You may not remember me

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!

Do you believe in magic?

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

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.

Mommy will kick you until you're dead.

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.

My Kingdom For A Decent Dog Park

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

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.