Library book, just signed out this afternoon, left sitting squarely in the middle of the coffee table, in a room containing not less than 20 assorted nylabones, hooves, stuffed toys and Kongs.
And yes, I read Rita Mae Brown.
The website overhaul on BullmarketFrogs is pretty much complete. I have some fine tuning to do, and a few pages left to put content on, but other than that it’s all there. Have a look and leave me some feedback.
I’m a bit concerned about this overhaul. I re arranged the way the file folders within the site are arranged – less nested files, deleting old and un needed folders, that sort of thing. Spring cleaning for your domain, if you’d like. Google, however, has the old file addresses cached, which means it’s going to start throwing 404 errors pretty soon. Anyone know how long it takes for Google to read your updated xml site maps?
Tula has gotten her appetite back, and then some. She’s currently a ravenous beast, eating 1 1/2 times her normal food, and hungry in between meals. Her sides are swelling out, and tight as a drum. Fair to say we’re pretty sure she’s pregnant…
Penelope, on the other hand, is off her food – and this from a dog who normally yips with frustration while she waits for you to fill her food dish. She’ll eat, but only if you add extra treats to her food. Fussy little monkey.. she’s right on schedule for this kind of behaviour, boding well for her pregnancy also.
Dexter and Petal had a face to face confrontation on the front porch this morning. Dex was completely freaked out, jumping straight into the air and yelping “What the hell is THAT?” when he saw her. Petal was so not afraid of him – she glanced at him, shrugged a typical ‘dogs, what morons’ kind of shrug, and went back to washing her paws. Within a few minutes, they were play wrestling and having a grand old time.
Bunny got creative the other door, when I accidentally left a folding hardwood chair where she could get at it. Within the space of two hours, she demolished every single inch of the chair – the leather seat, the foam stuffing underneath it, the legs, the slat back, the feet – everything. It’s the most thorough destruction I’ve ever seen by a French Bulldog. My fault completely, of course, for leaving a chair where she could get it, and you almost have to admire her dedication. She doesn’t just gnaw – she annihilates. She’s one nutty Bunny, that’s for sure.
Tessa is the last remaining puppy from her litter – although I suppose I can’t even come close to referring to her as a ‘puppy’ any more. It doesn’t really matter that she’s thirteen and change – to me, she’ll always be that little red and white trouble maker I tucked inside my coat and brought with me every where I went.
It’s not that I don’t realize she’s getting older – that’s obvious. She moves slower, sleeps more, and occasionally wanders into a room and forgets why she’s there (I’ve compared it to those moments when I get to the kitchen and think “What the heck did I come in here for?”). In spite of that, she’s still pretty perky for her age. Playing with the Grandkids (Fanny is an honorary Grandpuppy) gives her something to do, and probably makes those fireplace naps that much sweeter.
Here’s a video of her wrestling with Dexter, Fanny, Paris and Bunny.
Dexter is living up to the Frenchie family tradition of getting stuck in stupid places. A few nights ago, we heard him bark-bark-BARKing outside, so Sean came down to investigate. Seems Dexter had gone out the dog door, and around the corner of the house into the fenced play yard (probably following his ‘girlfriend’, Tula, who he shadows almost everywhere). Once there, he got a bit confused, and stood outside the ground level windows of our downstairs bathroom, yelling for someone to let him in. That’s where Sean found him, after walking around the house in his slippers – through three feet snow drifts. Dexter seemed pretty happy to be back inside.
Here are a few new photos of Dexter snuggling with his mommy Bunny, along with some lovely profile photos of Paris, and two that show how incredibly similar Sailor’s markings are to Dexter’s. Barb calls it ‘the mark of the Devil’. I don’t think Dexter is ready for a career of evil just yet – he should probably stick to figuring out how to navigate the backyard before he takes on total world domination….
Lots of new photos of Solo to post this week, including some of his exercising his ever growing ESPP powers, and a few worrisome ones where he contemplates going over to the darkside. More on that this week…
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.
LONDON (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.”
There’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.
Like a lot of people in Ontario, we suffered through some crazy windstorms yesterday, resulting in a day of sporadic power outages. From about five in the morning on, our power was on and off throughout the day, causing me some major inconvenience, and not a small amount of worry over keeping my puppies warm. With Bunny’s kids in one room, Solo in another, and the balance of the dogs split between the dog room and our family room, there was a lot of space to be kept warm, and just one airtight wood stove to heat it.
Thankfully, Sean had the foresight to purchase a gasoline generator a few months ago, in anticipation of days just like this. Hooked up to space heaters, it was sufficient to keep the entire house warm, and the pups content, if not thrilled about the darker than usual rooms. I’ve never been more thankful that we heat our house primarily with wood than I was yesterday, although I’m thinking of investing in a few kerosene heaters as back up. After all, people in the Muskoka area are still without power, and might not get it back until Saturday. That’s a long time to run a generator, and a lot of gas used. We have a pond out back for utility grade water, but we just noticed yesterday that our pump is hard wired into the house, and so can’t be run off of the generator. We’re going to invest in a dozen or so really big bottles of drinking water. After all, Sean and I can use up the bottled drinks in the house, but the dogs aren’t as keen on Diet Dr. Pepper.
The entire situation was made more hectic because it was the day Harley and Izzy were due to depart for their new homes. Lauren, Harley’s new mom and adoptive mom of our Lola, was flying in from New York City, and Sean had agreed to meet her at the airport to save her driving the five hour round trip to our house. Lauren had agreed to carry both Izzy and Harley back on the return flight, dropping Izzy off to her new mom in New York City. Susanna would then fly her back home to Texas the next day. That’s a lot of planning, none of which could be bumped just because our power was out. I had to make a lot of frantic phone calling to make sure everything was still on track, complicated by the fact our cordless phones weren’t working with the power out, and my cell was completely drained. Thankfully, Sean bought a new cell just before Christmas. Lesson learned – buy an old fashioned plug in phone, in case of future power outages.
So, Izzy and Harley are gone, off to their new families. The house is awfully quiet, and poor Dexter seems a little bit bereft. You’d think he’d be grateful, since Izzy spent the last few weeks terrorizing him at every given opportunity. Sean has taken their leaving rather hard – after all, this is the first time he’s raised up pups, only to see them leave for new homes. He felt a special bond with Harley, who enjoyed sitting on Sean’s feet when he found the rowdy grown up dogs a bit too overwhelming. Poor Sean. He just learned that every litter breaks your heart just a tiny bit when they go.
Solo is coming along swimmingly, and has finally reached the stage where he seems like a ‘real’ puppy. That’s the stage where this tiny little bundle of fur suddenly develops a real personality, and sense of consciousness. You look at them, and they are looking back, not just gazing unfocusedly into the ether. Solo has a vocabulary of little puppy growls and barks, and did his first puppy mouth war with me. He’s breaking his baby teeth, and likes to chew on the nipple of his bottle. He looks more and more like a baby polar bear cub.
Unfortunately, Mae is pretty thoroughly bored with Solo. She’ll give him a cursory lick now and then, but other than that they’re rather like two polite roommates sharing an apartment. Solo stays on one side of the pool, and Mae on the other. This disinterest on her part has given Sailor a new hobby – licking the puppy. After I finish feeding him, I place him in front of Sailor on a blanket, and she spends the next twenty minutes acting like a canine car wash. She licks him up one side, then down the other, and repeats the process for good measure. Solo gives off little baby growls when he’s had enough, but usually he ends up falling asleep on his back mid lick session. Sailor has been a veteran puppy licker since she first climbed into her mom’s whelping box to tend to Tessa’s new litter, and she’s been at it ever since. This is a photo of her licking her half brothers and sisters, shortly before Tessa told her to shove off and get a new hobby.
Sean took some pictures of the pups before they left yesterday, and some photos of Dexter settling in with the brindle bunch today.
See them on Flickr, or below.
