Those cats dogs were fast as lightning …

Today I want to talk a little bit about things we are afraid of.

Like dead people?!?!

For example, I am afraid Dexter is going to shatter into a zillion pieces.

*After* he breaks Spring;s neck in half.

But mostly I wanted to talk about Wootie’s fear …. which is that someone will Find And Steal His Rawhide Bone.

If you try to take it, I will kill you.  Dead.

Wootie and I play a game that Wootie *really* likes – I give him a stick or something and then I pretend to try to catch him and his stick while theatrically “sneaking” up on him, wiggling my fingers in front of me and sing-songing “I’m gonna get the Wootie Stick!  I’m gonna get it!” (This is yet another reason why I moved to the stix.  If nobody sees you engage in this kind of behaviour, nobody can call you crazy).

Mr. Woo thinks this game is *fantastic*.  And I can do it whilst playing ball with the other dogs, so Woo gets some exercise too.  I follow him around the field threatening to get his stick and he play-bows at me, and dives, ducks and weaves around (until he finds something better to do).  I believe this is called “turning a ‘bad’ behaviour into a reward.”

We most often play it with a “Wootie Stick” but if I am feeling particularly wicked, I will bust out the “Wootie Bone” which is a rawhide from under the sink.  Wootie is not all that enamored with rawhides, preferring his raw meaty pork bones, but he does recognize them as something of value.  Therefore, he does not want to eat the the Wootie Bone, but he doesn’t want anyone else to have it either.  So he paces around with it in his jaws making little whimpering whiny sounds and waving his Flamboyance™ in the air to let the other dogs know that he will kick the ass of anyone who tries to take it from him.

It’s mine and I don’t know what the eff to do about it!

Eventually, Woo decides the best thing to do is go and bury or hide it somewhere, so he can stop thinking about.

Nobody will ever find it here; I don’t even know what a telephoto lens is anyway.

Usually I keep on eye on where he’s hidden it, so I can make the game last longer by running toward his treasure cache and screaming that I am, indeed, going to get the Wootie Bone.  But yesterday I discovered that I don’t even need to watch him hide it on order to find it.  Such is our dogs’ great faith in our omniscience, Wootie believes I know where the Wootie Bone has been hidden even when I have no idea where he stashed it.  All I have to do is threaten to get the Wootie Bone and he takes off at a dead run for his hiding place so he can get there before I do.  He leads me to it every time.  And then is ASTOUNDED that I can figure out all his favourite secret places.

This makes me feel powerful, so sometimes to further convince him of my greatness, I will tell another dog to “go find it.”  They have no idea what they are supposed to be finding, but Wootie believes – *every time* – that I have sent my minions out to claim what is rightfully his, and then he leads them to it, barking and whining all the while.

OMG OMG OMG!  He’s going to find the Wootie Bone and bring it to the Food Lady!

I believe this is called “f*cking with his head.”  It’s no wonder, really, that the WooTWoo are so bad – if they were my kids, they’d probably be in therapy.

Another new thing for Wootie to be afraid of is my stellar aim.  Today I flung the Flying Donut and managed to ring it around his neck in one go.  Basically I turned him into a living Ring Toss game.  It was a totally lucky once-in-a-lifetime shot, but Woo doesn’t want to play Flying Donut with me anymore.

HOW?  How do you do these things?!?!

Here.  Try that shizzat with me, beeyotch.

Poor Piper.  The only thing she fears is nail clipping, and rightly so!  The other day I was doing the rounds of the paws and I quicked her so bad that her toenail bled – I mean it PULSED blood – for over an hour and left pools of blood all around the house.  She eventually had to go to bed with a giant padding of gauze and vet wrap twined around her foot.  I felt really bad.  But Piper’s feet are doing something I don’t understand – her outside toes are turning OUTWARD on all four feet, so her nails on those toes are laying almost horizontal to the floor, which is how I quicked her because I guessed the angle wrong.  I want to say she is becoming, like, flat footed?  It’s weird – anyone have any ideas?

TWooie’s biggest fear is that I will give him a bath with the hose.  After all, he watched me do exactly that to the other 5 dogs this afternoon (well except for Tweed, who only got his undercarriage washed, because DAMMIT HE IS 12 YEARS OLD AND WILL NOT STAND FOR THESE INDIGNITIES!) from the safety of waaaaaay up the driveway.  After each dog was bathed and toweled tried, they were ushered into the house until there was nobody left outside but me and TWoo.

I stood at one end of the driveway and he at the other and we stared one another down like a couple of gunslingers.  A tumbleweed may or may not have rolled on by.

Nothing could convince him to come to me when called, not even when I asked him if he wanted to “get the bunny.”  I got perky ears but not a single paw moved.

In the end, I moved partway down the drive and sat down in the gravel and asked him sweetly to please come to me for a cookie if I promised not to give him a bath.  And he did.

Okay, I will come because I love you.

So TWooie and I spent about 20 minutes in the sun, sitting on the ground with him curled up in my lap on his back with his head resting on my chest, and we just loved each other quietly for a while.  He wasn’t really all that muddy anyway :)

Stop being all sensitive and sh*t and come help me find a place to hide this that you’ll never find!

]]> http://www.wootube.net/2012/02/everybody-was-kung-fu-fighting/feed/ 19 http://www.wootube.net/2012/01/tell-me-is-your-twoosday-relaxing/ http://www.wootube.net/2012/01/tell-me-is-your-twoosday-relaxing/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:30:59 +0000 The Food Lady http://www.wootube.net/?p=1216

Or are you on guard?

]]> http://www.wootube.net/2012/01/tell-me-is-your-twoosday-relaxing/feed/ 3 http://www.wootube.net/2012/01/bad-news/ http://www.wootube.net/2012/01/bad-news/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:43:53 +0000 The Food Lady http://www.wootube.net/?p=1213 Dexter has rabies.

ha ha!  Just kidding.  Did I make your heart stop for a moment there?

Yippee!  I’m not rabid!

Today the dogs got a good work out in the Altheticism Competition on Food Lady Farm.

Dexter gets a B+ … but don’t forget, he’s coming back from an injury.  Okay surgery.  Whatever.

Spring gets an A.  Very impressive for a newbie to competition!

Wootie, of course, gets an A+.

It’s even more impressive when you think about the fact that he’s a lazy orange sausage of a dog.  He got extra points for throwing in fancy moves, like handstands, and sticking his landings.

TWooie, otoh, failed.

But he made up many points in the synchronized competition.

And speaking of the WooTwoo, some time back a friend sent me a link to a website about Max and Moritz, a German storybook about two very mischievous brothers written in the 1800s, and asked if they didn’t remind me – disturbingly so – of two dogs I knew.

Ah, how oft we read or hear of
Boys we almost stand in fear of!
For example, take these stories
Of two youths, named Max and Moritz,
Who, instead of early turning
Their young minds to useful learning,
Often leered with horrid features
At their lessons and their teachers.

*shudder*  Damn the Germans and their bad ass brothers!!

They’re scary.  I’m hiding behind Spring until they go away.

How long after neutering do you think it will take Dexter to put on a little weight and become a normal sized body, rather than just a giant head with some skinny legs attached?  It’s positively ridiculous that he can hide his whole body behind 19lbs of Springaling.

And speaking of Dexter … this dog makes me wish I could photograph sound.  I have never had a dog do this before, but when he is really excited he chatters his teeth together so loudly that he sounds exactly like a woodpecker.  I’m not kidding … I spent, like, a year telling people I had a woodpecker that visited my house until I clued in to the fact that the “woodpecker” only showed up when I was putting on my boots and Dex was stuck on the other side of the babygate waiting to be released out the front door, and I started listening a little more closely.  Does anyone else’s dog do this?

One thing I CAN photograph is pain.

Ow.

Food Lady, why you cry?

Ha ha ha!  That was so funny!  Ha ha!

Hee hee hee!  I laughed so hard I fell over!

Dude!  You gotta come and see this … Dexter knocked the Food Lady OUT with the Fifa!  it’s hilarious!!!

*shakes fist at sadistic dogs*  Clearly, they spend too much time with Gerhard.

I’m going to go think fluffy, happy thoughts now.

Hey cool!  You’re not dead after all.  Can I have a cookie?

]]> http://www.wootube.net/2012/01/theres-no-twoosday-like-snow-twoosday/feed/ 4 http://www.wootube.net/2012/01/bonus-friday-post/ http://www.wootube.net/2012/01/bonus-friday-post/#comments Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:18:18 +0000 The Food Lady http://www.wootube.net/?p=1208 Today you get a bonus post for 3 reasons:

1) because I borrowed the chickens’ heat lamp and aimed it at my bathtub drain pipe under the house and thawed it out so I could have a long, hot shower this morning.  All is right with the world :)

2) because we went to the park today with The Sadist’s wife (who is not sadistic) and their dogs and had a fun play, and TWooie DIDN’T TRY TO KILL ANYONE.  He objected when Cisco humped him, but no blood was shed and no fights broke out.  Brilliant effort on TWoo’s part; I am so proud of his restraint.  I took no photos, as I wanted both eyes on TWoo, but he did me proud.  Our hard work is paying off!

3) because The Sadist’s wife brought her new puppy, whom I *did* take photos of, and you will of course want to see some of them!

This is Cruz.

The Sadist says he is a pain in the ass.  I can’t imagine why ;-)

I think he’s just plain adorable :)

How lucky am I to get to spend my day off playing with a cutie patootie puppy?  Seriously.  Best snow day ever!

This is Miami … my hammy.  Say it out loud :)  It’s fun!

Doesn’t Miami have the super coolest Hamosphere ever?  She was abandoned at the door of a vet clinic in the snow.  People suck.  Since I liked MC Hamster a lot, and like having a hamster, I brought her home.

The beauty of the Hamosphere is that no dog tongues can sneak through cage bars to *taste* Miami, and therefore TWooie has lost interest in eating her already.

I thought maybe Dexter would like to have Hammy TV to watch whilst recovering from his neuter.

Alas.  ”Rest” is not a word in his vocabulary.

Or maybe he just doesn’t want to lie down … poor doggie, they shaved his wiener bald.  Completely bald!!  Oh the indignity!  I therefore could not withhold the joy of playing in the snow from Mr. Baldnutz (this reference is funny to Vancouver residents who have ever read the Georgia Strait only, pretty much).

He is none the worse for wear after his surgery.  I can’t believe how fast dogs recover from this kind of thing.  By Wednesday morning, he was bouncing up and down and bringing tennis balls to clients at work.  Do you think maybe he’s crying on the inside?

Dear doG, why’d you take my nuts?

He was feeling so fine today, a mere two days later, that he really didn’t understand why he couldn’t go to agility class this evening.

What the eff?

But I didn’t want dirty barn dirt getting in his incision site, so he had to stay home.  Miss Springaling went in his place.

BITCH! I HATE you!

Spring is totally gettin’ her agility on.  She’s mastered all the contact equipment except the teeter, which is still a little scary, but she can run a Jumpers course like a hot damn.  And she has not yet met the weave poles, because it’s been too snowy to bust out the 2X2s.  It started snowing a week ago and has continued to dump on us off and on for the last 6 days. AND the temperature dropped well below 0° so once again, my bath tub drain froze solid.  Why’d I move out here to the Stix again?

Oh yeah … because we get to run around on 10 acres like crazy peoples!

Apparently it’s going to start raining again tomorrow and melt all this white stuff.  So since I only worked a half day today, I decided to take the afternoon to get snowy photos of the dogs for you.

I think they enjoyed themselves.  What do you think?

Well, mostly anyway … Tweed doesn’t like snowballs (in his feet).

Shut up!  At least they didn’t steal YOUR balls!

YOU shut up, sonny!  They stole my balls over a decade ago!

Okay okay, I’ll stop with the testicle references.

Thank doG.  It’s about time.

Flying donuts … so much better than balls.

Yeah!  Donuts!

I love dogs-in-snow photos.  I especially love that my dogs will let me dump snow all over their heads and then look happy about it for photo opportunities.

Well, *some* of them anyway.

Mostly I just love how happy all my dogs are :)

Happy snow day, friends!

Is this post over already?

Brave Dexter!

Dexter came through his surgery with flying colours … Dr. Bowra found his testicles hiding right beside his penis, and not migrating around his skull or anything weird like that.  He also removed the tooth fragments left over from his smashed up tooth.  So he’s got only a pretty small incision and is recovering very nicely, albeit in the Cone of Immobility that renders him motionless.

They said he was “the biggest suck” and kept putting his chin in various laps and sighing.  That’s my little giraffe!

Thanks for all the positive thoughts and good wishes.  Not only do *I* thank you, and Dexter too, but my wallet also thanks you, as it was a lot less expensive than we were originally quoted :)

But not today.  Send good thoughts for an easy neuter and fast recovery please!

(Your regularly scheduled TWoosday post will return next week)

*This* doggie makes me MAD.  Dexter went 1 or possibly 2 for 6 this weekend.  Friday night Steeplechases were okay, except for a couple of weave collection issues and some  minor quirks.  For sure he Q’d one, and the other is up in the air, as my video says he was under time but the score sheet suggests otherwise.  All the same, Friday gave me hope.

Saturday gave me frustration.  My wild child had no listening ears for the boring old Food Lady, who just tried to make him do stuff like collect, turn, pay attention etc.  He and I were not running on the same wavelength at ALL.

This is his Advanced Jumpers run.  It started out so beautifully, with so much promise.  Somewhere around the tire, it went to hell.  I expected him to miss the tire because I didn’t decelerate much and didn’t give him a verbal cue, as I wanted to see if he could adjust his stride to take it – nope.  Okay fine, something we need to work on.  But coming out of that chute, he’s supposed to turn to me when I stop moving and square up to him (and SCREAM his name) but he just keeps going.  At that point, I excused us as when he gets that worked up and stops listening, I don’t believe he should be rewarded with more playing on his terms!

In his Starters Standard run, he fell off the dogwalk because he was running too fast, blew his A-Frame contact altogether and left his teeter contact before I released him.  And to add insult to injury, he turned around, grabbed the teeter with his front paws, pulled it back down and popped his back feet on it and assumed a perfect, and *extremely* sassy 2on 2off position, just to let me know that he was quite aware of what I was all huffy about.

If nothing else, the dog has character :)

Here are his two Steeplechase runs from Friday night, courtesy of Kristi.  He has some moments of brilliance, you just gotta find them in all the CRAP!

I hope he had fun, as it’s probably the last trial he’ll be doing for a while :(  Tuesday is coming.

^^This is what happens after I say “okay” when we’ve been doing this:

I don’t have many photos today, but what I do have is a bath tub full of meat.

I am defrosting my dog freezer today so I can fit all the meat in it.  And there is so much meat!  Cariboo and elk and deer and lamb and … oh my!

The reason I have so much meat is because I have so many fewer chickens.  But let me explain.

Last week whilst cleaning out the eatin’ chickens, I picked one up for fun (yes, our definition of “fun” is a little different out here in the stix) and was startled to learn that it weighed about as much as Springaling.  Mutant chickens!  I did some on the spot math and realized that I have been threatening to eat these things for about 5 months, which is 4 months longer than I should have been squawking about it.  Ridiculous.

So I marched back into the house and put an advert on Craigslist that basically said “come get 4 giant mutant roosters for X amount of money, or come slaughter and dress them and leave with 2 of them for yourself.  But I’m keeping the feet.”

I got a surprising amount of replies.  Several people offered to come and get them, though all of them tried to lowball me.  And then I got an email from a woman who said “We have been killing chickens all our lives.  We will come out and slaughter them and dress them for you, and take two home.  And if you let us have all the feet, we will bring you some other meats for your dogs.”

*shrug*  Okay.

So this wonderful couple came out to my farm and showed me how to slaughter and defeather and cut up chickens for eating.  They were super nice people who had emigrated here from South America about 40 years ago, and had obviously done this many times, as they had a whole little set up with a propane stove to heat the water to dunk the chickens in for defeathering, and a little blowtorch to burn off the pin feathers and even a machete for the, umm, deheading.  They really DO run around with their heads cut off you know.  One of them even chased me, which skeeved me out more than a little … how did it know where I was if it had no head? *shudder*

It was a really interesting thing to watch, and now I wish I had photographed it for you all and blogged it (okay, not for *all* of you, as I am sure several of you are making this face right now:

It’s definitely the face my mum was making back up at the house, as she didn’t want to see the chicken slaughter).  Alas, it was getting dark when they came over.  You know a dude has mad skillz when he can accurately cut off chicken feet at the correct joint in the dark.

So anyway, not only do I have two HUGE chickens’ worth of meat in my people freezer (they dressed out bigger than the TURKEY I was cooking for dinner that same day.  It was my belated Christmas dinner, since my parents are back from their tropical Hawaiian holiday), these nice folks also brought my dogs a ton of meat.  They also hunt, and have agreed to become my regular supply of deer and moose bones for the dogs. Score!

Mmmm …. meat.

I love the barter system – I really think we as a society should engage it in more often.  I didn’t mind raising these chickens, and then for a little bit of work, two families have lots of meat to eat.  And I got an education in how to process meat chickens, and I am thinking of raising some more later this year.

But later this week we are trialing in agility.  It’s Dexter’s last trial before his Big Operation on Tuesday.  I am quite nervous about the whole thing.  I have a great vet, but those testicles are really MIA and who knows how long he’ll be under with vet hands poking around his insides looking for them?

YOU’RE nervous?!?!  Run away!  Run away!

Quick!  Get him!  His testicles are running away!

Today is a little bit of a sad day for me.  It’s four years ago today that my Briggsy Bubba left on his journey to the otherworld.  Sometimes it feels like I can scarcely remember him; my dog family has changed so much in the last four years.  Other times it feels like just yesterday he and babyTweed were wrasslin’ in my living room:

Tweed has now been alive longer than I ever knew Briggs.

I’m going to live FOREVER.

He just might too.  In a few short months Tweed will be 12 years old.  You’d never know it to look at him, he still runs and plays like a five year old.

I’m a little kid at heart!

So in honour of my big Red Dog, today is International Extra Hug For Your Bestest Dog Day.

Briggs.  Bah.  I coulda taken him.

Have a fantastic weekend everyone.  Hopefully I’ll have some agility video for you by Sunday.