Adventures in Dog-Sitting

A friend of mine is house-sitting in Costa Rica for the month of November. She was trying to figure out what to do with her darling doggeh for such an extended time.

Since her dog (Kharma - a rescued, Indian street dog), is already friends with our Toby, I volunteered to take her in. After a little bit of adjustment - mostly involving getting Kharma to not chase the cats, it's been a lovely thing for the two beasties - 

There is LOTS of wrestling...

(they are indefatigable!)

There is lots of patrolling the backyard... Checking out the chickens and making sure all is well and safe.

There is also a bit of naughtiness - the digging of holes.... lots of barking at things, both seen and unseen....

And also lots of companionable relaxing. (Fairly alert here though - as they are both hoping for a treat).

It's going to be hard to give her back at the end of the month. :-)

WIP Wednesday - New Studio Chicks!

 It's time to update the chicken flock -

 - with a new batch of studio chicks!

 Just four this time around. It's the very end of chick-buying season, so I was kind of stuck with what they had left.

 A California White, a Red Sex Link - 

 - and a couple of Ameracaunas (so white, brown and blue/green egg-layers).

 (Ameracaunas are some of my favorite chicks - they start out looking a bit like chipmunks.)

Toby-the-terror doesn't quite know what to think about their tiny-chirpy-cuteness. I'm hoping he'll be more care-taking of these guys since he'll see them raised from babies. The last batch of poor older gals got chased a lot.

So, here's to Urban Chickens! 

Happy May Day -

 Today could not have been more beautifully glorious! So much sun and growing/blooming things....

 The grapes are leafing and budding.

 The Sweet Cicely, in all its sweet, anise-y glory, is blooming profusely.

 As are the bleeding hearts.

The lilacs are full out - filling the air with their delicious fragrance. 

 Here is a clump of Lady's Mantle - particularly apropos for May Day. Medieval herblore provides 'recipes' for youth or true love or seeing fairies that include dew drops collected from the leaves of Lady's Mantle (especially on the morning of May 1st, or by the light of the mid-summer's full moon).

 The celadon is growing and blooming.

 The fig tree is fruiting and leafing out.

 Lungwort, Johny-jump-ups, Sweet Angelica and lamb's ear...

 The large, graceful quince blossoms.

 Violets growing amidst the parsley.

And Toby-the-terror, begging for yet another game of fetch.

Happy May Day!

Terrible Tuesday - Toby-Outing

Took Toby to the dog park for an outing -

Here he is hanging out with some of the 'big dogs'. Makes him feel very grown up. (Although he is unaccountably kinda aggressive towards a couple of select dogs. What's up with that?)

He did decide he was brave enough to spend some time in the water -

All wet (soon to become muddy. And filthy).

There were a couple of dogs there who looked remarkably wolfish....

Bonus sighting - clusters of blue heron nests up in the trees. We saw at least 8 (you can easily see four in this shot alone). Lovely, summer golden-hour time...

Puppy Outing -

Toby the-terror-puppy turned 4 months old this weekend. To celebrate, we went to the off-leash doggie park on Puget Sound.

 Here's Toby checking out the water, and the kids...

 ...Happy romping...

 Running with the Big Boys...

 He ran until he about dropped -

-  he did totally crash in the car on the way home.

Happy birthday puppy. :-)