paw prints, manatees & fishin' ditty

did you know i have a pair of black reading glasses with white paw prints all over them AND & And i have a pair of black sox with white paw prints all over them. i wear them at the same time. who does that? you've heard of purses matching shoes. but glasses matching sox? i'm amazing & sometimes i’m really full of myself.

does he have the cutest butt you ever saw? and lucas’s isn’t bad either. honestly, i do love dog butts (& my hubby’s). so does robin adams (again i have to add parenthesis, ‘cause i don’t know if she admires chris's butt, but i do know she loves dogs’ butts.) check out this photo if you don’t believe me or THIS photo. she knows amazing butts when she sees 'em!

i have always been nervous to be in my kayak when the manatees were around - i thought they might tip me over & mistake me for hay & eat me. (birds try to peck my hair because they think it’s grass or something - [as if i could ever know what those mean spirited, evil intentioned, carnivorous birds are thinking...ok, i’m afraid of the birds, all sizes, i’ll just admit it. my slanderous words stem from fear FEAR, i’m fraught with fear of our feathered “friends”]) good news, i’m not fraught with fear of the sea cows any more. i love those pig nosed big grey softies. they are gorgeous.

to see the scars and wounds on these beautiful giants, even on the babies' backs, made me so sad & almost ashamed. i wanted to apologize. i think we were forgiven our human-ness. they loved swimming around the kayaks (if they had tails, they would have been wagging!) and came up to sniff - so amazingly trusting. chris said their breath smelled like fresh mowed grass. i can’t wait to let them get close enough so i can smell their breath.

we are waiting for ditto’s life jacket to come in. we had to order the extra small. i hope it looks ok under her fishing vest ‘cause we can’t cover that thing up. if she goes on daddy’s kayak she’ll help catch fish, if she goes on mommy’s, she’ll just look cute.

last week of august 2009 - in 2 parts

1a rain for 36 hours
2a great friend of mojo’s backyard euthanized. we will miss you, jake.
3a bit/bruised by my own dog on the tender parts of my left arm (inside part of my elbow - ouch)
4a muddy white shirts for our photo shoot (yes, plural)
5a boxer puppy found stumbling down road in brunswick georgia with throat intentionally slit open, literally from ear to ear
6a sen kennedy dies
7a 9 dogs at my house for a photo shoot and 1 puncture wound delivered by my crazy big hound dog. lucas was a butt.
8a mojo ate one of chris’s fishing gloves last night.
her tally for the month: 1 boat shoe (the neighbor's), aunt tee tee’s favorite flip flop, 1croc sandal belonging to the photographer we love, 1 of daddy’s favorite oxfords, 1 backpack (only the leather ties and straps), 3 pairs of underwear, all with the same story - waist band: intact. crotch: nowhere to be found) & the glove. if the glove is bit i will not acquit.

meet elvis, Lucas's evil twin(3a)

1b green green trees/grass, bright flowers, cool weather, high rivers to float kayaks down with our great friends susan & jim.
2b peaceful passing with loved ones close by, no more suffering
3b note to self: do not break up dog altercations using my body. it is my temple (ahem...i have 5 copies of this same note to self. will i ever learn?)
4b great photos with an honest touch of dog dirt; methinks if you’re a dog, having fun has very little to do with staying clean
5b puppy healing well physically. learning to trust & play again; for every evil-doer there are hundreds of big open hearted loving tender humans. barc people rule!
6b health care reform is in the spotlight even more. it was his mission. it will be his legacy
7b dinner with 2 of the best people we know, with some of the best lasagna i’ve ever had!

8b it’s a sign to start going green & stop buying leather. or maybe it’s a sign to keep this crap out of her reach!!

dawn, hamish & truffles on the st marks river (1b)
photo by the oc

jerry & o'malley (7b)

my sister's visit

my sister, anita christy came to visit this weekend. yeah!! i haven’t seen her in over 4 years. she is the mom of 2 gorgeous human kiddos, (abby is 6 & a j is 7, they both stayed up north with their dad) she also lives with a pit-mix GOOBIE, kittens, a horse, 16 chickens, a donkey & probably some other critters i don’t know about. she was very confidant coming here that she would be able to handle living with 5 dogs for 10 days. no problem.

i’m always nervous when we have guests. our dogs are usually very well behaved, but the initial 15 minutes can be very intense with the jumping, barking, racing laps around the house. plus, if you’re not used to it, 5 of anything can be overwhelming....5 kids, 5 pairs of shoes, 5 martinis, 5 choices of dessert, or 5 golden rings - 5 is a lot.

anita did very well...initially. the puppies loved her (our youngest canine fur-child is 2 years old & 70 pounds, but they’re all still puppies to me.) we walked them, played with them, made up voices for them, couch-potatoed heavily with them & photographed them. anita even slept with sparrow the first night.

aunt tee-tee with eiyso. chris has luke and ditto.

i believe it was the second day of aunt tee-tee’s visit when things began to go slightly down the proverbial hill. (all my fur kids call anita “aunt tee-tee” because they can’t say aunt anita)

anita brought with her a fancy pair of flip flops (actually, everything anita has is fancy. even her horse is named fancy. that’s so weird. i never even thought about that until right this minute.) anyway... she was sacheting around our house in her designer high heeled leather fancy flip flops extolling their comfort & i was oooooing and ahhhing. & then we got distracted. started cooking, laughing, remembering when she hit me in the head with the rock & i almost went down. i barely clung to consciousness, only so i could tell mom on her. apparently with all the reminiscent tale-telling excitement of our childhood, she threw off her very comfortable flippies. mojo found them.

by the time i noticed, one shoe was isolated in the dogs’ play room, separated from all other shoes. sitting alone. no living creature in sight. the leather flip had little tiny teeth marks & the the toe tip of the rubber flop was all swiss cheesy.

at first anita whimpered, maybe even cried a little bit. then she got mad. then she got all “my glass is 1/2 - full” & resolved to still wear them.

her thoughts on the matter included:
no one will notice they’ve been chewed when i have them on.
they may eventually break, but at least they should last long enough for me to find another pair.
they rub on the top of my foot, but only a little bit.

while walking the mall the next day, they did in fact give her a little blister & a mild limp to go along with it. that injury didn’t hurt nearly as much as her bloody knee. she broke the vase at the giftshop, but i picked it up to inspect the damage and a huge chunk of ceramic flew out right & away, slicing her knee open, giving her a huge gash that ran red for hours.

i think it was a couple of nights later that anita felt better, had a new pair of flip flops & her knee finally stopped bleeding, so we organized a little party.

we had some guests over for a very competitive game of wii bowling followed by a hard hitting set of rock band. our neighbors walked over to festivate with us; they’re a lot of fun & come over as often as they can. they kicked their shoes off at the front door, cracked open a bottle of yummy red and relaxed into dinner.

just as everyone was changing out of their bowling shirts & into their rock star clothes, i spied it with my little eye.

notice that the drummer has no shoes on his feet.

another lonely shoe in the dogs’ room. it was large & leather. insert 1/2 eaten & separated from the body of the shoe. the lace was missing as well as the leather that the laces ran through. there were, however, several metal rivets, slightly bent & strewn over the floor. mojo does have her standards.

my shopping list.

fur photos on friday

we had so much fun this past friday afternoon. a photographer came to our home to photograph our dogs.

i was sorta dreading it all week. it’s hard work to have a “stranger” come into a 5 dog pack - get the dogs to play nice, put on their best face, act decent, not bark, not jump, not argue/growl/grump with each other, & to smile, all the time worrying if the house is clean enough, the grass is short enough, if even a single photo will be in focus because not one dog is willing to sit perfectly still long enough for the photographer to exhale.

well let me tell you about ms robin adams, pet photographer extraordinaire. worry about the dogs jumping on her? she kicked off her shoes on the porch, walked into the living room, sat down in the middle of the floor & welcomed every sniff, kiss, nose bump, slobbering lick she could get from our pack. she reciprocated their acts of love by bringing bully stix for all, giggles, treats by the dozen, infectious laughter, enthusiasm & joy to our little pack, including my husband & me.

the dogs were so animated & loved her so much she could barely get far enough away from them to take their photos.

-lucas made all of his funny elvis faces for her
-eiyso stretched out in her “i am the zen dog” pose with those magical soulful eyes gazing deep into the camera lens
-mojo woofed & pranced & kicked in all her longhaired, smiling face glory followed by several vogue poses just to prove she’s still got what it takes for the cat dog-walk.
-sparrow did some vertical jumps, raced like a banshee-fied tasmanian devil & promptly retired to her crate stating “...& i’m spent.”
-ditto displayed the downward dog over & over so that robin could get just the right light while we giggled nonstop about how stinkin’ cute she is. (ditto, not robin. though, yes, robin is cute, too!)
-chris & i were left with huge smiles, feeling proud of our pack & we simply cannot wait to see the woof proofs. (we’ll be sharing once we get them!!)

robin is amazing with dogs. & amazing with the camera.
she’s a wonderful person, dog rescuer, cat lover, compassionate, talented, creative, has a zest for life & spunk that i admire. i recommend her for ALL your photographic needs.
check out her website FUR & Robin Adams Photography

she’s got a pack of new fans with the jones clan!!!

update.....here is the link to our proofs - they are awesome!!!
the jones family

roadie-oh

At mojo’s backyard, we foster dogs. One of the groups we work closely with is boxer rescue. (boxer aid and rescue coalition– you should check them out –great people, love dogs.) we usually have a boxer or two hanging around the daycare waiting for the perfect forever home.

We’re hosting a little boxer man right now named “roadie” I prefer to call him roadie-oh. He’s a jack russell/boxer mix – so they think. a jack in the box for those of you who need a designer dog. [you can read roadie’s story at www.boxerarc.org]

I love him.

this is jean - he works with us at mojo's backyard - holding roadie-oh. too too cute!!

roadie hated me or feared me most likely for a long time & I don’t know why. most dogs get one whiff of me & seem to trust me. this little dude gave me a fit. growled barked snarled lunged backed away for 2 or 5 days. I spent over an hour inching him toward me with treats & when I ran out of food, he ran away. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, he fell in love with me almost as much as I am with him.

Confession: He is a coprophagiac (he eats other dogs crap) but hey, many dogs do it. So he’s got a single fault…

I was tucking roadie-oh in one night (I work at the daycare a couple of nights a week and I always say goodnight to each dog – kisses, calming rubs, telling them they are good good dogs. sometimes I have to lie.) & I smelled light poop on his breath – so I wouldn’t let him kiss me. I kissed him on the top of his head. He laid his head down and accepted all of my affection. This must be why I love him.

Have you ever seen a smoosh face dog’s teeth? Oh my goodness – they are a crooked mess. Underbite-city, crooked as my conniving uncle eric, snaggle tooth from way back. it’s just so comical and wonderful. I love looking at them – it brings up a smile from way deep in my soul. (I had braces many many many years ago – so my bite now is disguised as almost straight – perhaps malformed k9 teeth remind me of my younger days looking in the mirror)

I really wanted a little look at roadie’s dentition for my own personal happiness meter – it never hurts to charge it up when you can sneak a peak at something that makes you feel so amazingly joyful.

When I parted his lips and prepared for my smile I instead felt a little puke come up into my throat. Uppers and lowers caked full of poop, shit, crap, excrement, grey brown burbling and overflowing from the crooks and crannies – just like my ex-husband.

[The only time that mean man ever made me laugh is when he would clog his mouth with chocolate, smile big and say “do I have anything in my teeth?” & that was really only funny the first thousand times he did it.]

Maybe that’s why I was so horrified mortified and nauseous with roadie’s gaping cesspool mouth & the foulness spewing from it….. he reminded me of my ex. Oh roadie-oh. …

or maybe it was just freakin’ gross.