Just the usual

going on here lately.

You know, a sea lion...


A dog wearing the cone of shame...

A little dog saved from the South Central shelter in LA...

Wait, what??

Yep, that's Paco.

Erika, Loic and I went to LA for a week and amidst the beach walking, shopping and relaxing, we managed to visit 3 animal shelters and fly a 10 lb dog home with us.

Beach walking
(Loic hated the sand on day 1 and took off crawling in it while laughing hysterically on day 2)

Shopping

Relaxing

We brought little Paco back here to find a home for him. He was in the worst of the LA shelters, from what I can tell. South Central needs to euthanize dogs all the time for space. The shelter was packed full. Not that this should need to be justified, but we brought a dog back here to Vancouver because (luckily in some ways) there are very few little dogs in shelters here. We've got way too many big dogs, but people searching for a little dog often end up turning to pet stores and breeders because they "just couldn't find one in the shelter".

We picked the friendliest dog we could find...and it didn't hurt his chances that he happens to be a Toby clone with Abby's face. He makes Toby look big though!

I like him. He's got that awesome terrier attitude. He's going to make someone a great little dog! He was so easy to fly with, too. He was in a soft crate in the cabin and he just slept the whole time.

Kepler is looking more and more like an adult these days.


Oh, and the cone of shame part? Ryan had this nasty looking lump on his leg that was most likely a histiocytoma. They're benign lumps that young dogs get that disappear in a couple of months....if left alone. Ryan must have started chewing at it when I was away and when I got back the lump was gone and all that remained was a horrible pseudomonas infection. He's on antibiotics and I've been wrapping his leg in honey bandages (honey kills pseudomonas). His leg is looking much better right now. Hopefully he won't have to wear the cone for much longer...he was found stuck standing between the couch and the coffee table the other day. He can be so smart sometimes...and then sometimes I just wonder...

Ay Chihuahua

That's one little dog to fill an awfully large beach.

Good thing he had some assistance.


Kepler's not such a puppy anymore! He's becoming quite the looker.

You know, Bella, I'd be getting out of the way right about now if I were you.
I don't remember what happened after this, I just liked the picture.

Amigo will play with anything.

Perfect camo for Cooper.

I like the light in this photo.

Tyler's in his element.

The many faces of Abby

Abby cracks me up. She is so expressive, demanding, and bitchy...yet also worried and sensitive. She'll let me know when I throw the ball "wrong" (if it bounces unexpectedly) and she always talks back when I ask her to do something she doesn't feel like doing. I think she's the biggest character of a dog I've ever met.

Unsure
Downright worried

Screw this, I'm heading back to shore!

Racing

Putting everything into that turn

Intense (putting it lightly)

Competitive

Err...

Feeling adored

A prissy girl

Just plain happy

Grey Skies

So it's the end of the long weekend.

Summer appears to have left the building.

Does anyone else feel like this?I'm with you, Abby.

Superdogging

This week has been crazy.

Normally I'm pretty busy so when I say crazy...I mean I have not stopped moving all week. It started in a whirlwind of moving starting Sunday and lasting until cleaning and handing the keys over on Tuesday. You'd think that I would then take a few days to relax and unpack and get used to my new place...but no.

Wednesday I left work at noon to go hang out with the Superdogs at the PNE. Our "in" was Dana with Zephyr (Ryan's brindle 'brother') - she's been in Superdogs for 7 years now I think? I brought Abby and Ryan and we played around on the equipment in between shows. The courses are fast and easy (compared to twisty agility courses) so they loved it. Me, on the other hand...I got a really bad impression of the people at first. By the end most of them were a lot friendlier but there are still a handful that are so snobby it's almost funny. I mean, come on, you might get an inflated ego from being cheered on my such a huge crowd for 2 weeks but you're still running around wearing a sparkly gold jacket making your dog jump over giant tampons (the barrels for some of the races can be described in no other way).

Thursday we went to agility after work and then we went back for the full day of Superdogs on Friday. Abby got to run in the midday show that was packed full with people standing. She did a flyball type race with 16 dogs on the floor at once. This is Abby we're talking about - the dog whose major distraction is other excited dogs. We were supposed to "burst" out from the sidelines with our dogs running all around us but under control, of course. Abby was overwhelmed and wouldn't tug (my plan was to just keep her tugging) but luckily she was fine eating treats so I kept stuffing liver in her mouth the whole time. She did fine with the racing (flyball had prepared her for the crazy atmosphere) and all in all was pretty amazing. The nicer people gave me a lot of compliments on my dogs' training which was great to hear. That nutty mutt sure has come a long way.

Something depressing about the Superdogs - they claim that 30% of them are rescued dogs but that is a pretty inflated stat. Most of them seem to be sport bred dogs of one kind or another. Way to prove that rescue dogs can do it all, people. More than slightly bitter here.

On a better note, tomorrow we head back to the beach and low tide so hopefully I'll have some good beach pictures - a bunch of my friends have never been there so there will be about 10 (mostly rescued for real!) dogs racing around having a blast!