Makita (1 year old) was happier to see my brother and me than his owner was, but he did let me get in a couple of shots. And, despite the fact that it was really dark outside, one of them came out. Behold, the glorious Makita!
That’s a lot of happy fluff right there.
A rescued greyhound. The longer they race, in my experience, the more skittish they tend to be. Colin (now 6) didn’t race long at all, he washed out early on, and he loves everybody. (Colin was adopted from Golden State Greyhound Adoption, although he apparently originally came from Florida.)
Since I took these pictures two weeks ago, I’ve run into Colin four more times. Hadn’t seen him before, even though he’s apparently lived here for a while. Funny how that works.
Gorgeous collar.
Soulful look. Also skinny look. Greyhounds always look like they could do with a good meal or six.
These guys have amazing yellow eyes, but this one was all sleepy, and I am not mean enough to go around waking up owls. (Another picture I took at WildCare.)
I came within inches of running over one of these things on the Pacific Coast Highway once.
Marmie = marmalade tiger tabby cat. This one was a pretty little kitten in the Macy’s window, naturally.
Cats sleep funny. From this angle it doesn’t look so weird, but…
…from this angle it’s just bizarre.
I have to say, Pomeranians are really growing on me, at least in the category of small dogs. They are a very happy breed, rivaling pugs and the other squooshy-faced breeds without all the associated health problems. (They are, in fact, the breed I’ve run into the most at advanced ages… one that was 16 and a cancer surviver and still running about happily, and another couple in the 13 to 15 range.) They’re also more friendly than most breeds of that size. And you must admit, they are super-cute.
Fizgig? Is that you?
Even if you’re not a small-dog person, I challenge you not to find something heartwarming in that delighted (if slightly manic) expression.
Woot! Five years of adorable puppydogs! I don’t promise to be here for another five, but I’m not bored of dogs yet, so I’ll be posting for a while, I think. (It’s actually been a couple days since the anniversary of the start of regular posting, but who’s counting, right?)
And here’s the other half of the set: Coco the 4-month-old black-mouth cur pup. I am assured that she and Jessie haven’t met. Well, maybe they’ll get lucky. I wonder if there’s a black-mouth play-date meetup group or something.
That’s a cute face. You could get away with a lot with a face like that.
That’s my brother’s hand. He was visiting and we were wandering around San Francisco when we ran into Coco, and he graciously didn’t object to my dog-picture-taking obsession.
Coco was a visitor to the city, from somewhere relatively close by, if I recall correctly.
That, on the other hand, is my hand. Coco was not satisfied with a mere one admirer.
Just a hint of concerned-forehead-wrinklage.
A new breed for our blog. It’s funny: I ran into Jessie (6 months old) on the 16th, the first black-mouthed cur that I’d ever run into, let alone photographed, in the five years I’ve been running this blog, and then eleven days later, in a totally different location, I ran into my second black-mouthed cur puppy ever. (I’ll be posting that one tomorrow.) Funny how these things happen.
NB: I have no idea what sparked the hovertext for Jessie. She was a total sweetheart who was just interested in distributing smooches with absolutely no attitude whatsoever. But my brain does funny things sometimes, and now it can’t see her any other way but with a heaping helping of Gloria Gaynor.
Jessie is an absolute dream to photograph.
She wasn’t totally hyperactive and blurrily wiggly, but she was ALWAYS doing something new.
Aww. Plaintive look.
Dance break!
Some dogs are interested in the camera, and some aren’t. She definitely was.
I really like this, I need to do something with it. Suggestions? Caption? Tee shirt? Poster?
These two are old friends, not of the blog but of me personally. I’ve run into them at least a dozen times, perhaps two dozen, over the last few years. But always, ALWAYS at night or when it was too dim outside for good pictures. Finally, fate relented last week, and I caught them during the day.
Emma is 9, and Spirit is 7 and blind (born that way, I think). They’re both doing just fine, and as long as you don’t go out of your way to surprise or annoy either of them, they are just as sweet as anything.
Edit: Corrected Spirit’s breed… it’s one I’d never heard of before, and a first for the blog. Yay!
The expression on Emma is not her typical one… she had an itch.
This is post-scratch. Happy smile.
White shepherds are such gorgeous dogs.
I can only imagine the shedding… but they are totally worth it.
(WordPress and my lovely hosting provider ate a nice long version of this post, and I really need to get to bed, so you get the shorter version. Fortunately I am ALMOST ready to move off of this provider.)
I know, I know, it’s too early for me to declare a dog of the year: there are still 20 more dogs I haven’t even posted yet to consider. I don’t care. I’ve made my decision: Pepper is my dog of the year for this year.
Some background: Autumn and I were out hiking in Briones Regional Park, out near Walnut Creek. It’s a nice little park, pretty steep, with a bunch of cattle roaming through it. People like to take their dogs there to go for a nice long walk, or in some cases run. I’ll be showing some pictures of another dog (a first-time breed for the blog) from there later this week.
We came around the corner, and we saw a woman and a dog. And saw the woman’s dog abruptly take off into the hills, and saw the woman yelling at him to come back. And saw the dog achieving what was obviously a lifelong ambition:
I would like to add that, according to the woman, this dog had never herded any actual livestock before in his life. (Children? Maybe. Other dogs? Definitely.) But he sure did her proud, even if she wasn’t 100% pleased with the performance. He herded the cows right around the corner and out of sight, and maybe 30 seconds later he came bounding back down the hill, looking as happy as I have ever seen a dog look in my life.
I’m going to say that expression is somewhere between ‘delighted’ and ‘shell-shocked’.
And that’s as smug as they come.
His victims. Or charges. Or whatever.
And this is a cow from an entirely different part of the park, that I put here just because I like the way the picture came out.
Autumn and I went hiking a few weeks back, and ran across some wildlife.
They were maybe a little to used to people. There were hikers within 50 feet of this one.
I love their tails.
There were two young ones too, but I didn’t get any good shots of them.