Beautiful Bullies, "where's yer Willie?" and Frogs Needing Homes

On February 9th, Bullies from across North America will be congregating in Long Beach, California, for the 4th annual ‘Beautiful Bullies‘ competition. For the first time ever, Frenchies have been welcomed into the competition.

Do you think they realize how totally and utterly Frenchies are going to dominate this competition? Go team Frenchie! If you’re in the area, stop by and check it out.

I’m spending this coming weekend in lovely Wiarton, Ontario, where I’ll be anxiously awaiting the predictions of Wiarton Willie. Will it be six more weeks of winter, or an early spring? We’ll have to wait for Saturday to find out.

Wiarton WillieWillie’s weather prognostication career has been sadly marred by scandal. In 1999, the long lived original Willie was found dead, and festival organizers were unable to find a replacement in time for the weather prediction. Instead, they marked Groundhog Day by revealing “Willie” in a coffin. He had been dressed in a tuxedo, had coins over his eyes, and a carrot between his paws.

A scandal ensued when it transpired that the real Willie had in fact decomposed, and the body in the coffin was that of an older, stuffed groundhog. The Associated Press was obliged to issue a retraction on its wires.

There are numerous other weather predicting groundhogs across North America, although Willie is the only albino.

Wikipedia lists:

If you can’t make it Wiarton, or to any of the other February 2cnd groundhog day celebrations, you can check out the live WillieCam – http://www.wiartonwilliecam.com/

They’ll be broadcasting Willie’s predictions live on Saturday morning, bright and early at 7:00 am eastern standard time. Sean and I will be there with the dogs, so if you are planning on attending, drop us a line!

Side note: a friend of ours on the upper east coast of the USA has suffered a family emergency. Due to this, they are placing several lovely teenage French Bulldog puppies, and a few retired show girls. If you are interested in learning more about these avail-a-bullies, please email her directly.

What is a 'working' dog?

I spent most of last week flat on my back, sick with the flu. Thank God for Jane Austen novels and French Bulldogs that love to snuggle, because they are the only thing that can get me through a week of enforced bed rest and computer abstinence. There’s something about a snoring Frenchie warming your feet that speeds up the healing process. I know I’m not the only person who feels that way, either. Years of doing therapy visitations has taught me that few things can cheer up a sick, lonely or isolated person faster than a lap full of Frenchie.

None of this should really be too surprising to us, when we consider what French Bulldogs were originally bred for. Unlike Border Collies or Jack Russell Terriers, Frenchies have only been designed with one ‘job’ in mind, that of being a companion.

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Bad Weather = More Movies

Pool House with SnowMy internet connection has been up and down all day long, due to the absolutely unbelievable amount of snow we’re getting. When the snow piles too high on the satellite dish, or the weather conditions are anything less than perfect, I lose my internet signal. Sweeping snow off the dish sometimes helps, but not always, and not today.

Little puppy, big snowSo, what to do when you can barely even get your email to load?

Yup, it’s time to shoot more videos of Solo.

Take a look here —

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN9EbN9ipKA


Or watch the embedded video after the cut.

Oh, and I managed to get this entry, and the videos, uploaded by the simple expedient of starting the process, then leaving for a few hours to go shopping, meet a new web client and have some lunch. After all that, most of the first video was almost done loading.

Whee! Country living is great.

Embedded video after the cut.

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More Solo Photos & Some Experimental Video

It amazes me sometimes how many tricks and features my lovely Mac computer has that I remain blissfully unaware of.

I only discovered Boot Camp (the utility that allows me to partition my hard drive and run either Windows XP or Vista on the second partition) after watching a Tech show on TV, and I know for a fact that I’m still not using a quarter of the features available to me in iPhoto. I had started out using Mac computers almost exclusively, but I then spent almost 15 years working in the clunky, non intuitive environment of PCs, and the learning curve of the Mac operating system had left me in the dust in the intervening years.

Other than my graphics and web design software, the bundled program I use most on my Mac is definately iMovie. Faster and more fully featured that Windows Movie maker, it takes all of the guess work out of making small, simple web friendly movies – perfect for the dog hobbyist who, like me, has a video camera addiction.

Over the weekend, I made a new movie of Solo, which I linked to in an earlier entry. Intrigued by the shutter delay feature on my XTI Rebel camera, I threw in some gratuitous stop motion still shots at the very end of the movie, and started toying with the idea of doing more time lapse videos. Hey, who doesn’t like seeing big chunks of time compressed into a single minute? The problem was, I had no intentions of standing in one place for an hour so I could take a billion photos, and I’m too impatient to take a single dog photo a day for the next ten years. I decided to go looking for hardware that would let me accomplish the same thing, and discovered that for just under a thousand dollars, I could get a camera remote with a timer.

Umm, maybe not.

I then discovered that I could get a nifty piece of software that connects to my camera via USB and collects timed still images that can be knit into a movie. Perfect! But it only works on Windows.

Another hour of googling, browsing, downloading and being disappointed, and I finally stumbled across Mac Docs link that pointed out that iMovie came with built in time lapse photography capture.

Oops. I guess that’s why we’re supposed to read the manual.

Anyways, I spent some time this afternoon capturing video of Solo, and of the bed area where my dogs spend most of their time. It’s in front our family room bookcases, and nicely close to the fireplace, so they sleep, roughhouse and stash toys there, making it a good place to shoot time lapse.

You’ll find links to both videos below, and embeds after the cut.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XwTAHMkbtM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVepFq5D4Kw

I also shot some new pix of Solo playing with Dexter. It’s so nice to see that he finally has a buddy to spend some time with, and Dexter is being so gentle with Solo that I’m well and truly impressed.

Solo with SnugglePuppieSolo has another new friend – his SnugglePuppie. Solo’s friend Judith sent it to him, because she is obviously powerless in the face of his ESPP. The SnugglePuppie has a heart beat, and can contain warming packets. You can even insert a bottle into it, and let the puppy nurse directly from the toy, in a way that more closely simulates natural nursing.

We put Solo on his new best friend just after lunch, as soon as we’d unpacked the SnugglePuppie and set it up. He literally did not move from it for the next four hours. He’s usually a restless sleeper, but sleeping next to the warm, beating presence is obviously soothing. Thanks so much, Judith! Here are some pix of Solo and the SnugglePuppie, sleeping the sleep of the content.

Embedded video after the cut.

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Bunny Does Tricks, Mae Plays, and Evil Clowns Scare Me

Bunny has been doing the oddest thing lately – she jumps straight into the air, twists at the height of her jump, and does a barrel roll onto the ground. It’s the oddest thing I have ever seen. I’m going to try to catch it on camera if I can — she usually does it when she’s excited to see me, so I’ll have to get Sean to do it, and he’s camera phobic. What is it with some guys? They’ll obsess over minute details while shopping for cameras or camcorders, but actually use them? No thanks.

I shot some video of Mae – Solo’s mom – running around and playing with Delilah, Penelope and Dexter. In one scene, Dex gets right up into Mae’s face and barks his shrill ‘lookatmeLOOKATME bark, until she finally smacks him with a paw. It’s pretty classic. Mae plays exceptionally well with puppies – she just hates Sailor, and the feeling is mutual.
You can find the video embedded below, or here’s the link on YouTube –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y256EQXNOi8

I read a great article on how some kids find clowns terrifying.

From Reuters:

Bart Simpson Clown BedLONDON (Reuters) – Unhappy clowns from around the world say a study that reported that children didn’t like them has wiped the big smile from their faces, and have been falling over their large shoes to put their case.

A poll by researchers looking at what decor to put in hospital children’s wards found that youngsters do not like clowns on the walls and even older ones think they are scary.

“We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable,” said Penny Curtis, senior researcher at the University of Sheffield which questioned 250 children aged between four and 16.

But their findings, published in a nursing magazine on Wednesday, has put the red noses of the clowning community out of joint.

In a deluge of emails to Reuters, they say they misrepresent just how popular they really are.

“The ‘universe’ of 250 children used for the Sheffield University study was miniscule compared to the 250,000 one-to-one bedside visits made by Clown Care to hospitalized children annually,” said Joel Dein, director of communications at the Big Apple Circus in New York. he Clown Care programme has involved two million hospital bedside visits since it began 21 years ago, employs more than 93 professional “Clown Doctors” and has been copied across the world in countries such as Italy and Brazil, Dein said.

Other individual clowns pointed out how much children, especially those who are ill, are cheered by them.

“I have clowned in hospitals, nursing homes, schools, day care, corporate events ,telethons and am a part of many charity events,” said Elaine “Daisy D.Dots” Vercellone, who has been clowning for 21 years around New York.

“It gives people, kids and adults a reason to be silly, to imagine and gives their minds a vacation if only for a moment.”

Heather Myers, aka Pip

“There are those who are afraid of clowns, this is unavoidable, the same way that there are those afraid of dogs and spiders,” she said.

“It is the responsibility of the clown to know his environment, and take the necessary steps when confronted with a phobia.”

jitcrunch.jpegThere’s a shock – does anyone actually like clowns?

Personally, I’m with Bart Simpson – I once spent the night in a guest bedroom full of clown dolls, and it was impossible to get to sleep. I was convinced the horrid things were moving around every time I closed my eyes.

It’s one of the reasons this is my favorite t-shirt.

Mae video embedded below.