Return of the Friday Dogs: Gunner

After almost two straight weeks of rain, spring has come early here. The inch-thick mud dried out in the sun, and the yard outside of my apartment building has once again been made suitable for impromptu canine play sessions — and for dog photography.

I love the coloring on this guy.

Gunner is 3 years old, with the mindset, attitude, and energy levels of a 5-month-old pup. He and Rufus have been friends for quite some time. They share a love of wildly physical play-fighting and of fetching sticks, though they'll both get growly and protective of a stick that's already in their mouths.


If you close your eyes as Gunner gallops past you, you'd swear from the intense thudding of his paws that someone was riding a horse nearby. And no, I'm not exaggerating. He's a LOT of dog.



The moment I pulled out my camera, Gunner stopped running in circles and came right toward me to sit down and pose. I love a dog who loves the camera.

Pushing paint

I've been playing around with paint for the past couple of weeks. Obviously I've still got a long way to go when it comes to traditional materials, but the tactile experience of using actual brushes instead of digital brushes is just so delicious. I've been seriously spoiled by the "Undo" button. You can't Ctrl+Z your way out of a bad brush stroke.

Friday dogs: Jude

Jude is a husky/yellow lab. He's built like a moose (with brains to match), has very thick pillowy fur, and is in desperate need of a bath most of the time. He's also an unrepentant sweetheart.


Jude has two mommies, both of whom are good friends of mine. He likes quiet dinners and long walks on the beach.

He's only 2 weeks older than Rufus, and they grew up together. They're desperately in love, but are doomed to remain apart — partly because they now live in different states, and partly because they're both neutered.

Husky howl

He's only half husky, but he's still got that tendency to vocalize just for the sake of vocalizing.

Friday Dogs: Nose

I've really been having trouble keeping up with posts lately - sorry. There's no internet at home and that makes things tough sometimes. I present today, for your consideration, a nose. While some say that the cognitive functioning of a canine is located in the brain, in truth it is located precisely here.

Friday dogs: Scoops

Scoops (also called Snookums, Scooper Dooper, and Poop Scoop) is a bichon frise, owned and very much doted on by my former coworker Karen Hollish. She named him Scoops as a cutesy homage to her career in journalism — as in, "What's the scoop?"

Four Strong Legs

Also posted this to my DeviantArt account.
Reference photo from The Daily Coyote.

Friday dogs: Katie

Katie Biscuit, purebred golden retriever, born when I was in kindergarten, died while I was in college at the ripe age of 14. I literally grew up with her. She died old, overweight, mostly deaf, partially blind, and highly flatulent. Hobbies included lavishing affection on every human being within range, demolishing plastic children's toys, and chasing chipmunks (she actually caught one once, but didn't know what to do with it, and dropped it back to the ground, unharmed).

You have never met a dog so gentle.

Friday Dogs: Elderly goldendoodle

From the archives, taken sometime this past summer:


This is a ridiculously sweet elderly goldendoodle (golden retriever/standard poodle), owned by a ridiculously sweet elderly lady, whom I've had the pleasure of meeting several times. Unfortunately, I never learned either of their names. Whoops.

Friday dogs: the ghost of Rufus past

Part of me wishes that I had a working camera around. The apartment building we live in is the designated "dog building" in the complex, so every time I step outside the door there's a new dog to meet and greet. There's even a person on the third floor whose miniature pinscher just had a litter of puppies.

But while we wait for the advent of a new camera, I hope you can get your puppy fix with this snap from my archives:

(Photo by Karen Hollish)

This is Rufus at 8 weeks old, the very night that I brought him home. (This photo, incidentally, was not taken at home, but at my former workplace, by my former coworker — that's her bichon, Scoops, sniffing Rufus' butt in the background.)

Relocation

Evan and I moved last week to the Minneapolis area. Neither of us has a job yet, so we're both busy scouting out our options, unpacking, opening bank accounts, building up our mental maps of the surrounding area, getting acquainted with the different pace of life...

We're in the midst of suburbia, but it's considerably more urban than the town where I've been living for the past six years. Most of the local establishments aren't local at all, but are chains. I have yet to find a good place to let Rufus run around off-leash. And there's an oxymoronic aura of both isolation and significant lack of privacy.

We have no internet at home yet (and I still lack a working camera), so I can't make any promises as to the regularity of updates or the timeliness of answered e-mails. I can promise, however, that I will try. At the very least I'll queue up some entries to post automatically.


Here's a pattern I made. My experience with making patterns is... well, you're looking at the sum total of it right now. Sized for widescreen desktops (full size 1280x800) for your downloading pleasure (for personal use only).

Click for larger image.

Friday Dogs: Artie

This one is special (fit for Friday the 13th, I guess). There's a story, but the photo is more important.



This is my late dog Artie, and me at age 17 or 18. This photo is a perfect representation of our relationship.

Artie was a yellow lab/German shepherd mix. He was born at the wildlife rehab sanctuary where I used to volunteer all through my teenage years. There were nine puppies in the litter, and the mother neglected them horribly. One of the puppies died after she stepped on it. Colleen, my dear friend and the owner of the sanctuary, asked if I could foster some of the puppies — she barely had enough time in a day to go to the bathroom, much less bottle-feed eight puppies every 2 to 4 hours. With my mother's permission, I took home four of them, one of whom was destined to become Artie.

Two of our neighbors adopted two of the puppies, and my parents decided to keep the chubby little blonde male, whom my sister named Artie, after a character from the old Nickelodeon show "Pete & Pete".

He had the worst hip displaysia that the orthopedic vet had ever seen. At less than a year old, he had a hip replaced; while he was recovering from that, he slipped on the kitchen floor and busted his knee on the same leg; after another surgery to correct that problem, he knocked the same knee on the doorway as he was going outside. By this point, the vet only charged us for the anesthesia and did the surgery for free.

He proceeded to become the happiest, most tender-hearted dog on the face of the planet, and he flat-out worshipped our older golden retriever, Katie. Tug-of-war was his favorite game, and he had very well-toned shoulder muscles because of it. He was a gorgeous dog. His nickname was "Handsome" and he answered to it.

I cried when I left him to go to college.

That first Christmas when I came home for break, on the first night, Artie stood at the door to be let outside. I let him out, and he immediately asked to come back inside. He looked at me oddly, then stood at the door again. This repeated multiple times, until finally I understood that he wanted us to be outside together. It was a full moon (I can't make this stuff up), and we romped in the yard together, just him and me. This is one of my fondest memories of my life so far.

Twenty-four hours later, he was dead of gastric torsion (bloat). He was six.

Occasionally I think that Rufus might be his reincarnation (and my mother agrees, despite her not being entirely certain whether she believes in reincarnation at all). While I very much love Rufus just for being Rufus, it's a comfort to think — even to just wonder if — there's a little piece of Artie in him.

Friday Dogs: George

This is George, and it might be considered cheating to use her for a Friday Dogs post, since no one is entirely certain whether she is, in fact, a dog, or just using some clever disguise to further her plans for global conquest.




She is the leader of the local transgender dogs (see also: Charlie). Perhaps she could best be described by relaying the story of her origin, as told to me by her owner, Leslie:

In rural southern Illinois, where the most exciting feature is a single tree amidst the endless acres of cornfields, there was a rather high-end breeder of bichon frises. A few miles down the road was another breeder of moderate repute, one of Jack Russell terriers.

Jack Russells are famous for their ability to defy gravity. One of the stud Jack Russells jumped (or possibly flew) over the fence, booked it across town, and flew over another fence, which contained the prize bichon bitches. The bichon breeder was about 30 seconds too late in discovering this.

If you're unfamiliar with the way dog breeding works (among reputable breeders, anyway), you ought to know that a breeder relies upon their reputation above all else. For a bitch whose grandmother won at Westminster, to be impregnated by a dog of another breed — her first litter, no less — could ruin that dog's career and spoil many, many years of careful planning on the part of the breeder. HUGE faux pas.

So the breeders were desperate to shuffle the puppies quietly off into good homes with owners who had never set foot in a show ring. My friend Leslie heard about this debacle, and stopped by to have a look at the puppies.

When she arrived, a wave of cute, fluffy, white, bouncy little puppies came tumbling toward her, with big puppy smiles and wagging little puppy tails.

...And then there was this one.

This undersized little female puppy who sort of stumbled out of the whelping box with a perpetually confused expression on her face. When Leslie picked her up, the pup didn't try to lick her face, instead going stiff and sticking all four legs straight out, like one of those suction-cup Garfields you see in minivan windows.

Leslie took this puppy solely on the basis that no one else would want her. And named her George, because gosh darnit, she just looked like a George.

[For the record, George (despite being in every sense an oddball) is a relatively healthy dog, with more quirks than I can count but no real behavior problems.]

Friday Dogs: Rufus

Evan and Rufus relaxing in the park after a long, long, LONG walk all the way across town:

I really love this photo for some reason. Hard to believe I only took it 2 months ago; the landscape undergoes such an extreme metamorphosis so quickly when winter comes up here.

Friday Dogs: Pecan

Pecan (aka "Peekers") is a smelly, adventurous mutt who thoroughly enjoys her life on a farm. Her favorite hobbies are eating things and rolling in things — the smellier and more rotten the better — as well as occasionally enhancing her perfume with skunk spray.

She takes commands very well, though, which helps her to keep out of dangerous situations, and is so affectionate that her bids for your attention can be downright pushy. But really, how could you say no to a face like that?

Friday Dogs: Casey

Casey lives with my friends Tiff and Joni in Superior, WI. She has a sensitive heart, a territorial streak, and a gentle, feel-things-out-along-the-way approach to most people and situations (the main exception to this being strange dogs, at whom she immediately barks if they don't approach right away to say hi).

Two-toned noses, along with one-ear-up-one-ear-down, are one of my favorite features in dogs.

Casey is rather enamored with Rufus. I love this photo because her leash looks almost as though it was Photoshopped in.

Charlie

Just look at that profile. Gorgeous.

Charlie is one of several dogs in this area with cross-gender names; she is, indeed, female. A borzoi mix, she shares her space with two women, a bunny, a duck, and a shepherd mix named Nika (below).


Both these dogs are all legs and pure energy. Rufus loves to try to keep up with them, and we love to watch him try. Here's a size comparison between a corgi and a borzoi:

Tumble

I'm sorry, what was I saying the other day about dogs who have one-ear-up, one-ear-down?

This little pup doesn't officially have a name yet. A friend found him playing with a tumbleweed in the middle of the road, so everyone calls him Tumble. It's a week later, and no one has claimed him yet. A friend of mine is currently debating whether she wants to keep him, but she's getting married this weekend, so the timing is off.

He's definitely got the flavor of a Jack Russell, plus some kind of bully breed. He's quite tiny, and notoriously insane.


I just hope someone officially adopts him soon.

Jack

Wow, sorry about the lag in updates there. To make up for it, please enjoy these photos of a dog with asymmetrical ears:



His name is Jack and he belongs to a friend of a friend. Note the one-ear-up, one-ear-down theme, and how this feature automatically doubles his cuteness score. More dogs should have this gift, I feel.

The other best thing about Jack is that all you have to do is look at him and he immediately rolls over for a belly rub.

Potter

Behold the fuzzball known as Potter. Pictured here with my friend Leslie, Potter is a 7-week-old mix comprised approximately of lab, husky, shepherd, and border collie. Her fur is enviably soft, and she loves to give kisses.

(In the background is Leslie's dog, George, being jealous.)

She belongs to Honore, the owner of the Black Cat Coffeehouse (aka my second home) and was given her name by Honore's young son.

What a face!