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Easter Snowstorms, Old Photo Uploads and Fat Fat Journey

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I cannot believe how crappy our weather has been. Yesterday tossed a total white out blizzard at us. It dumped a good foot and change of snow on us – and this just after a thaw had finally started to clear out some of the snow we’d accumulated over the winter.

From snow to mud and back to snowdrifts, in just over 48 hours. Here are some photos –

Pond view, from back deck
The view to our pond, from our back deck

Side pasture
The side pasture

Pool, dog run area and deck
Left to right – the deck, the small fenced dog run area, and the pool, with the pond and woods in the background

Old Photos Upload

I’ve been uploading some old(er) photos that I found on my PC. These are mostly from 2006, and are photos of Tessa and a whole series of photos of Penelope and her siblings – Sushi, Norman and Peter.

There are some great photographs in that set, a few of which are among my all time favorites. Penelope was a photogenic baby!

Some samples below, or see Tessa’s set here, and Penelope’s set here.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve pretty much stopped uploading to our Mega Gallery, and am using Flickr instead. I plan on migrating the site to a new host within the next six months, and the Mega Gallery is the most daunting part of that. The less photos I have to move, the better.

Tessa at the T Dot French Bulldog meet up
Tessa, at the T Dot Toronto French Bulldog Meet Up

Nell, Norman, Peter, Sushi
French Bulldog puppy pile

Cutest French Bulldog Puppy EVER
Penelope was the cutest French Bulldog puppy EVER

 Fat Fat Journey

Well, the good news is we’re pretty sure Journey is pregnant. The bad news is, not so much Paris. Next week we’ll do xrays to find out for sure, but in the meantime here’s a few photos of Miss Fatty Fat Journey.

Super fat, or with child? You be the judge.

Pregnant Journey, or just a dog who needs a diet…

Journey with Tummy

Missing French Bulldog Alert & Support Frenchies on Valentines Day!

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Bella

Bella is Missing from Coffeyville/Montgomery County, Kansas

 

Lost/ Picked up in Montgomery County Kansas, 1 Mi. South of HWY 166 & Dearing turnoff intersection.

Five month old French Bulldog pup, white with large black spot on rump. Speckled ears. Fourteen pounds last week.

Went AWOL while outside on potty break with our other dog, a Lab. Lab came back without her. We searched woods and pastures for hours, which turned into days.

Went missing Thursday, Jan. 24th, 2008. We are 1 mile from the Oklahoma border.

REWARD!

Please call 620-948-6249 or email seegedo@aol.com .

HER FAMILY MISS HER!!

ps: Please cross post, if you can. Such a tiny puppy, to be out in such terrible weather all alone.

 

Support French Bulldog Village with a Virtual Valentine!

Frenchie Kisses CardNone of us need another box of Chocolates this Valentine’s Day, and paper cards are so 2001, so send someone special your love with a virtual Valentine, from the French Bulldog Village!

Pick a chocolate kiss, a classic Valentine, a Frenchie Kisses Card, a candy hug or kiss, dedicate a custom framed Frenchie valentine, or choose one of the fun, animated cards!

Go here to send someone your love, or to show your love for your Frenchie!

Each and every penny you donate supports FBV and the Karen Krings Memorial Fund, which allows them to help dogs like lovely Lulu.

Lulu

From the FBV site:

Poor LuLu! At just eight weeks old on September 1, she is struggling to adjust to her new foster home. Her new foster parents, two teenaged boys, and the resident dogs are all trying to make it easier on her, but she still wakes up in the dark and screams her little heart out. She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t recognize the voices around her or the hands holding her.

It’s always dark when LuLu wakes up. Before her eyes even opened, a severe infection took away all of the vision in her right eye, and most of the vision in her left eye. Faced with a blind puppy, her breeder decided to turn her over to the French Bulldog Village so that this little four pound baby could get all the special attention that she needed and have the best possible start on what we all hope will be a healthy long life.

Learn more about Lulu here.

How could you say ‘no’ to giving just $5 to help a dog like Lulu? (Shameless guilt tripping – I’m perfectly OK with it).

Bad Weather = More Movies

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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

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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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Evil Supercuteness Puppy Powers

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Solo’s E.S.P.P.* is growing – he is officially now able to ‘smile’ almost on cue, he kicks his widdle feets if you tickle his tummy, and if you coo ‘Solooooo’ at him while holding him, he’ll jump up and lick your chin. The only hope for the world is if he decides to use his powers for good, not evil, because otherwise we are all so screwed. World domination is within his fuzzy little grasp.

As proof, I submit the following video. Don’t say I didn’t warn you if he ends up one day known as Lord High Interplanetary Ruler Solo.

* note that ESPP is now a new tag…