Bookend Butts

Here you have it. The result of an early morning hike and a lazy afternoon.



And this is what happens when I use the flash on the camera while the hounds are sleeping:




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Do you remember Play-doh? And the sets you could get to make more mess with your Play-doh? How about The Mop Top Barber Shop? Until last weekend, I hadn’t thought of this toy since I was a kid. Last Sunday was Canine Manicure Day at our house. This is generally quite a production involving, among other things, splitting the dogs up so one is watching from the hallway while the other dog is screaming blue murder in the kitchen. Kidding. But I do split them up, otherwise the free dog will take advantage (via unrestricted poking, barking and sniffing) of the dog who can’t go anywhere because I’m either sitting on him (Seth) or at the very least have a firm grip on one of his paws (Rory). So there I am grinding down Rory’s nails with the Dremel. After what seems like forever – it has been two weeks since I last performed this “weekly” ritual – I think we’re done. Rory gets up and walks around as if he’s testing things, making sure I haven’t inadvertently sliced off a toe or something. What I notice is that once he’s standing up, his nails don’t look nearly as short as they did when he was lying down. Also at this point, I have finished my daily espresso-based drink but haven’t had breakfast, so my caffeine-addled brain immediately comes up with two (quite irrational) explanations for this amazing nail phenomenon. First: Rory has retractable nails and pulls them in when faced with the grinder so that I’ll be finished sooner. Alternatively: when I’m holding (squeezing?) Rory’s paw maybe it’s the same sort of mechanism where you crank the Play-Doh and it comes up through the holes in the plastic guy’s head. Only these are chunks of keratin, not modeling compound. In any event, much to Seth’s delight (because it meant it wasn’t his turn yet), Rory underwent round two. By the time I got to Seth, I had had enough and just trimmed the tips of his nails. Lucky boy. Till next week.

And for those who need a demo of the whole mop top thing (just so you understand the analogy to never-ending dog nails….) check out YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiIDrCvv0AQ

I have to say it’s just as fun to watch the ‘hair’ grow on video as it was to crank the handle and do it for real. In fact, watching it is better, because then you don’t have to clean crusty Play-doh out of the follicles in little plastic heads.

Christmas Wishes. Sort of.

I loved Tamzin's idea of a portrait by the Christmas tree. The last time I did this, Seth was just a little puppy and Sage was with him. Depending on your definition of success, this session was okay. Dogs were bored, but at least they stayed still. Seth was not impressed with having his nap interrupted, and Rory is about ready for bed.







I put the flash on to see what difference it would make. Seth had a flash of inspiration and saw this as an opportunity to check for crumbs, and Rory wasn't going to be left out if anything was found.










Having completely given up hope on errant crumbs, Rory has resigned himself to his photo-fate. Really not what I was looking for.












My best "Old Man". Ever.












Rory. Half Asleep. Handsome nonetheless.

Heat Hound

Ahhhh....the smell of toasty dog fur. Apparently, it doesn't bother Rory. In this shot he's roasting his left side, but he has since turned around to warm up his right side and watch the hockey game (seriously). I do know that it's a really, really good thing there is a guard over the heating element, otherwise Rory's near-embraces with this machine would leave his fur darker than we're accustomed to. We've had the heater since last year - for those evenings when the firewood outside on the deck is just too far away - but Rory has only just discovered it in the last week or so. In his book, it's the best invention ever. I suggest that it's time to go outside for a pee break and all I get in return is the baleful, red-rimmed stare that says "No thanks, I can wait." I was wondering when he was going to turn into a real Ridgeback.

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Take off, eh?

Lots of pictures taken today (this one courtesy of Tamzin), and many Ridgebacks at the park.

Here are Ramsay (L) and Rory...I just want to know if any of my boy's feet are actually on the ground? Doesn't look like it.

Fall Pics

"Okay, Rory, you go that way...yeah, way over through those trees. Don't worry, we'll wait here for you...really, we will...uh huh...."











Seth still has lots to teach Rory. Especially when he's having such a good day. Sometimes, walks with Rory are too much for Seth's old bones, but this was a beautiful, warm fall day and he was feelin' fine.

"When ya sniff, make sure you get your nose right down into it."

This is Rory doing his impression of a gremlin. Check out those pointy ears!

Pretty boy.

Again with those ears. And that tongue.

Bathroom Reading

Bathroom reading at our house is a jumble of golf and I/T magazines. I'll note here that I dabble in both, however, the magazines are not mine. But when in Rome...
There was a simply stupendous article in one of the I/T mags written by somebody whose sole purpose must have been to purge himself of every hyphenated buzzphrase (should that be hyphenated?) he has ever come across. It included (and this is not an exhaustive list) delightful gems like: next-generation in-memory (double whammy I guess); policy-driven; latency-agile; low-latency analytics; premised-based business intelligence; distributed-caching infrastructure; event-stream processing; real-time business intelligence; changed-data capture; data-warehouse strategy; and dynamic task-brokering. Three of these were actually one after the other in the same sentence. I'm not sure I gleaned anything from the reading except that it's pretty amazing Norm and I actually speak the same language.
My personal favourite from the article is: trickle-feed extract transform load. I don't know about other dogs, but Ridgebacks would never be happy with trickle-feed anything. They need it all at once, right now, just dump it all in the bowl, hurry, oh please, and make sure he didn't get more than me. As for transforming it, well, they don't have a problem with that. Ask Norm. He mows the lawn