Summer Has Officially Arrived

Know how I can tell?

Woo on Piper action:

The Wootie Toy has lost it's allure entirely. Beach trips now start with this:

And end like this:

(Summer Mad Teeth (tm))

Welcome home, summer! We missed you!

Yesterday at the dog beach we met Rob and Jack. Actually, we met Jack first, because I threw the Wootie Toy and out of nowhere came this little black streak of lightning who leapt in the air, grabbed the Wootie Toy and vanished. We thought we were victims of a Kelpie (not the dog, but rather the Celtic shapeshifter) but then Rob came along and cleared things up for us. Turns out Jack is not a Kelpie at all, just a finely strung mixed breed dog with a penchant for frisbees.

Jack is a Smooth Fox Terrier X Lab who apparently bounced in an out of every shelter in British Columbia before going home with this fellow Rob. Rob also had a border collie, so I gathered there was some seriousness behind the phrase "Jack's nuts."

Nuts or not, Jack can jump! Holy crow!

And then there is Woo. Many times I have posted photos for you on this blog of Woo gracefully leaping for his frisbee or soccer ball and you have "oohed" and "ahhhed" over his mastery of the airborne toy.

But what no one has seen until now is the dark and dirty side of those shots. Everything in this world has a seedy underbelly and/or a secret.

This is Wootie's secret, exposed.

FAiL!
AKA This is what happens when Woo misses the frisbee. He falls down. At top speed.
(View large!)

I'm sorry Woo. Your cover is blown.

At the beach we also saw Howie. Howie was adopted from our rescue about a trillion years ago, so it was cool to see him again. Even if mostly all I saw was this:

Piper says he gets an "A" for Effort, but that his form is lacking and he fails to live up to her Extreme Hydroplaning standards.


I have no appropriate segue to this, but I feel it has been a long time since I provided Jane with a good shot of The Flamboyance (tm) and she must be going into withdrawal by now.

As you can see, The Flamboyance (tm) has really matured over the 18 months or so that Woo has become part of TWAAW. It is now, essentially, its own entity.

I'm still working on getting good Shaking Dog photos, and was pleased with Tweed's performance for the camera. I had no idea a dog could move so many body parts in different directions all at once.


"Barkbarkbark!Bark!Barkbarkbark!"

(Buried somewhere in this blog from last year are photos of Coach standing up in the water like a groundhog, but I can't remember where they are.)

Okay Piper wants me to get off the computer and take them all back to the beach and she is being all begging and pitiful looking about it. Kind of like this:

They like us, they really like us!

Thanks to b13 at fotographica for passing along a blogging award to Three Woofs And A Woo. It looks like this:

Thanks b13!! We have big egos, and are happy when other people pander to them.

Here are the “rules” of the award:

1. Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make me think and/or make my day
2. Acknowledge the post of the award giver
3. Tell the award winners that they have won by commenting on their blogs with the news!

Okay! This is hard, as I receive a lot of blog links, but no one gives me a lot of extra time to read blogs! Sometimes I will sit down and read a bunch of them on a Sunday morning the way other people read the newspaper.

My top 5 of the moment would be:

1. Just Another Dog Blog. Pia, Kate and Bella amuse me almost as much as me and my own dogs amuse me, and I find me fall-down-laughing hiliarious. But then, Pia and her dogs have been amusing me for some time before they got their own blog! Pia is a good photographer and her subjects are keen to make you laugh; it's a winning combination.
2. Nicaragua Redux: The Sarna Dog Chronicles. This is nepotism at its finest - Finn is my BFF and this is her blog, so of COURSE I'm going to plug her shit. However, she is also a skilled and dry artist of words and her life in Nicaragua is more interesting than yours. And the work she is doing is really important. So you should read it.
3. Erin Vey Photography. Look at it for the gorgeous dog photos but spend some time exploring the stunningly beautiful portraits of women in her "Believe" project. I think making people believe they are beautiful is a skill that not all of us (read: me!) have. Recently my mother, my sister and my ex boyfriend all told me how much they hate the photos of them I took, so I've given up taking photos of people again, since it's no fun to suck. I'll leave people photography to artists like Erin.
4. Alison. This is not really a blog, it's just a beautiful and deeply moving project by Jack Radcliffe, spanning a number of years, that I've never had the opportunity to post about anywhere. Though it is static, I revisit it over and over again. It's so beautiful it might make you cry. Don't say I didn't warn you.
5. Stuff White People Like. I have this ex boyfriend, whom I no longer communicate with but miss quite a bit, and every time I read this blog I have an overwhelming urge to send an entry to him, because he's the only person I know who I think would appreciate it as much as I do. Which is completely untrue, seeing as how a kajillion people read and appreciate it all the time. So I share it with all of you, and that way I can laugh about it with you guys instead of fighting the urge to send it to him (Hi Professor SmartyPants!) :)

So thanks so much for the award, b13! We appreciate it, and we like your blog too ... even if I only get a chance to read it on random Sunday mornings.

Feast or Famine

Kind of like this blog - some weeks, no posts. Other weeks, several posts.

Today's entry is about dinner; I haz it, the dogs want it.

In the sink sits a bag of thawing chicken.

FEAST

On the floor sit STARVING dogs. Starving TO DEATH if you please.

FAMINE
"I'm so fed up with her. There's chicken in the sink, perfectly good chicken, and she's sitting on the floor with the camera stuck to her face. I just. don't. understand. her."


FEAST


SO. MUCH. FAMINE.
"I'm too weak ... to lift my head ... I rest it in your leg ... you loser-human-in-pajamas-at-7:00pm-on-a-Friday-night.* Your cruelty
is why you are single. You suck. I'm so hungry."


FEAST. Chicken, chicken everywhere ...


KITTEN
"No eatin' the kitten. Move along. Nothing to see here."


Oops, shit. I mean, FAMINE:
"Dear doG, who art in heaven, please make the Food Lady give me chicken."

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

Oh and it gets better.

Are you ready for it?

Mr. Woo died of hunger. He moaned, keeled over, and died, right there on the floor.
Of course he died staring at me, so I'd feel guilty. I totally don't.

BYE BYE WOOTIE! MORE CHICKEN FOR TWEED!!

"Over my dead body. I'll fight him for it. Bring it on, @$$hole."
(more Meat Mad Teeth (tm))

For the record, since I don't want a "dog rescue" breaking into my house and liberating my dogs, they aren't really starving! They go into famine mode about 1/2 hour - 45 minutes before their regularly scheduled feeding time. It takes Woo that long to create an effective build up to his nightly "demise."

Besides, anyone who has seen Wootie in person knows he could live off his own fat for, like, three weeks at least.


"OMG. You starve me AND you mock me. I hate you."

*in my own defense, I am wearing pajamas because I changed out of my wet dog beach jeans into the closest pants nearby, which *happened* to be my jammies! And I'm home on a Friday night because I have to work early Saturday morning. I'm not a loser! Don't listen to Tweed, he's a dick!

Dueling Flamboyances (tm) and Other Tails

Today we went to the dog beach.

We started out practicing How To Be A Wootie Toy. It's like yoga for Woos.

Then we wandered down to the beach, where Woo commenced the meditation portion of the outing.

*Ohmmmmm*

And he did a little bit of swimming ... you know, to tone his rock hard abs:

But then his radar (ears) picked up something and started working over time ("Cap'n, look at the size of 'em!").

Whatever he picked up on his Earadar made him pretty excited:


It was his girlfriend! We haven't seen her for a while, that sexy minx.

The flirting began immediately. First there were lots of coy glances:


Then there were The Dueling Flamboyances (tm):

Then the two crazy-in-love kids began to --WTF?

TWEED, GET OUT OF THE SHOT!

Yeesh. Okay.

Then there was the wrestling, and the chasing. Regrettably, I had the wrong lens on the camera, so I didn't get too many shots, but this one about summed up their lovemaking:

Wootie learned Mad Teeth (tm) from Piper, who taught him everything he knows about flirting.

Speaking of Piper, I think she was jealous. She tried to play it cool, you know, "hanging around" the Wootie Toy all casual, in case he came back for it.

*coughSTALKERcough*

As for Tweed, he was either burying his hockey ball, or he was absent-mindedly digging in the sand while staring at me like a sociopath and thinking thoughts like "If you don't stop taking pictures of stupid Woo and his stupid girlfriend, and throw my damn ball, I will kill you. KILL YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP."

He was pretty happy to pose for me once I put the hockey ball away though.

And a close up (secretly, I am a bit fond of this dog)

And this a completely random, and completely happy, Viszla puppy:

Donut says this entry was boring. But she's a cat, and everything is boring to cats.

ETA:

Today I got an email from Dusty's new humans. I miss PANTS so I was delighted to get the update. They said:

"Ruby was a little hesitant about him for the first few weeks inside the house but outside she loved having the play companion. Now they are good friends and mellow on the deck side by side during the day. He is a great companion on the trails when running and biking. He cracks us up with his clumsy ways. We think he may be part kangaroo also because he bounces so high when he is excited and has excellent stretch techniques. Thanks for introducing us to Dusty. We think he is awesome."

And along with this they sent The Photo That Made Woo's Eyes Pop Out Of His Head With Envy:

What a moron ... I mean, Marushin

The following photo was two years in the making.

Countless episodes of forcing Tweed to wear human clothing and be humiliated on the blog; months of taking this out of the closet and giving Tweed a cookie for not panicking (he used to be scared of it); untold hours of being rewarded for sitting next to it ...

... and at long last, Tweed climbed Mount Marushin:

That's right. Tweed has conquered his fear and allowed me to pose him proudly (?) in my motorcycle helmet.

Look at the brave doggie!
How stupid is this??

ETA: Lest you think I am exaggerating the magical feat of getting Tweed to pose in my helmet, let me offer this texted gem I received on my trusty iPhone on May 12th. It's from my ex boyfriend, who owns the motorcycle, and once lived with Tweed, and can attest to Tweed's life-long helmet phobia. He doesn't care for Tweed, but likes to read the blog. The text read:

"F*ck me, i can't believe you got that helmet on his head!"

See? SEE??
------------------
Piper, OTOH, speculated that I was out to kill her by asking her to pose in a simple scarf. Donut, with her Incredulous Sniffer of Disbelief, did not help matters.

"Holy crap, what's she doing to you?"


So Tweed thanks you all for the birthday wishes. He thinks they would have been a lot better if they had all come with wieners, but he'll take what he can get.

Proof that Tweed is happy:

In other news, The Infamous Woo is going to be on television ... again. He happened to get interviewed by these nice people from Taiwan, who were filming a travel show and happened upon the dog beach.

I did most of the talking, but apparently Woo is more interesting. And even more interesting than Woo, apparently, was the Chuck-It (tm). Apparently they do not have Chuck-Its (tm) in Taiwan.

Financial Tip Of The Day: Become a billionaire and import Chuck-Its to Taiwan.

The host of the show, Brian, must have chucked Tweed's ball about 4 trillion times, so much that Tweed got downright tired of going to retrieve it. That hardly ever happens.

Here is standing on the shore kind of going "le sigh."

I do not know the name of the show, as I forgot to ask, and don't speak Tawianese anyway, so I will never see it. But it never fails ... somehow, Woo manages to get on tv wherever he goes.

It must be because he does stuff like this:

What a card.


HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!
(my ungrateful little brats didn't get me anything! I hope other dog-mums out there got something sweet!)