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I see you all politely ignored my bizarre chicken-centric post.  Ignore chickens at your own peril, my friends! Just to be obstinate, I’m going to discuss my feathered friends some more.  I quite like my chickens … at first I was all “Meh, chickens, whatever, they lay eggs.”  But over time, I’ve grown quite fond of them.  Not fond enough to name them or anything – they’re just known as The Chicken Collective (like an alt-rock band, such as Arcade Fire) although I did name the one black chicken.  Mostly because I can tell her apart from the others.

This is Black Roc Camaro: She insisted I take a photo of her good side, and not the paralyzed side.  Her other eye is all droopy, a lasting impression of TWooie’s chicken killing spree.  She’s the Queen Chicken, and nobody fucks with her.

I like the chickens because they are funny as hell.  If I call “Ladies!” they all come a-runnin’ to see what I have for them to eat.  They cock their heads to the side when you talk to them, which makes them all look like tiny little Tweeds.  And they fight over worms, which is gross but hilarious.  Right now they are all picking on Road Chicken, who just wants to eat some snow in peace. They are also extremely handy as dog sitters.  If I need to get some stuff down around the property, I can just plunk Faith down in front of the chicken coop and she’ll stare at them for a good hour straight if necessary.

Faith continues to be my good girl.  She’s such an easy creature to have around! And she does not want to eat or even hurt my chickens, unlike SOME dogs I know.

How DARE you malign me that way! As you can see from the fluffy white backgrounds, the snow has visited us at long last!  And lots of it too – there was a good 8″ or so of snow out there this morning for our morning walk.

Do you think the dogs were happy about it? Maybe just mesmerized. What I noticed while editing snow photos this morning was how often I get The Accidental Dog shot when I’m trying for something else.

Like The Accidental Faith: Or The Accidental Dexter: And The Accidental Piper: No wonder I feel like there are dogs *EVERYWHERE* sometimes.

In fact, I just went through a kind of short period where I thought maybe I just hated all of my dogs for a little while.  It felt like every time I tried to do something, there was a dog in the way – poking me in the eye when I leaned over to put on my boots (Woo); laying outside the bathroom door to trip over after my shower (Piper); springing across my half-sleeping form when the alarm went off (Dexter), squishing under the babygate to raid the cat box and torment the house chickens (TWooie)…then there are the three 12 foot long planks of my unfinished dog walk stretched across my kitchen because they’re still unpainted and I have nowhere dry to store them (and they are too tall to lean up against the wall) which I alternately trip over and stub my toe on many times a day.  The sun shining through my windows showing me all the many noseprints on them.  Faint traces of farm mud splattered across every surface in the house under a height of 2 feet.  Endless dog-drying-towels laundry.  Piper’s continuous growl through breakfast preparations.  Tweed and Piper snarking at one another under the bed at night when I’m trying to sleep.  Dexter’s new game of launching out the front door at 5AM pee time and racing for the back of the property barking so the other dogs will chase him, barking as well.  I was just sick to death of them all and wanted them all to go straight to hell, without barking, without stepping on me or poking me or tripping me, and just friggin’ STAY there, and the hell away from me!

I’m sure not the only person who has these lapses, am I?

In class last Thursday I was getting unreasonably irritated with Dexter who was skipping out of the last pole in anticipation of the next obstacle and when The Sadist chided me with “Remember he’s just a baby dog!” I snarked back “But he KNOWS how to do all the poles, he’s just being an ass.”  Later he pulled me aside and pleaded with me not to become *that* handler, you know, the one who blames their dog all the time instead of just working through the problem as a challenge to be solved.

Why do you hate me so, Food Lady? I told him that I was just irritated with Dexter for other stuff and I had accidentally brought that irritation with me to class.  And that’s when I realized that, in fact, that was *exactly what I was doing … and not just to Dexter at class, but to all my dogs, all the time.  I suppose my general irritation at losing my car, my aching shoulder, the cold shitty weather / long winter etc. was making me frustrated and I was bringing it home to my dogs, who I was viewing as another form of frustration – after a long day at work and a long commute home, it’s dark and cold and the dogs are wired from being alone all day and it’s too dark and late to give them much exercise, and then I lapse into a tv coma beside a warm heater until bed time and … and their behaviour is my own fault, because I am not doing much with them.  Really I am frustrated with ME.

So in honour of letting go of my frustrations, here are some reasons why I LOVE my dogs.

Because I just rolled in the snow and then posed for you, all serious-sexy like: Because I chased a rabbit through the pokies and made my ears bleed, but I’m smiling anyway: Because I’m so earnest when I sit here begging for you to kick snow at me: Because even though I am far from perfect, and you didn’t mean to love me, you do anyway … you know you do! Because I never do anything wrong. Because we chickens are a superior race, and somehow, your life always comes back to chickens. Damn post-invading chickens!

Go love your dogs for an extra moment.  You’ll be glad you did!  I made mine pancakes this morning as a way of apologizing for my bad behaviour :)


Is it time to go outside again?  Is it?  Is it? (Here’s some extra love for Tweed, because I love him the mostest!)