Dog of the Day: White Lab

Sweet older pup that I ran into at ‘Food Truck Thursdays‘ at Chameleon Cafe, Pacific and Leavenworth. If you’re in the neighborhood you owe it to yourself to drop by on Thursday evenings: they have a different food truck each week, and a surprising amount of the neighborhood ends up gathering there and socializing. Aside from me cornering these people and tackling their dogs, this may be the first exposure to other people in the neighborhood that some of these people have had!

White Labrador Retriever

Very light yellow lab. I guess these are called ‘white’ by some people, but that still feels weird to me.

Light Yellow Labrador Retriever

Someone was begging for skritches. If I recall correctly (and I might not, I’m missing my notes) this pup was being watched by one of Autumn’s dog-walking/dog-sitting competitors, ‘Who Let The Dogs Out!’

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Dogs of SF Contest: City Pictures

And of course the poll ended early again. Specifically, it appears to have ended at midnight GMT. I guess because my database is in GMT? But in any case, it hadn’t moved much lately, so I’m declaring polling closed. The final results:

  • Fifth place, with 1 vote, is ENTRY 2: The Golden Gate Bridge near sunset
  • Fourth place, with 6 votes, is ENTRY 5: Devo Surveys his Domain from Bernal Heights.
  • Third place, with 7 votes, is ENTRY 1: Violet in Front of Postcard Row.
  • Second place, with 33 votes, is ENTRY 3: Jasper Enjoying the Breeze on Baker Beach.
  • And the winner is, ENTRY 4: Lambeau on Bernal Heights at Sunset.

Congratulations, and thank you to everyone who entered. You guys are awesome! Prizes will be sent out all at once, so please be patient, since we have two more weeks of voting for the other two categories.

(Edit x4: Fixed. By creating a new poll and hacking in the results from the old poll. You will find that you can now vote again, if you voted before. Oh well. Probably won’t bias things too much. Anyway, I will publish the results on Monday, along with the new poll.)

(Edit x3: Well, how nice. The voting software I used appears to have decided to end the poll early, and now that it has ended the poll, it appears to have messed up the formatting of the site and I can’t figure out how to fix either of those two things. And this is a very popular, well-rated, and ‘well-tested’ polling WP plugin, too. Will fix as soon as I can figure out how.)

(Edit x2: don’t forget to vote! Voting for this part of the contest ends on Monday, to make way for the next part.)

(Edit: Woot! I figured out how to pin this post to the top. Normal daily posting is occurring below this post!)

All right, the voting has begun on the top contenders for Dogs of SF’s photo contest, and I am stunned by the quality of the entries. We are starting with ‘city’ entrants, mostly because that category got the fewest submissions. Still enough to pick the top five from, though! This whole thing has worked out even better than I’d hoped, and I’d like to thank everyone who submitted.

Please don’t try to vote a bunch of times for your favorite picture; I am sure it’s quite possible to game these things (in fact, I can think of a few different ways to do so) but I’d prefer if we could all just, you know, get along. I am going to leave this contest at the top of the front page for a week, for voting purposes, but I will still be posting Dogs of the Day… look just below this post for them. If I can figure out how to make that work.

Oh, I just realized: I didn’t ask people if they minded my using their names, so I am going to make the entries anonymous for now. If you would like me to use your name, either email me saying that you would, or claim your photo in the comments below, and I’ll adjust the title accordingly. I know some people are a little sensitive about this stuff. (And don’t worry, I would never publish someone’s email address.)

And now, without further ado, the entrants, in absolutely no particular order:

Violet in Front of Postcard Row

ENTRY 1: Violet in Front of Postcard Row. This is Violet, a Schipperke/Pomeranian mix, being goofy in front of one of the more recognizable landmarks of the city, Postcard Row.

Golden Gate Bridge

ENTRY 2: The Golden Gate Bridge near sunset. Only one person took me at my word, and submitted a ‘city’ pic without a dog in it. It has a bird, though!

Jasper Enjoying the Breeze on Baker Beach

ENTRY 3: Jasper Enjoying the Breeze on Baker Beach. With the Golden Gate in the background. It doesn’t get a lot more Dogs of San Francisco than that.

Lambeau on Bernal Heights at Sunset

ENTRY 4: Lambeau on Bernal Heights at Sunset. This is Lambeau the Tibetan Mastiff, who has been featured on DoSF before. He made me smile the first time I saw him, and no less so now.

Devo Surveys his Domain from Bernal Heights

ENTRY 5: Devo Surveys his Domain from Bernal Heights. I am honestly not quite sure what Devo is. Maybe we can get his owner to weigh in?

Soo… what do y’all think?

 

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Butterflyday Supplement

Unless something else exciting goes wrong, voting in the first category of my photography contest starts tomorrow. I’m trying to figure out how to work the voting, and I think I’ve got that. Next I need to figure out how to keep the poll at the top for a week, and a couple of other fun things.

In other news, I’m nearly out of cat pictures… well, out of my own cat pictures, I have plenty of submissions for the contest. So here is a picture of a pair (yes, there are two of them there) of San Francisco residents I found on my way to work a couple of weeks ago.

Western Swallowtail Butterfly

Always nice to see a few of these wandering through the city.

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Dog of the Day: Zoey the 11-Month-Old Possible Shiba Inu Mix

Well, mom had no idea what Zoey was, but I think she’s a Shiba mix. She’s so foxy and cute! She’s also super-friendly, and very curious. And has a somewhat alarming tendency to run around and around and around anything she happens to be tied up to. No, puppy, no strangling yourself!

Shiba Inu Mix

I was totally rude, I have to admit. I walked up and started taking pictures of this pup with her mom right there and I didn’t even ask. In my defense, I didn’t know that they belonged to each other.

Shiba Inu Mix

Can’t tell if that’s a smile or a smirk.

Shiba Inu Mix

Now that’s a grin!

Shiba Inu Mix

I love the black tailtip.

Shiba Inu Mix

Hey, are you laughing at me?

Shiba Inu Mix

Zoey can darken my door anytime she likes.

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Dog of the Day: Cokie the Chow Mix

What do you think? Chow/Pomeranian? Maybe Chow/Shiba Inu? Mom says she’s ten years old, and was rescued from Tijuana.

Chow Mix

What a teddy bear!

Chow Mix

A cuddly teddy bear!

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Dog of the Day: Only The Shadow Knows (Well, Okay, Actually He’s MacGregor the Scottish Terrier)

I ran into MacGregor a couple of weeks ago and I just HAD to stop and snag a couple of pictures although I knew that such a black dog on such a bright day, at noon, was going to be murder. And indeed, I got THE SHADOW.

Fortunately, MacGregor’s mom found the blog and sent me a few (rather small) pictures of him, to augment mine. Unfortunately, hers are mostly kind of silhouettes too. Oh well. MacGregor, it turns out, is hard to photograph at any time.

Oh, MacGregor’s story is worth a mention as well. Apparently he was taken away from his original owner by the Northern Cal Scottie Rescue when he was four, because he was being abused. (As in, they actually came in and took him away, against the owner’s will.) At that point he was terrified of everything: kids, cars, adults, other dogs, you name it.

And today he’s nine years old, and is the mayor of AT&T park: he knows all the regulars and drops by to say hello, he personally greets all the strangers he sees, and he chases the sea lions and seals up and down along the edge of the pier when they show up there. He’s a perfect gentleman, and I was quite honored to meet him. Guess that goes to show how much good a happy home can do!

Scottie (AKA Scottish Terrier/Aberdeen Terrier)

Why did I go with this picture? Because of the thirty or so I took, this is one of only two that had a visible eye. He really is a little bitty cheerful black hole.

Scottie (AKA Scottish Terrier/Aberdeen Terrier)

And why did I pick this one? One word: EYEBROWS.

Scottie (AKA Scottish Terrier/Aberdeen Terrier)

Mom provided me with a few very low-res pics, so I made up a little montage. Top: MacGregor keeping a watchful eye out for seals. Bottom left: MacGregor exploring for treats. Bottom right: MacGregor, on vacation from his mayoral duties, at Chrissie Field.

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Double Dog Day: More Vicious Puppy Fight!

As noted yesterday, these are Calvin Hobbes (large) and Riley (small).

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy

A quick time-out from the fight to do a hilarious patter song!

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy

Someone stuck his head in the lion’s mouth.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy

Coming up with captions for this level of cute is hard work.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy

Quick break in the action for hugs?

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy

I gotta admit, sometimes the expressions can be a little… off-putting.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy

Those ears.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy

And THAT expression is just totally goofy.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy

Dogs have silly ridgy mouth-roofs. Ridgy roof, ridgy roof. Okay, that’s enough from me, I’m getting a little too goofy today.

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Double Dog Day: The GREAT PUPPY FIGHT of 2012!

It’s been ages since we had a great puppy fight. And this one is pretty great!

The small one, who is supposedly some kind of spaniel mix (although he looks a lot like a papillon mix to me!), is named Riley, all of three and a half months old. The bigger one, a six-month-old German shepherd mix, is named (god I love this) ‘Calvin Hobbes’. They met, and it was vicious snarling snapping puppy love at first sight.

I’m splitting this post in two. Too many pictures to post in one day (twenty-ish!), and well worth two days for two such adorable dogs.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy Playing

I always stop for dogs, but most other people don’t. However, there was a little audience surrounding these two on the sidewalk, as people stopped and squealed inadvertently.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy Playing

It’s always fun watching grown men squealing.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy Playing

Calvin kept getting momentarily distracted. I think he had a little less invested in the fighting than ‘bold Riley’ did.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy Playing

It’s rare that a dog who is play-fighting gets distracted enough to even look at me when I’m taking pictures. Calvin was a total sweetheart, though, and gave me smooches on the way by when he left too.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy Playing

This is apparently Riley’s favorite move: lock his teeth in the other dog’s flews, or whatever that skin flap is called. Calvin hardly even seemed to notice, even though I can tell you those teeth were damn sharp.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy Playing

Calvin, on the other hand, liked to glomp his jaws around Riley’s leg. But he’d just sort of let them rest there, so Riley could just pull his leg right back out again.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy Playing

Look at those little sharp pointy teeth.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy Playing

Okay, I love that expression.

German Shepherd Mix Puppy and Spaniel Mix Puppy Playing

I could have stood there and watched this for hours.

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Double Dog Preview: PUPPY FIGHT!

Been working on editing these pictures a bit. I’m not done, so I’m just going to post a preview and finish up tomorrow. I promise, they’re worth it.

So, stay tuned for… THE GREAT PUPPY FIGHT OF 2012!

German Shepherd Mix and Cocker Spaniel Mix Playing

The little one sure does have the ‘vicious puppy snarl’ down pat.

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Caturday Supplement: Boatcat

Here’s an oldie-but-goodie: I took this picture in 2006 (wow, is that really six damn years ago now?) when I was visiting the Hyde Street Pier. There was a rowboat sitting on the beach, next to the pier, covered with canvas. And this fine fellow was sunning himself on top of it.

Marmalade Kitty

Big and foofly, as befits a San Francisco cat.

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