On The Move

Oh yes we are....
Our house is on the market for sale
Share it, talk about it, BUY IT!!!   (please!)

We are living in a duplex with  & 5 dogs that do not fit here very well...too much crowding, protecting, guarding & back talk.

 

Only bringing 3 home with us each night to stay.  The others spend the night at "school."  (MoJo's Backyard.)  We are so blessed to have those amazing  

MoJo's Dog Wranglers 

to help us take care of our most precious fur friends.

Amazing architect, Karin, from Dodstone is designing our new courtyard home & the BFF Dog Ranch.


OMD... dreams coming true!!

Monday: High, Low, & Middle Ground

The birds are chirping wildly, the trees are swaying mildly, & Ditto is digging her 60th consecutive foot of trough through the yard.  Some manner of vermin is on the run!  

Ditto breathes in snout fulls of dirt to focus her efforts & digs with a narrow margin, sometimes going deep rather than long.  Deep enough that only her butt & tail are visible.  Her big sister, Eiyso stands silently over her.  Make no mistake, Eiyso has the watch.  Nothing will happen to her little sister today.  

If the past is a predictor of the future, & I believe it is in this case, anything that is flushed from the earth by that little Jack Russell will be quickly & painlessly killed with a quick snap of the neck.  Within moments, Eiyso will steal the dead thing from Ditto, using her ACTUAL size to overpower Ditto with her perceived giant size, bad-ass big talk & tiny body.  Ditto is a do-er & has a lip on her.  Eiyso is a quiet, sensitive opportunist.  They are an amazing team!

Other Monday news.... 

...the makeover of MoJo's Backyard is well underway.  Thank you Oldfield Construction!

...Sparrow has been eating normal food for 2 1/2 days now.  She puked this morning.  WTH is wrong with my Monkey?  I think she misses her chicken & rice dish that mommy prepares only for her.

...I am meeting our new realtor today.  Sarah Henning, from Keller-Williams.  So excited.... our house should be on the market by the first week in May.   BFF Dog Ranch is moving one step closer to its final phase!!

...Cool weather with potential for high wind today.  Perfection.

...We are nearly all packed & I love my house all tidy with nearly nothing in it.

Chris is going bonkers without his never ending supply of hobbies 

(there’s plenty of work to do, but he finds little joy in CHORES.)

...We are going to miss this house so much. 

...MoJo’s winter coat is nearly ready for plucking.  It always starts with her legs.  When I saw a tuft sticking out on her foot this morning, I grabbed it & it pulled right out.  I gave a triumphant shout of glee.  She ran away and hid under the porch

...my phone just rang.   My best friend, my most kindred spirit, my sister from another mister, won the crap-you-don't-want lottery & got her very own rare form of sarcoma (odds:  four in one million)  Re-thinking this blog's title.  I like:

 "EFF You, Sarcoma."   

Sub-title:  You met your match & you're going down. 

I might be taking a trip soon to be support crew while my girlfriend kicks cancer's ass.

The Trade Offs

Driving behind a big 4x4 that thought the garbage truck was a bus...oh my dogs....EVERY DRIVEWAY was a stop.    But when I eventually got to work, the toilet water was BLUE!!!!  Happy Happy Day!


Crazy Crazy weeks of packing up our junk, trying to get our home ready to put on the market.  BUT, today we meet with the architects to begin plans for our NEW home & the BFF Dog Ranch.

WOOT!! WOOT!!
I love my universe.

the bridges i burn...

...may they light my way.

What a CRAPPY week.

                











The big picture is ~ this has been a devastating week for so many families.  Weather that brought destruction to many lives & changed cities forever.


On a local level, the climate in my life has been tumultuous at best.  (I write this fully aware that my current struggles are NOTHING if not just "normal life" compared to those who have suffered loss of family & property)

" WORTH: Just because you're necessary, doesn't mean you're important."
Some days this sentiment overwhelms my world

We all know about stress -
DIStress

                                         
















  Eustress

be careful what you wish for.

It's ALL stress.

The brain is NOT programmed to distinguish between the two.

I believe I spent most of this past week in tears.











a message to me from the universe:

I have been feeling claustrophobic in my home, at my desk, in my neighborhood.

Me & the GSD ~ TOO MUCH TO DO!!

 I need to get the BFF Dog Ranch up & running.  MoJo's Backyard needs some TLC.  There are so many jack-wagons out there that need to be exposed for the abuse they cause to animals.  

I need weapons training, self-protection training, to get strong & lose 15 pounds, a new wardrobe & don't forget about My five dogs, my husband & both my friends that need some time & attention from me.  ("both my friends"  LOL.  I have THREE friends, thank you very much!)  Don't forget that I have a full time job & Oh, I have been accepted to attend the Citizen's Police Academy.  (I am so excited!)

I must remind myself that these moments are simply the texture in the road to my goal.  I'm still moving toward it...just have to dodge the junk on the way.  Make no mistake, I am looking forward with jump-up-&-down excitement and a smile to every moment of my future.

Seriously, I live in the damn SUNSHINE state!!

If you're not on pinterest, you should be.  It's such a great place to store things you found on the world wide web that you love.  Every attachment that I ... attached... to my blog today was a good find on pinterest.  Go there.  There is so much cool stuff.  you can organize thoughts, pics, ideas & share them & steal junk from others.  It's like a MASS brainstorm session without having to hear the loud annoying voices of ignorant people.

rock on pinterest.  (No wonder I don't have time to get anything done - I spend every minute on pinterest)

Too Much? NEVER!

My hobby, as a young adult, was collecting clowns.  Oh it began innocent (naive) & fun enough.
Bright
Cheerful
Simple with prime colors and smiles.  A few crystal clowns here, a ceramic clown there.
And then it began....

Once you begin a collection - ANY collectable thing - it becomes the easy gift.  Everyone begins to associate you with that THING.  Every gift I received was clown related.

Clown t-shirt, clown garage sale finds, clown jewlry, a crystal bell with the clacker part as a clown.
Knitted clowns.
Eggshell clowns.
Clown slippers.

Over time, my beatific clown groups became edgy, mean, leering.  It got VERY scary.  That's when I started hating clowns.

Still the clowns kept coming.
Framed prints,
(which YES! I hung on the walls.  I don't know why....guilt?)
with shifting jester eyeballs that followed me around the room & watched me sleep.   Aaack!
Those diabolical clowns really started to suck BAD!!

THEN, someone told me about "IT" or was it "THING?" You know, the scary Stephen King novel/movie (I am not a fan of the Horror genre, so I don't know which it was.) Aaack! x 2!!

I had to donate that clown collection to the Salvation Army.  I should have burned it.

I have some better hobbies now - tracing my family history, camping, hiking, photography, cooking, kayaking to name a few.

But my PASSION is dogs.  I love them.  (did you know?)


That has led to people buying & giving to me all things dog.

 I have dog statues, dog cards, dog calendars, dog books, dog prints, dog signs, dog socks, dog jewlry..... and let me tell you something.  Dogs are NOT clowns (in the literal sense) I cannot get enough.  I LOVE every single dog item I have.  The magnets, the pawprints, the paperclips, the clocks - I wouldn't trade any of it for a big chunk of gold.  I love my paw print reading glasses (in black & in brown/multi) & my doggie-themed blankets.
I cherish my doggie coffee mugs as well as my:
dog t-shirts/sweatshirts/pajama pants
dog key chains
dog bottle opener
dog wine stoppers (& paw print wine stoppers, too!)
dog christmas ornaments
dog flip flops
dog throw rugs
dog pillows
dog picture frames
dog potholders
dog dishtowels

I love them ALL!!

I have been told my eyes change when the subject of dogs comes up - I get some sort of light or fire in them.  I burble with excitement & enthusiasm.  Exuberant becomes my name!!  (I am considering Zealot for a middle name!)  Careful, if you bring up the subject of puppies, I may talk & burble so much that spittle will gather in the corners of my mouth & I might pee my pants!

I can't get enough k-9.

So if you have anthing DOG lying around that you want to get rid of, please think of me first!!
Dog is Good.

For Christmas this year I bought myself a dog embroidered barn-style jacket, a gorgeous dog-themed canvas shoulder bag & my husband bought me a ring of gold dog bones & diamonds.  Best holiday EV-UH.

FYI - My birthday is in September & I'm still looking for knitted dogs & dogs made of eggshells!!  woof.

Schmuttz

This is our front door.  Notice the
markings on the glass!

This is one of my car windows. Yes, difficult to see in,
but I do good looking out!!

Hey - know THIS:

 Dog Art on glass has been called PUP-KISSES, WOOFMARKS, 

SLOBBER MARKS, DOG SCHMEAR, SNOT KISSES &

SCHMUTTZ

No matter what you call it, it's gorgeous, right?

Not my dog, Not my car
Not my dog schmear.
(but I wouldn't mind if it was!)

  

And I LOVE LOVE LOVE my world!!!

I fully intend to memorialize each of my dogs' nose prints in a gorgeous piece of jewelry!! Each pendant will be as unique as each dog.    

 I heart my dogs' nose prints & their noses & their snot kisses & their EVERYTHING. 

The Vapors

When a blog about dogs has the title THE VAPORS, your first thoughts may be ... GAS, farts, flatulence,  break wind, stink bomb, cut the cheese, fluffer-doodle, back fire, barking spider, toot, poot, step on a duck & of course, the dog did it.

The urban dictionary has 261 words that mean to pass gas.  I will be discussing exactly NONE of them.  Honestly Eeew, gross.

Let me say this - Ms Jackeline Sparrow, pictured above, despite her gorgeous looks, had some bad, bad Boxer Gas until we switched her to California Natural dog food.  She is much better now in the smelly guster department.

She got her name after the most famous & gorgeous pirate, Jack Sparrow.  He's played by the recently single, amazingly handsome & incredibley wonderful, quirky actor, Johnny Depp.  Turns out, Jack Sparrow doesn't have an eye patch like my girl & they look nothing alike.

The slightly angry, ever wise-cracking Jack

Sparrow.  Gorgeous in his own right, but looks

nothing like my boxer girl, Jackeline Sparrow.

(he is a no eyepatch pirate)

My gorgeous girl Sparrow with her pirate's eye patch.

So so beautiful, but looks nothing like her namesake,

Jack Sparrow.

Our friend, Jim, has stated that Sparrow looks like a very famous actress, the sultry Veronica Lake.

Veronica Lake

Ms. Lake, who died in 1970, had some mental health issues, which after doing some reading, I feel was nothing more than a straightforward case of The Vapors.

the doppelganger

Simply put, the Vapors = Female Hysteria

From Wikipedia:

Women considered to be suffering from the vapors exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite, and a tendency to cause trouble.

                                 My Sparrow-Monkey may well be Veronica Lake reincarnated!!

These are two Vapor-filled peas in their proverbial pods.  Now just because Sparrow no longer emits the noxious fumes she once did, she does have an occasional bout with female HYSTERIA.  As most of you know, during one of her "episodes" of nervousness, irritability & her tendency to cause trouble, she bit my ass so hard it's still healing 2 months later!

I love my Jackeline Sparrow.
I love my new, albeit deceased friend, Veronica Lake.
Ummm... I love Johnny Depp.

Methinks I feel a case of the VAPORS coming on!!

HOUND SOUND

You know the sound, if you have dogs, particularly HOUND DOGS.  If something new, wrong, or unexpected occurs, they will sound the doggie alarm.

Ahrooooo!

Woof!

Off Leash! dog walking by ~ OFF LEASH!!

Ahroooo!

Violation!  Violation!

BIG BOX ~ man mommy thinks is cute ~ shorts ~ brown truck.  

Stranger Danger!

Ahroooo!!

Woof!

My sister stole decapitated fat cat chew toy ~ MINE.  

Call to arms!

 AHROOOO!!

bark...BARK

Neighbor in her yard pulling weeeeds!! (woof)

Violation!  Extreme Violation!  

AHROOOOO!!

SQUIRREL on ground. 

 ALERT!!  ALERT!!!  ALL PAWS ALERT!

AHROOOOO!!!

wooOOFF!

Out of place ~ sofa has MOOOOOOVED!

Violation!

AHROOOOO!

Apparently, I, too, am at least part hound dog.  This has been quite a week for me & I am releasing my own "ALL PAWS ALERT."

Throughout my childhood, I would cry & hide in my room beside my bed from the cruelty of life on our upstate New York farm - afraid to stand up for the tormented, suffering 4-legged souls that lived in & around our barn.  

As an adult I have ignored & deleted any sad or difficult animal stories from my brain, my computer, & my bookshelf.  I have asked people not to speak of "awful" animal events in my presence.  I have always opted to remain in my magical world of All Fuzzy Things Sweet, Happy, & Wonderful.

Well I got slapped in my brain this week, hard! - something broke through my  perfect crystal wall of innocence that had been shielding me from the sad stories of evil doers, & mutilated dogs, cats & other gorgeous creatures in our world.

It was a horrific photo of torture that I simply could not ignore.  I was abruptly struck by the fact that absent from this picture & it's accompanying blurb were the important details.  And then I realized that rarely are these tales of abused, tortured, tormented, torn up critters EVER accompanied by any truly useful information.  

VIOLATION! WOOF!

I can no longer wait for Karma to do her thing.   

I cannot pretend this evil does not exist.
I am at the end of my "Mrs. Nice-Girl who ignores all things evil" rope.



I need to know & we all have the right & obligation to know:

• WHO committed these heinous acts?
• Where do they live?
• In which state & city do they live?
• On what street do they reside?
• What is their house number?
• Where do they work?
• Do they have access to children?
• Do they have other pets?

WOOF!

I am barking out my loudest hound sound.

AHROOOO!!!

Something is wrong in my world.  

VIOLATION. 

 EXTREME EPIC VIOLATION.

For me, I don't need to know the friggin' minutia of these cases.  Please, no gory details of the crime with color photos of the tortured animal lying in its own feces.   My heart still can't take it.

I do need a full color photo of the CRIMINAL, the perpetrator - the sick human that is responsible.  Their dirty deed has been done & we cannot change the atrocities inflicted upon the poor creature that died or nearly died.   BUT...We can protect ourselves & those we love from another despicable act from this MONSTER.

WOOF!

If there is an animal torturer in your neighborhood - you need to know about it.  They need to be identified & watched.  They should not be trusted near any other animals or children.

Here's the database   http://www.pet-abuse.com/     Check your city & neighborhood.
You can find abusers listed here & submit the names of abusers*.

I intend to BLAST the names & faces of these dangerous criminals to the public so we can prevent further crimes against our beloved 4-legged beauties & protect our communities.




*This data base is very good.  They collect all kinds of info.  It includes photos & details of the crime, as well as the criminal.  I understand how important this "minutia" (as I called it) is to those who track these kinds of crimes.  For me, as I've stated, it's more than my heart can bare right now.

And remember, the data base is only as good as the input they receive.  We can help make it better. 

 http://www.pet-abuse.com/

My Ancestors

For about four years now I've had an increasing interest in family history- mostly my own family, but I love the puzzling aspect of everybody's backstory.  If you haven't done it, you should check out ancestry.com.  There's so much information on this website & it's intuitively easy to use.  I could, & often do,  spend hours there doing research, looking at documents & just enjoying, what for me has been, the ever deepening mystery of my ancestors.  

Oh how I wish this bug had bitten when my Grandparents were living.  As I recall, though, they never liked to speak too much about their past - apparently some secrets, dirt, skeletons, & not always happy memories existed for them.  And in "those days" we didn't discuss that kind of thing.  I would have been strung up for my open mouth & it's loose lippy ways.  I was born in the right decade to preserve my own life.  

In addition to using the ancestry website to feed my puzzling passion (tracing your roots really is like working a puzzle) & experiencing the pure joy of putting together my family's sketchy history, I have been lucky enough to have been bequeathed boxes, bags-full, & albums of family photos from all sides.

Here's how the majority of these old family photos came to me:  "Dawn, do you want any of these old photos?  If you don't take them home, I'm throwing them away."

I love to use my OCD skills to pour over these yellowed black, sepia, & white, shedding old brown-orange crusty-taped, musty-smelling photos, trying to cipher the word or two someone might have bothered to jot on the back.  

I scan each one, label it digitally if I know who, what, when, or on the rare occasion WHERE, & then further categorize them by family, my preferences, & species (you know - "animals," "the farm," "buildings," "unknown." Don't judge  - we all have our own definition of species!)  I crop, enhance, rotate,  & create my own historical pictorial.  

My biggest joy-bomb, by far, in these photos has been in the discovery that there are so many incredible dogs in my family's history.  

I HAD NO IDEA!!!

No one EVER talked to me about dogs.  My parents never had dogs when I was growing up.  NO ONE, even in my extended family, lived with dogs.  

Well, guess what...I've found at least 15 different dogs in photos of my ancestors.  WTH???  Someone dropped the dog ball during my life time.

To see this gorgeous farm dog of my mom's mother's mother's father elevated to the two-barrel status makes me so happy!!

Meet SANDY.
In a time when you know money was
scarce, I am so proud of my family
for having a portrait made of their
tuxedo dog!!  (circa 1920)

I am still, even in this very moment, amazed that, Dogs, like horses, have always been in my family "blood."  I had to mature to the ripe old age of 41 before my (as it is obvious to me only now) inherited love & frankly out of control PASSION for dogs kicked in.  

 Warning:  Cliché ahead....

Dogs, like cotton, have become the texture of the fabric that is me.   

I KNEW it!!  White bully dogs are in my genes.  That explains
why I am obsessed with these beauties.  I came by it honestly!! (through my crazy family!!)

I have had this picture since I was probably 14 years old.  

(Long before I had a conscious passion for canines.)

I was always fascinated by the steps to no where.  

I don't remember who was going to throw this one away. 

 I probably dug it out of a burn barrel.  

The back of the photo tells us everything we need to know.

(see below)

Woof, Rover, Woof.

Anthro-Mo-Pho-Whatta?

Anthropomorphizing:  I can’t spell it without a spellcheck assist, have profound trouble saying it, but surely exemplify it a thousand times daily. 

You know the concept ... attributing human characteristics to things UN-human.

Who can blame me?

My reference IS human - it's all I have, really.  

(paraphrased from the blogger called Doyle)

Even fancy-pants scientists anthropomorphize. 

• The Weatherologists (or what-EVER they call themselves - big weather guesser people) name storm systems with, not some scientific jargon attached to a date, but very human names like Fay & Andrew.  
• Computer geeks talk to their hardware and software as if it had ears and was responding to verbal commands (hmmmm... maybe it does respond, but that doesn't make it human...). 
• At MIT in 1917 they were referring to cars/engines/gadgets/boats as SHE/HER/FEMALES.  Of course that is done by nearly all of us still today.  In fact, referring to a gigantic war ship as a she or her is currently recognized as proper and official Navy-Speak.
• In medicine there are killer t-cells that come out attack foreign bodies.
• Ever looked through a microscope & thought to yourself, "I wonder who those guys are?"  They're probably NOT guys.
• Think back to the early science classes when we were shown the graphic footage of molecules becoming attracted to each other & all the different ways they share & form bonds.  How sweet.

Language leads us to humanize so many things:

-cameras have eyes (so do needles)

-chairs have legs (so does wine)

-pins have heads (& beer, too, of course)

-clocks have faces while rivers have just a mouth.

As children, we are not so subtly led to anthropomorphize.  

• Books show us in still life - that little train that thought he could, thought he could, thought he could, & turns out, (spoiler alert!!) he actually could.
• Cartoons make nonhuman critters have many human characteristics.  You may know the rabbit that stands upright on only two of his legs, holds his carrot like a cigar & asks "Eh, What's up, Doc?"  Who could forget that big-bubble-headed little yellow bird that tawt he taw a feline & he did, he did.
• Fairy tales, like the one with three sizes of bears & the blonde girl talking about the exact perfect temperature for porridge.

Is the opposite of anthropomorphize to dehumanize?

 I hope not.  

I would guess that the majority of us who are enamored with dogs practice anthropomorphism. 

 My dogs each have their own voice with special accents & drawls & my husband & I love to verbalize what they are thinking & trying to say throughout the day.  (Don't be fooled, when my hound Lucas speaks, he sounds dopey as all get out, but he really is smart!!)  My fur kids favorite holiday is every Saturday (they get to spend the entire day with Mommy & Daddy.)  And Eiyso has a watch to let everyone know when it's dinner time.

I know - I am fully aware - that my dogs are not little fuzzy humans. 

However, they make me human.

….they contribute to my humanity & keep me humble

….they make up for all my faults.  

It’s not too much pressure to put on them;  They told me they welcome the challenge & are up to the task.   

Technology is freakin' killing me....