Tweed

GOTCHA

March 27, 2019 By The Food Lady 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Its scientific name is Maisie ChompsHisNeck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where Oh Where Has The Food Lady Been

November 23, 2018 By The Food Lady 3 Comments

Do you know that last night when I started writing this, I had to walk all the way over to the main house, in the dark, to reset the modem because my internet went down. Something of the insect variety was buzzing in the hood of my coat. I still don’t know what it was, and I don’t think I want to know. I know I don’t.

I also know I have been the WORST BLOGGER IN THE WORLD. I haven’t blogged in over two months :( There are lots of reasons why. It was a busy summer and fall for me, lots of events to photograph, which is great fun (and an immense amount of work) – agility, lure coursing, dock diving, disc dog … just endless activities! But I’m cutting way back on event photography next year, because it’s a lot of investment and wear and tear on my equipment for not a lot of monetary return. I had a very busy Autumn with lots of fall colours sessions, which was also fantastic! And now I’m heading into Holiday Sessions – 2 of 3 full days sold out! Also great, but the editing will be endless ;-)

But I miss photographing my own dogs, which I hardly ever seem to get the chance to do these days. In part it’s because I’ve gotten a lot pickier about what photographs I’m happy with and I want to put out there representing my work. I was pretty laid back about my work on the blog and did a lot less “set up” of shots, and just kind of hung around with my dogs and photographed them at our leisure. And that organic feeling is missing now, which is largely because my home space is … ugly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful we have all have somewhere warm and secure to live, but the yard is nothing to look at it and even less to photograph. Also, it’s in a parking lot of a fairly busy building, so the dogs aren’t relaxed all that often (nor am I) as there’s a fairly steady stream of activity most days, which distracts us all. I admit I miss the lush variety of my old acreages, where we could just hang out and be in each other’s company and I could take photos at random. Now, because of the ugly, and the activity, I take my dogs off the property for exercise most days and it’s just not always practical to drag out the equipment with us. I need a lot of eyes on my busy crew when I’m out somewhere, and can’t do that when at least one eyeball is stuck to the eyepiece of my camera. So I feel like the story-telling aspect of my blog is missing, because I have fewer stories to tell because my dogs are *exercising* rather than *being*, if that makes sense.

So today I hauled my ass and the dogs and the camera up a mountain. Even Dexter was perplexed!

But (I think) happy?

Because it’s Vancouver, and it’s November, it of course started raining shortly into our hike, so I didn’t get a lot of photos. I also miss my studio quite a lot!

Anyway, how about a pupdate on all the beasts?

For a fun fall activity, I decided to stop feeding Addy, so she has resorted to scavenging for food wherever she can find it.

She got so skinny she was practically floating away!

According to that Facebook Memories thing, today is Arriva-A-Versary …. 5 years ago 9lbs of squirrel brain burrowed into my shirt and never left! She’s a lot greyer now. She also, we have discovered, has mild seizures randomly. Like maybe once a year – she had one a few weeks back, which was scary but very short lived. She is so ADHD she can’t even concentrate long enough to have a real seizure ;-)

Fae, always a keen observer, figured she was next on my hit list, so she’s taken to hiding from me so maybe I will forget to starve her. Or perhaps I’m hiding HER because my mom keeps threatening to steal her … on FB she threatened to run me over with her car and keep Fae for herself. Obviously, I hail from a very loving family …

Mr. Woo is not hiding, he just thinks he’s a super model and he knows what colours compliment him best. I actually have a HELL of a time keeping him OUT of photos these days, because he wants to be in every shot … because posing means cookies, and (hello) I starve my dogs. Also, he’d really like me to stop taking photos of his sad, pathetic excuse for a tail. And he uses his old-age deafness to pretend he can’t understand me telling him to get out of the shot.

(I’m thinking about having that growth removed from his eyelid, 10% because I worry it bothers him, and 90% because it bothers me in photographs. Also, his tail is actually growing in quite nicely, albeit slowly. I am hoping it will have recovered by spring and we can have a party to celebrate!)

And speaking of Spring, she has taken up Parkour (look at her back feet!).

Whereas her brother has taken up (mostly) coming when called. We got pretty lax in that department, and it has resulted in Winter obsessing about running after things he sees in the distance, like cyclists, or other dogs, or people minding their own business. And when Winter goes, Spring goes, and when 2 go, at least 5 of the remaining 7 figure SOMETHING IS EXCITING AND THEY SHOULD GO TOO. So we went right back to basics (as Winter is a simple man) and every time I say his name, I shove something delicious in his mouth. This month that deliciousness is chicken wieners, because they were on sale. His recall has improved about 90% and last weekend I managed to call him off of not one but TWO bicycles he was thinking about chasing. I’m super pleased with this, and he’s currently ranking about 7 of my top 9 dogs in the house as a result.

Also, he and his sister make a wonderfully delightful duo when they pose together.

Like this:

And this:

And this!

They have supplanted their Senior Sibling Duo, because I DON’T PHOTOGRAPH SOFT CORE PORN, MR. WOO!

Hovering around the very bottom of my Top Dogs list is this asshole.

A few weeks ago she and Fae were sharing a recliner and she shifted around and stepped on Fae. Fae is, pound for pound, the biggest cow in the universe, so Fae snarked at her and told her off. This asshole retaliated by picking Fae up by the face and shaking her around until I punched her in the ribs and made her let her go. Fae had a little cut on her head, and a big pee on my recliner, and Peetie was very contrite, so I decided to chalk that one up as an anomaly from the world’s stupidest dog. But then about a week ago we were out playing ball in the yard and she bashed into TWooie (because she has zero sense of personal space) and he snapped at her, because it was rude. So she proceeded to kick ten kinds of holy hell out of him until I whacked her repeatedly with the Chuck It and drove her off. TWooie has a hole in his face, and one in his neck, and Peetie has all my intense loathing.

I don’t understand this dog at all. She is the first to befriend all new foster puppies, and is unfailingly patient with them … I used to catch Silly dragging her around the house by her face, which must have hurt (a lot more than Fae air snapping at her!) and She Who Is Not Friendly About Her Food can chew on a very high value pork bone while Addy furiously humps her (I don’t know why Addy does that) without so much as a glance at her tiny little violator. And 11 months of the year she is perfectly lovely with her siblings, but once a year or so she decides to visit some furious vengeance on them for no good reason. I don’t know what to do with her. I’ve toyed with strangulation, but maybe rehoming is the more humane option. Would you like her?

I mean, TWooie is an old man. He may be an old jerk of a man, but old he is, and I can’t have her trying to kill him. He’s pretty fragile these days – his legs give out on him sometimes in surprising ways, and while he is game for a full 1.5 hours of hiking and chasing squirrels, he also takes advantage of every opportunity to grab a nap.

And he Old Man complains about stuff. Like, “this cement dock is too cold and wet” and “I might fall in the water, so I don’t want to sit here” and “back in my day, dogs got THREE cookies for posing, not just one” and stuff.

And then there’s this thing. STILL HERE. Can’t seem to get rid of her. I haven’t found a home for her that I really think will utilize her potential. Which is ironic, because I also don’t and won’t use her to her full potential. Also, the number of people who don’t email back after I send them a lengthy, thoughtful response to their adoption inquiry is kind of appalling. Like at least half a dozen people who didn’t even have the courtesy to say “thank you for your time” is legit disgusting. With every passing year, I enjoy rescue less and less. I might be burned out, but I think it’s more that I just don’t like dealing with the people very much. Also, I might be getting old and complainy, like TWooie.

And my beloved Deafter remains … deaf. And nine years old. NINE! Where has the time even gone? I feel like it was just a couple years ago I was doing to the 365puppy blog (that’s a trip down memory lane!).

He is so funny. Since this tin can we live in is so small, and meal time can get a bit intense, I have taken to feeding him in the bedroom behind a babygate so he doesn’t have to ugly-face off hungrier dogs who eat faster than he does. So now when I get the bowls out of the cupboard, he goes and sits in the little hallway between the main space and the bedroom with his back to all of us, then acts delightfully shocked when I appear behind him with a full bowl of deliciousness. It’s like he’s playing a little game with himself, and it makes me laugh every meal time. He doesn’t quite have Tweed’s finely-developed sense of humour, but he really is a character unto himself.

We’re still all adjusting to life in this little space – it’s not like we haven’t done the small space thing before! But sometimes it’s a bit up close and personal. I was trying to do some clicker training the other evening (trying to teach Fae the ring-stacking game …. right now she thinks it involves picking up the ring and then laying down on top of it and pretending she has no idea where it is, so we have a ways to go) and literally the only space we have to train is the 3-foot-in-each-direction space between the side of the couch and the front door, and the two stairs that lead up to the hallway. I have to fend off the other dogs with my elbows as they try to squeeze in on the action from behind, and occasionally a particularly daring (hungry) dog will launch an aerial attack from the end of the sofa.

At least when the weather is good we have our new outdoor space, courtesy of my mom and stepdad – my new deck!

This was my birthday present and it’s fabulous! It’s since been painted grey to match the tin can. It definitely makes coming and going a lot less perilous than the skinny RV stairs with the even skinnier dog ramp rattling atop them. After it was finished, it took Dexter three days or so to figure out how to get back inside … first he would try and walk “up” the dog ramp, which was laying on the ground and nowhere near the door, and would just stand on it staring at the wheel of the rv, tail gently fanning congenially in the breeze (the same breeze running through the space between his ears, apparently). When I’d get his attention from the doorway, he would then run under the deck and out the other side in a big circle and end up back on the Ramp To Nowhere again until I put on shoes and took him up the stairs by the collar. After a day or so of that, he finally grasped the concept of the *deck* but remained blissfully unaware of the whole “stairs” thing and he would leap on and off the deck from the side. I don’t know why, he is perfectly familiar with stairs in his life! He seems to have sorted it all out now though, finally.

Addy is very fond of the deck because when it’s raining, she can attempt to sneak in there and pee underneath it and risk only minimal exposure to the evil IG-targeting acid shooting down from the heavens. Though I am quickly filling up her would-be-toilet with stuff stored under there. I am still trying to sort out storage – I divested myself of a f*ck of a lot when I moved out of my last house, but I still have a lot of things that I can’t part with, but have nowhere else to go, so I’m paying over $200 a month for a storage facility so my stuff has somewhere to live. I am thinking I need to finance one of those shipping containers so a) my stuff can live beside me, rather than across town and b) once I pay it off, it’s mine and potentially added bonus of c) I can use half of it as a studio space, if it’s large enough.

But my immediate need is to insulate under the rig so everything doesn’t freeze this winter. Can’t have the band getting cold on their winter tour!

Which is why I made a calendar! 12 months of The Wootube Crew for you to enjoy on your wall in 2019. I ordered a sample from my photo lab to show you

WATCH HERE

(without sound unless you enjoy listening to part of an episode of Sherlock Holmes). They turned out very lovely, but they are not inexpensive because they’re from a pro lab, which means if I want to make any insulate-my-trailer money off of them, they aren’t inexpensive for you either :( Plus shipping. Unless you have a better idea of where to order them from more economically? I will have to sell them for $25.00 CAD, not including shipping, and even then I’m not exactly raking in make-me-rich profits. The post office tells me it’s about $5 shipping in Canada and about $7 to the US. Which makes them about $24 USD for American Wootubers, but $30 for Canadians, eh?

If it’s not too rich for your blood, then you can order by sending me an email with your order, your full name and postal mailing address, and how you’d like to pay – you can send money via paypal, or if you’re local, you can do an e-transfer. Once I have amassed all the orders, I will then order them in bulk and then ship ’em out!

Mr. Woo hopes you will order, and help him keep him as warm this winter as he looks in this photo!

On This, The First Day of Summer

June 20, 2016 By The Food Lady 7 Comments

I offer you a photo of Winter.

I hardly ever post photos of Winter because he’s a) boring and b) not very good looking. Unless he’s wrestling with Spring, he doesn’t do anything except lay around being stressy or hunt for rabbits in the bush. He is also probably the least photogenic of all of my dogs. And he’s low on the popularity list around here (don’t deny it – if you have lots of dogs, you like some of them better than others. Even if you won’t admit it out loud).

I also offer you a photo of Gemma, to prove I have not chucked her out a window yet. Not even after she bit me in the foot this morning for trying to stop her from sticking her head in Piper’s breakfast bowl. Sticking her head in Piper’s bowl could easily have resulted in her losing her face or maybe her whole head, but the thanks I got was three sharp little teeth in my big toe. Jerk.

Today we are reflecting upon our Regionals experience (we being me, because Spring “I’m A Terrier” Aling has already forgotten about it).

Facebook peeps already know how she did, and *what* she did, but I’ll recap for the rest of you.

SHE SHIT IN THE RING IN STEEPLECHASE II.

Argh. Those among you who follow my Regionals sagas know that this makes the third year in a row where Spring has loosed her bowels or bladder in the ring. And she ONLY does it at Regionals, and she ONLY does it at Regionals at Thunderbird Arena. This year I carefully trialed her at new and different places with new and different footing, just to see if she does it other places too. I trialed her at a new venue outdoors on grass for ASCofBC and she earned herself three titles in two days and didn’t foul the ring at all. I trialed her at USDAA indoors on sand and she didn’t befoul that barn either. But bring her to Thunderbird and she craps on the course.

Lighten up, Food Lady. Everybody poops!!

I was SUPER bummed. I very seriously considered pulling her from the rest of the competition. Which some people seemed to interpret as me being a pissy (ha ha) pouty pants. But I wasn’t going to pull her for me, I was going to pull her out for her. Because Spring is a stressy dog, and her default response to stress is to pee or poop.

When I first got her, she would shit the floor if I looked at her sideways. I couldn’t leave her alone for more than two minutes without her eliminating in the house. It took lots of confidence building to get over that. And then when we started agility, if I so much as said “Whoops” if she made a mistake, she would pee herself. Lots of more confidence building required. Now she can clearly trial and do reasonably well without losing control of her bodily functions … except at Thunderbird. Which suggests to me that she was stressed. And the point of us doing Regionals – or any competition – is to have fun. Stressing to the point of pooping doesn’t sound like one half of us is having fun, does it? (The other half of us doesn’t have much fun when she poops in the ring either, lemme tell you. But that’s not really the point).

Some folks, whom I’m sure were well meaning, said stuff like “Well, just go out there and have fun with her.” Well obviously that was my plan from the get-go. Our ONLY goal was to have her running happy and not peeing (or pooping) in the ring. Look, I’m not running a competitive dog, I know this. I don’t take agility all that seriously – if I did, I wouldn’t be running rescues with giant closets full of behavioural skeletons. I would be attending seminars instead of a loose practice once a week, which I mostly go to because it involves a Starbucks coffee. I would be doing drills in my yard instead of leaning against the fence and half-assedly asking my dog to “go jump something or something or whatever.” I’m not trying to win all the thing. I *like* to win all the things, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t like it enough to work really hard at it. I like to play agility and I like to play it with a dog that likes to play it with me (hence the reason Dexter doesn’t play it anymore, because I’m not sure he wouldn’t prefer to go out there and do it all himself, sans stupid ole me) but I’m not super competitive.

(Except when I win, at which point I am insufferable. But I digress.)

The thing is, if my partner isn’t having fun, then I’m not having fun. And I am especially not having fun if I threw almost $250 at a competition where my partner eliminates herself (on all levels) because she’s so not having fun. That makes us both miserable.

But in the end I decided that Thunderbird is not, to my knowledge, toxic, poisonous, or dangerous. It’s not going to kill Spring or me. And by doG, she has full use of all her legs and she can run 6 damn courses without crumpling up and dying so I dragged her pouty ass back to the venue the next morning and decided that even if she pissed or shitted up the whole damn joint, she was going to try her paw at every bloody course and just GET OVER HERSELF. She is not that same stressy pee-machine I adopted 4 years ago, she’s come a long, long way. And a friend of mine gave me a really good plan too – she said if Spring pooped or peed on course (for those of you who don’t know the rules: if your dog eliminates on course, you get eliminated from the run and have to leave the ring without completing it and lose all your points) to take her out of the ring and drill her on the practice jumps outside the ring, to cement in her walnut brain that she has to keep “playing” even if she “goes.”

But as it happens, we didn’t need to use that strategy. because in the end, Spring went four for six clean runs and ended up in 12th place of the 38 dogs in her division, and qualified for Nationals!

She had two clean Jumpers rounds – not super fast, but with bonus time points for each. She had a nice clean and reasonably fast Standard and one clean Gamble run. The second gamble was not Spring-friendly, which I knew from the get-go, so we concentrated on what she COULD do in the opening and racked up a decent amount of points. She got a bit stressy in her second Standard and pulled some dorky stuff like not taking equipment she knows and likes very much, resulting in some refusals. And then suddenly she decided mid course she was having fun and took off down a line of jumps so fast that I f*cked up and sent her off course because I was out of position. So in the end, we had a really good Regionals. And if she had run that second Standard clean, she would have had the points to be on the podium. Which is pretty damn impressive for a dog who shat the ring on day one!

I am proud of my squirrelly girlie for overcoming her fears and trying so hard!

And speaking of rescues with closet skeletons …

Le Peetie. Le Sigh. So Le Cute. SO Le Annoying.

She has decided that jumping up to chomp me in the face isn’t as much fun as she thought it was, which is a good thing. But she hasn’t gotten any more fun overall either. She’s boring as dirt – lovely dog, great in the house (she spent 12 hours loose in the house yesterday as I only brought Spring to the event, and she didn’t do anything naughty), beautiful recall, but absolutely no drive to speak of when it comes to toys or games with me. I brought her to the event on Saturday, and aside from her wonderful habit of puking in the van, she was also spooked at the whole thing. I hoped bringing her ringside to see the high-octane dogs would get her motor running, but she wasn’t at all interested in watching them. She just wanted to go back into her crate and drool and not talk to anyone.

Last weekend I photographed a friend’s new puppy, and was captivated by her curiosity and her keen desire to play with All The Things. Plus she is really freakin’ adorable.

Fifteen weeks old and she is already a go-go machine!

I want that in my next puppy. I don’t want to create drive artificially, I want to harness and direct what’s already there and bursting to be free. And Peetie doesn’t have it. She’s going to make someone a very nice pet, but she’s not going to make me a very nice pet. Because I have lots of pets that take up space and eat me out of house and home, tyvm. And Peetie is NEEDY – she is always trying to flop in my lap or belly crawling up to me to lick my hands while I am trying to type or whatever, and it annoys the hell out of me. There are people out there who love that, but I don’t love it at all. Winter does that same thing, and we’ve already discussed how I feel about Winter.

So does anyone want a really sweet, really obedient border collie puppy who is decidedly low octane?

Fae has decided that it is indeed time for Peetie to go.

Peetie likes to bite the Littles on the bum to make them run, and then chase them down. Addy likes it for about 35 seconds and then comes running to me to be picked up. Fae doesn’t like it for even .35 seconds and would like to kill Peetie.

Even thought Peetie is a Dexter clone, which makes it difficult to part with her, the resident Bitch has spoken, so Peetie needs to move on.

Speaking of Dexters, today I spotted one in its natural habitat.

He is, of course, “hiding” in the brush with his ball. I’m not sure where he learned to retrieve the ball to a clump of buttercups rather than to me, but it’s going on 7 years of the same behaviour that drives me crazy but I can’t change it.

Fae is trying to change it by hunting him down and barking shrilly in his ear until he gets up and moves.

And here is a photo of Piper, because I luff her. (See, I can love dogs who suck at agility. Because if ever a dog sucked at agility, it was Piper!)

And here is a photo that is bittersweet. It is a photo that memorializes my Tweedles as Regional Champion in 2012 on a permanent trophy. Unfortunately, nobody told me that this trophy existed until after he died, so I never got a chance to get a photo of him with it. And after I learned about it, nobody could even be bothered to send me a photo of the trophy when I asked, so I had to wait until this Regionals to snap one myself.

Here’s to the best dog that ever was, and the best agility dog I ever had. I miss you Tweed!!

This is NOT the best agility dog I ever knew. But isn’t he good looking though?

One year ago

June 9, 2016 By The Food Lady 5 Comments

yesterday, I lost my bestest boy Tweedles. I miss him all the time.

He’s with Briggsy Bubba Border Collie, and I hope the Red Boys are having a blast. I hope they know how much I miss them. I look forward to the day when I get to see them again.

I’m the luckiest

August 10, 2015 By The Food Lady 13 Comments

Today I received this painting of my beloved Tweedles in the mail, by Laughing Dingo Studios / Claudine Sleik. She doesn’t do commissions anymore, but who wouldn’t want to paint Tweed?

I am the lucky recipient of three of her amazing paintings, but this one is the dearest to my heart. Somehow she manages to capture the dogs *exactly* – that was exactly Tweed’s most usual expression. It’s like looking right at him in front of me.

Thank you Claudine, I love it!! Best gift ever :)

Look, A Butterfly!

June 19, 2015 By The Food Lady 12 Comments

Today I bought myself a metal chicken at the dollar store.

It’s nothing special, just a cheap little ornament for the garden and given my affinity for chickens, it seemed like an appropriate and inexpensive pick-me-up on a day I’m feeling a little low. I stuck it in the box where my runner beans are trying to grow as slowly as possible. And it’s the weirdest thing … the metal chicken keeps disappearing and showing up somewhere on the lawn. In this respect, it’s not unlike a real live chicken. However, it can’t move on its own … this means either it’s MAGIC, or somethievingorangedog keeps stealing it from its roost.

While at the dollar store, I also bought the dogs a giant soft flying disk with a big butterfly on it. It’s didn’t last very long, because it was cheap. But the BEST thing about it was how pissed off it made every single dog, because it was awkward and nearly impossible for them to carry, which you can totally tell in the photos.

Seriously?

You like seeing me suffer, don’t you?

This is the only time I’m retrieving it. After this one, you can suck it.

I try and I try to be a good boy, and you repay me with this bullshit.

I am SO over The Food Lady. Her and her stupid metal chicken can blow me.

There was an even bigger one; I think I’m going to go back and get that one and torment my dogs some more :)

Greeeeaaaaat. Thanks.

I was looking through old photos of Tweedles as a puppy, because I am having an acute attack of Want-A-Puppy-Real-Bad-isis. Currently I am obsessed with this working bred cutie who is, of course, located in Serbia, of all places:

(The Internetz tells me that it will cost between “$70 and $1000” to ship a puppy from Serbia, which is less than helpful)

He was *the* cutest puppy in the world. I wish I had a DSLR back then (did they even exist yet?) because I have only a handful of photos of him that I am pretty sure I scanned into the computer, and he presented so many opportunities for adorable photos. This one was from the first time he went to the beach, when he was just 7 weeks old. He walked right into the water because he thought it was a solid surface, and he was right pissed off when he sank.

Playing with a giant ferret! I had really ugly furniture back then!

But this is one of my favourite pictures of Red Dog “eating” Tweed. This was shortly after Briggs decided he didn’t want to murder Tweed and that he was fun to play with. Considering Briggs spent much of his life on a mission to destroy other dogs, the fact that he played with this itty bitty vulnerable puppy belly so sweetly is an amazing memory to have.

I expected it to feel weirder without him around, but it doesn’t feel all that different. Maybe it’s because there are so many other little faces popping up and down for attention, but I’m not looking for him, or forgetting he’s not here any more or any of those sorts of post-loss experiences that I thought would happen. When I think about him, I’m often sad, but its not hitting me in the gut over and over again on a regular basis.

This in turn makes me feel bad. I worry I’m grieving *wrong* – shouldn’t this be so much worse? The problem is I’m a “thinky” person – even in the middle of feeling sad, I think about it instead of giving into it. A friend of mine, upon hearing from her vet that her beloved dog had terminal cancer and had very little time left, SLUGGED HER VET! She screamed at her and then punched her. I LOVE this story – not because I think we should go about assaulting our veterinarians when they give us terrible news (don’t worry Dr. Jeff, I won’t ever pop you one!), but because I love how much passion she had for her dog, and how thoroughly she could give into those emotions. It’s just not in me to do that. It was hard enough to cry in front of the clinic staff and my friends.

So that’s why, when yesterday I received this amazing gift in the mail at work, I was so very surprised.

This is from one of my readers, Fay, and came along with a lovely card expressing her condolences for Tweed’s passing, and it looks just like him, ears and smile and all. An ACO dropped off the package, so I opened it rather idly, thinking it was something I had ordered for work. And when I opened the little box and saw what was inside, I burst into tears.

As I was in the middle of completing the adoption of a dog to a woman (she was doing some paperwork when I opened the box), it was a bit of a shocker for everyone. I told her I had just lost my 15 year old dog, and she started crying too, and gave me a big hug. And all my staff stood around with their mouths agape like I had just started singing an aria from Carmen or something.

My friends have been amazing, and have surrounded me with lots of love around the loss of my boy. And you readers have sent so many wonderful condolences and memories of Tweed stories that stuck with you. Work paid for Tweed’s cremation so I could keep him with me. Aldergrove Animal Hospital gave me a clay paw print they made right after he died.

The Sadist, and my Bestie Fiona, and Auntie Corey all paid for Dexter to enter the pre-qualifier for Nationals because he had to miss Regionals and I’m broke (vet bills). I am lucky. I am blessed.

But this was the most amazing gift, Fay, not only because it’s beautiful and it means I get to keep Tweed close to my heart at all times, but because it gave me the gift of raw, honest emotion. I cannot thank you enough for this amazing present. Thank you so much!