Snapshot Sunday: Guest Blogger

While our plans for a simple, one-day, finish-by-sunset-and-grab-a-beer roofing job on the barn gang aft agley on Saturday with the discovery of rot in the base, our emphatically non-farmer nieces had to find ways to entertain themselves while Dad, Uncle Ken, Aunt Heather, and "Uncle" Bill bled money and profanity all weekend.

Fourteen year-old Brady borrowed Bill's camera, and came up with these:

Cole and Rosie: Vicious and Dangerous

Bwaaa haaa -- just kidding

Still-life with dew and turkey feather

Pokeweed after frost

Narragansett jake strutting

Fleabane

Ameraucana cockerel. Rooster voted least likely to end up as coq a vin this year.

The new generation of young photographers is going to be a fearless bunch -- liberated from the expense of film, able to get instant feedback on what "worked" and what didn't, and open to experimenting and accepting the happy accident. I envy them the freedom of digital, even as I'm nostalgic for the stink of developer and the pall of the red light bulb.

That said, the kid is a better photographer at fourteen than I am after almost three decades of on-again, off-again efforts -- the last six with decent quality digitals.

Snapshot Sunday: Demo Dog

Rosie and Ken, Mountain Rescue Demonstration, Pittsburgh Fire and EMS Expo.

Hanging from the ceiling of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

Not our usual environs, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Dat's why we had to move to New Yawk for to get a Bill o' Rights

HT to Shirley over at YesBiscuit for this story about free speech in the City of Brotherly Love.

Kori Martin is a life long, die-hard Eagles fan. She is also an animal lover; therein lays her conundrum. While gravely disappointed at the signing of Michael Vick by the Philadelphia Eagles, Martin still supports her home team but her experience while attending a home game at Lincoln Field yesterday has her absolutely flabbergasted!

While entering the arena to go to her family's season ticket holder seats a security guard told her she could not enter the arena wearing the shirt she purchased from pitbullgear.com because the anti-Vick message would be offensive to players and other people.

Seems that Michael Vick is tough enough to drown a puppy or beat a losing pitbull to death with his so-manly bare hands, but his sensitive feelings might be bruised by a lady in a t-shirt.

As the Examiner correctly notes, there was nothing profane or libelous or graphic on the shirt.

The Examiner incorrectly calls for the Eagles owner to "apologize" to this season-ticket holder, who did not know that the First Amendment does not apply to a paying customer attending a public event at a stadium owned by the City of Philadelphia and largely financed by the city and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (my tax dollars at work, thank you).

The only acceptable "apology" to football fans and the majority non-sociopathic Eagles roster is to fire Vick and let him "rehabilitate" by sweeping floors for minimum wage -- the fate of many a released jailbird who has done nothing violent, and also, a perfectly honorable job when performed by an honorable person.

Once again, TGFTO (Thank God for The Onion), which absolutely nails it with this story.

PHILADELPHIA—Michael Vick's pregame pep talk Sunday, in which he recounted the events of a brutal 2004 dogfight between his pit bull terrier Zebro and rival pit bull Maniac, failed to inspire his teammates in any way whatsoever, Eagles team sources reported.

Vick, who was playing in his first NFL game since serving an 18-month prison sentence, called the 10-minute story "really motivational," and reportedly failed to understand why his graphic recounting of how Zebro ripped out Maniac's larynx caused teammates to stagger out of the player tunnel and onto Lincoln Financial Field with their heads hanging.

We can only hope that the real players forced to share a roster with a man who finds joy in electrocuting dogs in a swimming pool also share the outlook of The Onion's fictionalized Gaither:

"The only reason the Chiefs scored in the second half was because I was still thinking about what Mike said during halftime about 'trunking,'" said linebacker Omar Gaither, referring to the practice of putting two pit bulls in a car trunk, closing the door, and allowing them to fight for 15 minutes until one is dead. "Why is this freak on my team? Why are people cheering for him? Seriously, answer my questions. Why?

Photo Phriday: Run Cole, Run

Because Sophia is going to clobber you with that tennis-ball bat thingie in a second.

The End of the Beginnings

Honey and Minnie Pearl, about to make English shepherd history,

On July 29 at 08:09 mountain daylight time, the first dogs walked out of the Yellowstone County Sheriff's evidence perimeter fence for the last time.

Honey and Minnie Pearl were on their way to be spayed at a private vet's office, and from there to home and freedom. See the animal control truck behind them? They were still bound by a chain of custody until they were spayed -- they had to ride to the hospital in this unlikely ambulance.

But they rode home from the vet with their owner, like real live dogs.

Most of the Operation New Beginnings dogs had to wait at least a little while longer, for the spay-neuter clinic. Many waited to be adopted or assigned to foster care. Nineteen waited interminably for the sentencing hearing, and three endless days beyond it, until they were released by the judge, never to return to their abuser. Those had to wait a few weeks more, until they could also be neutered -- a relief to the old bitches, care-worn with the work of producing litter after litter of puppies destined to die of parvo, worms, and hunger, or, if uncommonly lucky, be sold over the internet to anyone with the cash. If desperately unlucky, to survive a spell and remain behind in a canine Lord of the Flies.

Once neutered, each dog became the property of National English Shepherd Rescue, sometimes only for a putative millisecond before transferring to his or her adopter. Others stayed on, waiting for a placement, and significantly so did the volunteers. The best ones kept coming, taking on new dogs as projects as the ones they had already helped were launched into new lives. As the crowded kennel emptied and quieted -- and as NESR authorized the most skilled volunteers to take the dogs exploring outside the hated fence -- the "hard-to-place" dogs became the success stories, progressing with lightning speed, changing more in a month than they had in the previous eight.

We had until September 30 to find a foster or adoptive home for each of 240 dogs -- three pugs, one Labrador, seven big mixed-breeds (six pups, one mother), one ES-Lab mix, eight 3/4 ES-1/4 Lab pups, and 220 English shepherds.

About three-quarters are in forever homes, leaving about sixty fosters. Some are in what may be foster-to-adopt homes. Others are in high-skill foster for extensive rehab and training meant to address their special needs -- whether that need is "I must learn to trust humans" or "I need to find challenging and fulfilling work commensurate with my considerable talents." Some just didn't have a match with a forever home, but did have a foster family available to help. Some will doubtless become "failed fosters" -- beasts meant to be temporary boarders who proceed to set hooks into the hearts of their "interim" families.

Baby, touched down tonight, but still not at her final destination.

It is September 24. At 11:20 EDT tonight, the last Operation New Beginnings dog touched down at an airport in Pennsylvania. The Metra, once home to five barking barns, has been empty for ten days. There are no dogs at the Moore Lane facility. Even the cats and the cockatiels are gone. We beat the deadline by six days.

Baby will be fostering until we figure out some kennel issues that she started to show in the last month. If she needs to, she will come here after one of my three current fosters moves on to a forever home.

After I hit the orange button that reads "PUBLISH POST" I'm going downstairs and indulging in a snort of the highly addictive peat-bog and iodine extract that Douglas introduced me to on July 25 -- the day before we started the joyful labor of evaluating every dog and clearing them for placement.

I hope my friends in Billings are gathering tonight to celebrate an astounding accomplishment, something none of us envisioned ten months ago. (May I suggest this fine establishment -- not just a world-class restaurant, not just the best place to eat in Billings, but indeed, the only good place to eat in Billings. Try the shiitake with homemade pasta and smoked tomatoes.)

A home for every dog. No "this one is too old" or "too scared" or "too many medical problems." We made a promise to the dogs, and to the humans who grew to love them. No euphemasia.

And no rest for the wicked. We've sixty dogs to place, and some of them are ready for forever homes today. Foster humans need help and advice. Adopters ask for guidance. A dog must come back, often for totally unpredictable extraneous reasons, and a place must be found for him. Shit happens, and we are holding the scoop -- not for the next few months, not until my fosters are launched, not until every dog is adopted, but for the rest of these dogs' lives.
And English shepherds live long, interesting lives. There are fifty puppies who were born in custody.

I expect my commitment to the welfare of the ONB dogs to expire some time around 2027. But for tonight, Sláinte!

Photo Phriday: What's Up With These Ears?

Sam had the bad luck to be bought as a young puppy and registered with the United Kennel Club as "Kapsa's Shep."  It appears that she sold a lot of his offspring, or at least, pups with his name listed as sire. He's got a great temperament and is a lovely individual.  He also has a wry jaw and absolutely atrocious teeth, and an extra set of floating ribs.  (Hint: not breeding stock in the sane world.)  He likes to carry a ball at all times, and I wonder if this isn't because it is more comfortable than closing his jaws.  At least one of his sons rescued through Operation New Beginnings seems to have inherited the jaw deformity.

He also has a split in one ear pinna.  Normally I would assume that such a feature was due to trauma, probably fighting.  But it appears we have a mystery

There are two males that we are sure are Sons of Sam.  Here is the left ear of one of them:

The other ear is the same.

The other son is fostering at my house, and has a single split in one pinna, just like Sam's.

And this bitch could well be a Sam daughter:

It was Fancy's perfectly symmetrical split pinnae that first caught my attention, on the day that Sam, Fancy, Bruno and Max (now Barry White) were all neutered.

I am convinced that it is a congenital deformity, though I've never heard of such a thing being a genetic defect in dogs.  The head vet tech working that day is just as convinced that "someone" cut the ears when these dogs were pups, in order to "mark" them.

Anyone have any ideas?

The Barking Bus

Barking bus crew. English shepherds inside may vary from those portrayed.

Barking Bus interior -- beats the hell out of United, Delta, US Airways for comfort and service from Billings to Anywhere.

Twenty-four dogs and three humans left Billings, Montana for points east at O' crack-sparrowfart Tuesday morning -- all aboard a delightfully disreputable half-gutted retired school bus.

The dogs were all bound for their adoptive or foster homes.

The humans were bound on a punch-drunk odyssey of rest-stop hand-offs, construction zones, odd smells and two-hour potty breaks. (Done the hard way -- one dog at a time.)

Friday night at 2:30 they got to my house, for a layover featuring a chicken dinner, laundry, hot showers, cold beer and clean sheets for the humans, entertaining walks in the pasture and some running time behind the new foster fence for the canine-Americans.

I met Rick, Jan, Nancy and the fourteen remaining canine passengers at the fire substation on Route 19 so I could pilot the Barking Bus* through the destruction zone that currently dominates the labyrinth lanes of the village -- not to mention our alternate access across the hayfield, courtesy of August's driveway washout.

Professor Chaos, grumbling, stayed up past his bedtime in order to feed this contingent of my White Hoodlum Friends.

Jan and Nancy are NESR personnel; I've known Jan, the founder of NESR, for over a decade, own one of her grandpuppies (though that is inadvertent, and a long story), and we've seen and met one another's dogs. Nancy and I worked together in Montana last month, where my training partner Douglas and I delighted in pushing her middle-school-teacher buttons; she owns a cousin of Moe's who is in love with Rosie's brother Audie.

The English shepherd world remains a small one, even if we are spread out over the continent.

Rick, the volunteer poobah of the soon-to-be vacant Operation New Beginnings Puppy Barn, got to meet some adult English shepherds who have never believed that people will most likely kill them in the morning. (Translation: Moe wouldn't get out of his lap.) And he got a happy reunion with former puppy-barn denizen Cole, my ONB foster #1, who rode shot-puke with me from Montana two weeks ago.

The second of those weeks has been spent preparing for two more fosters. I've made our pole barn dog-tight, installing two runs, a "living room," and an outdoor run for the special-needs dogs who will require plenty of R&R and training in order to become ready for forever homes. In other words, I ran to the hardware store every half hour for six days.

I ended up taking in Max, slave name Mack -- who is going to get an entirely new name soon -- and Dakota the half-Lab. More on them in later posts.

Here are the two dogs that Jan is fostering (the little one) or adopting (the big one):

Marty, the black and tan guy, was known as Fred at ONB, and his slave name is Barney. (Creepy, huh?) He was a "foundation" dog -- one that Linda Kapsa bought from a breeder who had not taken the precaution of a written puppy contract. He is a medium-sized ES male. He is my Rosie's uncle. He is a grandson of Jan's dog Toast. He is going home.

Keeper was a four or five month-old puppy at the seizure in December. He is done growing. He is one of hundreds of exhibits attesting to the importance of perinatal nutrition. No, it isn't inbreeding depression that stunted him. The pups born in custody -- the ones whose dams were fed during late pregnancy and nursing, and who were fed themselves as babies -- are normal-sized English shepherds.

Before breakfast we walked all the dogs while Rick broke down crates and freed up space for humans to stretch out. The dogs were all neutral towards my free-range chickens and nebby turkeys.

Nancy and Stan the Man, leaving kennel stress behind.

We settled my two new fosters into their transitional space, reloaded the dogs bound for points further east, fed the humans, and paid a visit to the world-famous Dale, fattest pullet in the laying flock.

Jan and Nancy can now attest that Dale remains robustly alive and grunting (she tries to cluck), if a bit behind of the rent (that's Dale's excuse for an egg that Jan is holding.)

At 11 in the morning I watched the Barking Bus drive up through my hayfield and away, conveying the rest of the hairy passengers to their new lives.

At last count, there were in the neighborhood of a dozen Operation New Beginnings dogs left to place into foster or adoptive homes -- about 95% are in homes or spoken for.


* Jan's coinage, and it delighted me in the same way the Whomping Willow does. It certainly felt very Hogwartsian, standing in the fog outside the fire house in the small hours to flag down this strange vehicle with its stranger contents.