3 Woofs & A Woo on Wootube!

So long, farewell ....

2010-03-16T20:17:00.001-07:00

Say good bye to 3WAAW on Blogspot folks.

:(

BUT - say hello to WOOTUBE at its own domain!

Please change your bookmarks - new posts will no longer be appearing on the blogger platform and although this blog will remain up, it will be stuck in statis!

Keep up with the program - join us at wootube.net

See you on the flipside, babies!!

You may not remember me

2010-03-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

but my name is Mr. Woo. You haven't seen me in quite some time.
*drips sarcasm*

The Food Lady is too good for us lowly dogs these days. She never bothers to photograph us anymore. She doesn't even know how to use the camera these days.

See?

I don't understand what the problem is. It's not like that boring old dog is taking up all her time anymore. She sent that ole' bag of bones packing so he went back home.

There's a lot less swearing in the house now. But also a lot less leftovers.

All weekend long she totally ignored us. I decided to to beat some sense into her with this big stick I found, but Piper and Tweed wouldn't let me.

Tweed wasn't really into it. He had another plan to punish The Food Lady and drive her crazy - all weekend long at the agility trial he said he did something called "blowing her off," "flipping her off" and "giving her the bird." I don't know what it means, but he seemed pretty satisfied with himself afterward.

He spent a lot of time reflecting on what he calls his "Missing Contacts and What-Are-Weave-Pole-Entries-Anyway" plan.

Except it didn't work. TFL says she still loves him anyway.

She still loves me?

And Piper is just a suck up.

"*I* didn't miss any poles or contacts. Of course, I didn't run in the trial this weekend, but still. I'm a perfect princess."

Dexter is a spaz. He can't be trusted with any Food Lady Punishment plans.

Now The Food Lady says she is busy working on making us more famous by redesigning the blog, so she STILL doesn't have much free time to photograph us.

*sigh* My life is so hard.

Please tell The Food Lady to spend more time with us!

See Sport Run

2010-03-08T20:25:00.000-08:00

PSYCH!!!

Of course Sport does not run. But he DID shuffle determinedly after Tweed a couple of times, just like the old days, whilst we were playing DumbBall.

Sporty can't go for long walks, so we compromise - once a day he gets to come clatter around the horse paddock while the other dogs play ball. For the other walk of the day, I slip him a Percocet, he goes to sleep on the big pillow and I take the dogs out for a long run without him.

However, yesterday Sporty accompanied us all the way down to the barn and back. He seemed to really enjoy it - so much so that when I let everyone out for an afternoon pee, he took himself for a second walk down to the barn without me. Then he got lost, so I had to go retrieve him. Fortunately, he moves very slowly.

But he's pretty handsome for an old guy, huh?

This morning at breakfast he said that he didn't want his food, he wanted what everyone else was getting, so he got a bowl of tripe, which he ate!

For dinner, he ate a bag of sample kibble that the nice folks at Elemental Canine gave us to try out. He also ate two slices of processed "cheeze" and about 4 mouthfuls of his actual, 40-minutes-to-prepare meal.

I rather enjoy having Sporty around. I do wish he'd close his eyes when he sleeps though, because I keep thinking he's dead.

But he's not.

Anyway, mostly I stopped by to let you all know that as part of my Master Plan for 3WAAW I will be migrating the content off of Blogger and onto its own server. There will be some changes to the site, which I'm making based on some excellent advice from Judy at JTdataworks. The idea is that 3WAAW will earn its keep down the road!! There may be some interruption to the blog, though I do hope there won't be ... but despite the changes you will eventually see, it will still be 3WWAW - ie, irreverent and peppered with swear words :)

See you soon!

Do you believe in magic?

2010-03-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

So your Food Lady has a part time job ... working for a magician. Yup, you've read that correctly ... I spend a couple of days a week at the beck and call of a magic man. It's rather fascinating stuff. Last week I spent several hours making things out of FIMO ... I can't tell you what I made, or I'd have to kill you. Also, I'm still not really sure what it was I was making, cuz it's awful secretive, this magic business.

There are some downsides to this job:

1) It's kind of like working for a congenial and slightly less creepy David Blaine.
2) I'm a captive audience for all these magic tricks that make me SHIT MY MIND.

But there are also some real perks to this job:

1) He feeds me lunch, that sometimes includes cake!
2) He pays me in real dollars, not magicbucks.
3) I get to see one of my favourite things every time I walk into his house.

Remember this fine old gentleman?

Oh yeah - it's the world's most demented canine tyrant, His Majesty Sporticus. Now EIGHTEEN AND A FREAKIN' HALF YEARS OLD, Sport refuses to die ... probably just to be obstinate. Or, the most likely explanation, is that it's some kind of magic at work. How else can you explain how Sport, going on 19 years old, still shuffles around this earth making people do his bidding? It's gotta be magic.

This week, Sport is staying with me and my crew while my boss and his wife have disappeared into the magic box and reappeared in the middle of NYC. Sport rattled and squeaked his way into my living room, collapsed himself into a heap of dusty old bones on a big fluffy pillow and has been making me do his bidding ever since.

Sporty is much as I remember him - serious, sweet and bossy as fuck.

You! Peon! Bring me some food I will eat. Except I WON'T eat ANYTHING that I have eaten before, so be creative. But not too creative, for I won't like that one bit. In fact, maybe I'm not even hungry at all. You'll never know, will you? Why are you just standing there?! GET TO WORK!!

This is one OLD dog, my friends. He is on a million medications to keep his heart beating, his joints passably mobile and the grim reaper at bay. Every time I pick him up (which is shockingly often, and usually because he has gotten stuck somewhere) he wheezes and coughs and I'm sure the end is nigh.

He has a very special eating regime that I, apparently, SUCK at, because he completely refused to eat his dinner last night (a dinner, I might add, that involves several steps, about 40 minutes of cooking and a very specific presentation) until I peppered it liberally with slices of ham. And for a dog who gets stuck in corners, he's remarkably adroit at removing strategically placed ham-bits from the rest of his food.

This morning he woke me up at 6AM by peeing on my carpet.

I love having Sport here because ... well, because I love Sport! But I also hate having Sport here because I am nursing this 24-7 dread that he's going to die on my watch. His owners have assured me many times that if he dies while they are gone they won't blame me, because he's EIGHTEEN AND A FREAKIN' HALF YEARS OLD and he's bound to pop off eventually. But I'd much rather he waited until they come back from NYC and if he must kick it, he does it in their house and not mine. (Of course, if he doesn't stop with the refusal to eat anything I make him, I may kill him myself. Perhaps I'll kick him until ... oh never mind.)

A day with Sport goes kind of like this - he wakes me up at an ungodly early hour by pissing in my floor, so I leap out of a dead sleep, hustle him at a snail's pace to the front door and shove him outside. Then I crawl around cleaning up the trail of pee, crying because 40 seconds ago I was asleep and now I'm the opposite, and I'm confused. He wanders around outside sniffing stuff and trying not to get lost at the pace of .0927 miles per decade, then waits for me to reappear because he can't get back up on the deck. I lift him up, he coughs and wheezes - I squint my eyes shut and repeat the phrase "don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie" until he stops coughing.

Then we sort of propel ourselves through the house until we're back in the big room, where Sport whines until someone gets off his big fluffy pillow, where he promptly collapses. I make a meal he won't eat, replace it with something else he won't eat, lie down on the floor in front of him with a spoon and beg him to eat, kick his bowl across the room and hurl invectives at him for not eating, then I give him several slices of ham and some liver cookies, which he will eat. At least, which he will eat today. Who knows about tomorrow?

I finally sit down with my coffee and Sport decides he needs to pee again so we repeat the shuffle, lift, cough/wheeze, don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie, whine, collapse routine. And then it's time for one of his many medications, delivered sneakily in a liver cookie (I can do magic too, you know!).

Repeat several times daily, go through the whole eating thing at dinner time again, eventually go outside with him for the last pee lest he inadvertently wander into the mouth of a coyote, move his fluffy pillow into the bedroom, go back to the big room to convince him that the pillow CAN, in fact, move rooms and he doesn't have to stand where it used to be and stare at nothing, eventually lift him up and carry him to the pillow, cough/wheeze, don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie, sleep.

Sport is a lot of work!!

But having him here, and working with SAINTS, has really gotten me thinking about when and how our old dogs should die, and how much and for how long should we be keeping them alive? Sport can scarcely move these days, and spends much of his time either asleep or staring blankly at nothing, like a wall. Who knows what's going on in his little pea brain? Is he thinking "you bastards, let me go?" or is he going " ow ow ow ow ow" in his head or is he grateful that he's still here to rule the house from his pillow?

Don't get me wrong - I am in NO WAY second guessing his owners' decisions about his well being. I won't pretend that having him for a week is like having him for my very own, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that they are doing everything for him they can and with his best interests in mind. I'm definitely not suggesting that Sport should not still be with us (and besides, it's not like he's actually alive anyway; he's in a state of suspended semi-animation thanks to MAGIC).

It's just that I've never had a really old dog myself, and having this decrepit old house guest just, I guess, makes me think about this stuff. I try to imagine, say, Piper at EIGHTEEN AND A FREAKIN' HALF YEARS OLD - she is such an animated, lively, busybody of a dog. What would she be thinking if she were really old, and couldn't do any of the things she loved to do, and couldn't really move or walk or make Mad Teeth(tm) at her friends? Would she hate every blessed minute of it or would she just be happy that she was still hanging around being a puny little witch?

Kill me, and I will haunt you. And so will my sidekick. Bitch.

And when do they tell us that it's time for them to go? Do they know? Briggs never told me - my vet told me. But did Briggs want to die? I'll never know; all I knew was that he was going to die in a matter of days, possibly hours, and I didn't want him to hurt anymore, and there was nothing else we could do for him. His imminent death was inevitable, and as much as it pained me, I don't think I let him go too soon at all. But a dog like Sport - who is dying by degrees just because he's old ... when is it too soon? Or too late? How do you KNOW?

Part of me hopes Tweed lives to be as old as Sport, and part of me hopes he doesn't at all. Mostly because as long as there is breath in his body, he will bark at me, and I cringe at the thought of 9 more years of his incessant barking. Wootie will undoubtedly live to be about 43 years old, just to torment me.

Having Sport here this week is like a living (<-- interpret that liberally) philosophy lesson for me. Also, it gives me a glimpse of Hell ... a Hell where I will be forced to beg dogs I love to eat all day long. He really is an obstinate old goat. He maybe can't move much or even really function, but he can sure still lie down in the worst direction possible for getting a decent photograph.

At SAINTS they make life and death decisions all the time. It must be heartbreaking for them. And sometimes, I imagine, the dogs make the decision themselves about when it's their time to go, which must also be heartbreaking for them. It's so easy to get attached to these little lives, isn't it?

Yesterday I took my dogs for a walk (but not Sport, that'd kill him for sure) and Tweed stepped on a whole branch of thorns - he was wearing a thorn shoe! And he limped right over to me, poked me in the knee with his nose and when I looked down, he held his paw right out to me to remove them for him. Can you imagine? We've finally reached that place. He's my old dog, and he loves me!!

Are you still on about that? doG you're boring.

Life's A Beach

2010-03-05T20:22:00.000-08:00

At least, it was today.

Your Food Lady has been a busy girl! She's working on all kinds of things these days, including a special thank you to the lovely folks who donated to keep me (and by extension, Wootube) up and running. Watch your mailboxes!!

SAINTS photo shoot number 2 took place this week, and I think it gave me carpal tunnel syndrome. That'sa lotta dogsa! There's a sneak preview for you here later in this episode ;-)

So today was the first day I've had some free time, and I took advantage of it to spirit some very pouty dogs off to the beach for a couple of hours. They said after a week of being largely ignored, it was a nice gesture, but not good enough.

I'm leavin' on that midnight train to Georgia...
as soon as it shows up.

In an historic first, Tweed agrees with Woo, and is also thinking of hopping a boxcar and abandoning me.

Dexter, however, is just hoping to throw himself under the first train that comes along (he's a teenager; they are notoriously full of angst)

Boys are dumb.
(Piper has the retention span of a goldfish, and has already forgotten she was annoyed with me)

Piper called me a name *pout*

But the allure of the ocean jollied them out of their pissy moods.

And there was rejoicing.

Hurrah!

And there was DumbBall

And there was irritating-Tweed-by-following-him-around-which-we-know-he-hates-but-we-do-it-anyway-just-to-be-pesty.

And then I had to stop with the photos, because my wrist was swearing at me. Now there are dog-shaped piles of sand making the floor look arty, and 4 soggy and tired dogs heaped around under furniture.

This leaves me some time to edit more SAINTS photos.

This time around we tried to simulate a studio effect. For Every. Single. Dog. It took a long time.

I say simulate because, of course, we have no studio. All we had were some white sheets, a reflector and many packages of tempting Snausages.

But I think the results were quite good, all things considered.

I can't see them, but I can sure frickin' smell them. Where are the damn Snausages?

I have some difficulty standing. If you were less cruel, and appreciated my Dexter-like ears, you'd give me a Snausage.

I don't need your stinkin' Snausages. But don't touch my monkey.

SnAUsaGEs! SNaUsagES! SNaUSagEs!

All in all, I think they turned out quite well! At least for most of the dogs. A few were not so cooperative, and in a couple of other cases, I just failed to get a really nice shot.

Carol told me this evening that Rose passed away this afternoon. I am now sad that I didn't get a really love photo of her during the session - a hard lesson to learn when photographing SAINTS dogs ... you may not get a second chance.

RIP Rose.

It's hard to stay sad, though, when Dexter The Canine Spider goes dancing past you like this:

I *definitely* got the weird puppy.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

2010-02-27T18:51:00.000-08:00

Today I was at S.A.I.N.T.S for one of many upcoming shoots of their wonderful and whimsical collection of special needs animals. Carol, the founder, and I are talking about collaborating on a photodocumentbookthing about this huge and amazing rescue she runs.

While I was there, I overheard the most *interesting* conversation. Apparently, someone came up with the most brilliant idea for a fundraiser - a fundraiser wherein they either raise $2000.00 .... or Carol shaves her head.

S.A.I.N.T.S. is an incredible sanctuary for senior and palliative and "unadoptable" animals. Over 130 of them call this little farm Home.

The old.

The Blind.

The maimed.

And the ... uh ...

Oh, it's Percy. Best. Cow. EVER.

All of them have found safety, love and physical and emotional nourishment in Carol's home.

That's why I don't think it's very nice to make Carol shave her head! She's already lost her sanity, she shouldn't have to lose her hair too ;-)

If you're interested in helping Carol keep her hair, email S.A.I.N.T.S. to find out how you can purchase a lock of her hair and give it a good home on her head!

And please give Daphne a cookie. She's starving.

Mommy will kick you until you're dead.

2010-02-26T09:27:00.000-08:00

Say whuuut?

Ha ha! I was having a conversation recently with an animal trainer friend of mine (whom I won't "out" here in case she doesn't want anyone to know about her personal vulgarities) and when I made a joke about Wootie's recall being something along the lines of "Fine! I hope you drown in that river, you willfully-deaf, disobedient, pile of orange garbage!" she told me that her newest response to *her* 'selective listening' dog was to promise to kick him until he was dead.

I *may* have laughed until I cried.

Abby doesn't find it all that funny.

This got me thinking about all the Frustration Phrases that have either come out of my mouth, or the mouths of my friends, with respect to their dogs over the years.

Why just last weekend, after the agility trial, I posted on Facebook something to the effect of how proud I was of Tweed, and that I'd left Piper in the dumpster behind the gas station on my way home. Which was indeed something I had threatened her with when we left the trial site.

She's just kidding. Right? *goes off to find Piper*

In agility class, Tweed expresses his enthusiasm by talking about how happy he is. Loudly, rhythmically and eternally. It's this great, booming, metronomic ARF ARF ARF ARF - you could play an entire symphony on the piano to this noise. He does it while other dogs are running, and it increases in frequency when he thinks it's his turn: WOOFWOOFWOOFWOOFWOOF. It. Drives me. INSANE.

Our class often runs late, and generally our last exercise is a timed run-off where we all try to run clean and beat everyone else. The next class is frequently coming in to set up while we are finishing up the Competition Run - and since I have two dogs who run 16" Specials, Piper is often near the beginning, and Tweed somewhere near the end, so they catch Tweed's run mostly. I don't know all the people in the next class, just a few of them.

Recently one friend in the late class told me that I scared the bejesus out of some of his classmates by hollering at Tweed "I will reach down your throat and remove your bark box with my fingers if you don't shut up!!"

You'd have to catch me like a tennis ball first!

(don't tell anyone we were playing Dumball, okay? Shhh.)

Food Lady let us play Dumball! Food Lady let us play Dumball!!

Dexter, I will shake you until your testicles drop.

(Hmm. Not a bad idea, actually.)

My friend Finn, whom I've blogged about before, is like the tattooed patron saint of needy animals. She's worked in animal welfare her whole life. She travels the world lending a hand to animals in crisis; she was in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina, she is regularly at New Hope's Casa Lupita in Nicaragua. Now she is heading off to Haiti in the aftermath of the horrible earthquakes that have devastated the Haitians. In other words, there is nobody more invested in the well being of the world's critters than Saint Finn.

And yet, Finn has been heard to tell her dogs that she will beat them repeatedly with a 2X4 before sending them back to the Pound. Loudly.

I think people need to have more of a sense of humour when it comes to their dogs sometimes. We get so caught up in being politically correct about how we train, how patient and tolerant we can be ... we forget sometimes that dogs can be really freakin' frustrating, and that it's okay to get irritated, and that without a healthy sense of humour about it, we might go insane. As long as you channel your frustration into funny ... that way, you're a lot less likely to *actually* take it out on your dog.

Last night Dexter ate my headphones for Skype. Whilst sitting on my toes, I might add, innocent as a Spring blossom, the little turd monkey. I *may* have told him he was getting the leftovers for breakfast, and that there would be no more real food coming his way, ever.

I don't know about you, Mr. Husky, but I think TFL just likes to hear the sound of her own voice. I don't like it much, and that's why I ignore her. What say we take her out?

Plus I think they learn something from it.

Last night in agility class, Piper nailed her weave entries every.single.run. That's never happened in the history of Piper. (Piper: "The dog full of GO, but empty of KNOW" ~ courtesy of Christine. hee hee!!) I like to believe the dumpster threat is responsible for this magical turn of events.

So what's your dirty little secret? What threats do you utter at your recalcitrant canines? Don't be ashamed - I won't judge you! After all, my K9 Mantra is:

More Beatings. Less Love.

Oh shut up already. And here's your stupid frisbee.

Wow

2010-02-25T08:47:00.000-08:00

So, umm, lots of you folks made me cry - and I'm not a crier either. Usually you'd have to pinch me really hard or something to get me to shed a tear, and then only if you ran away really fast afterward because if you pinch me, and I can catch you, I'll channel those tears into return pinches;-)

I cannot believe how much you all love this blog, and how kind you've all been. Really, I am overwhelmed.

So here's my situation, since you all deserve to know why I'm cryptically trying to sell my camera stuff.

You probably all know that last year I lost my job at a NPO I worked for when this stupid moron ugly co-worker, her even stupider and uglier husband and a pack of their intellectually challenged friends decided to stage a hostile takeover of the BoD through false means (me = still bitter). The new, fake, BoD terminated our positions, shut down the NPO and then a battle in court between them and the old, genuine BoD ensued that has tied them up in court since forever.

Piper hates the stupid ugly people.

Like any jobless person, I applied for Unemployment Benefits, full expecting to find another job right away - I always have. It's rare I don't get a job I apply for, historically speaking. But their timing could not have been worse because, umm, there are no jobs. The economy sucks goats. I have been unable to find gainful employment since. Hell, I can't even find crappy employment.

Sad Wootie is ... sad.

This month, my Unemployment Benefits ran out. So I have no job, no money, and no safety net, because I was not exactly earning a fortune at my last job (the curse of doing Good Works for a living). I am dead serious about not being able to pay the rent - it's no euphemism, or exaggeration. I have sold everything I have to sell, including my beloved bicycles, just to get by these last few months. My friends have been just stellar, paying for my agility classes and trial entry fees, donating dog food to my hungry canines ... but I cannot continue to let people fund my life!

That's in part why I am so reluctant to put a tip jar on the blog. People have been so very generous already, I feel downright naughty accepting more help. I'll beg shamelessly for rescue, but it's awfully hard for me to ask for help for me.

But not for Tweed.

I also don't want to make any of YOU pay for *my* blog! I do this because I love it - it's so much fun to chronicle the many (mis)adventures of my dogs and the fact that you all get to enjoy it with me is just a bonus for me. Your comments often make me laugh harder than you probably do at the blog itself. You give me back as much I give you. That's what makes this whole blog thing work, imo.

Lastly, I don't want anyone to think I'm plugging for money. There are so many disingenuous people in this world with a sob story - I wasn't trying to elicit sympathy from anyone by trying to sell my camera gear. I just want to pay the bills, and the camera et al is all I have left, really.

But I won't sell it, not right now - not because I never intended to in the first place, but rather because several people have offered to buy the whole shebang and rent it back to me again until I've paid it off again. I think losing my cameras would be like losing an arm, so I can't pass an offer like that up if I can avoid it (because without my arm, how would I beat Wootie for being so BAD?). So if you've emailed me about what I've got to sell and not received an answer, that's why - not because it was a sympathy scam.

I would love for this blog to make money, I really would. But because I started this blog for my own selfish enjoyment, I would - and still don't - have any idea how to go about making that happen. I am completely open to suggestions. I am no entrepreneur. I'm just a girl with a camera and too many dogs for any sane person. But I definitely don't want it to make money at the expense of any of YOU. I won't charge for subscriptions ... my dogs are whackos for free, you should get to appreciate their whacko-ness for free too!

But pay ME, and I might give you another ear.

The many many emails, atop the many many comments here, that I have received are trying to assure me that my 'art' such as it were, is worth paying for. I really struggle with this, friends, but my protests get drowned out by your arguments. And I'm tired of Pia calling me an asshole! ;-)

So I acquiesce, and I'll put the tip jar here on the site. I'd never even heard of such a thing until you all collectively bellowed it at me.

If you want to donate, I love you and I'm deeply humbled. If you don't, I love you for reading the blog. And you have NO idea how much Tweed loves an audience.

ETA - I don't know what I am doing wrong with the donate button? I just followed the paypal instructions. As you may have figured out, I'm quite techno-stupid. What's the secret here?

Okay wait - more Edit ... I think this will work. The only paypal account I have is the one associated with the rescue, so if this works, maybe just add a note that it's not a rescue donation so the funds don't get mixed up? ARGH! It's already complicated ;-)

If this helps - just use the address sheenas@shaw.ca It's all connected to the same account, I think, but that address differentiates it from the rescue one...right?

In return I promise to buckle down and try to find a way to make what I love to do pay for my simple little life. A friend and fan is hooking me up with someone who apparently knows how to make websites make money. Another friend has suggested I check out a government run self employment program for sad sacks like me with an idea but no idea how to execute it. I will also look into selling prints or other items made with my camera - if anyone is familiar with setting up webstores or similar, and wants to help me get that off the ground, I'm all ears (kind of like Dexter). And of course, if any of you fine folks in the Lower Mainland can hook me up with an actual job job, I'm all about the networking and will take any help I can get.

I don't know what else to say, except that I promise to try and repay you all for your kindness by being funny and taking funny photos. A little birdie tells me I'm not too bad at it, after all.

No, not that birdie.

But wouldn't it be totally creepy if, like, it did?

Camera gear for sale

2010-02-24T10:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers,

I find myself in financial straits and desperate times call for desperate measures.

Wootube and 365puppy have been great fun for me, and hopefully for you. But all good things must come to an end.

Maybe one of you wants to take up the gauntlet of providing fun posts and decent photos to the world. If so, I have a camera package for you!

Please email me for a complete list of the items I have available. I prefer to sell it as a package. The Food Lady needs to pay the rent :(

I will miss you all.

Super Woo!

2010-02-22T12:49:00.000-08:00

Actually, Wootie has nothing to do with this post, I just liked the photograph and couldn't be bothered to think up a decent segue.

The real Super Dog in today's installment is my Bestest Boy, Tweed.

Who, me?

Yes, Mr. T - I am talking about you!!

We trialed on Saturday and Tweed made me so very proud! His accomplishments this weekend were:

Steeplechase - 1st place and a Q
Masters Jumpers - 1st place and a Q
Masters Standard - 1st place and a Q
Masters Gamblers - 2nd place and a Q
Challenge class - 1st place and a Q

He went 5 for 6, as I got slightly out of position in his last Standard run and he dropped a bar. He was still several seconds faster than his competitors, but the 5 faults meant no Q.

Nobody could touch him in Challenge; the Q time is determined by the fastest dog, and he blew everybody away. It was the nicest run I think he and I have ever had. It *even* got us a compliment from the Sadist - not even a backhanded one, an actual, genuine compliment!

Udda udda udda - whuuut?

I know Tweed, I was surprised as well. It's such a rare thing.

I've been told it's not nice to brag, but I don't care! Tweed and I worked real hard to reach this level of teamwork, so I'm braggin' for both of us. Tweed's a winner!! I only wish I had gotten someone to video some of those runs.

I *heart* Tweed!

Piper ran 4 times in Advanced too, and she didn't let me down - she messed up every single run and didn't have a hope in hell of getting a qualifying run. More or less what I was expecting - she's a pretty thing, but running on fumes, not cerebral power.

Piper fetch me a stick with which to beat you.

OKAY!!! YAY!

You owe me $56.00 in wasted entry fees.

Ummm ... can I pay you in sticks? Here's my first installment.

Piper is officially pulled from trialing until we get some of our shit together. The Sadist says Piper really wants to please me and I get too frustrated with her, which shuts her down. It's hard to imagine her being shut down whilst she is at the same bouncing up and down on my toes like a cork in a stormy ocean. If that's shut down, what would she do if she were really happy - jump right inside my skin??? And also, if she wants to make me so damn happy, then why doesn't she get the hell off my cleats and go take a freakin' obstacle?

Really, Piper's two biggest challenges are:

1. Distance - Piper is attached to my cleats by an invisible elastic that only stretches a tiny bit. I thought with time the elasticity would develop some give, like a well used hair tie, but it's pretty damn resilient!

2. Weave pole entries. Piper's brain is like a nervous frog in a hot frying pan, and even though there are weave poles set up on the kitchen, she can't find the entry to save her life. We're going to go back and retrain the weaves using the 2X2 method - has anyone successfully retrained weaves this way? I keep hearing they are a great way to teach them, but stressful for the dog to relearn. I'm hoping that since she doesn't seem to understand them now, retraining won't be too confusing for her.

Oh well, I'm still strutting around all happy-like thanks to Tweed's glorious Saturday. Nationals, here we come!

My Kingdom For A Decent Dog Park

2010-02-18T14:43:00.000-08:00

Even though we have 10 acres, it gets boring wandering about all by ourselves sometimes - it's pretty isolated out here. We often hit the park up the road, where we've made lots of new friends, but I make a point of trying out the various nearby parks we find on the internetz. Yesterday, we went to the worst one yet ... we only lasted 30 minutes at that one.

Then Ace's dad tells us that there is an off leash beach in White Rock. A beach?! Ohboy! Being former West Enders, we really miss the ocean a lot. White Rock sounded like it'd be far away, but I timed it - only took us 15 minutes or so to drive there.

Woot!

And by "Woot" I mean Wootie was happy to be back in a large body of water.

Ahhh, this is the life.

He was so happy, he couldn't even keep his feet on the ground.

He didn't even care if he caught The Wootie Toy or not. Which is good cuz, umm, he didn't.

Tweed + beach = bliss.

Piper + ocean = who-cares-as-long-as-TFL-throws-the-ball.

Even Dexter seemed to like the ocean, and water is NOT his favourite surface.

He was a little hesitant at first ....

... but soon he'd made himself at home with the ocean.

Speaking of Dexter, I've been observing him a little more closely lately to see if we can't get to the root of his assholiness.

Someone had suggested that perhaps his issue was being on leash, so I took him to the park several times on a leash to see what he did. Which was nothing different. Friendly to everyone he met on leash or off.

But he did do something in my living room the other day that gives me a little bit of a clue - he snapped at Wootie who got between him and his "job" (we were working on fetching to hand from a short distance). He was waiting for me to toss the ball and Wootie wandered by and got a snap in the face for it. A little later on, Piper (gasp!) got one was well.

At the park, he largely ignores other dogs, though will greet them politely for the most part, but he's not too interested in them. He will infrequently snark at a dog who is too in his face, but I expect this from all my dogs, who like calm greetings and detest rambunctious ones. However, if he thinks something fun and exciting is about to happen involving people, he gets very bitchy with other dogs. This is different from being *involved* in something fun and exciting though - like today at the beach, I was throwing the frisbee for everyone and a certain Schnauzer decided to obsess on Dexter, who was - as usual - creeping around in "work" mode trying to keep an eye on the frisbee and all three other dogs at once. Several times the Schnauzer jumped on him, got in his face and barked right in his eyeballs without so much as a blink of a response from Dexter, because Dex was concentrating very hard. And when he finally did snark at the irritating Schnauzer, it was ever so brief.

So it seems to me that "Relaxed" Dexter is friendly, and "Working" Dexter is largely oblivious, but "Anticipating" Dexter is a right rip roarin' bitch. I do wonder if at agility class he is so keyed up that his nerves are on edge - he sure acts calm, but I know he's dying to get to 'work' (I keep putting "work" in quotes because it's his definition of a 'job' not necessarily mine) and he wants nothing to do with anyone who may interfere with that.

I suppose this makes him a workaholic.

I'm going to take him out to play with some of those same puppies from class at the trial this weekend to see if he treats them differently in class than out of it. That might give me some insight.

Why's Dexter such a turd monkey?

Who cares? He's boring anyway.

Is that a rabbit?

I think we'll be spending a lot of our free time at East Beach this summer. We are all just so happy to have found a nearby ocean again.

Yippee!

Single White Female

2010-02-15T12:52:00.001-08:00

Srsly. Dexter is not just trying to be like Piper, he is trying to BECOME Piper.

It's real good for Piper to have a buddy she can play with. Tweed's too scared of her to play with any regularity, and Wootie likes to torment her, but has no attention span to keep up a good game for any length of time. Also, I'm not even really sure he speaks border collie very well.

Of course, he still likes to indulge in old habits from time to time.

But Dexter speaks Piper's language, man. They have invented this ridiculous game where they run parallel to one another about 20 feet apart, usually with one of them up on the dyke, and the other in the field below. They'll both drop into a crouch and eyeball each other, then one takes off and so does the other one and then they're racing like Nascar.

And, just like in Nascar, sometimes they collide.

I have lectured Dexter on the importance of becoming his own person and not trying to borrow the attributes of another to form his personality, but he's not listening.

Shut up. I'm not listening.

Sometimes he tries Mr. Woo on for size...

...but mostly he prefers to adopt Piper's personality.

It's getting so that I can't tell them apart. Aside from Piper's hillbilly teeth, that is.

But one thing Dexter is, that Piper is not, is a DICKHEAD. He's becoming a real shit again with other puppies in his age range. Yesterday at class he embarrassed me to no end by snapping at Nixie several times, biting Chili in the face and making ugly face and snapping noises at Joey. None of this is okay! And I'm not sure where it's coming from either - Dexter goes to a dogpark almost every single day of his life and has mingled with hundreds of other dogs and he does just peachy, greeting dogs politely. He's been socialized up the wazoo and has not had bad experiences with other dogs at all. He let Sean walk into his house and make himself at home without issue and he plays with Ginny all the time. But I'm not really sure what to do with his new asshole-to-other-dogs business he's decided to take up. What do you think?

Sometimes I feel like Dexter moved in and replaced Wootie. When we go for our morning walk through the fields, Mr. Woo vanishes, but I still have The Three Muskateers.

Apparently, we are just too boring for Wootie-Mac and the jet setting lifestyle he wishes to lead.

He thinks if Piper and Dexter want to be one-dog-same-dog, that's fine with him.

More time for hunting wabbits.

Exercise Induced Collapse in Border Collies

2010-02-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

If you have a border collie that has episodes like Piper does the University of Minnesota wants to hear from you. Check out their website for information on submitting samples. Your dog does NOT need a pedigree to be included in the study.

"An exercise-induced collapse syndrome similar to the EIC syndrome in retrievers has been recognized in Border Collies and may be called Border Collie collapse (BCC) or exercise induced hyperthermia. It is most common in dogs used for working stock but has also been seen in dogs training for agility or flyball competitions and in dogs repetitively retrieving a tennis ball. Affected dogs are normal at rest and seem healthy but become abnormal after five to fifteen minutes of strenuous activity, particularly in warm weather. Some dogs will develop a stiff, stilted gait with short strides and others will become wobbly and then collapse. Some dogs develop a balance problem or are mentally abnormal during an episode, and a few dogs have died during collapse.

This syndrome has not yet been well characterized so we are uncertain whether this is a metabolic, muscular or nervous system disorder. Affected dogs are negative for the dynamin 1 mutation causing EIC in Labrador Retrievers.

If your dog has had 2 or more episodes of collapse we would like your help as we try to describe the syndrome and search for the genetic cause. Please take the time to fill out the questionnaire and send us a DNA sample and pedigree from your affected dog. If you have a video of your dog having an episode we would like to have the opportunity to view that as well."

Ode to an aging dog

2010-02-11T11:10:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe that in just a few short months, Tweed will be 10 years old. To the unfamiliar eye, he looks like a young adult dog, and nobody ever guesses he's more than 5 years old. Even I forget he's not 5 years old.

Watching him age has been both beautiful and painful. I did not get the chance to embrace Briggs' aging process ... he was an old soul from the time he was small, and his health problems aged him faster than he deserved, or I could believe. He was always an old dog, to me, and I lost him when he was not yet 11 years old. I always felt robbed of his twilight years, but also, somehow, robbed of his youth.

And Tweed is not Briggs. Briggs lived his while life asking me, "What now, Boss?" but from the time he was small, Tweed only ever asked me "Why?" Why should he sit there, stand on that, leave that alone, stop barking, be nice to the cat? "What's in for me?" he always wanted to know. He still does.

Tweed has always questioned everything - he's a born skeptic. And he's cautious, about everything. Never was Tweed one to run headfirst into a tree after a ball, like Piper; never has he skidded to a stop throwing up mud answering his recall, like Dexter. His steps are measured, his enthusiasm always tempered with reserve. Strangers, new places, foreign objects, new commands - he's been cautious about them all. He's not like Woo, who exists only to please himself. Quite the opposite, Tweed has always wanted to be good, but first he just wanted to know why. If I've failed him in any way, it's that it took me ages to recognize that he really is a very good dog. In many ways, he's smarter than Briggs ever was, and the smartest dog I know.

I'm an impatient trainer; my temper is quick, my impulse control needs work. I struggle with it often. And Tweed's questions always drove me crazy - "Just do it!" I'd seethe, and Tweed would tilt his head at me and ask "But why?"

It was not until after Briggs' death that Tweed began to shine for me. Although he was a difficult dog in so many ways, Briggs was so easy for me because he always wanted to do what I asked. Briggs was a foot soldier, a loyal subject, who could not even fathom asking "Why." It saved him from himself, and his demons, but at the time I didn't see it as a survival mechanism; I only recognized it as Super Dog, and more robust, more rounded dogs seemed petty irritations to me. But when I no longer had anything to compare Tweed to but a memory, I began to see what an amazing dog he really is.

And this is what Tweed has taught me - forgiveness. He forgave me, instantly, for assuming he was a lesser dog than Briggs. He never lost faith in me, even when I had so little in him. It pains me that for so many years, I failed to see how many times the "Why?" I saw in Tweed was really TRY. He tries so hard, he's full of try. Once I learned how answer his questions, he has given me more back that I have ever deserved.

Years ago, I was walking around a lake with my two red dogs, and Briggs stepped on a big, fat thorn that shoved itself way up into his pad. He yelped, held up his foot and limped over to me - held out his paw and trusted I would take care of it. I pulled the pointy barb out of his flesh and tossed it to the side of the path where Tweed, meandering by, immediately stepped on it. He screamed, tucked down his tail and took off on three legs - unlike Briggs, he didn't come to me to save him. And I used to think that illustrated the difference between my two dogs, and was such a clear indication of why Briggs was so superior to his little brother. I was too selfish to see that all it illustrated was how much less I valued him.

Today, while we walked along the dykes we came to the place where we have to cross a sea of boulders - about 50 feet long, and 20 feet wide, there's no other way to get to the other side. As the pups and Piper danced across the uneven surface, Tweed picked his way carefully along behind me, stepping where I stepped, choosing the same flat surfaces where he saw my feet go. He trusted me to lead him safely across this small challenge, and it made me so glad to see how far we had come.

And then he fell - he lost his footing and slipped. He went down rather heavily, and two of his legs disappeared into crevices, trapping him with his chest pressed against the jagged edge of a big boulder where he tried to balance. And it was then that I realized Tweed is getting old. I've seen Piper fall on these same boulders and recover herself before she's fully hit the rocks, but Tweed went down and he stayed down. He's not 5 years old anymore - he's almost 10 years old, and his body knows it, even if I don't.

For a second or two he struggled and I thought "don't panic Tweed, don't - you'll break your legs if you do!" and then he turned his head and looked at me. He just met my eyes for a long second and I could see he was asking, again, "Why?" But not "Why is my body failing me? Why am I getting old?" Rather, he was just asking me, "Why are you just standing there, you flippin' idiot, can't you see I'm stuck?"

"Sorry, sorry!" I said and picked my way across the rocks back the way I'd come. I bent down and carefully lifted him out of his little prison and set him back on a flat surface. He wagged his tail and stuck his nose in my pocket. "Cookie please, that was really traumatic."

I laughed. Tweed loves it when he thinks he's been funny, and he barked back. Of course I gave him a cookie. I'm looking forward to giving him cookies for barking at me for many more years to come.

He's such a good dog, my Tweed is.

(I promise not to make these long winded, sort of maudlin posts very often)

I HAZ

2010-02-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

ALL THE EAR SETS IN THE UNIVERSES!!!

The answers you seek

2010-02-07T17:09:00.000-08:00

EvenSong said...

Inquiring minds need to know: with all of Piper's energy focused on making mad teeth at a healthy Tweed (YEAH!), what happened when sweet little Dexter, of the half-mast ear, landed upon her?!?

Nothing! He did not land on her, as he's not allowed to do that. He tends to land beside her, and then get run over as she barrels through him :)

***************

Blue said...

Would you mind sharing the recipe for the fish brownies? My Aussie LOVES fish.

Sure! But first, the history: The Sadist, aka my agility teacher, is unnaturally competitive. It must be an Austrian thing. He is even competitive about his dog treats. So every class, he tries to lure my dogs away from me with his own home made dog treats and then gets all puffed up and happy when it works. Of course, he could probably lure them away with Elmer's Glue, because my dogs are gluttons and will eat just about anything. I don't have the heart to tell him this, plus he wouldn't be able to hear me over the sound of his own crowing.

Anyhoo, I am trying to improve my treats, because I am going to lure his dog Biscuit away from him and replace her with Wootie. I make the ubiquitous "dog brownie" with whatever happens to be in my pantry. I use liver, chicken gizzards - whatever. At the moment, I am using salmon because I have lots and lots of salmon (thanks Jez!). Canned salmon works best, but ground up salmon works fine too.

This is very complicated, so pay close attention.

You'll need: salmon, a couple of eggs, some flour, some baking powder and some baking soda. I can't tell you how much, because I am a free spirit when it comes to baking or cooking. I throw it all in the food processor until it's lump-free, then gag whilst spatula-ing it out into a baking pan (a pan which, I should add, is only used for dog baking. For that matter, so is the food processor). I fight with it for a bit until it's sort of smooth, then I throw it in the oven at either 225 or 300 (because I always forget which temperature is the right one) and leave it there until I notice a smell bothering me and remember that I'm baking dog cookies.

Voila! You can make them with anything! You can use ground beef if you want, and sometimes I add parmesan cheese, or just grated cheese, garlic powder or any other spice I grab out of the cupboard. The stinkier the better.

I smell cookies

Anonymous said...

I, too, have one pupster who loves to go off hunting. Sometimes she is successful-yyyyyeeuck.

Anyway, have you tried finding a hole or whatever it is Woo is after and then calling him to show him your most excellent find? In chipmunk season I actually have better recall because it is believed this food lady has mystical powers to control the appearance of chippy holes.

That would probably work, except Wootie knows where the best hunting grounds are, and they aren't accessible by humans. Today he returned from another hunt bleeding once again from his ear and ALSO from his Flamboyance!

I've told him to be more careful, but he's not listening.

Anonymous said...

Oh Food Lady you just scared the livin beejeesuz outa me. Just looked at That'll Do Rescue and saw a pup called DEXTER up for adoption. Had to check and check limb, by limb, tail, ears and markings to make sure it wasn't your/our Dexter.

Well of COURSE not! As if I'd give away my cutiepatootie puppywuppy! And as if I'd give some other dog his same name! THAT Dexter was named by the shelter, so nothing I could do about it, unfortunately. The only thing he really shares with TOD (The Original Dexter) is really loooong legs. Otherwise, they aren't very mix-upable.

Other Dexter is not available for adoption yet, but when he is, you'll be able to read more about him here.

Lastly, those of you who enjoyed Finn's Sarna Dog Chronicles blog will want to follow her to Haiti via RabidGoats. Happy reading!

Ya'll didn't tell me

2010-02-06T15:41:00.000-08:00

you were magical blog followers!!

All your juju and good thoughts have worked wonders. Tweed has been limp-free since Thursday. I upped his exercise a bit and even with running, jumping and some (Ru-free) hiking, he's weight bearing on all legs, and no limping at all. He gets to go back to class next week. Hazzah!

Look how happy he is! Piper doesn't look so happy though...

I shall reward you all your efforts with totally unstaged (ha ha) photos of dogs in a blueberry field on a sunny day!

This is not my good side. Beeyotch. Lucky for you I'm in a good mood.

It'd be nice if his tail was the same colour as the rest of him. Every summer it bleaches out, and doesn't catch up to his darker coat until Spring, just in time for the process to start all over again.

This is Piper's impression of a carpenter's level.

Mr. Woo = two functions only: "Sit" and "Hunt." He managed to offload his bear bell in some undergrowth about 4 days after I implemented it. But we have been working very hard on stuffing his face with homemade fish brownies every time he answers a recall, and I'm getting about 50% success. Which is better than 0%, which is what it had deteriorated to,

Dexter is only half interested in what I have to say, apparently.

Anyway, thanks again for all your marvelous healing thoughts!! We are so happy to have a fully functioning Tweed again :)

Now I have to go throw the ball for Miss Piper.

I could blog about this dog

2010-02-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

all day, and I don't even know his name!

He's a border collie X Aussie, like Tweed, and he shares Tweed's passion for making funny shaking faces.

But he is much, much funnier than Tweed can ever hope to be.

ha ha!

Tweed is not speaking to me at the moment.

F*ck off.

You may recall a couple of blog posts ago I mentioned off the cuff that Tweed had injured himself whilst chasing Ruger through the forest in Belcarra.

Well, he is still injured. For about two days he was a tripod, and then his left hind leg came down, but while his toes are brushing the earth, his foot is by no means supporting very much weight at all. We went off to see our friendly new veterinarian who diagnosed him with a serious case of "Uh, dunno."

He may or may not have arthritis in his knee. He may or may not have a sprain. He may or may not have a partial cruciate tear. He may or may not ever play agility again.

(*insert sad face here*)

As he is still not weight bearing on that leg, he is restricted to on leash walks only, lots of rest and is on some anti-inflammatories for 14 days. Should he still be gimpoid by the end of this regime (and we are on day 8 of the problem) we should probably sedate him and x-ray the knee.

The on-leash business is making him Very Angry.

F*ck you.

While his siblings romp, frisk, frolic and cavort, he plods along behind me in silent fury.

Yay! Running is So Much FUN!

Even strangers are mocking him.

The rage is building. Today he did something he's never done before - he slipped his lead while I was preparing to take a photo of someone else, and ran off!

GO F*CK YOURSELF!

He did the zoomies for about 3 minutes before I used Mad Mommy Voice to full effect, and then he hobbled back to me and let me re-leash him.

I feel really badly for him. And I feel really sorry for me - my hopes of placing high at Nationals just ran off with Tweed. And I feel really badly for all of you, because if he needs TPLO surgery, the only way I can conceive of paying for it is by selling off my camera gear.

It's a sucky situation all around. But hey, there's always a different way to look at things, right? I mean, at least I'm not bleeding from my head.

But I guess that's because I DON'T STICK MY HEAD REPEATEDLY IN THORN BUSHES.

*ahem*

What?

Really he's bleeding from his ear tips onto his head, because those ridiculously flappy things get caught on the thorns all the time.

And speaking of ears, I do believe Dexter...

... has been coveting Piper's ears.

That's because he wuvs his big sister.

They're really good friends. They're always togeth - GET OUT OF THE SHOT, TWEED!*

It's difficult, being so sexy.

NOW DO WHAT THE FOOD LADY SAYS, AND STAY ON YOUR LEASH, TWEED!

*Because I know someone is going to point out that Tweed should be on-leash in that photo too, I would just like to say that we are being very strict about the leash business, but Tweed needed to go "Number Two" and he didn't want to do it on leash, so he was trundling off into the bushes to take of that - at a *walk*. The other off-leash photos were all taken when he slipped his lead and pulled a runner. I'm taking his knee problem very seriously, because I want him to heal up!

Happy Birthday to my Big Red Dog

2010-01-29T09:07:00.000-08:00

If my Briggs had lived, he'd be 13 today.

This is a photo a friend of mine took at Briggs' first agility trial. He was about 2 years old here. The photo is framed and sits in my office.

He was such a fine specimen of a dog. Dexter has big shoes to fill.

Happy Birthday Briggs. We miss you every day.

Bell of the Ball

2010-01-26T15:51:00.000-08:00

Hello. My name is Mr. Tricky Woo. And I have to wear this goofy and irritating bear bell on my collar now.

HAH! Take that, Wootie.

While Jingles tinkles merrily away on our walks, he also cannot disappear because the absence of the ringing is rather apparent. As he starts to wander off, he gets called back - see, Wootie will only take off if he's already out of sight. But if you notice him leaving, he pretends he wasn't going anywhere in the first place. This is one VERY sly dog.

Since I put them bell on him on Sunday, he has been remarkably present.

We didn't even lose him on the hike today. He did try to scuttle off into the bushes once or twice, but since there were three humans, who were SUPER ANNOYED by his bell, one of us always noticed when the tinkling started to fade from earshot.

Well this sucks.

Bear bells: available for about $4.00 from your local outdoor sporting goods store.

Oh look, it's Ru. And Tweed's behind him.

We go hiking once a week in the deserted forests in the Belcarra area with Cheryl, who is a dogwalker, and goes there every day for her job. That's a cool job. But she has Ru, a TDBCR adoptee, who has a reputation for "breaking" dogs. While Ru is allegedly an old dog, he outruns everyone on the hike, every single day. Any dog foolish enough to try and keep up with him ends up a crippled gimp at the end of the day.

Not that I'm naming any names.

The forest can be scary. For it contains borderjacks.

... borderjacks who clone themselves, bigger than life.

How'd he do that?

Oh look, it's Ru again. And Tweed too.

And again.

Hey look at that ... again!

The result is The Tri Pod Formerly Known As Tweed. He's totally gimped this afternoon :(

Tweed's dumb. I'm pretty. Take a picture of me.

Look who is almost the same size as Piper!

Holycow!

Rogue says she is also pretty, and I should take a photo of her too.

We are still accepting guesses as to what her breed mix might be.

But be careful, for if you guess wrong ...

... the borderjack cometh.

Let Freedom Reign

2010-01-22T16:58:00.000-08:00

We went to Campbell Valley off leash park today for some Big Air.

We were a little out of practice.

First we got some small air.

Then some FAIL air.

And a combination of the two.

Finally we got some Big Air.
(he did catch this on the way down)

We were really having a super good time!

And then ....

I saw this.

A couple minutes later, I saw this:

A few moments after that, I lifted my head and all I saw ...

was this.

For Wootie had, yet again, vanished.

Ever since his Runaway Woo episode a couple of weeks ago, Operation Scare The Shit Out OF The Food Lady has broadened in scope considerably. It now encompasses sub-operation Make TFL Really Stinkin' Angry, as well as Mission Return Wootie To The Pound. IOW, Mr. Woo is channeling The Littlest Hobo and is making a career out of wandering off - at high speed.

First we lost him while hiking in Belcarra earlier this week. We had a massive pack of dogs with us (here's about half of them)

...including my newest favourite, Fonzie.

and still, the little furry orange bastid vanished into thin air and was gone for the longest time.

Two nights later, I let all the dogs out for a last pee at midnight and all but Woo returned. I spent half an hour wandering through farmer's fields in my pajamas and a pair of gumboots, with a city girl's flashlight, whisperscreaming his name and getting nada in reply. When I got home, I found him peering out at me from behind my van and when he saw me coming he took off down the driveway and tried to hurl himself through the solid matter known as my front door. Because he KNOWS damn well I'm comin' for him.

There are so many ironies at work here. It is ironic that I have put reliable recalls on about 200 foster dogs in 10 years, but can't get Mr. Woo to so much as flick an ear in my direction when I call him. It is ironic that last night in agility class, I gave Mr. Woo to Auntie Fiona to run as she was down a dog, and he couldn't run a whole course with her because it was "too far from Mummy" and he kept running back to sit on my lap. It is ironic that my 5 month old puppy listens better than my 4 year old dog.

*shakes fist at Woo*

MORE BEATINGS, LESS LOVE!!!

Ha ha. You don't mean that.

Dude, you really shouldn't try her patience. You are going to be in so much trouble.

Did I mention he is long-line wise? He won't go anywhere if he's on a long line (which, incidentally, he sports when he goes out for potties now. The other end is bolted to the porch, until we get ourselves a fence) and, in fact, he won't go anywhere if he knows I'm watching him. But if I take my eyes off him for 10 seconds, he's gone like a bat outta hell and he doesn't come back until he's darn well good and ready. And what can I say? I don't have Dexter's eye, I can't watch him constantly.

This behaviour is all brand new - it either coincides with Dexter's arrival, or our move to the Sticks. I think it's the latter - Wootie was born to hunt, and the countryside is just too full of opportunity for him to indulge his passions.

Neither food, nor the Wootie Toy, holds his attention any longer.

How long do I have to keep this up? I wanna hunt me some wabbits.

Ahem. *I* come when I am called. *I* win the competition run in class every Thursday. *I* am a good dog. Pay attention to me. ME.

Did some say RECALL? I'm coming!!

Me too! Me too!

Oh well. I guess I'm not the worst trainer in the world. After all, I've taught Dexter to play with a frisbee!

Dexter, bring it here.

I said, BRING IT HERE!

Just kidding. Dexter is very good at fetch now.

Piper: Nature's Transit System

So ... anyone got a GPS system they want to lend me? I can't track Woo. Maybe a satellite can!!!

Portrait of a fat dog

2010-01-19T21:36:00.000-08:00

separated from the objects of his desire by both a fence, and Uncle Ruedi's stock stick :)

Yes, Ruedi taught Wootie (weird, that rhymes) not to chase sheep!

My camera is in the shop, hence the lack of updates. But I did want to let MC Hamster's fans know that last night, he expired in his sleep :( He was old - like a million in hamster years - and it was his time to go.

RIP MC Hamster.

Tried a new dog park

2010-01-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

The one where the fattest dogs in the world all hang out.

See?

Oh, making fun of my girth again are we? How exciting. *YAWN*

Ha ha. But seriously, compared to the other dogs we saw at the park, Wootie is practically svelte. Actually, to be fair, Wootie isn't really THAT fat at all. He is *very* hairy, and has a chest like a beer keg, but you can quite easily feel his ribs. If you felt just his ribs, you'd think he needed to lose a whopping pound or possibly two. It's his back that you can't find, up around his shoulders. It's buried in so much hair and lard that it may actually be at home in the toybox as much as you can prove it's in his body where it's supposed to be.

Or maybe he's keeping it in his magnificent Flamboyance(tm).

There were so many obese - not just fat, we're talking easy-chair-plus-an-ottoman obese - dogs at the park that it made me cringe. One border collie we ran across was so huge I could easily have dined on his kitchen table of a back.

I had this predictable conversation with the owner as I was leaving.

Him: "Are those ALL your dogs???"

Me: "Yes."

Him: "Do you do flyball with them?"

Me: "No."

Him. "Oh. We tried flyball with our dog, but he didn't seem to like it."

Me: "That's because he's 30 lbs too fat to run or jump. He'd probably enjoys sports a lot more if he wasn't shaped like a beach ball."

Him: mouth agape.

I know, I know - I should mind my own business. But I can't help it! That poor dog was so fat he couldn't even keep up with Dexter, who trips over his own giraffe legs every 4.5 seconds. He'd only just walked into the park and he was already panting like crazy. It's just plain sad.

Never mind the Jack Russel that looked like he'd swallowed the aforementioned border collie. Oy.

And it wasn't just fat dogs that made this new park kinda creepy; there was the unnecessarily high (and ungodly) percentage of Cesar Milan Wannabes who kept poking their dogs and going "Zzzzt." WTF is that supposed to do anyway? Is there a magic noise-making button on dogs that I've missed all these years, that makes your dog do EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS DOING ALREADY when you push/zzzt it?

And then there was this dog (also really fat):

His owner opened the gate, sat down on a bench and screamed "RUN RUN!" at the dog, who immediately took off and started doing laps around the park for no particular reason - he was not chasing anyone or anything, he was just literally running in a big circle over and over and over. It was the exact behaviour we see in, and try to train out of, rescue dogs who run fence lines in their yards. The dog basically ran non stop for about 20 minutes, literally running a trench in the soft ground, until the owner hollered "That's enough!" and the poor thing collapsed under a table.

I have never seen anything like it.

Fortunately, aside from the big play space, the park also has a shortish network of paths in the woods, so we wandered away before my brain short circuited.

Annnd then I made my dogs pose on stuff.

Which Wootie really likes.

See?

But Tweed can take it or leave it.

Who wants me to stop making dogs pose on stuff?

Excuse me, but I'd like you to stop making me pose on stuff.

Oh GAWD. PLEASE stop making me pose on stuff! I beg of you.

YAY! Thanks, Food Lady!
(you can see the bare patch on her chest I had to shave to take care of that hot spot. It's healed up very nicely. Hibitane cream is a gift from the heavens.)

When Dexter started single-pawedly trying to demolish the forest

... we headed back to the open field.

I'm just going to take this tree with me.

And then I caught Piper doing something shameful.

GASP! Piper, are you playing DumbBall???

What? No! What?

I was just taking this hockey ball to the, umm, puddle. It's thirsty. Yeah, that's it.

Now I'm just going to put it back here under this tree where I found it. Totally innocent. I swear.

Speaking of puddles, guess which two dogs got a feet-and-belly bath when we got home?

So this is what Wootie would look like if I punched him really hard in the face and then washed him in hot water. Interesting. I wonder if that would require thumbs?

Another WIN for TDBCR dogs!

2010-01-10T10:53:00.001-08:00

Former TDBCR dog Zephyr takes the Silver medal in the Weave Pole Competition at the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge in Whistler, BC!!

This is from today's Province Newspaper. Congratulations Dana and Zephyr!!

Rescue dogs can do ANYTHING!!!

More Photos:

On the Podium!

Zephyr in action during the disc dog competition

How to hypnotize a Jack Russell Terrier

2010-01-03T18:12:00.000-08:00

Too bad it doesn't work to stop the barking.

We paid a visit to Hayward Lake today.

It's got some groovy scenery.

But the beach was too small, and in terrible light, to get any really good photos.

So sometimes, you have to rely on comic relief.

Ruger was no help in this department, as he is Very Serious About Fetching Sticks. No room for fun, k?

Well, maybe a *little* room

I had ONE shot at a group photo, before Dexter and Cal took off. Notice how Cheryl's dogs are looking at her, and all of mine are ignoring me (except Dexter, who is trying to silently convince me to give his release command)

I know why Piper is ignoring me ... I am making her wear a t-shirt. Last night I found a gross, disgusting, inflamed and painful looking hot spot on her chest. After cleaning it up, I put one of my old t-shirts on her to protect it and keep her from scratching. She hates me now.

At least Cal still loves me. And by me, I mean the cookies in my pocket.

DID SOMEBODY SAY COOKIE?!?!?!

Country Life

2009-12-31T16:32:00.000-08:00

So I was driving down a country road today when I spied something out of the driver's side window.

I had exactly 11 seconds to stop and take a couple of photos before I had to continue on since traffic was coming up behind me, and there were no shoulders on road, and I was pretty far away so these are heavily cropped. So I apologize for the quality. Even if I could have stopped, it's pretty hard to sneak up on a coyote in an open field.

He's probably hunting something that would make Mr. Woo EXTREMELY jealous.

And Mr. Woo deserves to suffer a little, believe me.

I suffer. Oh how I suffer. Hey, is that a rabbit?

He deserves to suffer because he is R.O.T.T.E.N. to the CORE!!! Yesterday we were taking a nice walk in the fields around our home when Wootie just vanished. One second he was standing beside me, the next he was nowhere to be seen.

At first I was all "Wootie, where are you? Get over here, right now." And after about 10 minutes of nary a sighting, I was like "Wootie? Sweetie? Where are you, pumpkin?" and then 10 more minutes passed and I was all "WOOTIE! WOOTIE! WOO-HOO! COME YOU BASTARD!!"

Still no Wootie.

I bushwhacked through fields and thorny things for about 45 minutes, getting progressively more frantic, until my heart basically just stopped beating altogether. What if he got run over by a car? What if someone found him and just, you know, kept him? What if he followed his nose all the way to Abbotsford? I ran home.

Where I found Wootie. Sitting on the porch.

BAD DOG!!

Looking for something?

*shakes fist at Wootie*

I know it's hard to believe, but he is a really bad dog. I was so angry that I hugged him and kissed him and sobbed and was all "oh I was so scared! Where'd you go?!" instead of giving him the beating he deserves.

Next time: more beatings, less love.

Today we were bored with our usual routine, so we tried out a new (to us) dog park in Langley. It's just a big round field, with a path circling it so people don't have to get their feet wet. It's not very exciting, but it IS fenced, so I didn't have to worry about losing Woo two days in a row.

*shakes fist at Wootie. Again.*

Tweed felt it was kind of meh.

Meh.

But he got a lot more excited when I pulled out the Chuck-It.

I tried to get a family portrait, but Wootie refused to join us, as he was busy eating dirt. Unusual, I know.

Mmmmm dirt. Wonderful, tasty dirt. Mmmm.

As for the other dogs ... well, I just don't think it's natural for two dogs to have these kinds of thoughts about their sister's shapely rear end, for crying out loud. She's their SISTER!!!!

What? We weren't doing anything!

We had to have a little chat about the birds and the bees, and how some feelings are just not appropriate to have. I guess I embarrassed them, because none of the boys would even look at me after that.

I know they're looking at my butt. I don't care. Throw the ball plz.

Tweed was quick to agree with his sister.

And Dexter was all "Wait, aren't we looking at her butt anymore??"

We played some Dumb Ball

Until Wootie tore up enough of the turf that I thought someone might notice.

So we packed up our hockey ball and our (ridiculously) long tongues, and headed back home.

Now we are snuggled up together ready to ring in the New Year.

Happy New Year! Wishing you all the best in 2010!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T12:38:00.000-08:00

from 3 Woofs & A Woo!

Recognize anyone

2009-12-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

on this list?

:)

Don't mind us, we're mindless

2009-12-18T13:24:00.000-08:00

I've got Dexter in training to be a mindless idiot with no training on him whatsoever.

Say whuuut?

That's right ... according to one of the stupidest discussions on a breed board I've ever read to date, if you play fetch with your dog, you're just an mindless idiot imposing your mindlessness and idiocy on your poor dog.

Poor dogs.

Stop smiling Piper! After 7 years of fetch, you are far too stupid to be happy.

Sorry Tweed, sATCh and 5 times Nationals Qualifier, your enormous repertoire of commands is a sham and all I can do now is hope to fix the damage that 9 years of fetch has done to you. You'll have to stop looking so eager - I too am a mindless moron, and I'm probably too diminished to throw this ball for you by now.

*insert eyeroll here*

I dunno about you guys, but I think that's a big load of hooey. I played fetch with my dogs just yesterday, and checked the ground over carefully afterward. Saw no signs of brains left in the grass, so I'm going to have to assume they didn't become dumber from the experience. I might be dumber for having read the discussion though.

I like playing fetch with my dogs. And 3/4 of them like it right back at me. All the eye-rolling I did might have impeded my reading comprehension, I admit, but what I walked away from it with was the idea that border collies are too smart to play fetch, but stupid not to play fetch, and therefore, people who play fetch should turn in their border collie ownership cards and stick to goldfish.

Uh oh. Scratch that.

Mr. Woo, of course, doesn't play much fetch. But Mr. Woo also sticks his head in thorn bushes, gets thorns in his ears, cries and bleeds and then repeats the experience the next day. And the next. Etc.

He *might* be kind of stupid.

Yay! What?

Dexter has a message for the fetch haters.

I do lots of things with my dogs. The other evening, I sat down on the floor and taught Dexter to run across the room and stand on a box. He knows sit, down, stay, come, gimme five, target, spin, get out, off, up, load up in the car, stay for paw wiping, tug, and my personal favourite "hugs and kisses" (when he puts his 'arms' around my neck and I lift him up for both those things). He's 4 months old and he knows tons of stuff! My dogs get to for walks, swimming, hiking up mountains, to agility classes, to flyball tournaments, to friends and relatives' houses ... and yes, they also get to play fetch. It seems ridiculous to me to belittle someone for playing a game with their dogs as part of a well rounded life of a variety of activity.

Less theorizing. More fetch. Kthnx.

Yay! More fetch!

On one of our daily constitutionals, I took this shot kinda off the cuff randomly and then laughed and laughed. It's like Wootie orchestrated it to not-so-subtly point out out how pathetic other tails in this world are, comparatively. Like, these sparse porcupine-tails are making him gag as he sees them fluttering around pathetically in front of him.

And it goes without saying, of course, he's got no respect for the excuse-for-a-tail, the Naked Snake, sported by his youngest brother.

In other news, "Little Man," now known as Journey, is healing up like a champ.

If Tweed doesn't take him out first ...

Ooomph.

And lastly, the people who share my property recently moved in with their border collie, Kila. Piper Does Not Like Kila, who is one of those border collies who stalks other dogs who are trying to play, cuts off their escape routes and grabs fur as they run by (given the choice between a dog who is enraptured with a hockey ball, and one who is allowed to obsess over other dogs, I'll take the former any day!).

Do. Not. Want.

^^ imperious princess.

Like it was never here

2009-12-16T16:09:00.000-08:00

Snow's all gone.

And for no reason whatsover, here's a photo of Wootie eating peanut butter.

It's beginning to look a lot like

2009-12-13T12:50:00.000-08:00

... like it's damn cold outside!

That's the start of our first official snowfall. I realize it doesn't look like much, but that was taken two hours ago. Now the snow has covered everything already, and my thermometer tells me it's -3 outside. That's just too darn cold. And the snow continues to fall.

ETA: A similar view just 2 hours later. And it's still snowing like crazy!

I would have risked the Wrath of the Dogs and declared a moratorium on outside time today, but I had to go out this morning to pick up The Package.

ZOMG!

That's Little Man, fresh from Kamloops, gimpy leg and all.

Il est joli, est il non ?

He's a lot fluffier than Dexter, though way smaller. And he's says that's fine, as he doesn't even want to be confused with Dexter, whom he does not really like.

Gee, I wonder why.

BONZAI!!!!!

Where ya goin', Gimpy? Come back here and play with me!

He probably feels a little vulnerable with that bum leg, and Mr. Bossy Boots wasn't really instilling confidence in him, poor wee felly.

And he still doesn't have a name, can you believe that? His previous owners were calling him "Lucky" but given that they managed to get him run over by a car within a week or so of owning him, that's a bit of a cruel irony ... even for me. So he needs a name. Any suggestions?

He's pretty cute, and you can see that one hip is no good. As I type, he standing there staring at one of the cats on just 3 legs. He looks normal when he runs, but he's not putting any real weight on that leg. This week he'll be going into our vet with his x-rays for a re-evaluation and then we'll schedule the surgery. And it's all thanks to the so so many of you who donated toward these costs! Some donated a little, some donated a lot and in the end we have what should be enough to cover the costs of making this little pants-biting miracle all better again!

Congrats to Amy Miller, who won the custom pet portrait from Laughing Dingo Studios!

I didn't get too many shots of him, I'm sorry. It was just too cold outside and my camera, which is on its last legs at the best of times, becomes sluggish and uncooperative in the cold.

And it is cold. The snow continues to fall, which Piper thinks is a lousy reason for me to not walk them.

Woo could care less. It's not as though he actually walks anyway.

And it's Dexter's first snow fall!! I was excited for him.

What's that white stuff falling from the sky?

It's been a busy week for us, as fosters come in and move on. Little Man will be going to another foster home this afternoon, where he won't be tempted to wrassle with Dexter after his surgery.

We temporarily has The Fire Breathing Dragon, aka Saphy:

This little ~~monster~~ dog is, if you can believe it, the product of a border collie and a cross of pomeranian/chihuahua.

All 20 lbs of her! And she is a going concern. Ball CRAZY and fast as the dickens. She is available through TDBCR - height dog for flyball, anyone?

We also made a new friend, Luna the world's most adorable black lab puppy.

And Maia, Lens Licker Extraordinaire.

Maia and her mum will be fostering Ziggy, who will available through our rescue soon as well.

Feed me, Seymour!

It's coming from inside the house!

2009-12-06T18:19:00.000-08:00

So there we were this morning, enjoying some Wootie Toy in the horse paddock.

Wootie got some air

and some Mad Teeth(tm)

And then he was off and running like a shot

I wasn't sure what he was after. Could have been the big bold as brass coyote who was standing on my lawn in the middle of the afternoon two days ago.

Or it could have been the bunny rabbit that he enthusiastically chased up the road yesterday, and under the house foundation this morning. At least, I think it was the same bunny - the same very stupid, slow learner bunny.

But whatever it was he was after, he was convinced it was in the garden shed. Which is locked.

No matter.

He decided to just dig through the side of the shed.

When that proved to be frustratingly slow, he decided it would be faster to EAT THROUGH THE SHED!

What the hell?

He's teaching Dexter very bad habits!!

Good. More Wootie Toy for me.

Lord help me. Now I have to fix the shed.

In other news, we have raised $1500.00 for Little Man's surgery! You are amazing people, and you just made a little puppy's future so much brighter. We cannot thank you enough.

We'll be holding the draw this week and will announce the winner on the blog and on the website. So be sure to check back to see who gets a custom portrait from Laughing Dingo Studios!!

Best fans EVER

2009-12-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

ETA: As of 1:30PM we are at $900.00!!

Nope - make that $1000.00!!!!

Way to go guys!! Thank you so much!!!

------------------

In less than 12 hours we are already halfway to our goal!

Little Man, hoarder of household toys, is impressed with your generosity!

So are we!!

Help a puppy, win a prize!

2009-12-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

This little fella:

is just 9 weeks old, and somehow has already managed to get run over by a car :(

His people brought him into a vet clinic and learned that surgery to fix his fractured pelvis and hip would cost upwards of $1000.00, which they did not have. So they surrendered him to the clinic, and the clinic in turn has given him to TDBCR.

We'd like to give this little guy a fighting chance to have four functioning limbs instead of the 3 he's wobbling around on right now.

Laughing Dingo Studios, who alerted us to this puppy in need, is offering you a chance to win a free pet portrait if you donate to Little Man's surgery fund via paypal. No amount is too small - anyone who donates will have their name entered in the draw.

Our paypal address is bcrescue@shaw.ca Be sure to leave a valid email address where we can contact you if you are the winner of this fabulous prize!

We know times are tight, and we know Christmas is just around the corner. But if you can spare a few dollars to make the future a little brighter for a little dude in pain, that'd be like the nicest Christmas gift EVER.

Got questions? Email us. This little guy will be looking for a home once he's all healed up too, so be sure to check our website for updates.

3 Tails From Today

2009-12-03T16:23:00.000-08:00

ha ha.

"Tail" #1

Let's sing a song.

Little Fatty WooWoo

Was digging in the swamp grass

Killing all the field mice

And looking sad when I took them away

I know, I know ... one day I won't be able to catch him and then he WILL eat them. But by golly, I will not let him do that while I'm watching!!! I can't stand seeing their little feet sticking out of the corners of his smug little mouth. Reminds me of MC Hamster too much.

"Tail" #2

Today, Tweed got the zoomies.

Random, unprompted, totally goofy butt-tucking zoomies! I love it when he does this, because I love that my almost-10-year-old dog can go from somber adult...

... to insane puppy in under 2 seconds

He was so full of joie de vivre that he even played with Dexter!

It looked like actual fun, not even a mercy play.

Dexter was having the time of his life, because he has been trying to convince Tweed to play with him for weeks and weeks. And he has been completely unsuccessful. It took the zoomies to break down that wall.

Dex was overjoyed, until Piper decided to play. Piper is very good at gentle indoor wrestling, but outside, she's a Toothy Sniper and she always ends up hurting someone - or someone ends up making this face:

MOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM! Help!!!! Piper's trying to play again!!

"Tail" #3

Dexter fell in the water. He tried to jump a ditch, under-estimated, and fell in.

This is what he looks like when's wet:

Holy crap, what was that? A watery abyss??

Screw that. I'm outta here.

Here are some stick faces

This is Wootie's stick face. I know it looks like he is flirting with the camera, but really he's keeping a beady eye on me, because he HATES it when I advance on him with waggling fingers, threatening to steal his stick. Which, of course, is exactly what I was doing. Heh.

This is Tweed's stick face. It's not very dignified.

I are serious dog. This are serious stick face.

Dexter has no stick face, because nobody would let him have the stick.

He has pouty/envious-of-stick face instead.

Swamp Things

2009-11-30T10:23:00.000-08:00

(cue ominous music)

When it rains heavily, the back of the property turns into a wet, grassy swamp. This makes all of my dogs (except Dexter) ridiculously happy. They get to swim, splash and bounce around like morons. They also get to hunt.

Although really, I don't know what they are hunting for.

Maybe for the origins of the Magical Flamboyance (tm)?

I think it comes from a mysterious portal just beyond those trees.

And if you find it, you can fly! See?

Food Lady, Tweed is being ridiculous.

Everyone knows the magic lays just beneath the surface of hog fuel.

It's quite funny - when it gets wet, the hog fuel of the horse paddock and around the barn makes these really strange, creaking, groaning and whistling noises. Piper is *convinced* something is alive under there.

There! There it is! Did you hear it?

Didn't you hear that? It's under there! Right there!

Dexter! Come here and help me dig this up the magic!

And Dexter is happy to oblige, because the Swamp Things make him very nervous and he'd much rather be here than there.

Ack! They're coming! Run Food Lady, run!!

Oh foolish youth.

Oh oh - looks like Dexter found the magic portal!

One day this kindgom will be mine. All mine.

Poor Wootie. Even though he likes playing Swamp Things, he really wishes there real and alive things for him to hunt.

It won't be long before he gets his wish. I'm told this property is overrun with bunnies and pheasants in the Spring and Summer months.

If I think he's fat now, imagine how portly he'll be when he's eating all the little wild critters in his kingdom? Or maybe the frantic chasing will balance it all out ....

Blackie Spit Off Leash Park

2009-11-26T15:47:00.000-08:00

The dogs give it Two Tongues Up.

The "dry" off leash area was all sandy, so no mud!! (Big improvement over, say, my own property) And it had dogs for Wootie to play with.

He was so excited he used his magical powers to transform his Flamboyance (tm) into the back end of a cattle dog.

It even kindly provided a puppy for Dexter to play with (when Wootie would let him). And by "play with" I am of course referring to "bite on the nose."

He got a little pouty when the bitee retaliated by squashing him.

The off leash area also had these cute little jungle paths for exploring

Thank you for letting me run again!!

(Piper is on a program of gradually reintroduced exercise. No limping at all so far, so I think we're doing okay! *fingers crossed*)

But do you wanna know what the best thing about Blackie Spit is? Do you?

What is it?

It's this:

ZOMG!! Ocean-induced Mad Teeth (tm)!!!

Oh ocean! How I have missed you so! Moving out to the sticks meant leaving the ocean far behind, and I thought we'd never see it again.

There was much rejoicing.

Hallelujah!

Although some members of the family were less than impressed with this large body of water, because some members of the family don't "do" water.

I feel pretty 'meh' about this whole ocean thing.

Mr. Woo tried to show him how it was done.

If you stick your face underwater, you can pick up cool stuff!

But Dex wasn't falling for it.

Stick my face where? Nuh uh, brutha, youz on the crack!

But Dexter wasn't going to ruin Wootie's fun! He was so happy he even fetched the ball. Oh yes he did!

Americans have Thanksgiving; I have Wootie Fetched A Ball Day.

Mr. Woo was exceptionally pleased with Blackie Spit because in no time at all he figured out that if he wanted to, he could just ... leave (reoccurring theme with him, or what?)

Oh hai! I snuck out of the fenced area.

Tee hee! Catch me if you can!

What a little porker. Oops, I mean, what a little STINKER.

Nooooo, I definitely mean what a little PORKER.

I mean, look at him:

I don't understand how Wootie gets so fat! I feed him next to nothing - seriously, he eats less than a 1/3rd of what my other (skinny) dogs eat, and his morning meal looks so pathetic I add beans, canned pumpkin and warm water to it so that it appears more like a meal and less like a POW ration system.

Why is he so fat? I mean, I guess it could be because most of the time on our outings, he can be found like this:

... which is Wootie with his face in a hole. And I am not exaggerating - he can spend HOURS with his face in a hole. Turns out what he's doing is sucking on dirt clumps. Is it because he's hungry? He's hungry because I don't feed him enough, but I don't feed him enough because all he does is lie around eating dirt!!! He's like the chicken-and-egg riddle!!!!

Oh well. I guess the Mystery of Wootie Fat will never be solved.

Hai! Talk about me for a minute! Woo is boring. And fat.

Okay, Tweed, let's brag on you for a second.

Although I had to scratch Piper from the trial last weekend, I did run His Silliness, Mr. T. And he went 3 for 3 - 3 Qs, two 1st places and one 2nd place. That's my boy!!!

I will leave you with this one thought, dear readers ... if you want to see something very, very amusing, give your dog a salt and vinegar potato chip. A big one. In fact, photodocument it if you can. The face-making is HILARIOUS!

Farm Dogs

2009-11-20T13:55:00.000-08:00

are too poor for real toys.

They have to make do with old milk jugs, and sticks.

Which they may or may not find whilst digging up the horse paddock

OMG! Are we poor?

Yes Dexter, we are very poor! And we almost got a lot poorer recently too.

The other day, we thought Piper had blown a cruciate. Eep. She hunkered down in Dexter's crate and wouldn't come out, and when I did lure her out she was limping badly on one hind leg and didn't want to walk on the laminate.

Well, it hurt. What did you want from me?

I immediately blamed Dexter.

It's not my fault. And you can't see me anyway.

Because SOMEBODY has a nasty habit of trying to squash her while she's bouncing up and down waiting for her ball.

What, you mean when I do this?

And the heavier he gets, the more he impedes her insane devil spins and interferes with her take-off.

So we trundled off to the vet clinic for a check up.

Piper has the most intense sense of self preservation of any dog I have ever met. She refuses to show pain in front of anyone but me. If *you* cut off her legs with a rusty hacksaw, she would just stare at a spot on the wall behind you and pretend it was not happening, and that she was fine, but if *I* pinch her toe she screams just as if I'd said "all the world's tennis balls are gone and you'll never play fetch again."

So of course the vet couldn't get her to show an ounce of pain. She was so tensed up the vet couldn't tell anything at all! She did step out of the room and I grabbed Piper's knee and she shrieked but as soon as the vet stepped back in the room she stopped (mid-shriek) and went back to her happy (mad) place.

In the end, the vet said that given Piper's size and general FANTASTIC body condition, and a few other factors, she didn't present as a cruciate injury, but possibly a muscle strain. We decided on a conservative approach of rest (no agility, no fetch) for a couple of weeks to see if she improves on her own. She is no longer limping, but I'm playing it very safe. She gets a two week break from agility class, and I scratched her from the trial this weekend too.

There's a good chance I'm going to lose my shit, thanks to this regime.

I didn't want to trundle all the way to agility class with just Tweed, who is too old for two hours of class anyway.

No I'm not! I can do it!

Yes, you are. And no, you can't.

I hate you, and you'll pay for this. Good luck falling asleep at night.

So for a lark, I threw Mr. Woo into Piper's spot.

Mr. Woo has learned all the equipment in sporadic practices, except the chute, and for fun I have taught him both threadles and serpentines, but really Wootie has been on equipment maybe 6 times in his life. Since this is a mostly Masters level class, I apologized profusely to my classmates for the time-waste they were about to watch ... and damned if the little fat couch didn't run almost a whole 20 obstacle course.

WTF?

A "natural jumper" The Sadist calls him.

That was fun. Let's hook up next Thursday, and I'll show you up once again. XOXO

Since Piper's on a break, there was no fetch today.

Just some rock climbing:

I think I lost my ears in this pile of rocks ...

And exploring for weird things. Weird things like this:

What is it, fish roe? I am sure there are fish in the dikes (which are now, like, rivers) and I know there are lots of birds of prey flying around, as I see them every day, so I assume these were the remnants of a fish supper.

I also saw a dead headless duck, but decided not to photograph for you all :)

Call me old *grumble* Why don't you step in here with me, Food Lady?

Pineapple Express

2009-11-17T11:50:00.001-08:00

Being no stranger to the PNW and its wet weather patterns, I was unsurprised (but unimpressed) to awake a couple of days ago to relentless, pounding, whipping, freezing and CONSTANT punishing rain that lasted for days and days. I don't *like it* but I wasn't shocked or anything.

I wasn't even surprised when late afternoon yesterday my power went out during the worst of the windy rain. What did surprise me was that it wasn't the weather that caused the power outage - it was some guy up the road in an excavator who backed into a power pole. How he did that on 25 acres of flat farmland is a mystery to me, but then again, I've never driven an excavator.

Anyway, the pole went down across the road, and with it went our power. And my freedom! As I am at the end of a dead-end road, and there was a pole down across that road, I was trapped on my property, with no way to escape to, say Starbucks for a latte and some wifi, or the drugstore for candles! It was a long, and cold, 6 hours of pitch black silence, let me tell you.

Poor Wootie was freezing cold too, as we had been outside playing just before the power went out, and he'd been splashing about merrily in a ditch. I wrapped up the sad little orange sack of cold-wet in a blanket and sat him on my lap while he shivered. You never saw anything that pathetic in your life.

phhllbbb on crummy weather.

The finer points of living in the stix continue to elude me. I'm making real efforts to adapt, and yesterday somehow convinced my stepdad to drive all the way out here in the pouring rain to help me build a temporary fence. There are no photos of this fence for two reasons.

1) it's invisible.Not really. What it it's made of is deer netting, which is a thin black plastic mesh material that is supposed to keep hundreds of lbs of deer off your property. After lots of painstaking research, I chose deer netting because the temporary fence was going in a place where a fence would look stupid, so being almost invisible was a bonus. Also, it's super inexpensive, and since this is just a temporary potty area, I didn't want to sink any money into it. Real fencing goes in next Spring.

The other reason there are no photos of it:

2) Because it's already gone! How the hell this stuff is supposed to keep a 400lb deer out of anything is a mystery to me, because 40lbs of Tweed didn't see it (cuz, you know, it's invisible), ran into it and split it right down the center. WTF?

The whole reason for putting up the temporary fencing was so that I had a semi-secure potty area to put the dogs in where they wouldn't wander off. Because Wootie has a habit of just ... leaving. And lately, he has started taking Dexter with him.

Who, me?

Yes, you, you little rat! In fact, if Dexter were grown up, the scene would probably look a little like this:

Wootie's not leaving because he doesn't like it here - on the contrary, he is in love. It's just that since we settled in, he has adopted the entire neighborhood as HIS. He must pee on all the neighboring properties, chase other dogs down the road, hide bones in the horse paddock and generally make sure everyone in a 3 mile radius knows that Woo is in da hood.

He loves to go outside and patrol the perimeter of the property.

I'm your friendly neighborhood security patrol. Get that camera out of my face.

And Dexter has no qualms at all about strolling off when the mood strikes him. He is one brave little puppy.

Oh hai, I'm in your horse paddock, pretending I'm deaf.

His enormous ears give him away though! Those things don't want to stand up, but they don't want to lay flat either. They both point forward and fold in half. It makes him the absolute cutest puppy on the face of this earth! Although I might be biased.

No you're not. I am really, really cute.

I thought *I* was the cutest puppy on earth?

Oh gosh, but you ARE Piper! Even with that divot of skin missing from your nose, where you ripped it off trying to "bury" your elk bone in the linoleum.

But also, Miss Piper is no puppy. Why tomorrow (or some time this month) she will be 7 years old! And Mr. Woo (ditto) will be 4 years old! Where on earth does the time go?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PIPER AND WOO!!

Ha ha. You guys are getting older! I'm still 9.

I will assume you have some good reason for never celebrating my birthday.

Fitting in

2009-11-13T09:49:00.000-08:00

Listen kid, if you want to be a part of this family, you'll listen to my advice.

First things first - you can't be afraid of Mad Teeth (tm). No hiding.

Face your fears

And give 'em as good as you get 'em.

Ha ha! That's my boy. He's learning the ropes around here pretty good already!

And so am I. I have resigned myself to the fact that muddy feet are just a part of living in the stix, and that I'll just have to become a little friendlier with the mop. And thanks for all your wonderful landscaping suggestions - over time I will definitely implement some of them to make our little space in the country more user friendly!

The dogs are loving it for sure. While we miss our our old haunts, there are some new ones to explore. Yesterday was beautiful, so we went and relaxed at the local dog park for the first time.

We made lots of new friends. Except for Wootie, who made no friends. He has taken on the roll of Dexter Protector, and he beats up anyone who tries to play too rough with "his" puppy.

And if I don't feel like loading everyone up in the car, we just play on our own property, which backs onto the dikes.

In the Jungle

The Mighty Jungle

The Puppy Creeps Tonight

Somebody comes from real sheepdog stock.

Now that he is getting kind of coordinated, like a real dog, he is all crouchy, creepy and stalky. It's very amusing to watch.

And he is getting braver too. He now tumbles merrily down the hills without fear. This is because he wants to follow his big brother and sister into the grass pit. The grass pit is this huge basin flanked by four hills, about the 2/3rds the size of a football field, and full of grasses that are about 5 feet tall. I can amuse myself for eons by lobbing a ball in there from the top of the hill and watching the dogs hunt for it.

Are you sure it's in here, Food Lady?

Tweed always finds it though.

Hours can pass without me seeing more of Wootie than this:

He's usually hunting wildlife. And there's lots of it too!

There are, of course, lots of ducks

Blue herons (this one was standing on my lawn and took off as we approached the house)

Yesterday I saw 4 snow geese circling the farm way up in the air. And two nights ago I could hear an owl "who who-who whoing" in the trees, so I went outside with a flashlight and saw him sitting at the top of a pine right outside my front door. How cool is that?

Yup, we are really liking it out here so far, kind of a surprise to The Food Lady, who likes her city comforts.

I always knew this would be awesome. I'm smart.

Are you just going to let him tell lies like that, Food Lady?

Come on, kid. Let me give you some more advice. Follow me, and you won't go wrong.

Should I be listening to this guy??

This is great

2009-11-07T21:22:00.000-08:00

The view this afternoon from my patio door

They all touched down in the big pines surrounding my yard, and sang for about half an hour. The noise was deafening, but amazing. I think they were red winged blackbirds.

This is NOT so great:

That's after ONE potty trip, and right after those mats were freshly washed. The mud out here is so frustrating - no amount of dog paw wiping or floor mats seems to help :( I am a fairly fastidious housekeeper (at least for the visible bits) and I've nearly worn out the mop. The bedroom carpet is already a lost cause and it was pretty well brand new two weeks ago.

*sigh*

It does not help when Wootie decides to surreptitiously bury his knuckle bone in the mud during a potty trip.

I'm so ashamed. Sort of. Can I go get my bone?

I wish The Food Lady was not so grumpy

Home, Home on the Range

2009-11-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

We're back! Did you miss us? We are finally all moved in.

That's not the same as being settled in or even the same as being unpacked. But why waste time unpacking when we can be exploring our new neighborhood?

We are located at the end of a dead-end road and surrounded by dykes and farmland that is open to roaming. Makes for a lovely photo backdrop, especially right now in the Fall.

It's got some wildlife, which is simply tantalizing for Wootie.

I'll bet he really wishes he could fly!

There was dense fog this morning, trying to obliterate that pesky sunshine

But it made it easier to sneak up on Mr. In Yo Face

The sun ultimately won the Fog War

And then it was beautiful!

A lovely morning for trying something new. Like a threesome:

And some light bondage.

Piper really enjoys being a dominatrix.

Dexter prefers to watch.

Though Piper is willing to share the secrets of her bossy success!

First thing she needs to teach him: How Not To Tumble Down A Hill

Dexter is settling in well! He can "sit," he can "lay down," he can wait for his dinner bowl to put on the floor, and his recall is coming along nicely!

Coming! I'm coming! Have cookies at the ready!

He is such a charming little bloke. On the weekend I brought him with me to the agility trial and passed him around from person to person. He's completely unfazed by noise and new experiences. Amusingly, everyone said "he's the one I would have picked, if I could have adopted one." It's amusing because I ended up with him precisely because nobody else *did* pick him.

Still, I think it worked out pretty well for both of us.

The dogs are diggin' their new home. Yesterday we played ball in our own yard whilst waiting for the Internetz Man to come hook us up. We found someone snooping around our storage shed and Mr. Woo ran him off the property with some self important Woofing, so he feels very important. House training is going well, now that outside is not 4 floors away :)

I'm a little less enamored with the new house. The set-up is frustrating, as the mudroom/entrance way is just off the bedroom, which we must pass through to get to the main room. This means my bedroom, despite the liberal use of towels, is a constant mess of dirty paw prints. This is the first time I've ever lived on laminate, and it doesn't clean up as nicely as hardwood. And of course, the house has exactly zero closets, and the World's Smallest Amount Of Counter Space. Building a kitchen island is first on the agenda, right after I put in a fence.

On the plus side, it's so wonderfully quiet out here! Instead of sirens and truck brakes, I hear frogs and the gentle "wheeeeeep" or hawks flying overhead. No more earplugs at night!

I think we'll settle in just fine :)

In other news, blogger tells me I've used up almost all of my allotted space for photos. I supposed this means archiving some of my very oldest posts and removing them from the blog. Anyone know how to do that?

Aftercare Instructions

2009-10-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

Congratulations! Your rescue dog has just been reproductively sterilized and will no longer be capable of adding to the world's population of unwanted pets.

Your rescue dog has just had fairly major abdominal surgery, so please follow these instructions to make the healing process as successful as possible. Keep your dog quiet for as long as you can. No running,

and absolutely no jumping.

Try to keep her from excessive playing with other dogs.
It is very important that the incision stay clean and dry.

So try to stay on sidewalks and other areas that are free of debris.

Meh. So I'm not going to win the Foster Mum Of The Year award.

But it is Maeve's last day with us, and I wanted her to enjoy it!

Yay! Thanks for letting me out of the house finally!

I'm also not going to win the plain old Dog Mum of the year aware either. Not judging by these faces.

Oh yay, she's making me sit like a bunny. Again. Whoopee.

BRAAAAIIIINNNNSSSS. As in, 'grow one' Food Lady.

If I knew how to sit like a bunny, I would totally do it for you, Food Lady.

Kiss ass!

I will sit like a bunny! And then later, maybe I will pee on your bedspread, or eat something important to you.

*sigh* Is she gone yet?

(Excuse me. I cannot sit like a bunny, but I CAN look very sad and implore you to spare a cookie.)

That' s right folks. Tomorrow Maeve is going toward the light - err, I mean, she is going to her new forever home.

We'll all miss her around here. And by 'all' I mean me. I'm pretty sure no one else in this house will care. They will probably all be relieved that her constant energy has left the building.

Little do they know what's waiting for them just around the corner (Tuesday! He comes home on Tuesday!)

I am moving in a week, so won't have time to post much on 3WAAW for a bit. I will however try to keep 365Puppy updated as often as I can, so check in often!

But you know what the best thing about walking with my doggies on a rainy day is?

Pointing the camera down and capturing this:
Awwwww :)

See you soon, readers!

FAME! (she's gonna learn how to fly)

2009-10-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

TDBCR rescue dog Joey moved to Australia with her adopted mum a couple of years ago. Big changes for a shy little rescue that was pulled out of a kill shelter in Washington State! But it was a good thing, because it was proof positive that it is in fact possible to move house, across the country and even across the WORLD with your dog. Millions of dogs in shelters didn't believe that, because their owners said "Oh we're moving, guess we can't keep you anymore."

Kelly Ramirez decided to put that myth out to pasture when she moved to Australia with Joey, and then to really drive the point home, she turned around and made Joey FAMOUS!

From the Hornby and Upper North Shore Advocate:

How much is that doggy in mid-air?

MEET Hornsby’s newest national champion - Joey the jumping dog. And she could be about to take the world by storm.

The high-flying pooch has been raising eyebrows and dropping jaws since her owner, Kelly Ramirez, of Hornsby, entered her into a competition called ``dock diving’’ just for a few laughs. Picture gallery of Joey in action, HERE

Dock diving is a popular event in the US and is spreading its tentacles to other countries, including Australia.

It involves dogs running along a flat platform, then launching themselves off a ramp and into a long pool of water.

It is like long jump for dogs and, incredibly, the best dogs in the world leap about 7m (although the sport is judged in feet, because of its US creators). Dock-diving picture gallery from around the world, HERE

Joey already sails that far - and she has only contested one event.

``Her results were totally unexpected,’’ a stunned Ms Ramirez told the Advocate.

``People said to me, `oh, you must have done this before’, but I was just as surprised as them.

``There were US judges there who sat up when she jumped.’’

Adding to the story is the fact Joey, a kelpie-cross-cattle, was rescued from a US animal shelter. Ms Ramirez picked her up two years ago, when ``she was a complete mess’’.

``It is nice to think that Joey could go from death row to being a world champion,’’ she said.

Joey’s sole competitive performance was at a small event at Homebush Bay in July. Her 19-foot leap gave her the Australian title. She has since jumped 20 feet.

If Joey continues her form into the World Dog Games at Homebush Bay later this month, Hornsby could have itself the world’s longest-leaping dog.

Dock diving will be a demonstration sport at the Games, in the hope it takes off here. For a video preview of the World Dog Games click HERE

Ms Ramirez said the sport was tailor made for Australians.

``This is a sport with a huge following in the US, with prizemoney, professional training and plenty of attention,’’ Ms Ramirez said.

``I think its perfect for Australian conditions there is potential for it to really take off.’’

Joey’s fitness level was ``frightening’’, Ms Ramirez said.

``She’s all muscle. She gets trained every day because, when you have a dog like this a dog that’s built to work you have to exercise them a lot. It’s the key to a happy dog,’’ she said.

The Games start on October 31.

* More dock-diving videos can be found by clicking (or cut-pasting) the following links - these videos are not Advocate creations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-527_KG5iQQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7Jw3DqrbEI

Congratulations Kelly and Joey!

Tick tock, tick tock

2009-10-18T17:17:00.001-07:00

Where does the time go?

Can you believe this strapping young lad:

Was once this little guy?

Zomg, Ryan, you got huge!

What?!

Waaaah!! My lost youth! Woe is me.

I guess I've got puppy growth on the bean today, as I ponder what this little feller is going to look like one day.

Since this photo was taken, I'm told his white bits are getting all freckly!

I know you are all VERY excited to watch Spike-o-saurus grow up, but I gotta tell you, I'm afraid!! It has been a really looong time since I raised a puppy (and that puppy was Tweed, which doesn't give me a lot of confidence!) and I've forgotten everything.

But you have been craving a puppy forever, Food Lady! No I haven't - I mean, I have, but I crave puppies in the abstract. Cutiepie wiggly fluffy butts. Not peeing, pooping, chewing no-training machines. Eep.

So you swapped Maeve for a little puppy. You suck. Maybe I do suck, but I assure you, there was no Maeve swapping going on here. I love my Miss Maeven, and she is pretty much exactly the age I would *prefer* to adopt ... because I'd much rather have an idea of a dog's structure, temperament and drive than the unknown of a wee puppyblob. I prefer a little training, an attention span, the Oscar-winning bonus of being HOUSEBROKEN and sleeping through the night. Maeve is SO MUCH WIN. Young adults are a million times better than puppies. You just remember I said that the next time you go looking for a dog to adopt.

Liar. You were going to adopt Spike all along. Nope, I really wasn't. I *heart* the whole litter of pups - again, in the abstract. I loved going to Hilary's house, smergling puppy bellies, and then going home to my well trained* adults. I was not in love with any one puppy. And Spike really was the litter leftover - we received over 100 applications for this litter and exactly zero of them were for Spike. I'm not sure why, but I hope I can raise him right and make all 100 of those people feel like they made a big mistake! (actually, I only want to make 93 of them feel like they made a mistake - the other 7 adopted his siblings, so by default I automatically love those people. They're family now.)

*Woo excepted.

Do you know what the temperament tester said about Spike?

BIG PERSONALITY.

Oh boy. What have I done?

I should've just kept Maeve! Although after today's mud splattered outing, perhaps not too.

What?

Miss Graceful did a faceplant into 6 inches of mudpuddle. And you wonder why she wouldn't make a great agility dog?!

Ridiculous. It was just a little mud. Stupid, fussy, fastidious Food Lady.

It's the worst time to get a puppy too - smack in the middle of my move, no money, no job, right on the heels of Miss Maeve, who leaves 24 hours before Spike arrives ... ugh.

I just hope it doesn't stress the Big Dawgs out too much. They're already going to be sad that we are leaving behind some of our favourite places, like Bridgeman Park in the Fall.

Auntie Jody, did she just say 'no more Bridgeman?'

I just hope that bringing home a tiny humpable will distract Mr. T!

mmmm ... humpable puppy .....

Oh and have I mentioned that Mr. Woo HATES puppies?

Like this puppy, seconds before Mr. Woo informed him he was about to get his butt kicked clear across the Lower Mainland.

There are only 3 things in the world Mr. Woo does not like:
1) lettuce
2) being left behind and
3) puppies.

Great.

Anyway ... got any idea for a name for Spike? I've not come up with anything good for him yet.

And who wants to puppysit for me on Sunday evening, November 1st? My wonderful mum got us tickets to see David Sedaris in Vancouver for my birthday gift.

He's really cute! (Spike I mean, not David)

Do you notice how in EVERY photo of Spike, he is looking straight at the camera lens? Yeah, that might have had a little something to do with my decision ... :)

3WAAW is moving!

2009-10-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

Hopefully I'll get this technical business correct, and assuming I do, at some point in the near future (say within 24 hours) you will be able to type in wootube.net and access this blog!

Now, let's just hope I did it correctly :)

ETA - yay! It worked! Update your links please!

ETA again - no it didn't! Excuse my technical ignorance, I will sort this out eventually :)

So Long ... Farewell

2009-10-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

It's time to say goodbye!

We had our last puppy visit last night. This weekend the Peanuts turn 8 weeks old. Next week they head off to their new forever homes. A happysad time for all.

Adios, Charlie. Enjoy your new life with Sue and Glee!

What? You're sending me away?!

You're going to LOVE living with Phil and Mary, Franklin!

*yawn* Wake me when we get there.

*zzzzzzz*

Buh Bye Linus. Scott will treat you right!

Yeah uh-huh, whatever, NOMNOMNOM

Make us proud, Lucy. The Deacons can't wait to welcome you!

Put me down. There is havoc to wreak.

And I'm taking this with me.

Patty, please do something with those ears before you go live with Cathie.

I'm affronted!

Sweet Sally, I'm sad to see you go, but Nan is going to love you.

ha ha ha. That's what she thinks. I hope she has lots of pants.

And Schroeder, please don't bite the Jan and Wally in the crotch!

Stop pointing that facebox at me.

Pretty soon it will be time to say good bye to Miss Maeve as well.

Say what?

Today she is meeting what we hope will be her forever home, on beautiful Bowen Island.

Don't make me go! I wuv you :(

BOOHOO! I am so sad about Maeve. But I know she is going to LOVE her new home. No Tweed standing sentry in doorways to prevent her from coming in to visit me. No Piper to flash Mad Teeth (tm) at her every 10 seconds. Two humans who will take her hiking and swimming and trail running - she's going to absolutely adore it there. I wouldn't let her go if I didn't think she would.

So who wants to help me move into my new place on October 30th. Anyone? Hello?

*crickets*

Oh come ON people!! Lend a girl a hand!

I'll let you hold my new puppy, Spike!

(didn't see that one coming, did ya? Heh heh heh).

Seriously though, I could really use some help moving...

I've Had All I Can Stands

2009-10-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

I can't stands no more!

For adoption:

One slightly soggy porcupine.

Expands to (almost) normal size dog when shaken out.

Can be modeled after your favourite female superhero:

as well as programmed to "talk"

This dogupine is part of our "Action Pack"

but is offered as a single unit.

Miss Maeven is officially listed for adoption :(

I'm sad. But I can't say Piper's sad.

Free! I'll be free!

Awww shit. GET OUTTA HERE, MAEVE!

And while I'm Mad Teeth(tm)ing Maeve 6 ways from Sunday, could you please ask Tweed WTF he's doing in the shot?

Read my teeth. I. HATE. YOU.

*sigh* One day I will be Maeve-free.

WTF? Are you still here?

I left my heart

2009-10-08T22:52:00.000-07:00

in Surrey.

(in Hilary's kitchen)

ZOMG! It's 7 week old Linus! Who has been adopted - not by me, sad to say.

(insert pouty face)

Aren't they humungoid now? Puppies grow obscenely fast.

Charlie, the heartbreaker

Lucy, Diva in a puppy suit!

The coveted, but adopted, Patty

Her mother's daughter, Sally.

"Eff-You Camera" Schroeder.

And the irrepressible Spike AKA Mr Personality!

For some reason, I completely forgot to take photos of Franklin (adopted), so I'll give you a second helping of Spike.

Gah. The cute. It's too much!!

But I guess it's a good thing I left my heart in Surrey, cuz that's where I'm moving at the end of the month!

This is my new home, dubbed "The Little House On The Prairie" by my (mean) friends.

That's my backyard, with an apple orchard and a fire spit for rowdy barbeques.

And this is TLHOTP viewed from the other end of the 10 (count 'em, TEN) acres my wee house sits on.

I'm officially movin' to the stix. Commence mockery .... now.

What do you think of that Rivet?

Meh. I can cover my nose with my tongue.

Miss Maeven was a little more excited for me, at least. Of course, Maeve is excited about *everything*

But I don't think Maeve will be coming with us. For this, you can blame Linda, mostly because it makes her feel guilty ;-)

As much as I adore her sunny personality and enthusiasm, and her simply adorable face, Maeve is built like a tube with 4 ramrod pistons for legs. She is a lovely dog, but she's not put together for the rigours of agility. Ten acres doesn't equal ten dogs, and my 4th and last addition has got to be able to play with me for a long time. It breaks my heart - I mean, it shatters it in a million pieces, you've no idea how much - but I just don't think I can keep her. She deserves someone who won't be disappointed that she can't be a sporty partner.

OTOH, today I hate agility so much that I might be inclined to change my mind. Again.

I guess every dog comes into your life for a reason. Perhaps Maeve came into mine so that I learn the valuable lesson of letting go of what I think I want, and holding out for what I know I want. Either that, or the universe is a big mean bastard with a sick sense of humour.

*grumble*

Fortunately, I have Tweed to lighten my pissy mood.

Oh hai, I'm in your lens, stealing your perspectives.

I'm going to go drown my sorrows in research on chicken ... brands? Breeds? Whatever, I'm gonna get me some chickens when I move!

Get off my land, city slicker

They don't even grow horses properly out in the sticks! Yeesh.

Can You Help Pop and Puzzle?

2009-10-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

Pop and Puzzle are two 9 week old Australian Cattle Dog puppies in foster care for Blue Dog Rescue. They have recently been diagnosed with Parvo :(

POP

PUZZLE

Foster home Katie Trachte sends out this plea:

The two foster puppies I took in have developed a life threatening desease, Parvo. They were rescued out of Tennesse and made the long journey up to CT and then on to our house in VT. Puzzle and Pop are in Intensive Care at Greylock Animal hospital under the care of Michelle Gorbutt-Pascerilli.

As you can imagine, their vet bills are climbing and we're doing everything we can to save them. It's looking promising as both were 'spotted' wagging their tales as a "thank you" to the staff this afternoon, a vast improvement over their previous state this morning. We need your help though... please... please, PLEASE help us save them.

Please consider donating either through PayPal to agilebug@gmail.com or directly to the hospital which can be reached at 413-663-5365 and ask to donate for Puzzle and Pop under Blue Dog Rescue.

Thank you for ANY donation, we're desperate... these puppies are only about 9 weeks old and are total love bugs, they deserve the chance to fight.

Booty-licious

2009-09-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

In the ongoing war of The Food Lady Versus Tweed And The Infected Toe, there is only one weapon.

THE BOOTIE.

But it's not a particularly effective weapon, since we are now on Bootie #3.

Hello up there! Hai! Take this off, or I will.

It's too big for him. The last one was too small for him. The first one was just right, until he ate it off.

I eventually got tired of it, so I just cut off all his legs. It makes his tail sexier anyway.

The good news is - his toe is totally healing and looks really good (but also creepy, because it's been shaved). No thanks to Tweed, who eats everything I wrap his foot in. I have gone through more vet wrap than I ever thought possible. They are starting to greet us with a roll in their hand at the local Tisol.

The Infect-o-foot has not stopped Tweed from having a good time.

Who wouldn't have a good time sandwiched between these two hawt bitches?

What a hard decision for a dude!

This one is the yin to his yang (and her own)

But this one has a tough, bulldog-like exterior and a heart of ~~tennis balls~~ I MEAN GOLD!

Together they are Unstoppable Cuteness.

As you can see, Piper is getting along with Miss Maeven The Raven just fine. Maeve is VERY VERY ANNOYING:

but Piper is maintaining and even enjoys a good game of bitey-face with her every morning.

Interestingly, it is the baby of the family that is put out.

Please send her back to where she came from.

I've been getting the cold shoulder. If we all sit around on the sofa of an evening to watch tv, Wootie is napping in my bed, in the other room. When I go to bed, he slides off with a pitiful expression and crawls underneath it. You KNOW he's pouting, because he doesn't like to sleep under the bed where the Grumpy Tweedigator lives at night.

Now he's trying to win back my love by being A Good Dog. This afternoon, he posed for a photo op all by himself. I was standing there admiring the view and I heard this little whimper ... I turned around and he was doing this:

Sassy little thing.

Look how cute *I* am, Food Lady!

Which of course inspired me to try something. Something that was FAIL.

No matter how hard you wish for it, Food Lady, I am not Phoenix.

Yeahno. It's too scary.

(But if you need me to, if we are ever lost, I can dig us to safety.)

Wootie thinks winning me back is probably a lost cause. He's decided to go Team Guy.

Too bad his teammate is only thinking about one thing.

I hope we are leaving soon, so I can eat the bootie in the car. Mmmmm .... bootie ....

No matter what happens with Maeve, I already know I have the best, most devoted dogs in the whole world.

Ouch

2009-09-25T17:31:00.001-07:00

Poor Tweed. He has a pus-filled pocket of infection in one of his front toes. It must be quite painful, as he licked it into a horrible mess.

As you can see, it's really slowing him down.

Don't worry, that's our last trip to the beach anytime soon, since his toe needs to heal, which means it's staying wrapped and not getting wet. Or at least, that was the plan. After shaving his foot, charging me a princely sum for The World's Most Expensive Vet Wrap ($14.00!!!), coupled with The World's Most Expensive Antibiotics ($60.00!!) my vet assured me that her wrapping job was "dog proof." For extra good measure, she sprayed it with the foulest tasting stuff around.

Tweed unwrapped the bandage in the car on the way home.

Oh but I was ready for this. When we got home, I put a boot on him. He looks ridiculous and he's MAD AS HELL because even his considerable brain can't wrap itself (pardon the pun) around the concept of Velcro.

Mwa ha ha ha.

Anyway, so today was our last beach trip until his foot is better. I had to get one last one in.

Maeve was very glad that I did!

Wahoo!!

So was I. Because how else would I get shots like this?

Piper has acclimated to Maeve now and it's no longer constant Mad Teeth(tm). That does not mean she is really happy about sharing her Queen Bitch status though.

I'll serve her up a big ole platter of Whoop Ass right now!

She spends a lot of time trying to escape Maeve.

But Maeve is insane.

and FAST!

ZOOOOOOoooommmmm

You are all terrible HORRIBLE AWFUL CRUEL enablers! It's like you all got together and caused a tilt in my reality, because yesterday my landlord informed me that he'd put my condo on the market and it's now officially for sale. Looks like I am moving whether I really intended to or not!

However, whether that move will include Maeve remains to be seen. Because although I really like her, there are two concerns I have.

Concern #1 - Maeve does not jump. I mean, she doesn't jump anything. Small log in the way? She goes around it. Frisbee in the air? Very keen, but waits for it to come to the ground. Last night at agility class during warm up, I tried to coax her over a 10" jump and she limboed underneath it. A stunning display of dexterity to be sure for a dog that stands 18" at the shoulder, but nothing that's going to rocket us to Nationals or anything. Now, I have started a fair number of my own agility dogs (5, akshully) and I teach it to beginners as well, and I've never seen a dog so reluctant to jump.

I already have a non-agility dog (not that I'm MRWOO naming any names MRWOO) and I don't want another agilitydud. Tweed is going on 10 years old - sooner rather than later my boy will retire. And Piper, bless her, is coming along really well (in spite of my poor sportsmanship and bad temper, I should point out). (See Gerhard? I already KNOW I'm an asshole) but she is 7 years old - I waited much too long. If I'm going to get another dog, I want one I can compete with down the line.

Of course, it's easy to say all this when I'm not looking at this face!

Concern #2 - ZOMG!

Hello, my name is Linus, and you promised to love ME!

Okay so this is not really a concern, just a cheap and sleazy way to segue into new rescue puppy photos!!

Goshgillygeewhiz, they are SO DARN CUTE! They are now 33 days old, and have transformed themselves from sleepy cuddly potatoes into razorsharp shark monsters with a taste for blood. NO TOES ARE SAFE!!

Why are you standing on one leg clutching your foot and crying, Facebox Lady's assistant?

I look cute, but I'm just lulling you into a false sense of security. Then I'll attack. And attack, and attack, and attack ...

I do not remember Mona's puppies being this obsessed with feet. PAINFULLY obsessed with feet.

This one was the worst offender of them all. I think he might be a direct descendant of Satan. Or else that Shark Water guy should be doing a study on him or something.

Stalking ... feet ... tasty, delicious feet ...

And this one is just dreaming about feet.

Satan's foot soldiers! (I really need to lay off the puns)

Aren't they the dreamiest though? I so love them (at someone else's house)!!

We have had a fair number of applications come through for them already. The usual handful of ridiculous ones (are they housebroken? How much training do they have? I'm about to have a baby, can I adopt one?) but also some really stellar applications from some really amazing performance homes. So if you want one, act fast (PAULA).

See? I can be an enabler too.

Stop blogging. More ball.

2010 TDBCR Rescue Wall Calendar

2009-09-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

Order yours today!

All photos were taken by yours truly (some of them you may recognize!) and each featured dog is a TDBCR rescue! 100% of the proceeds go back into our fostering program (and believe me, after Cafe Press takes its cut, there's not a lot of proceeds - so order lots of them!).

Got another calendar you'd like to see? Maybe a Dogs In Ridiculous Clothes calendar, or an All Puppies All The Time calendar? Let me know and I'll do my best!

Love,

Your Food Lady

The Farmer In The Dell

2009-09-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know me know that I never miss a chance to make fun of people who live in The Sticks. I like to joke that they marry their first cousins in the back of a pick-up truck to the ear-splitting tunes of the local bar's country & western band, 'cept for Terrance on the banjo, who got drunk and fell off his trailer's stoop and had to be replaced with Uncle Jim Bob, who plays a mean set of spoons. My friends in The Sticks don't care much for my jokes (and scowl at me from under the brim of their 10 gallon hats whilst gnawing on hayseed or whatever).

Anyway, today I was in The Sticks and witnessed one of the many crimes against nature that are the reason I don't get out there much:

That's a little dawg gettin' it on with a big dawg, who don't even notice none, while another one has a good ole look-see at the action. All of this was happening on someone's lawn.

Speaking of crimes against nature ... while fortunately Calibre, the randy Jack Russell, is neutered and Sonic the foster border collie is about to be spayed, a union between the two were they not would produce THE SPAWN OF SATAN also known as a BORDERJACK.

*Duhn-duhn-duhn*

This is Pip, a new foster in the TDBCR program. She is about 4 months old, 12 inches high and has a set of batteries on her that never run down.
Be afraid, dear readers. Be very afraid. But first, adopt this borderjack puppy!

If psychosis:

is not your thing, don't worry - we have another bargain for you.

One tongue for adoption (may or may not include border collie).

Sonic is a sable and white border collie (or possibly English Shepherd) who is also a newbie in our rescue program. You may know her by her Biker Gang nickname, "Howler Monkey." If you adopt her, you get twice as much tongue as you'd get with a regular dog.

Don't be sad that you have missed out on great deals we've offered in the past, like Gargoyle Dog:

Or the model that's so popular with kids - "Snarlpuss":

Because if you act now, we'll give you Spawn of Satan AND Howler Monkey, as one insane package. That's right, we're practically giving them away! Or they are running away. Whatever.

Anyway, back to The Sticks. What can I say? I'm a city girl - I grew up on the East Side and spent the last 10 years living in downtown Vancouver, lulled to sleep at night by the sounds of traffic, bums' shopping carts and drunk transvestites fighting with each other. Moving out here to the suburbs was quite the culture shock!

The only thing worse than friends who have children and become walking baby poo blogs are friends who move to The Sticks, and tell you stories that make you want to scratch your eyes out, like about finding spiders in their bra while unloading mountains of hay bales and the choice half of a cow they won at the local meat draw.

*vom*

And yet there is a part of me that longs for something that the city can't give me.

That something is this:

Zomg! Meet Maeve, the newest addition to our fostering program. I picked up Maeve to drive her to her foster home on Friday night and ... umm ... I didn't.

Bad Food Lady, bad!

Oh yeah, like YOU could have resisted this:

She is 8 months old, matches Piper dainty footsies for tiny pound and wiggled her way into my WANT PUPPY void. Dammit.

She is also completely hilarious.

The stinkin' thing is, I can't have 4 dogs in my condo. I barely squeaked in with 3, and that's only because my landlord went to bat for me, nice man that he is. Making Maeve a permanent addition would definitely mean moving. And if I'm going to move out of my perfectly nice condo, I may as well find something with a yard for the dogs. And since I'd be feeding more mouths, I may as well try and catch a break on the rent. And since none of those things are likely to come together in one abode in the city of Vancouver, it probably means moving to the sticks.

What do you think? Is this face worth swallowing my pride?

Oh who am I kidding? I have no pride. I do, after all, live with this:

We're dan-cin', yeah ...

Tweed said "You go right ahead and keep that puppy, Food Lady. I'm going to go home with these people" and he hopped into their van.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that those nice people were taking this home with them.

*duhn duhn duhn*

Can't take him anywhere

2009-09-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

Vancouver's summer is bidding us adieu for another year, so we're taking advantage of the precious few nice days left to enjoy some swimming. Today we went to Trout Lake.

I was very excited when we got there, as the first thing Woo did was swim out to the Floating Log with no prompting whatsoever. "Yay!" I thought, "He remembers our last photo and training session!"

I should have been suspicious as soon as he gave me this look.

Because after sniffing up and down the length of the log, he then did this:

WTF? Why me? Why do *I* have the ONLY dog in the world who takes a crap on a floating log, in a lake, surrounded by grass?

Yay! I have humiliated The Food Lady! Off to find something else to do!

OMG don't make me get on this thing. I saw what Woo did!

*sigh* I hate you.

But I WUV you! Did you see me take a dump on that log? LOL!

He's tainted the whole lake. Yuck. I feel dirty.

Piper missed The Great Log Incident of '09 because I was holding the bag of tennis balls, and she was doing this:

It's a good day to be alive.

What? What? What did Tweed just say? The lake is tainted??

Oh dude. So gross. I don't think I should get in here ...

She eventually jumped in, but Log Dog was waiting for her.

(*cue JAWS theme music*)

Come 'ere Piper, I'm gonna taint you too!

Gross! Get outta here Woo! You're disgusting!

(Poor Piper. Little brother suck)

I'm going to go play on the field, which Woo has not defiled.

Woo is a dirty dog. In so many ways! Last week we went for a hike with the very lovely Rivet.

It wasn't raining, and most of the route is gravel paths. Nevertheless, Wootie still ended up looking like this:

Who's a disgusting, filthy, rotten little stuffed pillow of a dog? Who is it? Who?

Me! It's me!

Well it's not me. So take your stinkin' camera and ...

TWEED! Language, mister!

Yeah, sorry. Whatever.

And we know it's not my pretty, precious little princess.

*blink, blink*

I'm feeling generous toward Piper these days, can you tell? I am very proud of my little snuggle snookums. In our agility class (you know, the one lorded over by The Sadist, who btw has taken up the habit of menacing us Stupid Humans with a broom, or a spare jump pole. It's ominous, because he's German, so he sounds scary even when he's happy) we have to do Very Mean Things, like run courses from the Worlds agility competitions and such. And last night in class, Piper successfully completed a challenging course, 20 obstacles without a refusal, without a bar down, without missing a contact etc. I almost threw a party for her, I was so pleased!

That's right. I'm da bomb. You may now refer to me by my new nickname, Greased Lightning.

You like her better than me now, don't you? I may as well just end it all, right now, on these train tracks. This photo is totally not posed. I swear.

Oh of course not Tweed. I love you both equally. And at least twice as much as Filthy Woo.

What? Come on, give us a kiss.
Blech.

Hello there. Excuse me? Can you help me find a Schnauzer blog? I think I may have taken a wrong turn somewhere...

Personal Ad

2009-09-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

I'm a 30-something year old woman looking for The Perfect Man. He should be young at heart, with the capacity for growth. Athletic, competitive and intelligent, he would also enjoy snuggling on the sofa and long walks in any weather. Ideally he'd fit right into my family unit with respect and lots of love. I'm looking for a 10-15 year commitment from a man with a good background, who has all his hair and teeth.

I would call him Linus!

Then again, I'm willing to swing both ways. I wouldn't kick a beautiful woman out of my (and Woo's) bed either. Maybe what I'm actually looking for is a stunning broad named Patty.

ZOMG! Teh cute!

I went to visit Tess' pups yesterday. They are now 18 days old, eyes are open ... and so are their lungs!

And so is the Milk Bar:

These puppies are KILLING your Food Lady, dear readers. I mean, I may actually just DIE. I have never seen so much cuteness in one place.

Oh hai. Plz to love me foreverz.

Each one is more heartbreakingly adorable than the last. While Linus remains my favourite, his brothers and sisters , each and every one of them, are giving him a serious run for his money.

Charlie (male)

Franklin (male)

Lucy (female)

Sally (female)

Schroeder (male)

Spike (male)

Oh it burns, readers - it BURNS! I'm so steamed that I can't have a puppy :(

I'm dreaming of living wif you, Food Lady ...

Kill me. Just kill me now.

Doesn't anyone have somewhere wonderfully affordable for me to live, without a tight-assed strata council to get all up in my bizness, so I can have a puppy of my own? I would move for a puppy. I really would.

"Uncle" Dutch (available for adoption through TDBCR) has been a wonderful babysitter to the peanuts. He is utterly fascinated with them, and visits them often.

I can visit puppiez now plz?

Mama dog Tess isn't too happy about Dutch's interest in the pups, but she is a generally polite lady so she lets him have a peek now and then.

These pups are going to be excellent prospects for working and sport homes. They will be high drive, intelligent dogs with so much potential you won't know where to begin! If you are looking for a new sport dog to start from the ground up, don't forget to keep checking our website for more information about when we will start accepting applications.

But you can't have Linus! He's mine!

*runs sobbing from blogspot*

Log of Confusion

2009-09-08T17:42:00.001-07:00

Oh shit. Great. My ball is on the other side of this floating log. Now what?

Guess I'll have to climb over it, since it's obviously as long as the lake itself and there's no going around it.

Oh just FANTASTIC. How am I supposed to get the ball from way up here?

Screw it. I'm heading back to shore. This is hopeless.

Oh geez!

WHOA-OH!

And now you know why Tweed has never run away to join the circus.

Lack of balance.

Mr. Woo needed to show him how it's done.

First, hoist yourself up:

Then spend some time admiring your (portly) physique in the reflection of the water:

Next, make unnaturally lascivious up-close-and-personal gestures to appease the Log Gods:

(Seriously Wootie, stop it. You're making the viewers uncomfortable)

Tell the Food Lady to get bent, and not to rush you:

Then spring off the log with no preamble whatsoever, and ruin the shot:

Today I was teaching the dogs to swim out to the log and climb up on it for photo ops. Given Tweed's initial encounter with Lousy Lake Log, he was none too happy about this game.

It sucks out here.

How much do I loathe you? Let me contemplate the many ways ....

Oh good! We're done here? FINALLY! Peace out, bruthas.

Piper was not so cooperative.

I swam! I hopped up! I jumped off! How much of that did you catch?

Mr. Woo, otoh, was more than happy to show off.

Sproing!

Sproing!

Are you watching? I'm very sexy!

Sproing!

Look, I did everything you asked. I even retrieved Fifa!

I think I've done plenty. Now stop standing there like a lump on a log (har har) and GIVE ME A GODDAMN COOKIE!!!

I SAID GIVE ME A COOKIE, OR THE PRINCESS GETS IT!!
Okay that's it. You'll be sorry.

Look out Piper!

Agh!

He bodyslammed the ball right out of her mouth!

GREAT Woo. Thanks so much, asshole. Where's my ball now?

Meh, you're probably tired of seeing my silly dogs. I know why you stopped by; you just want to see some puppies!

Here's one:

It's somewhat insane.

Here's another one!

It can replicate itself!

...so it has someone to play with.

I know, I know - you thought I meant TESS' PUPS. Those photos are coming, I promise. I'm going out to see them again this week - they will be almost 3 weeks old. Their eyes are open and they are getting mobile now. Check back later this week for puppypics!

You should kick this for me. Remember what happened last time you ignored my request ...

Hey, Food Lady? I still can't find my ball ...

Leech-Free since 2002

2009-08-31T16:21:00.000-07:00

Just one of those delightful phrases that I *used* to be able to apply to Miss Piper.

Not anymore.

Blech.

My sister's wedding reception (aka Big Ass Party) was at Bowen Island this past weekend so we loaded up the dogs and took them over with us. We went a-swimmin', and Piper brought home this leech attached to her stomach. So gross.

It didn't phase Wootie though.

Must retrieve toy for cookies. Must retrieve toy for cookies. Must retrieve toy ...

But it totally gave Tweed the heebie-jeebies.

Eww! Gross! Yuck!

Let's cuddle. No? Why not? What's a little leech between friends??

Piper has balls of steel!

Actually, Piper does NOT have balls of steel. She just really really wishes she did.

Like The Big Steel Ball in the Little Cement Birdbath, which she was unable to remove.

Sneaking up on it did not help.

Staring at it intently was also a bust.

Digging it out of the water looked promising initially, but in the end, the ball defeated her.

However, it kept her entertained for - literally - hours. I mean hours. She was exhausted by the time we left.

Which was a good thing, as it left me free to hunt down Houdini-Woo, who was hunting down Bowen Island chickens. For a fat dog, he sure can squeeze through small spaces.

Oh hai, I'm in the driveway now. You thought an iron gate would keep me in the yard? Why so silly?

I took no photos of it, but Tweed spent the entire party beside the buffet table. Sometimes Piper would go check on his food-mooching progress, but it was too far from The Ball Of Steel.

Tweed's over there eating chicken wings. Are we going back to the fountain now?

Mmm... chicken wings ... straight off the chickens over there ... I wonder if I can get through this thicket?

Tweed and Piper Picked A Peck Of Pickled Peppers

2009-08-25T17:38:00.000-07:00

Except it was just Tweed, not Piper, and it was blackberries, not peppers.

This afternoon we took a trip out to Dog Heaven in Ladner to walk the poocheroonis. The weather started out kind of sour, but soon turned quite lovely. DH is gorgeous at this time of year.

It was also the land of plenty. We came home overflowing with juicy and tiny little plums:

And loads of the sweet purpley goodness that are blackberries:

Like the world's most awesome, and totally free, farmer's market. They even had frogs available.

How cool is that? And, umm, what kind of frog is that? All I know is that as I asked Auntie Jackie "think it's poisonous?" I was already reaching for it. My sense of danger is smarter than my brain-body connection, apparently.

But anyway, back to the blackberries, the inspiration for today's title.

Today I watched Tweed work something out in his little pee brain: he watched us pick blackberries and put them in our little buckets. He watched the other dogs get fed blackberries from the little buckets. A lightbulb turned over his fuzzy head.

Hmmmm .... I haz an idea ....

He then decided to bypass the middleman (ie, the buckets) and help himself to blackberries right off the plant.

Nom.

Now I know lots of dogs eat plants out of the garden and whatnot, and even Woo has helped himself to blackberries from time to time. What was interesting to me was watching Tweed's brain work out the connection between the purple yumyums in the bucket and the source - he glanced from me to the bucket a few times, then from the bucket to the plant, then he left the crowd o'canines jostling at my feet and headed straight for the blackberries on the vine and started chowing down. That's deductive reasoning!

Previous to this, the blackberry bushes were just annoyances that tried to grab his wiener when he lifted his leg for a whiz.

Yay! I am so smart!

Me too! Wait, what?

Dog Heaven is a great place to walk the dogs, but it's a pretty far drive just to canoodle with the canines. Don't you wonder what we were doing way out there?

The berry bushes are that way, guys. Why are you walking away from them?

Well, I woke up this morning and decided that more than anything in the world, I needed some Peanuts. In fact, I was absolutely determined to lay my eyes on 8 peanuts before noon.

Lucky for me, Tess the TDBCR foster dog, had 8 peanuts to share!

Meet Lucy, Sally, Patty, Linus, Charlie, Spike, Schroeder and Franklin!

ZOMG!

Tess had her puppies this past Sunday - 3 females, 5 males, all perfect and wonderful little tri colours.

She is being a great mum - a little confused and stressed, but mostly doing wonderfully.

What happened here? As doG as my witness, I will never have sex again!

Well that's true. Tess is going to be spayed once her pups are weaned, and then she'll want a home of her own too.

In the meantime, she is working hard at keeping her little Peanuts safe.

Enough photos. Take facebox and vamonos plz.

I'm rather partial to this little gentleman, Linus:

But they are ALL lovely!

The other 4 boys:

And the little ladies:

I WANT ONE!

You might too - but please, we are not accepting applications for the puppies yet. It will be several more weeks before they are old enough for us to start finding them homes. Also, I need time to find a new home for me so I can have first pick ;-) *sigh* If only that were true.

So. Much. Want.

Oh hai! Don't mind me, I'm just passing through this entry ...

The Dog With A Thousand Faces

2009-08-18T18:44:00.001-07:00

And all of them look exactly like this:

Get. Your. Camera. OUTTAMYFACE.
Or I'll tear out your heart and shove up your nostrils.

Okay, that's so not fair of me. Sometimes he looks like this:

diediediediediediediediedie.

Poor Tempus the borderjack thinks he is so misunderstood. But we understand him just fine - he is Satanic.

As your Master, I summon thee. Now, kill these humans. ALL these humans.

And it's not like his sister, Rogue, is much better - even though she isn't a borderjack. We think. Or rather, we don't think. Well, to be honest, we aren't really sure WHAT the heck Rogue is. She has this in common with His Wootieness.

I am MISTER(y) WOO. Please refrain from speculation. Thx.

What the heck is Rogue Poguey, AKA, The Angry Coho?

Huwo. You can't peg me. Nope.

Rogue is silvery-blue and white, and squeaked in at just 16" when measured for agility. She is Evil in Training, but lacks the psychotic qualities of her deeply disturbed borderjack sibling.

Also, she is weird.

Any ideas?

As long as it doesn't involve swimming, I don't care what you call me. This liquid is GWOSS!

I'm a booteeful and imperious pwincess. Don't forget that. Or I'll bite you.

Yesterday we tried a new swimmin' hole, called Buntzen Lake. Fiona said it was "an adventure," but I think she just wanted us to go somewhere with water that wouldn't make Toby smell like the mouldy old socks of a long dead man.

It was quite lovely at the lake, very picturesque, and - HEY! GET OUT OF THE SHOT, TWEED!

But I'm so good lookin' :(

From what glimpses of it I could catch, that is. Oh hai, Piper. Yes, I see you.

I said YES, Piper, I DO see you! Jeez!

Well fantastic, you're not blind after all. What good news. Maybe you could see yourself throwing this ball for me then.

Food Lady = slave to a trio of canine whims (Mr. Woo's whim is to sit around doing nothing at all)

Today, the kittens are the vet getting themselves spayed, while their mama, El Gato Negro, roams my condo calling for her little lost children. It kind of breaks your heart. Also your eardrums.

The brown tabby has a home. The black and white whiskerface is meeting what I hope will be her new home on Saturday!

This leaves only EGN and her reign of terror over my poor dogs.

She is a nice cat in her own right, but foldy ears or not, nobody seems to want her :( Black cats get a bum rap.

But why?

Never mind Toby.

But WHY?!?!

Toby shut up. Don't make me summon the Lazy Orange Basketball from its leafy hiding place.

Did someone summon me?

You know when I do that, Piper goes into strange twisty fits.
^^weird.

In other news, Tess the pregnant BC that we flew here a few weeks ago was recently x-rayed and appears to be carrying 8 little bundles of fuzzylump cuteness for us, due sometime in the begining of September. Fingers crossed that all goes well!