Someone’s afraid of boys! Poor pup, hope she gets over it soon. She missed out on a belly rub from me because she hid behind mom.
Mistress of the sidelong glance. She's definitely not sure about me.
Note how she avoids looking at me, but makes sure to keep me in her field of view? She did that until I left.
What a cute combo!
I'm a sucker for dogs with ridiculous neck-ruffs.
A rare moment of rest in Fozzie's otherwise totally frenetic life.
Aww. This pup absolutely loves to be chased. The pug in the picture was totally mystified. "You want me to what? To do what? No, I'm not getting it."
Well, you know the old saying: a Yorkie and his belly are soon snorgled. Or, ah, something like that.
This pup was terrified of me. Her mom was bemused, as she apparently isn't generally like that. But for some reason I am SCAAAAARY.
And, as we can see, this pup does indeed have a belly. Pity it was not snorglable.
Some more shots of the super-cute denizens of Lake Creek Park. These were mostly experiments with my new camera, attempts to pan the camera with the moving dog, so as to get the dog in focus and the ground motion-blurred out.
On the down side, it appears that this has around a 1% success rate for me. On the up side, that’s more than I was expecting, given my inexperience. I don’t consider all of these ‘successes’, by any means, but I found them all at least interesting enough to post.
So, without further ado, I give you: Corgis! In! Action!
No, no, no, I said ‘Corgis In Action’, not ‘Hot Corgi-on-Corgi Action’. Sheesh!
This is an interesting one. Note that his face is in focus, his legs aren’t (for obvious reasons), but his butt isn’t too. As far as I can tell, it was defeated by the Corgi tendency to waddle: his head was moving more-or-less steadily, but his butt was moving back and forth so quickly it blurred. Goofy! (Wasn’t a depth-of-field issue, I had the aperture more-or-less closed all the way down to give myself a long enough shutter speed to get the blur.)
I can’t even begin to know how I managed to so closely match speeds with the one in BACK, when I was trying for the one in FRONT.
Can’t decide if I like this one or not. If the other dogs were closer, if the one with the clear face were a little clearer (so I could zoom in more), if if if. Still, it’s a really neat effect.
This little guy has the *evillest* expression I have ever seen on a corgi. His mom told me he was pure corgi, but I don’t believe it. He looks too much like a corgi/chihuahua to me. Sweetest little dog, loved everybody, but he totally looks like Marty Feldman, or possibly Peter Lorre.
May I introduce Dashi, the 8-year-old miniature dachshund?
That's a plaintive expression. I wonder what he's thinking?
I can tell what he's thinking here: 'Come ON, mom, let's GO!'
I’ve been doing this for well over a year now, and there are still dogs in my very neighborhood that I’ve never seen before. I’d remember either of these two if I’d run into them.
Mulligan is the golden foofball, obviously, and for a Golden/Bernie, he’s an oldster: he’s going to be 13 in March! In Bernese Mountain Dog years, that’s about 130 years old. And he seems astoundingly healthy and happy, too: from looks and demeanor, I would have guessed he was about 3 or 4.
Kaya, whose name means ‘unusual beauty’, would by process of elimination be the one in the back gnawing away. She is only one and a half years old, and really does live up to her name. She has gorgeous eyes. She’s also a bit monomaniacal in the ‘food’ department… she didn’t mind me petting her at all, as long as I didn’t require her to take her attention away from her chewy thing.
Look at those humongous paws. Look at that ruff of fur around his neck. If his ears stood up a bit, I'd be shouting "OH MY GOD! IT'S A LION! GET IN THE CAR!"
He totally looks like a big foofly pillow when he sleeps.
When he's standing he looks a little less 'lion' and a little more 'adorable blond teddy bear'.
See? Kaya is monomaniacal. Also: Weimaraners have the softest ears ever. If I had one, I would quickly develop a ear-petting habit. I bet it would drive her nuts.
I thought this was going to be the best shot of Kaya's eyes that we were going to get. Note the tiny eyebrows and thick lashes.
...but apparently not.
Close up of that face. Those eyes haunt my soul.
Short post today. Autumn’s coming home tomorrow and I’m getting things ready.
If you're going to have a Chihuahua, make it a long-haired one. Poofliness makes up for a lot.
Another attendee of the corgi meetup. He saw all those corgis and thought, ‘Ooooh! Herding practice!’
As we can see, that didn’t quite work out as planned.
The Aussie already looks just a tad bit nervous, doesn't he?
Standoff! The corgi all the way on the left looks like he has an extra tail. He's actually tilted way to the side... that's his left hind foot.
Corgis are amazingly cooperative herders. Instincts are surprising things.
He took off, but the corgis herded him right back again, around the other side of the big clump of bushes.
Sadly, someone called off the corgis before it got any sillier.
Every time the second Saturday of the month rolls around, there’s a Welsh Corgi (both Pembroke and Cardigan) meetup at Mountain Lake Park in San Francisco, around 1 PM. I finally got around to showing up at one. Here are a couple of pictures. I’ll post more some other time.
(Whups, corrected the location.)
I think there are actually seven corgis in this picture, although it's kind of hard to pick out the seventh...
Is it just me, or does the guy on the extreme right look a little bit concerned? Let's see...
CONCERNED CORGI CLOSEUP!
Thought I’d let people know how the Macy’s adoption window display did this year. And the answer is… pretty good! 259 cats and 12 dogs were adopted right out of Macy’s. Another few cats and dogs were put on hold and picked up later at the SPCA. They were aiming for 300, and although I don’t have the final numbers, it seems like they came pretty close.
Better yet, of those cats, 40 were pure black, which are always (in this country, at least) the hardest to place. (Did you know that black cats are generally considered lucky in England and Scotland?)
Seems like some dogs (including the cutie below) had a pretty good holiday season. Thanks, Macy’s, and SPCA. It wouldn’t be Christmas without you.
I have a bunch more pictures of cats and dogs in the windows that I’ll be posting in the coming weeks.
So cute. Scruffy. Floppy ears. Plaintive look. He's got the whole matching set.
While I was taking this picture, a boy of about 8 walked up, took one look at the dog, and ran off, yelling, "DAD? DAD! DAD! I KNOW WHAT I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS!" (It was New Year's Day at the time.)
The picture isn't blurry. Those are noseprints, tongueprints, and steam from him breathing on the window.