Who's Number One?

Why is there a placement podium at the dog park?




...Were you waiting for an answer? I dunno!!

But we know who #1 is!!

And boy did he dream big today! Today he apparently dreamt he could bust into the puppy pen and eat mama's food. Mama dog disagreed. They argued through metal. RED DOG LOST A TOOTH! There was a big ole pointy canine laying on the floor when I got home. He's going to have no teeth left if he keeps this up.

Goofball.

So after much deliberation, we have named the puppies. The 7 Deadly Sins were a great idea ... if I never wanted to find them homes!! Just like you never name a foster dog "Digger" or "Mike Meyers" you also don't name them "Wrath" or "Gluttony." And quite frankly, the thought of who would adopt a dog named "Lust" was just creepy.

I liked the idea of naming them after toilets, but this was vetoed by Cookie Uncle who felt that since he drove all the way to the boonies to pick them up he has a big say in the process. Not big enough to house 7 puppies in his apartment, or have mama dog run out into the building hallway and take a giant smelly dump in front of his neighbors, mind you.

So without further ado, I present to you ...
We are now at Day 4 and all the pups are doing well, even the wrinkly one. I swear they have doubled in size,but I think they are actually about one half size bigger than they were 4 days ago. They are FAT and squirmy. Mama, whom I have named Mona whether Cookie Uncle likes it or not, is eating about 5-6 cups of Innova Evo a day. Ouch.

The still look kinda like potatoes, but they are starting to look a little more puppyish. They are getting cuter by the nanosecond.

Blah blah AWWWW blah blah

Awwww!

What a capture, right? Little wee merle with the big mama merle. How cute is that??

I know how much you all love the puppy photos. That's why I am going to show you something else instead. For Hallowe'en I'm going to be Torture Lady (tm).

You can just ignore these. After all, they are MERELY some of the most technically perfect shots I've taken in a while. They are ONLY some of the last sunny day beach pictures I'll have a chance to get before we turn the clocks back and the rains come. Don't mind boring old self indulgent me ...


blah blah blah, a lovely photo of Lars' coy side

Ho hum, a perfect capture of Woo's unique sproinging

...blah blah blah, the moment before Mad Teeth (tm)

Ha ha! Not all dives are flawless! Oh shut up boring Food Lady, with your Piper photos.

SNORE, yeah yeah, foster dog Cooper, looking for a home, we remember him. Get on with it already.

Oh look! The Flamboyance (tm) VS Rat Tail. That's so zzzzzzzzzzzz

Okay Okay Okay.

Puppies.

Here's a wee white noggin peeking up from a sea of merle.

Two Heads Are Better Than One

He does have legs, I swear.

I have been trying to get photos of each pup individually, but the little bastards keep turning away from the camera. They are blind, they are deaf, the only motion they can reliably do is The Worm, and yet the second the camera comes out they all turn their little potato backs on me. I don't know how they do it. One of the great mysteries of nature.

Maybe I should bring the camera out in the middle of the night, when they are all screaming and keeping me awake!!

Anyway, here are some shots I did manage to catch this afternoon.

They don't even have feelings yet, but this one still managed to scowl at me.

This one just gave me the puppy version of the bird.

And then complained about me to his mum.

Ha1 I like this one. He looks exactly like a piglet

This one stuck his tongue out at me. While scowling.

I keep calling them all "him" by the way, because I can't remember which ones are males and which ones are females. Truthfully, I am lucky I remember to put on pants in the morning, that's how tired I am. This is harder than I remember it.

It's a damn good thing they're cute.

Shut up, Lars!!

"You're not the boss of me! Shut up!"

Lars is an evil little shit. He has designated me "Auntie Chuck-It RIGHT NOW Lady." Even though he has his own perfectly good Dad with his own perfectly functioning Chuck-It, Lars believes I should throw his ball for him ... endlessly. Never mind I am throwing balls for my own three numbskulls, and trying to entice a little orange tube with a Wootie toy, AND trying to capture it all on film. If I ignore Lars, he hooks his foot around my ankle and tries to trip me, then barks at me. Or he shoulder-checks me in the knees and then he barks at me.

Or else he just barks at me.
LARS IS BOSSY!

(Cookie Uncle is meanwhile usually sitting on a log trying to lure puppies to him so he can chat up their attractive owners. Lars has lost faith in Dad's Chuck-It abilities.)

And speaking of Shut Up, I wish I could capture a hound baying in a photograph. Because the guy that owns this dog was asked to take his dog home by someone who lives near the dogpark and was tired of hearing "BAWOOOO BAWOOO BAWOOOO."


This hound dog never-stopped-baying. If he wasn't baying at his owner to throw his ball, he was baying at other dogs for the sure joy of hearing his own (very loud) voice.

But the funniest thing about the hound baying is what it does to Wootie:

Some dogs howl when they hear fire engine sirens. Woo doesn't. But something about the particular pitch of this hound's sound causes Wootie to howl his little heart out.


Poor Red Dog says he would rather drown than hear it.

As for Tweed, I'm not sure what's going on with Tweed here. You probably can't either, so I drew a big arrow for you to see what you're supposed to look at.
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I know, I know - "We're tired of your boring beach stories, Food Lady, show us puppies."

FINE!

Here are all the merle pups on day two on this earth. The little non-conformist black puppy was nowhere to be seen.
They're clearly feeling a lot better, because they aren't all huddled together all the time, which means they are sufficiently toasty warm.

Mama Dog is feeling a lot better too. I guess everything comes together after you take two giant dumps on the living room floor, and finish it up with a great lake of pee on a dog bed.
The good news is she did all of this right by the patio door, so she clearly wanted to go outside. Since then, she has done her business outside where she is supposed to.

Taking pictures of merle puppies is like taking picture in a hunting store. Just a bunch of camo!

It's easier and much cuter when they are on their own:

Then again, a stack of merley tails is pretty darn irresistible.

Idle Hands Are The Devil's Playground

or something like that.

First things first.

Thanks to all of your for comments and emails about the loss of my dear departed Toilet Kitty. His death was very traumatic and sad, I'm not ready to share it with you yet. But all of your condolences and kind words and well wishes were really, really nice and very comforting. It meant a lot to me. And if Toilet Kitty knew about them ... well, he wouldn't give a shit, because he's a cat and they don't care. But at least one of us does.

So anyway.

Now that my bathroom is empty, I decided it was best to refill it as soon as possible. And because I do everything in a big way, I went out and stuffed it with these:

Ha ha! You should see the look on your face! I'm just kidding, I didn't put these in my bathroom.

They wouldn't fit. I put them in the Northwest corner of the shoebox-cum-apartment that my border collies let me live in. It surprised me to learn that if I didn't usually keep a deep freeze full of dog food in that area, I could fit a small table and chairs there and eat like a normal person, as opposed to balancing a plate on my knees and swatting away dog tongues while I do it. Also, the deepfreeze looks like crap in the living room.

But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. Yesterday this sweet Australian Shepherd mix was picked up by Animal Control. I guess she was so grateful to them that she bestowed up on them 8 little presents in the middle of the night. Come morning, some of those 8 little presents were dying because the shelter floor is cold cement. One had already passed away.


When the shelter called one of my volunteers this morning with a desperate plea for help, and then she called me, I said "No, absolutely not, no freakin' way am I taking a litter of newborn puppies." Then I hung up the phone, called Adrian and sent him out to Chilliwack to pick them up.

*Le sigh* My next tattoo is going to say S.U.C.K.E.R. and it's going straight across my forehead, behind which there is no brain or sense.

(Anyway, ladies, I should mention that Adrian is still single. And still looking. And if there is anything that will tug at a woman's heartstrings, it has to be a big man carefully carrying a load of small puppies up the stairs swaddled in a blanket and cradled in his arms . For the first time ever, he almost didn't repulse me.)

Now I have all these puppies in my apartment. And my dogs are mad. The Mad Teeth (tm) are flashing left, right and center. Red Dog remembers very clearly the day I brought home Wicked and he didn't like it then, and doesn't like it now. Tweed doesn't like the fact that Mama Dog gets a big bowl of food all to herself and he can't have any of it. Piper doesn't like the fact that there are things cuter than her in my apartment. Woo's just an idiot and keeps sitting on the coffee table. We've had four visitors today, which is four more than we usually have (puppies make Food lady popular!) so my dogs are going off their nuts with the excitement of it all.

But you don't want to hear me babble on about having puppies in my apartment. You want to see photos.

There are 3 girls and 4 boys. Two very dark merles, two lighter merles, two white pups with some merling, and one almost solid black little non-conformist.


There will, of course, be more photos to come. Right now, I am just letting them settle in and get comfortable. You know that apartment you had just after college, and you shared it with one or more other people, and it was a one bedroom and you cleverly made a partition with an old sheet so you could have some privacy? Yeah, that's me now. Except my roommate is 7 little hairy potatoes and their Grand Potato.

What I need now are names. There are, doG willing, 7 pups remaining. Snow White and the 7 Dwarves is out, because we used those names on a recent litter. So we need names in a "Seven" theme for the pups. When they are old enough, assuming I haven't been taken to the Bin by the nice men in the overly white coats, they will be neutered and adopted out to new homes through our rescue. If you have some name suggestions, please leave a comment!

And so my homies don't feel left out, here's a shout out to my own dogs.


The Furry Orange Sausage trying to camouflage himself from squirrels:

Piper tries to overthrow The King

The Tongue

And Donut is ... Donut. Probably doing something bad.

ETA: I ALREADY got called mean names for the phrase "almost didn't repulse me" with respect to Cookie Uncle and this post has only been up for 10 minutes! Here is my penance.

Ladies, the Dogman:

He doesn't seem to repulse the woman giving him the eye in that photo, does he? *nudge nudge, wink wink*

My bathroom is empty

and my heart hurts. No, it aches and aches.

R.I.P Toilet Kitty

September 14 1991 - October 23 2007

Best fuckin' cat. I miss you buddy. Salut.

Look out, world!!!

Before you stands what is, without question, the world's newest and most terrifying force to be reckoned with in the venue of dog agility. Standing 16 3/4" tall and weighing in at a portly 26lbs, this orange furry sausage appended to the universally renowned Flamboyance (tm) is going to take the sport of agility and turn it on its head!!

Or, you know, not.

*sigh* What can I say? Woo was cut out for cute faces and the occasional television role, but not for any kind of dog sport. When I first brought him to flyball practice last year, everyone in the club was impressed with his small stature and lined up to watch him do his first ever row of jumps. By jump #3, they had all turned back to conversation among themselves, if that speaks to you about Mr. Woo's jumping (or rather lack of) style.

To demonstrate:

Tweed, ADC, AGDC, MJDC, MGDC, FDM-CH-S

Notice the clean lines of his finely tucked legs parallel to the water's surface. Notice how he is driving forward with purpose. Notice what a gorgeous figure he makes in his jumpingness, screaming "look out world, Tweed has arrived!"

Mr. Woo
Notice the nambly pambly splayed legs, the mocking wavery of the The Flamboyance (tm) and the complete lack of purpose or style in his jump.

In other words: I don't think Mr. Woo is going to be my next stellar agility dog.

So the other day at the beach an eagle stole Piper's $5.00 rubber Chuck It ball. I threw it out in the water and the eagle got there first, took off with it and then dropped it down a building vent of the nearby museum. And did I have a camera to document any of this? Nooooo sir, I did not!! Stupid rain!!

But now Piper has a brand new, $10.00 pink Orbee ball to match her pretty pink Camo collar. The collar, incidentally, was purchased for Piper by Cookie Uncle Adrian, who mocks my obsession with All Things Pink for Piper, but also feeds my addiction through purchases like this:

She is so pretty!

It's too bad Piper won't play flyball anymore, because Auntie Fiona and I have a dream. In this dream, we have a flyball team of rescue dogs called "Pretty In Pink" and all the dogs will be outfitted in pink harnesses and the handlers in pink shirts.

The star of this Dream Team will be The World's Cutest Puppy. You all know her as Rogue:

Yes she is imperious. Yes she is full of 'tude. Yes she is a big devil nestled coyly in a small adorable package. I don't care. I love her!

So does Wootie.

I took these photos at the ill-fated agility practice where I learned that Woo will never be an agility star. Having a lie-down in the tunnel is just not part of the competition.

Some other dogs who came to agility practice:

No-Eyes Muppet and Woo-Eating Smudge

This puppy was just present at the facility, he is too young for agility. But OH MY GOD is he ever keeee-ute!! I was smitten with his Dane-ness, and he had me wrapped almost all the way around his giant paw!

Look at that face!

He is just 4 months old. One day, he will tower over this sibling of his, who is a larger sized Chocolate Lab.

Now Toby, bless his heart, is not much of a agility dog. He's more of a drool and walk around kind of dog. Since Woo and I weren't really making a lot of progress on the agility front, I had some time to torment Toby with strategically placed cookies.

"Hey Toby, want a cookie?"

"Yes Please!"

"Hey, umm, the cookie? I ... oh ... cookie."

"I can ... get .. the cookie ..."

Poor Toby. All that work for a wee biscuit.

I think swimming season is now officially over. It's getting dark a lot sooner after work and Red Dog has let me know that swimming is no longer a soothing panacea to his hot aching joints, but rather it is more like being pelted with iceballs right in his elbows. He's still game to go of course:

But that's because he is a good, brave dog. His limping for the next 24 hours tells me something different. So it's back to mucky grass and soft moist earth for the winter.

This funny little Jack Russell disagrees. He said "Get in that water and be a man!! Be a HUMAN!" and he demonstrated how.