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Um, Is That Normal?

Sometimes, when I post pictures like this of my dogs…

…people wonder if they are vicious killers. They probably wonder about me, too, posting pictures of what might look to many like two dogs fighting.

Normal people might not post pictures like this.

Some people might think this behavior and these images are inappropriate.

Personally, I find the behavior entertaining. And the pictures! Some of the pictures are hilarious. I find them so hilarious specifically because they make the girls look so ferocious and mean.

These dogs are not fighting. They are playing. Wrestling. (Or “wrastling” as my Dad would say.)

They may look like blood-thirsty killers at times, like in this shot, which just might be one of my all-time favorites (yes, it’s the same as the first image in this post)…

…but both Belle (on left) and K are complete and total sweethearts. There’s not a mean bone in either of their bodies. They just really like to wrastle!

Here’s some proof for you. An actual video of Belle and K in action, which was taken earlier today. K does emit one short bark in the beginning, but other than tags jingling and a little growling, the sound is minimal.

I wish I’d had a video camera when we had all of that snow on the ground!

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Friends in All the Right Places

Gift-wise, this has been an interesting Christmas.

I mean that in a good way, of course.

The first gift Hubby and I received came all of the way from Alaska. And, it arrived in the middle of a blizzard, which was awesome. It, by the way, was a box of home-made goodies from Mike’s cousin, June, and her family. The box contained yummy cookies–oatmeal, pecan sandies and chocolate chip (made with pretzel stix)–trail mix (a variety of nuts and dried fruits) and some homemade soaps.

There’s nothing like homemade goodness. The oatmeal cookies served as Hubby’s fuel on Sunday as he shoveled a path down the driveway through the 23 inches of snow we had. And Joey LOVED the trail mix. We all liked it, but he loved it!

Another very nice surprise gift was this intriguing and way cool object d’art.

It is made out of super-compressed graphite. That’s the stuff they make pencils with. So, not only is it cool to look at, every surface of the object writes like a pencil. Neat, eh? I LOVE stuff like this.

The leaf is about 6 inches long and fits perfectly in my hand, for when I need to write something of course.

This bath scrubby of mine was selected and paid for by my granddaughter, Brianna (age 9).

Our oldest grandson, Gaige (age 6), shopped and paid for Hubby’s gift…

… a small, ceramic dog. It’s about 5 inches long and 3 inches tall, at its tallest point. Gaige apparently knows that Pop loves dogs.

Meg is wearing one of the gifts I got from Hubby. The big blue and white thing hanging from her collar is my new Pet’s Eye View Camera, also known as a doggie cam. We can’t wait to go to the WV place so we can see what she sees on the way to and from Buddy’s house. Hubby also got me a digital picture frame, which I have wanted for years. Oh yeah, and a teleconverter lens for my camera, among other things.

My parents really surprised me with 3 bags of Seattle’s Best Hazelnut Coffee, which Mom had shipped direct from Washington state with the help of a wonderful friend. I got some shopping money, too. And a short story book. I’m addicted to short story books, in case you didn’t already know.

A dear friend sent Hubby and I a gift, which was accompanied by this card…

…that for some reason made her think of me. LOL!

As awesome as the card is, the gift is even cooler…

… real Belgian chocolate. YUUUMMMMMMM.

Oddly enough, we received it on the same day we received this…

This is the chocolate Mrs. Mac posted about that inspired me to try, and quickly become addicted to, Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels.

According to the Lindt Web site, this stuff “will surprise your taste buds with an unexpected alliance of nicely bitter, silky dark chocolate refined with tiniest crystals of “Fleur du Sel” – the flower, or the crown of the sea salt.”

It was personally hand-delivered by Mrs. Mac, who came all the way from Switzerland just to see us, and her family, and her friends, and her former co-workers, etc.

It is quite delectable. You have to like dark chocolate, though, which I do. Hubby and I may be fighting over this one.

Speaking of chocolate… I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the Rheb’s candy, which Hubby and I gave several folks for Christmas. We bought ourselves a box, too, of course.

This image shows chocoholic Meg who is simultaneously wondering “Why, oh why, is Mama taking pictures of all of her chocolate?” and “Is she going to give me some? Is she? I like chocolate!”

This is a snowman ornament I’ve had for years. I can’t remember if it was given to me by one of my girlfriends, or if I bought it myself.

I have the same issue with this ornament. Though I am pretty sure this was a gift from a girlfriend in a previous year.

I couldn’t resist sharing this doggie picture. K and Belle were jealous that I was taking Meg’s picture. So they joined in.

Wanna know why K looks so short?

It’s because she sits on the steps with her butt on one step and her front feet on the step below that. We think it is easier for her to sit that way because of her very long forelegs.

I hope you enjoyed this little gift recap. I hope you have friends in fun places, too.

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Catching Up is Hard to Do

The blizzard of 2009 hit just over a week ago on December 19, 2009. I love snow. I have always loved snow. But I REALLY love watching the dogs play in the snow. They absolutely love it.

Between Hubby and I, we took hundreds of pictures of the dogs playing in the snow.

With all the stuff needing to be done in preparation for Christmas, I haven’t had a lot of spare time to go through all the images, re-size them, tweak as needed, etc.

These may seem a bit untimely since the snow has pretty much all melted. But, so it goes.

My favorites are posted below…









If you want to see the whole set of snow dog pics, you can go to my FLICKR page, or watch the slide show embedded below.

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Blizzard Aftermath

So, wanna know what my world looked like the day after the blizzard dropped about 23 inches (58 cm) of snow on us?

People tend to get cabin fever and do weird stuff when trapped by snow. I decorated the Christmas tree (finally!) and, while doing so, took some pictures of FibroDuck with some of our more unique ornaments.

I also took lots of pictures. Lots and lots, I should say. A blanket of snow just makes things look so much more interesting.

I took the above shot around 6:30 AM from the front window of our house. On the far left, covered in snow, is my car. In front of that, toward the center of the frame, is Shannon’s car.

This is the view from our front door.

And here’s what it looked like from inside our garage moments after Hubby started to shovel.

That’s my car in the foreground. It’s still snow-covered. So is our front sidewalk. I might have to clean my car off soon so I can get all my last-minute Christmas stuff done.

Here’s my happy Hubby in the newly shoveled driveway.

The view of our street from the bottom of the driveway.

One of MANY dog pics I have to share. Belle and K have been chasing each other and having a blast in the snow.

Meg has fun in the snow, too, despite the grumpy look she has in this picture. (I’ll post more snow-dog pictures eventually.)

I actually took this photo at about 11:00 PM on Saturday night, not too long after the snow had stopped. Because it was nighttime, the camera shutter stayed open for about 4 seconds. I am not sure why the sky is so pink, but I think the overall effect is pretty cool.

And now, I need to get to work.

Happy Monday everyone!

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Oh, the Weather Outside is SNOWY

When I went to bed last night, the weather man said we might get about three inches of snow overnight. That was to be topped off by up to 12 inches on Saturday.

Not too long after I came downstairs this morning (Saturday), I decided to take a picture of Shannon’s car.

The snow was a bit deeper than a few inches.

This image was taken five hours after the first one.

This shot was after another three hours had passed.

And this was taken after another two and a half hours (around 7:00 PM).

By just after 9:00, the door handle could no longer be seen and the mirror had almost disappeared. The entire car had almost vanished. But it may have FINALLY stopped snowing.

Wanna see my car? It’s much bigger than Shannon’s, after all.

Good thing there’s a mirror on the side, eh?

The airport won’t release the official numbers until after midnight. I’m going to guess we got at least 23 inches of snow in less than 24 hours.

But, you know what? I LOVE snow. The dogs and I had a blast outside today.

Here you can see Meg completely airborne. The snow brings out her inner puppy.

She’s even in the lead as the girls all cavort around the yard. (This picture was shown on the local TV station — ABC2News — after I submitted it by e-mail.)

You know I had to include at least one picture with Belle’s ears flying, right?

The previous four shots were taken around noon. The snow wasn’t very deep then. Yet Belle still looked like this…

We didn’t go out again until about 4:00. The snow was so deep by then, Belle’s body created a plow effect as she ran.

That doesn’t help her snowball issue at all.

But she sure enjoys running through the snow.

The snow was so deep by 4:00 that our wall was almost completely hidden. Belle is the only one that cleared the wall cleanly. Meg did a face plant into the snow. Poor K forgot the wall was there and ran right into it.

She was a bit shaken by that, and was slow to get back into the swing of playtime.

She even went and sat on the step for a bit.

But soon enough she was back to normal.


Even Meg was still feeling pretty feisty. That’s her inner puppy again. She is absolutely exhausted now, though.

The dogs really do love the snow.

So I had to let them out to play again after dinner. Even if that did mean I would have to de-ball Belle yet again. She’s pretty good about not giving me a hard time while I brush the MANY snowballs out of her hair.

After K’s wall incident, I shoveled out a spot so the wall could clearly be seen by all.

I think it’s a really cool picture. It was taken earlier this evening. Since it may have actually stopped snowing, perhaps I can go out and get some more nighttime snow shots.

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Not Such a Happy Dog After All

K has been with us for a whole month now. She really feels like part of the family. But then, she’s fit in right from the start.

Those of you who have been following the transition have seen how happy she looks. Or has looked, I should say.

She’s not looking so happy anymore.

Yes, there is a specific reason for that.

I think she is now convinced that we are total weirdos.

Seriously.

Does she look happy to you? She’s not.

Do you want to know why she’s now so unhappy?

Why I think she thinks we are weirdos?

It’s sort of a longish story, which I’ll do my best to shorten.

It’s actually Meg’s fault. You see, Meg is a brown dog with a white tail. The woods around our West Virginia place are full of deer, which are brown with white tails. (They aren’t call whitetailed deer for nothing!) Although there’s no hunting allowed in our community, hunters aren’t always the smartest bunch. And I didn’t want Meg to be mistaken for a deer.

She’s too dear to use for that (pun intended). So, I outfitted her and CeCe with what I call “don’t shoot me” vests.

Since Belle joined the family after hunting season, she didn’t have one. We let Belle borrow CeCe’s vest during our last WV visit. But it still says “CeCe“. So I made her one of her own.

Of course, K didn’t have one either. So she got a new “don’t shoot me” vest, too. Which is why she is so unhappy.

Apparently, K much prefers running around naked. Not only did she not want me to put the thing on her, once she had it on she didn’t want to move.

She was giving me this look as if to say, “This is stupid. I feel like a huge dork. I am not going anywhere until you take this thing off of me.”

As you can see, she finally relented. When outside, K is not one to stand in one place for very long. She wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t want to stay still either.

She got used to it after a while. Maybe she figured if Belle and Meg were wearing outfits, it must be okay for her, too.

Soon enough she was back to her happy self. Maybe that was because I declared the fitting session over and let her get back to cavorting naked through the yard?

I guess her previous owners didn’t play dress-up with her.

I suppose she does still have some more adjusting to do after all.