Look Who's One Year Old Today!

Ruby is one year old today. We told her she was, but she really can't quite believe it herself.



What she does believe in,however, is her birthday bone.

Christmas Present(s) and the Texan

My sweet sister-in-law, Barb, sent me this Texan ornament. It's part of her diabolical though brilliant plan to recruit Doug and I to Texas. We're thinking about Austin TX when we retire. (Oh, I don't know why. Something about it being 72 degrees right now when we're at 29, with a "real feel" of 15.) This Texas ornament really is the size of the local high school, too, because everything really is bigger in Texas!



Ruby got this crazy squeaky toy for Christmas. She loves it! She can drive us humanoids insane with its squeaking in just under 72 seconds! The way it's constructed, the squeaker is in the middle of the toy, with extra layers of plastic/rubber webbed around the outside. She hasn't shredded it yet! All stuffed animal squeaky toys have a very short life-span with Ruby, but this one looks like it's going to be around for awhile. She loves carrying it around in her mouth!
It won a Best in Show award at the 2010 Global Pet Expo. Here's a link.

A Beautiful Face of January 1, 2012

Today's prompt is wide aperture, and although I took this photo January 1st, I decided to use it. f/1.8; 1/100; ISO 400. Used external flash, -1/3 flash compensation, TTL/BBL. 85 mm lens, shot RAW, tweaked with Radical Lab to add some contrast.



I'm a little biased, but I think Ruby is gorgeous! And she's a great little poser; she'll "Stay" forever for one lousy Cheerio. How long would you stay still for a Cheerio? Actually, I'm lucky I caught the shot before she started drooling.

The Mean, Mean, Ruby Machine Teasing Poor Little Saxon

Poor little Saxon (Scott and Elizabeth's four month old Cockapoo), valiantly tried to hold his own with the older woman, (Ruby, 11 months). But Ruby is in training, and must perfect her skills of using Saxon to clean up spills in the kitchen. After all, every dog should have a job to do.



But now Saxon has gone back home to DC, leaving Ruby to pine away for him, and him for her.

And we are left to our own devices, celebrating the New Year in our usual fashion: watching Reno 911 episodes and a touch of the bubbly at midnight. Hello, 2012!

Decisions, Decisions. . . What Should the Well-Dressed Lab Wear for Christmas!

Sometimes it's tough to choose just the right attire for special events. And SOME friends are pushy about their ideas. First, they tackle you. . . .

Cover you in slurpy kisses and chew on your ears. . . .

. . . insist they know just the right thing to wear. . . .

. . . . and sit on your head to be the hat.

Friends! What would life be without them?

Re-Enacting the Trauma

Kind of like play therapy, only different:

She's great at removing the body parts . . .



. . . but I don't think she'd be good at stitching things up.



. . . but I bet she'd be awesome at removing stitches!

Thanks for the well wishes yesterday as we worried about Baby Ruby's Big Girl operation. Not surprisingly, it went well, but it's still hard to see her uncomfortable, and the idea of "keeping her quiet" till her stitches come out seems almost delusional!

The Big Red Dog's Date with her Birth Control Plan

What a day! As I write this, Ruby is at the vet getting her reproduction capabilities nixed (spayed). And it seems to fitting that this should occur on a day when I opened the newspaper (you know--those print things) and saw that the federal health care plan is going to mandate that insurance companies cover women's birth control contraceptives, starting January, 2013! It's about time! The fact that men's Viagra is so routinely covered, but women's contraceptives are not, has really angered me over the years. Insurance companies have been able to duck this by claiming religious controversy. I suspect it's been a "convenient" and lucrative "moral position" and their part, and that they've been much more inclined to cater to their male stakeholders than to young women. But I digress. . . .

. . . Anyway, so Ruby is at the vet, and I'm anxious about this. She looked at me with her beautiful big eyes this morning and said, "Where's the food? Yo! Are you forgetting something near and dear to my heart? Tricks? Shall I do tricks for you? How about a handshake? Ummmm, let's go in the kitchen and get some food!" Apparently, we would get to fee her until tomorrow.

And then we pulled out the leash and led her to the car (translate, she practically dragged us to the car and leapt with joy into the back seat), and now she's probably under sedation. . . . so I'm pacing around, antsy, looking for ways to distract myself . . . . (I'm glad my children never needed their tonsils taken out, or. . . ummmmm. . . . needed to be fixed!)

So here are two versions of a shot of the Big Red Dog, and look how red--I mean, REALLY, really red she is in the second photo. The photo was taken with my new 20mm f2.8 lens at the dog park. The first photo is much more what she actually looks like to me.

The second version is one in which I used the command "convert to sRGB" from my working space of RGB in photoshop, and then ran an action that resizes and sharpens for web.

The first shot is one in which I used the command "assign to sRGB" and then ran the same action.

I don't get it. The "convert" command somehow loses the sRGB change, and results in a photo that is interpreted by the web any old which way, in whatever color space it feels like. And Wild Red it is.

But the "assign" command keeps the sRGB designation and successfully bosses the web around demanding that my instructions about the sRGB color space be followed. (But then again, Google Chrome and internet explorer are still not color managed and will play looser with color instructions; Safari and Firefox have much better color management capabilities.)





Other than all that, this shot is of Ruby at the dog park. She loves it! She's now gotten to go about four times, and still thinks its the Happiest Place on Earth (sorry Disney.) See the black dog taking a drink from rectangular Rubber Maid container? Ruby is a maniac with it; when she gets a chance at it, she manages to "dig" out all the water with her front paws, splashing any nearby humans, who then are at her beck and call to refill it from the drinking fountain. Apparently, other owners at the park are telling me their dogs are picking up her fiendish ways and are doing the same things to their dishes at home now. Sorry folks!

Sigh. Time to go pace around in the kitchen again and clean a closet. . . .

***** UPDATE * * * * *
Ruby is home and well and groggy and sleepy. I'm not sure yet if she's going to be trying to lick her stitches a lot, so we're taking a wait-and-see attitude about whether she need to wear the cone around her head. We actually got one of those inflatable ones. It's hard to see her like this; she's definitely uncomfortable, and for awhile she just laid in her crate and moaned :(

Hopefully the next two weeks will show a speedy recovery, and we'll see our little maniac back!

The Puppy Takes the Platypus

OK, I know it's silly, but here's a video of Ruby gutting a platypus, with Doug, in his special "video-voice narration" talking you through the 6 minutes. It's long, so feel free to speed through it, unless you are enthralled.





This little toy is an "egg baby." It has an opening, and you can stuff "eggs" in it; little, soft, squeaky toys that are like puppy-crack.

Yep, kids, this is what "old people" do when you leave the nest.

Brace yourselves!

She's Such a Good Dog!

She's learned a lot of things in her obedience training classes and approaches all the lessons with great gusto. She shoots through the training tunnel like a rocket, and when we're asked to lure her on this rocker platform and see if we can desensitize her to the motion, she leaps on it, and will spin and twist in circles clockwise and counter-clockwise for a lick of Gerber Chicken Baby Puree. She's such a good dog!



Except when we go to obedience classes and she wants to EAT the trainers, the other dogs, and their owners. And as we approach, the other owners rush their young-uns away lest Ruby corrupt them with her wild-germs. Whole crowds of doggy gatherings disperse when we approach with our little pariah. . .

But she's such a good dog! Except when she refuses to walk when we've gotten about 6 blocks out, planting her feet in front of her, deciding it would be more fun to watch the cars go by for awhile. And the only thing that we'll convince her otherwise is to pull out an old sock from my pocket, with a squeaker ball in it, and let her carry it home in her mouth. . . .

And she's just learned this cool trick where we have her "touch" a lid with her nose, and then we give her a treat. It should come in handy if we ever want her to learn to answer our smart phones, or start the ignition on our car. . . .



Today she was a really good dog when we took her to the local farmers' market, and good to LOOK at people, but not touch them. And she SO wanted to take home so children, but we wouldn't let her. She just had to settle for playing tricks with us, in the middle of market, so that we could learn the occasional stray child to us who was brave enough to play "Sit" and "Down" and "Leave it" and "Take it" with her.

She even nicely spit out the cigarette butt she snatched (A man walking by sai!d "Now THAT's a smokin' dog!"

And she even resisted jumping into a fountain, which she desperately wanted to do (mainly because she couldn't fit through the bars all around it. Thanks,City Planners!)

If you look closely at this photo you'll see that it's also a self-portrait of sorts.

Ruby's Growing Up!

Have I mentioned lately how totally cute little Ruby is? Here are some late June photos of her. . . .

She's learned a new trick! It's called "Open the front door and greet people before Angela and Doug can find my leash!" Fortunately, the Schwan's man comes prepared with dog bisquits in his pocket for potential escapees. Smart man.----smart little dog, too.


She loves this turtle toy. It's legs, tail and head are all attached by elastic, with squeakers embedded in each section, so she can stretch it viciously and boss it around. Sadly, I'm going to have to sew parts of it back together already!



If you ever come meet Ruby, prepare to be her New Best Friend, because you will be at risk of being licked to death!

Some Critters are FAST!

Like the kind who can who can, in the amount of time it takes you to brush your teeth, unroll the toilet paper, swallow a button, and eat plaster or plastic screws or something off of the faucet by your toilet, causing your bathroom to flood--while you're trying to get ready for work in the morning.



That kind.

Day 53: Held Captive

Yesterday, we went to our first obedience class with Ruby at the Grand Forks Kennel Club. This class is so much better than the crazy experience we had at Petco with the dog trainer that it's hard to think that these trainers could possibly be of the same species!

But that does not mean it was stress-free! Oh, no--not with a lab!



We tried to prepare for the Big Day by getting Ruby somewhat tired during the day, with lots of exercise, then sufficient sleep in her crate. We made sure she was hungry, cooked special "treats" to use in the training, ate dinner early, got her seat belt harness ready and reminded ourselves that our egos would not be on the line in this class.

And then we smoothly headed out the door to the car for class. Or tried to. First, I could not get the harness on her. This little harness is to help keep a puppy safe in the car so that she does not become a projectile with sudden stops, or a projectile with sudden bursts of energy during which she tries to consume the driver. Harnesses are good.

But you have to get them on said pup. Somehow, Ruby managed to have 12 legs and 7.6 arms that flew in dervish-like directions while I tried to snap strap A to B, attach carbiner to C, and looping it around to X etc. Trust me, between her needle-sharp puppy teeth, leaps into the air, and somersaults for belly rubs, it's no wonder that I broke out into a sweat and Doug sat nervously in the driveway, waiting for me, worrying. . . .

But eventually Ruby was locked and loaded and I hit the front door with her. She misses nothing; her mulching tendencies leave no twig unpulverized, and no gallon jar of Sun Tea on the front steps untossed.

After my feet were drenched with Sun Tea, and I had her in the car, we headed off to class, but not with the nice margin of time we'd hope for. We'd hoped that Ruby would get to meet all the nice people, get her exuberance at PEOPLE and OTHER DOGS under control in time to settle down.

But class had already begun, with all 10 other pups and owners sitting in a zen-like circle (most likely after the pups had been dosed with Valium and Prozac), when we made our Grand Entrance, hoping to slip in unnoticed. Let me just say it was noisy; Ruby was ecstatic and I'm not sure her little paws really ever touched the ground in the first minutes. The trainer paused, and announced "Looks like we have one of those dogs right here!" and approached Ruby. Ruby decided the instructor was her New Best Friend, flipped over on her back, and showered the air with dog pee.

Yeah. About that little ego thing. . . .

The trainer then slipped a little Premier Easy Walk harness over Ruby's head and middle, and Goodbye Marley! Ruby turned all angelic on us and with the sheer brute force of two adult human beings, we were now able to control her wiggly 29 lbs!



And today, we rushed out and purchased our own Easy Walk harness! What a Godsend! Now Ruby is truly a Good Dog and deserves these little treats sent to her by Elizabeth and Scott.

We ARE held captive, but most enthusiastically!

North Dakota and It's Pathetic Version of Spring

April showers bring. . . . wind chills? (And the wind actually blew down our basket ball hoop, hitting the back window of my car! It didn't break; just scraped a swatch across the window.)

Oh, and we have another 6 to 8 inches predicted tonight.









Guess we'll just have to stay inside a little longer and find something else to do.

Well, Would YOU stick a matchstick up her butt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?

Now this is a title that REALLY demands an explanation! Doug and I are now Petco Puppy Kindergarten dropouts, after one day. We had an experience with a trainer that I am finding to be just plain out bizarre! Have you ever had one of those experiences where you hear something, and then your head goes into this twilight zone where you try to figure out if you REALLY heard that? Like maybe, you just had this little hiccup in your ear or something, and No-she-did-not say that?

Except she did.

Doug and I joined one of those obedience classes for new puppies to just work on the basic commands. . . like walk on a leash, don't eat the guests.

We should have been suspicious when it turned out that we were the only ones in the puppy class.

The trainer asked how it was going with housetraining, and we said that it was really going quite well, better than expected. The intrepid little Ruby does have occasional poddy accidents in the house, but we're pretty pleased about how that's going. Could we get some suggestions for walking on a leash.

I swear, the woman has an anal fixation!

She said we HAD to reward Ruby with a treat outside every times she goes. OK, we could do that. . . can't see what it would hurt, except to be a nuisance, since she does this just fine.

And THEN she said, (and not even Dave Barry would make this up!), "And to get her to poop, light a match, put vaseline on it, and stick it up her butt."

"What?" And my brain does this strange sloshing from side to side in my skull at this point, thinking it's maybe like lighting a match if someone makes the rest room unusually stinky.

And she says, "Well, not lit still of course. Ha Ha."

"Why? She goes just fine!"

"Because she'll push against it, just like you did with your babies and thermometers." (ummmmm, no!)

She said we could not get a refund after that evening. We went into Petco and got a refund of $99.95 the next morning.

This little gem of wisdom was also mixed in with extensive hawking of the Petco products, and telling us that most likely Ruby would need intensive individual training by her privately, because she's "a certified dog trainer with 50 years experience." (She looked to be about 55 years old, so she must of started with butts and matchsticks at about the age of 5!)

Any other Petco customers wandering by were also fair prey for her to promote her therapeutic methods at her private business as well. She told one couple who was expecting a baby in a few weeks that their large boxer, who had recently been attacked by another dog that their dog could now later shows signs of trauma, and their baby could be at risk. She gave the couple her card.

She also taught us the "Therapeutic Grab and Hug" for "brain recovery," which all puppies need. (?) This involved rolling Ruby over on her back, sticking our hands in her mouth, and as she'd tried to bite, growling/shrieking "Off!" , with our other hand in a claw as if to strike at her, and as she stopped biting (or cowered) massaging her vigorously all over.

I know some trainers do recommend alpha rolls and dog massage, but someone please tell me it doesn't start with this harsh approach to a 10 week old puppy!



So here's the reason Doug and I continue to be tired, but you know what? She's not nearly as tiring as making sense of some of the craziness out there!

But Where Did Angela Go? (and spring equinox at Chichen Itza)

. . . . those of you who are quite bored may have asked.

Well, I went to three places, two of which are not for the faint of heart.

First, I went to the Puppy Dimension. As the astute reader may recall, I embarked on a campaign to soften Doug's heart to the idea of getting a new dog, after we lost The Beautiful Ms. Bonnie last July. Doug said, "No more dogs." I co-opted the Netflix que and ordered doggie tearjerkers , movie after movie, until the poor man was absolutely red-eyed and chafed nosed. Then I would occasionally whistfully comment on how when he would do something that would raise the hackles of one's spouse, I would chant my mantra, "but he picks up dog-poop, so deserves a lot of grace," . . . and those good times were over.

So Ruby Baby, aka Ruby Beast, aka Ruby the Rascal has come to live with us and keep us on our toes.



And the 2nd place for the not-faint-of-heart was Cyber Hell. My hard drive crashed. The new hard drive also crashed because of the crazy Acronis back-up program (don't buy it!). The computer then had "heat sink issues" (whatever that means!), and my wonderful husband said that (not only could I have a puppy!!!!!!!) but I could get a new computer.

Since I had no back-ups of all of my software and settings, I've had to start from scratch with Photoshop settings, and then monitor calibration, preferred sharpening, sizing, color workspaces for web, for printing, for everything, etc. Sheer torture.

And then Ruby (the Beast) chewed up the data cord to my external hard drive. Just enough to make it inconsistent. So I replaced the external hard drive, transferred everything over. . . . to a new external hard drive that failed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And bought a new one, which now works, and was able to finally, get all my old photos onto it.

(Do you hear the important lesson in all this? Back up, back up, back up. Many ways, on many media.)

And we went some place else! Doug and I went to Mexico, with all three of my children and the wonderful Elizabeth, Scott's fiance.

There is no more perfect place to go in March, when your departure point is the horrific Winter of North Dakota!



This is a photo at Chichen Itza, a Mayan Ruin on the Yucatan peninsula. We had the extraordinary good fortune to get to be there during the spring equinox. (I'll write more about this later.)

If you look closely at the photograph, you'll see a snake head at the base of the ruin on the left side. Between 4:30 and 5:30 pm, during the spring equinox, if the sun is shining, it strikes one corner of the structure, creating a shadow on the other corner, creating the illusion of a snake body slithering down the side of the building.

Look Who's Come to Live with Us!

And is she ever keeping us busy! 8 weeks old and running on all engines; Meet Ruby, aka Ruby Baby.

A Hint of Things to Come!

I won't be able to post much in the way of my photos for awhile, but I managed to snag this hint through my phone!!!!