Showing 1 - 10 of 431 posts found matching keyword: poodles

Oodles of playful poodles!

The polite poodle waits for someone else to bite the ball first

The polite poodle always says 'me, too'

The polite poodle is patient with the paparazzi

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Friday, our pack grew by one.

We got another partly white poodle just so we could show off how dirty Henry gets

Dad's been lonely since Rambo died last year. Despite my concerns about Dad's physical health, he wanted a new dog he could raise just right, and I wanted someone to hang out with him who wasn't me. Thankfully, my aunt found a new 3-and-a-half month old poodle puppy that might make both of us happy.

Technically, Dad and dog are supposed to be in a bit of a trial phase, but things have been going swimmingly for the first 24 hours. She's sweet as can be, loves people, and both Henry and Louis think she is great fun. I'm thinking it's going to work out.

She's a lover not a fighter

Puppy doesn't have a name yet. Her breeder didn't give her one. They called her "Purple Ribbon Puppy" so they wouldn't get too attached. Dad's already very attached and is currently testing "Marion." We'll see if that takes.

UPDATE: It did not. Her name will be Cecilia.

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The instructions on the receipt from the vet appointment read "A few pets may experience some lethargy and soreness from the vaccinations." And, yeah, Henry slept for a few hours after he got home. But he must not have been too lethargic or sore because he caught himself a rabbit.

He was so proud.


What, you thought I would show a picture of a dead rabbit? What kind of monster do you think I am?

Granted, I didn't actually see him kill it. For all I know, he found it that way.

But the important thing here is that Henry was (and remains) very proud of himself. They say you're supposed to support your children, so even though I might not be very happy about the fact that I had to bury a hare in a shallow grave, I guess I should say "Good Dog."

I'd hate to give my dog a complex.

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I'm supposed to have a blog post today, but work has been especially demanding for the past few days, and I just haven't had the time/desire to write something here.

As you can see, while I'm been busy, the boys have found their own entertainment.

Picture are worth a thousand words... or seven thousand barks

Alas, the bus never stops at our house, no matter how hard they bark.

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Dad had Rambo put down today. Rambo was almost 14 years old, and in the past year he was diagnosed with laryngeal paralysis, which made it harder and harder for him to breathe. Apparently the hot August air was the last straw.

Rambo (2009-2023)
Rambo in better times.

I always lead these dog obituary posts with the cause of death, but that's not how I remember any of them. What I'll remember Rambo for is his single-minded determination to do whatever it was that he wanted to do.

Rambo was appropriately named. He bit his dad on several occasions, and bit me once or twice when he didn't want to do what we wanted him to do (or as fast as we wanted him to do it). While living on a ranch in Florida, he went toe-to-toe with bulls who were standing in the wrong places. I wouldn't say that Rambo won any of those encounters, but he might have said so.

Yeah, he could be sweet. He liked to sit beside me on the sofa while we watched football games, and he was a total bed hog. But what I'll remember is his orneriness. I think he'd be happy with that, too.

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It probably won't come as a surprise to you if you've seen my latest poodle strip, but as is usual for springtime, I have a terrible case of poison ivy. This year's bout, no doubt thanks to the helpful paws of underbrush-romping Louis, is the kind of rash that makes me wonder how much life is actually worth living. (There must be some reason so many people are taking fentanyl, right?)

Most people seem to think that cortisone cream makes poison ivy feel better, and maybe it does... for them. For me, all cortisone cream does is take the itch away so that I can feel only pain. "Burning" and "stinging" sensations are on-the-warning-label common side effects of cortisone cream, and I feel both. I'm left with the choice is to scratch myself to death or self-immolate like a Vietnamese war protestor. Thank you, medical science.

I've always had a problem with poison ivy. As a child, I believed it must be contagious, and for many years after, I believed that the rash spread through the bloodstream. In about 2010, a very grumpy doctor finally convinced me that "contact dermatitis" can only result from surface contact with the irritant, but that only deepens the mystery of how I get rashes where I get them. Last month it was on my scalp. It was ugly; even Sitting Bull wouldn't have taken it.

My current worst rash spot is right on my belt line, which makes makes the socially-approved custom of wearing pants feel like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. My solution, obviously, is to not wear pants, which would only be acceptable if I lived in a society that still killed criminals with hemlock. I have a rare, in-person meeting scheduled for this tomorrow. Boy, are they going to be surprised.

If the march of human history is leading us to a global warming heat death, bring it on. So long as all the world's vegetation dies with us, great! I hate poison ivy.

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I swear, you turn your back for half a minute....

I thought I saw something on the camera, so that's why I wandered out of frame for a second. You'll note that I was savvy enough to ensure the door was safely closed before I did. I'm so smart. But my poodles are smarter.

For the record, the boxes contained new couch covers to replace the ones they had destroyed earlier in the week. In hindsight, that was obviously part of their cunning escape plan. Poodles play the long con!

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Happy 2nd Birthday, Henry!

Immediately after this picture was taken, Henry learned that fire burns

Henry's great-aunt Kelley (that's her hand) brought hats, and Henry, Louis, Audrey, and Kelley's newest dog, Topper, were all treated to Waffle House leftovers.

Dog lips aren't made for blowing out candles

Audrey likes her hash browns scattered and covered — and she tolerated the hat only long enough to get some.

She'll sit still for photos if she knows there's food on the other side

Henry, on the other hand, was happy to wear his hat the whole time. He's always happy just to be included.

Happy, happy, happy

Good dogs! Here's to many more birthdays to come.

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It's 7:00 and I have to get over to CVS to pick up Dad's newest medicine before they close so that I can deliver it before he freaks out about it and the dogs have to go out before I go and its raining and I open the door for Louis... and Henry chases him outside into the downpour. And they ran and ran. And ran.

So now I have to add "wash and dry the dogs" to my list of things to do tonight.

This is the 'before' picture, but sadly the 'after' isn't much whiter

I'm... not having a good time these days. And the boys are just making everything so much harder.

It's really starting to feel like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

UPDATE 3:30AM: And I just let the dogs out (one at a time!) before bed and in the 2 minutes it takes to use my electric toothbrush Henry dug a hole in the mud and now has to have another shower before bed.... Grrr. It was just two minutes, Henry!

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Did everyone have a Merry Christmas? I guess I did, all things considered. I mean, so long as I ignore the fact that the Miami Dolphins collapsed in the second half and lost their 4th straight game, going 0-4 in December and demonstrating that despite some earlier success they are definitively not ready to be a playoff team for the 22nd year in a row. (Annual reminder: their last playoff win was in 2000.)

Yeah, ignoring that and the fact that I badly cut my thumb on the large carving knife while doing the dishes, the rest of the day went pretty well. It was in the wee hours of this morning that I ran into trouble. Or maybe I should say that it was Louis who ran into trouble for us all.

After watching Sunday Night Football go to overtime and spending an hour trying and failing to play online games with Friend James (the trouble seemed to be with his ISP), I noticed at about 1:30 in the morning that something smelled wrong in my room: the faint smell of burning plastic. That's never good.

I began sniffing my way around the darkened house for the cause, starting with the basement. It wasn't coming from my room. It wasn't the furnace which has been running all out for days to combat the 30-year historic cold. It wasn't in my studio where I had been painting finishing veneers earlier in the day. So I moved upstairs where the smell was indeed stronger. I thought maybe it was the Christmas tree lights, but no, they seemed fine. And It wasn't any appliance in the kitchen or anything electronic in Mom's office. I even grabbed a flashlight and checked outside to no avail. What *was* the source of that smell?

When I came back inside, I noticed that the flashlight wasn't a spotlight like it was outside but an illuminated beam, a fuzzy lightsaber. As a former Boy Scout, I quickly recognized this as a Very Bad Sign. The good news is that I could follow the flashlight beam to find the areas of thickening smoke.

The source, as it turns out, was behind the curtains separating the den from the sunroom that Mom uses for crafting. As is usual in the winter, the "sun" room was the coldest in the house, and she has been running an older model portable oil space heater day and night to keep the chill out. At this point, you've probably figured out where this is headed.

Context clues indicate that sometime while I was preoccupied with football or video games, my mischievous puppy, Louis, had taken a break from chewing up my new shoelaces and pajama bottoms to sneak behind the curtain — where he knew he wasn't allowed alone — and knocked over the heater. The sideways heater did not have an automatic shutoff, and worse, on its side it started leaking oil, oil that fortunately smoked before it flamed.

I uncovered the problem in time to prevent any further damage to life, limb, or property. (Sure, the house *smells* like burnt plastic and oil, but at least there's a house to smell.) I think from now on I'm going to have to keep Louis tied to me. And I'm going to recommend that Mom mounts her new space heater (with automatic shutoff!) to the floor!

Post-Christmas crisis averted!

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To be continued...

 

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