! – around like nothing happened at all.  She only has difficulty at one end of the living room because it’s laminate and it slopes, so sometimes she falls down, but she has learned to avoid this by walking on dog beds and the area rug (which SOMEONE *coughADDYcough*) keeps peeing on that I put down in front of the sofa.  She is one TOUGH cookie, this dog!!  She is going to be 15 in about two months and she is determined she is going to be in shape to party when that day comes.

I just admire her tenacity so much.  She has a ton of heart, this little dog.  Looks like we’ll have to get Mia to make us another cake with bacon rosettes for Piper’s birthday!

There are no photos of the Wondertwins, because they are never anywhere to be found!!  Turns out out little squirrel friend from the last blog entry has about … ummm … 77 squirrel friends.  And all of them are partying with the walnuts in the orchards – the one beside me and the one by my landlord’s house – so Spring and Winter spend all their free time hunting squirrels.  I’m not sure how they actually get any exercise, because as far as I can tell they just pick a spot in an orchard and stand motionless staring up into the trees for upwards of 45 minutes at a stretch.  They seem to be waiting for the squirrels to forget they are there, and come down to the ground where they will be available for eating, but the squirrels, though stupid, are not THAT stupid. And yet the terriers are TIRED when they come inside after all that being motionless.  Maybe their necks are sore from staring up.

I asked Spring if she would maybe stop squirrel hunting and pose for a photo and she gave me this face, which can only be interpreted as her “fuck you” face.

What a sweet thing she is.

And here’s a turkey face.  Literally.  This is one of my juveniles from this Spring and he’s going to rival his dad in the handsome department (not evident from this photo, I know).  I now have 7 turkeys, so next year the ones I hatch will be sold for eatin’.  Although if this feller keeps hopping the fence, running across the road and eating my neighbour’s berries, I might eat him and start fresh next year.  I had no idea turkeys were such a pain in the ass!  They get into more trouble than my goats and that’s saying something!

Have You Ever

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wanted to be friends with someone real, real bad, for reasons you can’t even really articulate, but everything you do or say seems to cause a greater rift between you and them and you have no earthly idea how to close that massive chasm of simultaneous hope and dread?

Spring is experiencing this existential crisis right now with the goats.

She keeps making overtures to Harvey, Bonky, Nibbles and Moe (AKA “The Firm”) but always, somehow, she makes a misstep and the fragile tendershoots of friendship crumble to dust beneath her pawtips and like The Phoenix rising from the ashes, the cycle begins anew.

To be honest, I don’t know if she wants to meet them or MEAT them … and I don’t think they know either, which is probably why after she makes some friendly bum-and-nose-sniffing overtures, the terrier wailing begins, The Firm gets panicky and the chaos ensues.  She’s gonna get the daylights headbutted right out of her if she doesn’t figure it out.

(Not to worry, goat-field time is always supervised because I don’t want her to get ruined by litigious goats).

She’d probably have better luck making friends with the squirrel that likes to taunt my dogs from the walnut orchard.  I like the squirrel; it exercises my dogs for me every day.  It has this nifty little path from the orchard on the one side, across the power lines in the front yard and into the pear and apple trees in the goat field and it leads the dogs on a merry chase back and forth, chattering away while it harvests walnuts.

Climbing the trees to make “friends” with the squirrel is not as successful as it sounds, actually.

This tree climbing dog does not want to befriend the squirrel, it wants to murder the squirrel, for the squirrel is stealing walnuts.  Fae, like a feudal lord, believes that all the bounty in her forests belong to her, and that harvesting any of it by lowly fluffy tailed serfs is punishable by death.  Preferably beheading.

For though there be thousands of walnuts with which to play, and to make weird faces at …

… Fae is hunting for That Elusive Magical Walnut, the Special Walnut, the Walnut That Will Change Her Life.  The power of the walnuts can be found in their bland uniformity, that they are indistinguishable, one from the next, so the Special Walnut could be hidden anywhere, amongst any of its nutty comrades, and therefore, All Walnuts Are Precious.

If you ask me, *Fae* is the “Special Walnut” around here.  This is her face when she is guarding *A* walnut from everything.

When it comes to friendships some creatures are simply antisocial.  My blue turkey hen, for example, has a serious hate-on for my small dogs.  She will take any opportunity to chase them around the yard (also good, free exercise, IMO).  But lately Peetie has decided to become the champion of small dogs pursued by rabid turkeys and has taken to bodyguarding The Littles so they can in turn guard walnuts in peace.

This turkey has only herself to blame.  I had no idea Peetie was a superhero, but at least we’ve finally found a use for her!

(She doesn’t want me to tell you that right now she is sporting a pair of boy-cut lady’s underpants with a hole cut out for her tail, and a belly band wrapped around her waist to keep it in place, because she is in season and Winter wants to “help her out” in the worst way and we are trying to foil his efforts)

Addy, friend to everything except ducks and newborn poultry, is currently making woo (not Woo) with the water droplets from the dog pool, as tossed by the Food Lady with the help of the Chuck it.  I’m going to have to recruit a friend to help me though, because my camera/lens combo is way too heavy to manipulate with one hand/arm – especially my chronically injured elbow arm – and it’s nearly impossible to get photos of her doing her water ballet as she chases the airborne droplets.  I did manage to snap a couple:

This one pleases me.  She wears the same expression I imagine I do when someone offers me pie.

But when it comes to friendship, nobody holds a candle to these two.  They look like a buddy-comedy pilot advertisement.

And then there is Gemma.  Who refuses to make friends with the Grim Reaper.  Do you guys realize that Gemma has outlived her PROGNOSIS VERY POOR diagnosis by THREE AND A HALF FREAKING YEARS???  She is the most ornery creature on the planet.  She guards her life force harder than Fae guards a walnut.

After a brief (read: exhausted) hiatus I’ve embarked on another home improvement streak.  In part this involved installing baseboards in my living room, rather than leaving them artfully leaned up against the wall in a precarious and bendy fashion in the kitchen.  I first had to scrub the daylights out of the entire living room, because a) this house is old and therefore slanty and b) Gemma likes to leave pee bombs strewn randomly around the house, often in the wee hours of the morning when my pee-radar is off duty (and dreaming of clean floors) which then meander fore and aft around the floor like lazy midwestern rivers of piss, pooling in corners and leaving trails of cold urine for my unsuspecting feet to slosh through when I get out of bed.  Although I spend a pathetically inordinate amount of time wiping up pee trails, some of them are sneaky and escape my notice.  So the entire living room had surprise old dried puddles of pee under sofas and collecting around the bottoms of my curtains.  I took everything out, washed it all, scrubbed the floors and walls and installed the fresh white (and slightly bendy) baseboards.  And when I finally sat down in a sweaty pool of Food Lady to admire my handiwork, I realized that all I had effectively accomplished was to supply Gemma with a 6 inch tall bulls-eye at which to aim her piss efforts.

So I then installed a small xpen in my office, where Gemma spends 99.92% of her time sleeping, and in that Gemma is now confined at all times.  She hasn’t really noticed, because as I say, she spends almost all her time sleeping, with brief forays into wakefulness to eat anything you put in front of her nose (which is the only one of her senses that actually function now) and to pee on my floor.  But *I* feel bad about it, because what kind of life is life in an xpen 24/7?  Thus I have now made a point of making her come outside with us for at least 10 minutes a day so she can experience a different environment … kind of like a prison warden.  And like a prisoner, Gemma spends her allotted exercise time shuffling around in a big circle because she can neither hear nor see and let’s face it, Gemma never liked being outside anyway.

I sometimes really do think she is going to outlast everyone.  Including me.

The other task I accomplished was to fence the poultry off from the rest of the yard, for so very many reasons.  There’s the reason where I am tired of tracking bird shit into the house on the bottom of my shoes.  The reason where I am sometimes inadvertently terrified by the sight of 50 damn farm birds standing on my porch screaming at me to bring them more food, because they are voracious and insatiable velociraptors who KNOW the bird food lives in the kitchen.  The reason where twice in one week Addy jumped out of my truck on our return home from a hike and killed a baby bird, and the one where Winter killed a duck and stashed it under my house and has been pulling out disgusting gooey rotting duck bits to snack on for the last couple of weeks.  But mostly I did it because Old Lady Dog Piper has developed a phobia of the poultry in her senile years, and is scared to go outside if they are milling around.

I feel like, having reached the ripe old age of almost-15, Piper deserves to go outside to relieve herself (are you listening Gemma?  No wait, of course you’re not, you’re deaf) without creeping around in terror of turkeys and other assorted poultry.  So I spent another hot, sweaty weekend pounding metal posts and putting up fencing so that the borders between Chickens and Dogs are safeguarded.  A wall, if you will.

She is so much happier now!

And on the topic of aging … in three days, Dexter is going to be EIGHT YEARS OLD.  Eight insane, powered-by-adrenaline, years old.

Piper barely looks like she has aged a day, but Dexter is half her age and twice as grey.  With his giant bushy Einstein eyebrows and everything.  And still batshit crazy (why is that expression even a thing?  What’s so crazy about batshit?  Someone enlighten me.)

Still love him though. He will get something delicious for his birthday celebration.  Although what he should really get is a vibrating collar so I can teach him not to vanish whilst we are out hiking.  I’ve had a few scares with him recently – he must go far, far away to poop (this is a family trait, weird as it is – but what about Dexter and his family is NOT weird??) and then sometimes he has no idea where we are when he’s finished taking care of business.  He can hear certain pitches, but can hear almost nothing at a distance.  Between him and Piper, I feel like I spend half my life screaming their names at the top of my lungs in a variety of pitches – kind of like a poor man’s Pentatonix – as I try to find the perfect harmonizing that reverberates properly in their broken ear canals!

Anyhoo, this had been a snippet of life in Turkey Territory with my band of Very Special Walnuts.  Now back to photographing other people’s dogs for the rest of the month.  But here’s a photo of TWooie being extraordinarily happy, because he chased the squirrel and found some goat poopies to roll in, and because despite the fact that he is an evil little shit, I love the butterball and I love when he looks happy.

 

“I Used To Read This Blog

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…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

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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??