A puppy, in celebration of Autumn’s triumphant return to San Francisco! Sophie’s 11 weeks old, and quite a squirmy handful.
Apparently short-haired Brussels griffons are the result of a cross with pugs. I can see that.
I can't tell whether that face looks grumpy or whether there's a little smile in there somewhere.
Now *that's* grumpy.
PUPPY BELLY!
Headline: A Pug Is Goofy. Details At Eleven.
Charlie's 7, but, as with most pugs, tends to act like he's about 7 months, at least around people.
Judging from this expression, the word 'pugnacious' was derived from... well, from this expression.
Is anyone else reminded of a frog?
He's curly at both ends!
I probably post way too many goofy dog nose pictures. I can’t help it: they make me smile. (A little short on time today, but there’ll be more of this fine fellow coming up sooner or later.)
So ridiculous.
Ran into this guy down at the Ferry Plaza. He’s got to be a mix: his fur was a gorgeous mahogany, which I’ve never seen on a Lab, and was also slightly variegated. Plus his ears were a lot more ‘up’ than you see on Labs, and he had a little patch of white fur.
He also had the most amazing whine that I’ve ever heard. This didn’t sound like a dog whine at all… it was more like a human crying. And he was doing it a lot… seemed like he wasn’t sure whether his person was going to come back out of the Ferry Building for him or not. He only stopped whining when someone stopped to pet him, and then only for as long as the petting lasted. It was devastating. If that were my dog, I’m not sure I would have been able to leave him. Which probably means that I’m too much of a sucker to have a dog.
The color in the picture really doesn't do him justice... his fur was this beautiful variegated brown-shading-to-almost-black color. I should have looked closer: it could even have been brown fur with darker-brown tips.
There's one 'up ear'.
No, this isn’t the cat of a guy named Geoffrey… it’s kitten of a species of South American feline. And it is adorable, and tiny (the adults only get up to 10 lbs or so), and utterly fearless. The lady, part of an educational group called “Classroom Safari” (or, sometimes, “Birthday Safari”) that brings wild animals to classrooms and events for kids, definitely has her hands full with this kitten.
Not to say that I wouldn’t fill my hands with this kitten in an instant, if it didn’t require quitting my job and hand-raising it full time for a couple of months. But I would probably put on oven mitts first.
Not going to apologize for image quality this time: it was way too dark in there, and the animals moved fast and didn't like flashes. I'm lucky I got anything!
A little blurry, but I love the 'vicious kitty' posture!
Faster picture, underexposed and then compensated for. Looks pretty bad, but actually I'm shocked it came out this good. In the exposure, the dynamic range of the picture is around 1/20th of the possible range for the camera, all at the low end.
Spent around an hour on this in Photoshop. Still not great, but at least it's no longer covered with pink and purple splotches. Looked like the woman had some terrible virulent skin condition.
One of a few flash photos. Didn't want to flash him right in the eyes.
This one, now. This one I blame myself for. Dammit, best pose of the lot, and I cut the head off.
This woman is a lot braver than I am. With teeth and claws like that? Yeah. I'd be wearing oven mitts, if not an entire space suit.
This looks kind of interesting. If you have kids, sounds like it might be fun. Hands on with some kinds of animals, and a bunch of awfully cute-sounding animals in attendance too. (Fennec fox, ocelot, etc.) Can’t bring your dogs, but hey, you can’t have everything.
$10 for adults, $8 for kids, or, if you order in advance, $2 off with the super-special secret code ‘AOB’.
Another set of pictures from ‘Bay to Barkers.’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, Missie is the white one and Raven is the very dark (for a shepherd) one. These two were very clearly old friends, in the ‘us against the world’ vein.
(I think they’re winning.)
I just heard someone complaining about German shepherds yesterday, so I had to post a couple awesome ones in their defense.
Looks like of like one of the varieties of Belgian shepherds, but given that (as you can see in the background) his mom and dad were German shepherd specialists, I suspect they knew what they were talking about.
Never seen a white dog colored quite that way before, with the cream about the ears.
You can tell the white one is a real character.
I rest my case.
Westies seem like such cheerful dogs.
This pup was utterly ball-centric. If it wasn't between his paws, he never took his eyes off it.
That's mom. And in the background is one of the supports for the Bay Bridge.
Three guesses why he's looking up at me so fixedly.
Good guess.
This pup stuck to mom’s hip like he was stapled there. Didn’t see them walking, but from the standing-still part, looks like he’s very well trained.
Look at the toe-hawks. (Giant foofs of fur from between a dog's toes.) Awesome!
A couple of weeks ago, I had a ‘big dog day’. Not intentionally: I just happened to run into two St. Bernards and two Great Danes (entirely separately!) in the course of a 2 mile walk and some shopping.
Well, I have to share the luck. So here’s a sadly-sun-washed-out young awesome Great Dane tied up outside of Real Foods on Polk Street. He was barking as I walked up, and damn does he have a loud bark. But when I got near him he stopped. And then when I finished taking his picture and giving him the obligatory dog toll backscratch and walked away, he resumed barking. ROWF! ROWF!
Great Danes: goofy dogs? Or the goofiest dogs?
Behind him is 'Bow Wow Meow', an awesome little pet store and dog groomer's. If I were to start taking ads, I'd totally hit them up.
Do the eyes look even vaguely natural? I had to touch them up a bit.
That one's not touched up at all. 100% all natural goof.