This little guy is a Pomeranian Chihuahua cross.  I just love how before...he looks like a Pomeranian....

And after...he looks like a Chihuahua!

This guys name is worth mentioning....Hahem. No no, I'm not trying to get your attention, he is! That is his name! Actually, it is the sound you make when you say the word hahem.  So unique!  Though I have to admit I did have trouble with it :P

So Regal.

Happy Tails :)

Miriam

For Easter this year I decided to experiment with chalking for the first time.  I did Akira's tail, paws, pants and furnishings with pink, and her ears with purple.  The purple didn't end up showing up very well, but the pink was nice!

I told people she walked through a pink puddle, he he.

I just used regular sidewalk chalk because I was being spontaneous and just decided to try it spur of the moment.  Apparently sidewalk chalk gives a little less colour and is a little dustier.  The best is to use artist's pastel chalks.  Next time I will buy some and have a go with those.

It's a pretty simple process.  Just bath and towel dry, then rub the chalk on the hair you want to colour.  Someone suggested twisting the strands together and that worked a bit, mostly I just laid sections over my hands and rubbed away.  Gloves would have been good but washing thoroughly with soap and water a few times after does the trick too.  I haven't bathed her yet again to see if all the colour will wash out with one shampoo or not.  Apparently lighter hair might take a couple washes, dark hair usually just takes one.

Happy Tails!

Miriam

Whenever I'm grooming a dog, or relating to any dog for that matter, I always try to put my intentions ahead of my actions in an empathetic way, so the dog can read my body language and silent words in my eyes and know what I am about.  This way the dog can express to me without having to 'yell' any concerns, like being scared of nail clipping, brushing mats, or clippering ticklish feet.  I can listen to them and take extra care to be gentle and reassuring on nervous areas.   I also talk in a normal tone of voice and explain everything I am doing as I work.  This is how I can groom a dog that may otherwise be difficult to groom, not trusting what is going on.

This guy had wispy leg hair and a plush undercoat on his body, so I clipped the body 1/4", and scissored the legs short to get rid of all stray away hair.  I gave him a dense fox like tail, and left a spunky topknot to balance his ears and face.  I was happy with how he turned out, but more importantly so were his Mom and Dad.

Happy Tails!

Miriam

I had the utmost pleasure of grooming Zivah today.  The beautiful retired Samoyed show dog who belongs to the lovely and talented Rachel Barkman, who does dog photography.  She does human photography as well, which I must say I quite like and you can go check out her website here: Rachel Barkman Photography. 

Rachel gave me a mini session with Yukon and Akira before Zivah's grooming this morning, (even threw one of 'Puppy" in there), just a quick 30 minutes, and look what she gave me, priceless treasures.

There are a lot of photographers out there, and I have a very critical eye when it comes to photos.  I have to say, she is really good!  A great photo captures light, personality, composition, balance and I'm sure other and more technical stuff that I don't know about, but put it all together right and you get a magical moment that you just want to keep looking at.  It is art. That is a good photo.  That is what I see in Rachel's photos.  So thank you Rachel, you made me very happy today!

Happy Tails!!

At the drive in!  We haven't been on a movie date together in.....well a long time.  It is great fun, especially for Puppy, who stayed up the whole time until 2 in the morning!

They were playing 'The Heat', a show about two women officers, one an FBI agent and the other a detective, and oh I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.  I loved it.

The second movie was 'Wolverine'.  It's set in Japan, and I always love movies set in Japan.  I have been studying Japanese for the past five years, and even though I still can't speak it, or understand most of it, it has stopped being a 'foriegn' language to me.  My vocabulary is just very small.

You know the classic train fight scene in movies?  You know the one, where the good guy fights the bad guy on the roof of a moving train?  Well this movie steps it up a notch, they are on the roof of a bullet train!  The scene was really well done, quite entertaining.

Yukon is still growing, he is just almost 7 months old, and he doesn't realize he's not still the tiny puppy that he used to be.  He is always climbing up in the front and onto our laps!  So we have a nice roomy mini-van, and here we have two adults, a toddler, one small dog and one fairly larger dog all watching the movie from the front seats :D  Happy Tails!

Browsing through the web on a dog related search, I came across this great magazine, City Dog Magazine -Seattle.  The are planning to expand to more cities soon, I hope they will come to Vancouver.

They have a dog lovers social community where you can make a profile and share, make friends etc.  Like Facebook but just for dog lovers.  I like it!

One of the articles this month is on camping with dogs.  Most of the places are in the States, but they do mention Cultus Lake, and places in Oregon which isn't too far to go.

It can be challenging to find a dog friendly place to camp.  Sure you can have your dog at your campsite, but are they allowed on the beach?  It's good to know places that have more to offer your dog.  Maybe I'll camp at Cultus now, I haven't before.

Really, there are lots of more remote places that are great for camping with dogs, which is the kind of camping I usually prefer.  The more remote the better.  With four kids now though, safety is a factor, so somewhere close by might just be the way to keep us outdoors :)