Puppy Porn

The innocent look is all an act.

Warning: The following may not be appropriate for all readers, especially those offended by accidentally coming across porn on the internet.

I recently received an email from a person, whom I do not know personally but is in a group I belong to, strongly suggesting that I change my URL because "if you mis-type it," you may be shocked and appalled to find yourself on a porn site. So I was kind of like, "well, um, if you type it correctly, you don't." That isn't really what I wanted to talk about but it has been bugging me a bit and I couldn't pass up the chance to use it as a segue to my Puppy Porn story.

There is a dog at the park named Joe. Joe is a 2-year old dog that looks just like a Golden Retriever but he is black, so he is obviously not a Golden Retriever. Joe is 100% enthralled with Lulu. Actually, Joe is 100% enthralled with humping Lulu. The last time we ran into Joe, he didn't care about playing, he didn't care about swimming, all he wanted to do was hump Lulu. Even more strange, there was another dog that would not let Joe get close to Lulu. It was like a very dysfunctional love triangle. Every time Joe tried to get to Lulu, the other dog would intervene, barking and keeping Joe at bay.

So today Lulu is playing with her new friend Blue and I see Joe running towards Lulu. He immediately jumps on Lulu and starts humping away. Blue, unlike no-name dog from above, saw no need to protect Lulu's virtue and ran off to find fun elsewhere. Meanwhile, Joe's owner is telling me that the love affair is about to experience a tragic demise, as poor Joe is getting fixed tomorrow. While I am contemplating the end of Joe's masculinity, someone says, "Oh my God, look!" I turn around to see Lulu laying FLAT on her back, legs splayed in the air, and Joe doing dirty, dirty things to her. Seriously. I would not kid.

I'm guess I'll just be thankful that I have a dog, not a daughter, as I have apparently, unwittingly, raised the town tramp that has no problem having sexual acts performed on her in the middle of the park. I would just like to note that I am sure that she inherited that trait from her father, not me.

Dirty Bird

This is Lulu's favorite toy which we have named Dirty Bird. Dirty Bird was originally purchased for Bella but was apparently not quite up to her high standards and lived at the bottom of the toy pail. Somehow Dirty Bird didn't even rate being gutted and torn to shreds. We are not sure what kind of bird Dirty Bird is, but Lulu loves Dirty Bird. Somewhat similar to the stories of dogs that will nurse abandoned kittens, Lulu saw the potential in Dirty Bird as replacement for her dog mom . Since then, Lulu has spent countless hours nursing on Dirty Bird.

Dirty Bird must be nocturnal because it only comes out in the evening. After a long day of doing whatever crazy things Crazypants does, she will settle on her pillow with Dirty Bird. Thus begins the ritual. If you look closely, you can see the dirty, hard areas under the wings. This is where Lulu does her suckling. She kneads her paws as she literally sucks the fur under Dirty Bird's wings (see video below but please turn down your volume unless you just happen to be looking for some tips on how to live greener from "Living with Ed").

Suckling Dirty Bird's fur must be incredibly comforting to Lulu as, inevitably, her little paws start moving a little slower and her sweet eyes start getting droopy. Her head starts nodding and then she falls asleep with Dirty Bird still in her mouth, only to wake up and start the process over again. This is somewhat like the guy on the airplane who nods off then startles himself awake only to start nodding off again. Somewhat, but significantly cuter. This can go on for a REALLY long time until she finally gives in to sleep. At this point we all dance a jig and praise God that she is actually asleep and peace has been restored in the house.

As I am sure you can imagine, all this sucky sucky on poor Dirty Bird has taken it's toll. The bird is downright crusty. I mean hard crusty. When she is done, Dirty Bird looks like it could be the poster bird for Excessive Bird Armpit Sweating Disorder. I have looked all over for a replacement bird but so far no luck. I have also tried to substitute newer, cuter, softer critters but alas, like Cindy Brady and Kitty Carryall, she won't be fooled by some imitation Dirty Bird. If anyone knows where to find a new, clean Dirty Bird, please let me know.

Oilcloth Collars

My oilcloth collars are hitting the stores today. They are super-fun summer goodness, the canine equivalent of the hawaiian shirt.

Lulu is sporting the Vintage Cherries which i love love.

Bella is wearing the Red & Aqua Floral.

As you can tell, they were pretty psyched to do some doggy modeling for me.

Actual Playdate

Bella, Lulu, and I had a great morning out in the country. This is what happens when 6 Ridgebacks, 1 Great Dane, and a Schnauzer meet Milly the donkey and her horse bodyguard.



And no, Nikki did not get kicked in the head. At least not that we could ascertain.

Virtual Playdate

My sister sent these photos of Bella's favorite friends this weekend and I thought it was time for a virtual play date. That's Bella's BFF Winnie, whom Lulu reminds us a lot of, and Cooper and Dylan, a.k.a. "the Wiener Brothers." If the world was perfect, I would load them all up in the car and take them to Stinson Beach. Stinson brings out the crazy in every dog. The moment the paw hits the sand it is sheer pandemonium, with dogs running, the ridgeback body slam (sometimes used on unsuspecting Labs), and lots of bird chasing.


This is a photo at Stinson of Bella, Winnie, and Uncle Mo. It was the last time that I got to take Desmo to Stinson before he got sick again. For a bunch of dogs that don't like water, they LOVED the beach. They would play so hard that, almost without exception, one dog would go down hard squealing like a ninny, leading us all to believe that they had been mortally wounded. A plan would be hatched about how to best transport an almost 100 lb dog back to the car. Concerned onlookers would offer aid and ideas of how to best make a stretcher from items on the beach.

While debating whether we thought a helicopter would consider an ailing Ridgeback worthy of a Life Flight, the dog would inevitably get up, limp around whimpering a bit, then TAKE OFF full speed looking back as if to say, "What are you all standing around for? Let's GOOOOO!" It's a good thing that the vet was always at least a short distance away as thousands of dollars must have been saved by one of the dog's miraculous recoveries from the brink of death on the drive there.

Sadly, the beach is not a part of Lulu's puppyhood. I suppose we could take the dogs down to one of the Texas beaches but I have a feeling that Bella would get out of the car, walk to the edge of the beach, look, look at me telepathically communicating, "what kind of *#!%hole beach is this?", turn around, and trot back to the car, thereon refusing to budge. What can I say, Sister knows her beaches.

How to Create a Monster

Ingredients:

1 OCD (obsessive-compulsive dog)

1 blanket

1 dog bed

1 bad idea

Living in Sausalito, evenings are cool, whether it be summer or winter. Even when the heat waves occurred, you would  be back in your fleece by sundown. We slept with a big down comforter on our bed and blankets on top of that. Bella slept beside our bed on her pillow. Scott became increasingly concerned about Bella's level of warmth and, one day, decided that she needed a blanket (cue music of impending doom).

He thought if we were cold she must be cold also. I tried pointing out the fact that she had fur and we didn't but he was not to be swayed by petty logic. Scott started putting a blanket over her when she went to bed. Sometimes, if he deemed it "really cold" she got double blanketed. We had plenty of blankets because Scott seemed to receive a blanket from his family on every holiday. Some were even monogrammed, which was very thoughtful, but a bit odd when your monogram is also a communicable disease (SAR).

Bella took to the blanket idea like white on rice. Only problem was that she didn't sleep in one place all night. She would wake up, do her spin move, and the blanket would inevitably fall off. Being the smart girl that she is, she would just paw at the bed until her blanket was put back on. It could happen once a night or it could happen five times. If the pawing didn't work, she would add the whine. The paw/whine combo never failed her.

I decided there had to be an easier way so I designed her a cape. I took a fleece blanket, cut a neck hole in it, and voila, there was her sleep cape. I was pretty excited to try it out and was singing my own praises at what a brilliant solution I had come up with as we went to bed. During the night Bella woke up, spun, and went back to sleep. Sucess! Genius! Except the next time she woke up, she stepped on the back of the blanket, spun, and front leg came out of the neck hole, trapping her in her cape. This continued to happen and was somewhat traumatic each time we had to dislodge her. Her cape turned back into a regular blanket and with that my dreams of dog cape fame and fortune died.

That was probably 4 years ago and she still sleeps every night with her blanket on. When we picked her up from the kennel recently the owner said "I thought you were kidding about the blanket but I did it anyway and, sure enough, when I would come in in the morning, she would still have the blanket on." This, of course, proved that she can keep the blanket on in emergency situations and if she knows there is no one to put it back on her.

Scott keeps trying to talk me into trading sides of the bed so that I have blanket duty. Instead, as a coping mechanism, I have learned to sleep with a pillow over my head. Scott calls it my pillow hat and I like it very much. Maybe next time it falls off, I'll try the paw/whine combo to get Scott to put it back on. :-)

Bella walking around bumping into things after getting up in the morning.

Hobbled by a Bic Pen

Graceful I am not. I trip frequently, run into things even more frequently, and am just generally accident prone. I attribute it to the fact that I am 5' 10" and only have a size 7.5 foot but that does not explain the freak accident that happened yesterday.

The offending instrument of torture

I loaded the dogs in the back of the car to take them on a walk and went to get into the driver's seat. There is a mesh pocket in my door where I keep, well, basically anything that gets stuffed in there. Today there was a Bic pen with about 1" of the writing tip sticking through the mesh. In a truly spectacular feat, I somehow managed to put the tip of it into my big toe. It took out a gash of skin right next to my nail and then seemingly plowed further into my toe, causing quite a bit of damage. Now I know I am not doing an adequate job of explaining, and I would post a picture of the actual injury but, given that every time Scott looks at it he recoils in disgust, I thought maybe it may not be appropriate.

My toe (in my cute new flops)

I am not sure when I have experienced such pain and pain, and I have a long standing relationship. It hurt so bad that I ended up calling Scott and asking him to come home. Not because he could do anything, but just having him here to share in my pain made me feel better.

I am confident that, given 1000 tries, I could not recreate this act. Scott asked me over and over to try and explain why my foot was where it was, shouldn't have been my other foot, was I inspired by the Olympic gymnastics trials and doing a running mount into the driver's seat? But no, I was just getting into the car.

As I was laying in bed last night, big toe throbbing in Fred Flintsone proportions, I cursed myself for quitting ballet classes as a child. I thought it was dull and boring. The only part I liked was jumping over the candlestick and, let's be realistic, just how long can doing split jumps over a "candlestick" fashioned from a toilet paper roll and some tissue paper be expected to keep one's interest?