Happy Birthday Hanky The Christmas Poo

It's not just me that holds birthday parties for dogs. Some time in April, foster dog Hank turned a whopping 4 years old. To Adrian, who is fostering Hank, that means it's party time! So today we met at Bridgeman Park and had a party for Hanky The Christmas Poo (thanks eversomuch Jackie, for giving Hank that permanently-etched-in-my-brain title). Because unlike me, who has the good sense to hold such celebrations in the privacy of my own home, Adrian felt it should be a public event.

OTOH, he brought the humans pie, so I will forgive him.

The dogs got cake. Birthday boy Hank shows off his.

The guests, as they are relatively good sports, showed up in party attire. Or more correctly, they innocently showed up and then we leaped out of bushes in camo gear and forced hats upon their heads for our own sick, twisted amusement.


Real men wear pink
Once we had finished falling all over ourselves laughing at dogs in birthday hats, because yes, we are all 11, we then commenced further torture and presented them with the cake. But no-no, no touch cake until we get you all in a drooling, pleading pile o'dogs.
Then it was cake time. We let the discerning pallets of the assembled octet do the taste testing, as we felt that a cake somewhere called "Three Dog Bakery" was probably not something we wanted to eat ourselves.

Lars says "it's okay, if you're into cake."

Harriet was impressed with the portion sizes

Tweed suggests that it was 'a little tough'

Okay, but what is a party without some whipped cream? (yeah, that was Adrian's idea too. I will leave you to think about what that could mean, and I can't take responsibility for how it affects your overall impression of him)

Red Dog demonstrates his unerring talent of completely missing anything aimed directly at this mouth.

Piper demonstrates her overall personality, which is the unshakable belief that things just come to her if she so much as hints she would like them to.
Big gaping maw.

Tweed demonstrates that although he is bloody terrified of the sound of the aerated can of whipped cream, he can still partake of the edible-oily goodness.
(he used to demonstrate something similar, which was that a bar of soap tastes excellent even if you have to stand in the scary bath tub to lick it. I have no photographic evidence of this latter demonstration, but I thought the story might help you get to know Tweed a little better)

And Woo demonstrates a complete symbiosis with the spray can.

After we cleaned up the party...

...Hank got his birthday present (which he most definitely did not share. Hank's a bit of a greedy bastard!)
So. Happy birthday Hank!! Maybe for your birthday you will find a forever home of your own.

And relative to nothing at all, here's a photo of Harriet on a stump

Woo's Got Balls

Well, not really. Like all of my dogs, Woo is neutered (shameless pet responsibility plug). But Woo's got One Big Ball courtesy of FIFA - the dumpster soccer ball. Walking home from the park the other day, WootieMac discovered someone's discarded soccer ball and gave me "pleeeeeeze mummie" eyeballs, so I let him take it home. Best. Discovery. Ever. Woo LURVES his soccer ball. Big noises come out of little Woo that bring paramedics running, and make regular people fall down laughing. It's bizarre.

GIMME!!

MAKE IT GO!!

The ball can cause Woo some difficulties, i.e., sand in the eyes

But the bastard ball proves to be even more difficult when it tries to escape in the ocean.

OH.MY.GOD. GET BACK HERE!

Even The Tenacious B (aka Red Dog) concedes and lets the bastard ball make its escape.

YOU WILL GO BACK TO SHORE. DO MY BIDDING, DAMMIT!

And then a show off big mouth lab comes along and hustles off with the ball like it's no big deal. phhbbt.

I tried to help the Woo out by giving the ball a good boot in it's leathery little rear, and Woo repays me with a completely useless back shot. Thanks for nuthin' Woo.

So Adrian shows up at the beach (stalker) and lends me a hand ... er, foot, and gives the ball a mighty boot that then grants my wishes three and affords me what was, hands down, the best shot of the day.

The is your Woo. This is your Woo on Soccer.

And speaking of stalkers, I don't know why Red Dog even bothers to come back to shore with these two scary hounds waiting for him.

And speaking of scary, TELL ME these two have not turned into OneDog SameDog. Lars (one 'a'. Got it. Jeez) now swims. Tweed has grown uppy ears. I'm damn scared. One Tweed is bad enough; two can only signify Armageddon.

So, umm, got puppy breath?

Puppy coming

Puppy going

And I'm really starting to think that Adrian is using my blog as his personal dating service. Oh yeah sure, he just happened to crouch down in front of my camera and make smoochies with adorable puppy face. Oh yeah, that doesn't make girls swoon and stuff. What-ever. Fine. I'm his pimp. Here you go. The price just went up.

And now, a picture of some guy's wiener.

Why, who is THIS extra handsome fella?

Harriet will give that some deep thought.

Parker's going to reflect on it awhile.
And for Jackie, who doesn't understand why I'm not taking photos 24/7 and uploading them to flickr and my blog, like, all the time, some more photos of Harriet and Parker.

This is a happy Parker.

This is Camo Harry (where? where's Waldo?)

And this is what Parker and Harriet look like when you chop off Parker's front legs.

If you chemically fuse Mr. Woo with a Brittany Spaniel, it might look a little something like this. It appears to be angry.

Okay and lastly ... what? Why? GOD.

Airborne with Uncle Adrian, and other tales from the dog beach

Piper is the Queen of Boing. She boings for everything. She boings so much that it has seriously inhibited her agility career (she boings UP not forward. No jump required!!). Whatever, I think it's funny. She can even jump rope 'cuz of the boinging. So anyway, her two favourite things to do are a) boing at whoever has the Chuck-It and b) have a ball in her mouth and do this crazy devil spinning at whoever has the Chuck-It. The latter is too fast to catch with the camera, and I am so used to the former that I don't really photograph it. But today I turned and snapped off a shot that I liked the composition of. So here she is, the Queen of Boing:

It's been a while since Piper busted out some Mad Teeth, but she gave some to Woo today when he body slammed her in the ocean. I don't know if she is mellowing with age or what the deal is, but she isn't showing off the pearly whites as much these days. So I figured this one needed documenting.
(Do you kinda dig the expression on Woo's face too? Screwed up his eyes while praying for courage and plowed on in? Funny little Woo.)

And here is Piper just being Piper. I liked how Red Dog snuck into the shot and is totally happy about it too. He was in LOTS of shots that I took today, come to think of it. I think he is getting better at anticipating where the ball is going to go, since with his bad elbows he has no chance of getting to it first.

And speaking of Red Dog, I just think he is so darn handsome. I titled this photo "The Perfect Man" because, well, he is! If only he were human. *sigh*

You can see how he rocks his weight back onto his hindlegs to take the pressure off his elbows, makes him look a little like a hunchback. But it seems to do the trick, and I think he looks pretty damn fab for an old dog who could barely walk two weeks ago. I wuv him!!

So onto more red dogs. I believe I mentioned a few posts ago about my concern that Tweed and Laars look an awful lot alike. Sometimes, when they are at a distance, I can't tell them immediately apart ... especially now that Laars has learned to swim (who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?), and when the two of them strike out into the ocean for the ball they may as well be a single dog.

So here is Laars

And here is Tweed

And here is Laars-Tweed, or Tweed-Laars. Eerie, no?

So now we move on to Woo, who is the real reason anyone reads this blog anyway (Hi Dana!). Woo likes to play this game with sticks, that we call the "I'm gonna getcher Wootie stick!" But you have to say it exactly like I do, which is in a creepy, shrieky voice while hunched over and holding out your hands, the fingers of which are wiggling menacingly, as you advance upon the rapidly more stressing Mr Woo. This game upsets Woo to NO end, and causes him to hunker down over his prized stick, put his ass in the air and bark and growl at you before taking off with the beloved stick (which, btw, came home with us ... and is in a million pieces on my carpet. I've already incurred one splinter as a result)

This is the Wootie stick game, summed up in one photo:

This photo is relative to nothing. I just like it. I call it "Warrior Woo." That sounds romantic, but really I think he was scanning the beach goers for treat-potentials.

And just a couple of random dogs from the beach. This Lab made, hands down, the funniest shaking face I have ever seen:

And here is a photo called "David and Goliath"

In other news (because of course the above was breaking news), I have donated a photo session to the silent auction fundraiser at SAINTS, being held on May 12th. It's for a good cause, so check it out:

http://www.saintsrescue.ca/news/2007/auction/silentauction.htm

Bad dog ...?

Tonight I was playing with light and shadow. This is what a Red Dog looks like in black and white when he has been punished for being BAD. Bad like attacking the cat. Now, they say the prednisone will make him thirsty (check) and pee more often (check check!), and that it may increase his hunger (this would explain why the BEST DOG EVER snuck into the bathroom and ate all the cat's food, something he would never have done pre-steroids ... he did it right in front of me!)(he has no practice at being sneaky, obviously). I was also warned that it would make him moody. Until he went after the cat, I saw no signs of this.

Now the cat, you must understand, has just cost me five big bills in vet costs. The infamous Toilet Kitty has somehow gotten old. He'll be 16 this year, and he is diabetic - going on 4 yeas now. Earlier this week he crashed - his blood sugar was through the roof, his bladder got all infected ... it was ugly. And expensive! And now that I have spent the big bucks getting him on the road to Better, the last thing I need is a BADDOG taking a hunk out of him. So Red Dog got in lots of trouble. And the result was this look, a very sadbaddog. Sadbaddogs lose their ears.

Contrite, no?

Now the Wootie Master needs to be in colour because an oranger dog there never was. In this shot I managed to get this his lovely plume of a tail, which I swear is as big as the dog himself. His big big eyes always make him a fetching subject as well.

Piper is already black and white, so she looks good in either format. I desaturated the photo a little to emphasize her lovely brown eyes. I know she looks all attentive and such, but really she thinks the camera lens cap I am holding in my hand is either a) food or b) a toy of some kind. The only thing that would get her attention more thoroughly would be sheep. But they are difficult to hold in the air.
And lastly, we have Tweed. I have nothing good to say about this dog. He is either ridiculously happy looking in photos, or he is a no-eared suspicious dog. In this case, we went for deliriously happy.
I have no photos of Toilet Kitty. He is still mad at Red Dog and is hiding in the bathroom again. I did notice though that he got a good whack in, as RD has a long deep scratch down the center of his nose.