Dobermann Pinschers – Family Members
I'm a Southern California living in South Florida. I've been here for 10 years as of October 1, 2007. No matter where I live, I'm a dog lover, and my breed is the Dobermann Pinscher of the Working Group. I am also fond of the Australian Shepherd of the Herding Group. My life revolves around my dogs, which is something those family members of mine don't understand. So I'm an island in that respect, but have built friendships with those who are doggie lovers and respect the canine as much as I do. Some do rescue, some train in, compete in, and judge AKC trials. The common thread is our dogs are family.
It’s dinner time. Raven knows it. She tries very hard to maintain herself.
When she gets anxious, she steps outside her crate to tell me so.
Then she goes back inside and raises the volume of her demands.
This is the point where she zones out and is about to leave her senses.
Rabid dog! Rabid dog! Hungry Rabid Dog!
Baby tells it like it is.
Raven had to stay behind the curtain until she calmed her bad self down. Then she got served dinner.
Today I had to take the hose set-up from my laundry room to Home Depot where a nice, young gentleman there managed to remove the nozzle from the hose. This has been an on-going sore spot for me. I had set up this slinky-type hose with hot/cold water access in the laundry room, so I could stretch it out on cool days to the dog-wash table for a warm-water bath. But the nozzel broke and I couldn’t remove it. Not with pliers or hammers or WD-40. So the fact that I found a good guy who knew what he was doing with those muscles on his arms was a godsend. Thank you! (And I did go on-line and wrote to Home Depot customer service telling them about this wonderful employee.)
That meant that I could get on a bath schedule again. And being it’s no longer Halloween, and Chirstmas is coming, it’s time for the winter type Christmas season collars to go on clean dogs. Today was Raven Peebody, Lilian Peebody, Luna and Ginger’s turn. Ginger loves to be doted on, so she got a bath just because she likes the attention. Here she is looking lovely drying off in sun.
Shortly after this picture, she found the place she most likes to pee, and rolled in it.
Luna, the sweetness that she is, decided to dry off on the dirty mat we use coming and going from the back door. At least her pillow was clean as of yesterday’s laundry.
Raven thought Luna was particularly fragrant.
Shortly after her sniffs, Raven went into her “Lookie!” stance while Lilian and the Cuz ball got reacquainted.
And what was Raven staring at? Wow! Big bird. Not THE “Big Bird,” but a really big bird flying overhead. Raven’s got a lot of bird friends, though this one looked sort of menacing. Hungrily so.
Lilian decided to run inside and take her beloved coconut to protect it from the big bird. This was not a decision that sat well with the Dobermaid though.
Speaking of, Raven’s new idea of fun is to give the Dobermaid’s friend, the Dobercook, sass, sass and more sass. The Dobertrainer thought it an idea to let the Raven out while food was being prepared so she wouldn’t have to hear the demanding barks from the bird. It works to a point. The point being when Raven’s patience has gone on empty, she jumps into her crate to bark at the Dobercook to move it along…serve dinner already. What happens from here?
Well, the Doberwaitress tells the Raven to shut the heck up or she won’t get dinner. Of course, Raven doesn’t oblige, so the Doberwaitress closes the door, drapes towels over the door and window of the bird’s crate, and the bird then throws a major fit. Doberwaitress then serves everyone else who knows how to behave and waits until the ruckus behind the curtains comes to a complete and utterly stop. And it does. Eventually. That little bird is starting to get it. But the “starting” part still takes longer than the household would like. Our ear plug bill is a bit outrageous.
Look what Luna can do with a coconut!
Synchronized coconut swing dancing!
Lilian’s thinks all that’s fine, but she is still best at collecting coconut thread between her teeth.
Raven is busy leading her flock from her throne.
Speaking of a flock…lookie!
It’s one of Raven’s feathered friends stopping by.
I’ve been eye-balling the coconut tree on the corner. It’s next door.
This morning, I decided to step outside and make that sharp right to check out the ground beneath it. When I did, holy moly! I hit the mother load. There were stray coconuts everywhere. True, some where a little elderly, but that was OK with me. I grabbed an arm full and took them back to the Fort Doberdale Coconut Posse. I threw them on the ground, found my big ol’ white shopping bag, and took another sharp right turn back to that tree.
I returned home with a huge bag full of the precious nuts, proving I am the hunter that my dogs think I am, once again. (Yesterday I came back with chickens! I not only hunted them down, I cleaned, wrapped, and froze them for storage.) After unloading the massive bag of coconuts onto a lawn chair, I wiped off all the ants that accompanied the nuts over here and had crawled onto me.
One of the coconuts had a good sprout on it, but there was not enough color in the mix for artiste Luigi, so he added his yellow Cuz ball to brighten the pallet. Then he stared, waiting for something to happen.
Something did. Raven came along with the evil intent of taking his Cuz ball. And Leissl had the same idea, without the evil intent part. The three stood together psychically deciding the fate of the helpless ball.
When all was said and done, Leissl put her decision into action, and that was that.
Until later, when Luigi regained possession of today’s coveted Cuz, and planted it next to the newly potted coconut tree. Ollie was ready and willing to grab that ball.
Meanwhile, the Queen Mother, the Bahamian Baby, who taught these mainlanders what a coconut is for, pulled, tore, and enjoyed her Sunday morning coconut bash.
Lilian, who carries on as if she’s the ultimate Doberdiva, got coconut hair stuck in her teeth.
It’s a bit like walking around with spinach on your teeth. But curlier and you don’t have to smile for people to notice it.
Annie was more into hugging her coconut than using it on her teeth.
Bouchard, macho Frenchmann that he is, used the one-paw-holding method when pulling his nut apart.
Baby used the traditional two-paw method.
Ginger took special efforts to move her coconut around to the right spot.
Then she dug in!
Ooops! A little sprout. Another one that needs a pot of soil to grow up in.
While Lilian’s scanning for a spare pot, I’ll go find the soil.
These folks who do the NaNoWriMo program and website have a big task every year, and they warned us that the website gets so busy and this year they have the most participants they’ve ever had, that they were expecting glitches. Sure enough, I went to add to my word count this evening, and the site is down.
D-O-W-N
The exact words are:
National Novel Writing Month is currently undergoing maintenance, and will be back up in an hour or two.
I feel the excitement. The frantic excitement of a not-for-profit group working on a shoestring to make something that’s grown so immensely still fit into their shoebox. They know their shoebox is too small, and have mentioned they are getting a bigger shoebox for next year, but this year, their very predictions are reality this night.
So I will post my 1989 words for the day here. Plus the 636 I did on Friday, brings me up to 2000 something. Tomorrow will be here soon enough and I’ll have that extra hour that I’ve already been trying to get used to as of last week when my computer changed times on me and between it and the clocks on the wall, my week has been an extraordinary bumbling of trying to figure out just what time it is.
