This Blog is About to Disappear.

Sorry. I have not the technical knowhow to even understand the directions for migrating my blog to bogger's new system. In fact I don't even know what will happen to my files if I choose not to migrate.

So, in weeks or months or days, perhaps if you want to find me blogging, try googling my name and see what comes up.

Thanks for your following over the past little while.

Untrained dogs

No stranger to yelling matches in dog parks with people with untrained dogs that impinge upon my (read, Ruby's) space, this morning's episode produced at least the entertainment of hearing the single stupidest thing I've heard about dog behaviour and training -- see aren't I always looking for the positive? :)

So, Ruby is at heel, beautifully I might add, as we approach the open meadow where we play ball and is so because we're running late so there are lots of dogs about and I'm utterly disinterested in ever letting Ruby be part of the dog-park pack syndrome. (She gets tons of dog play with dogs we know and like, not that it's a requirement that dogs get to play with other dogs -- damn, my brother the dog trainer is rubbing off on me). I see two nearby great danes running, not in a playful way, toward us so I stop, which as she's trained to do makes Ruby sit down at heel.

The danes keep coming and I get in between one of them and Ruby but the other gets her, flips her over and then the two are on her, growling nastily and snapping at her (and biting her at least once). I realize my fist is clenched and I'm about to punch the larger of the danes in the head when the owner steps in, and doesn't control the danes, but chases one away and hauls the second off by the collar, ignoring, I noted, his only real tool, a pinch collar. In the shouting (mine) match that ensues I was told the "just a little bit of dog interaction in an off leash park" was Ruby's fault 'cause she acted submissively (she's not at all submission btw, although is totally without aggression) by sitting down when the danes ran toward her.

It got highly entertaining though when I told the guy to let the dane he was holding go and he did and then asked him to recall the dog. Of course he couldn't, didn't even try, and I kept repeating, coldly, "call your dog back and make him sit next to you" no matter what he said to me. HA! It made him so mad. It helped that Ruby did her part by sitting next to me where I'd asked her to stay. I apparently used swear words and was told not to curse (HA!) -- free of irony that he'd called me an asshole; I agreed saying I AM an asshole when it comes to confronting people who don't train their dogs -- so Ruby and I parted with the words, "Fucking dick wad."

At least I knew I was safe 'cause the guy couldn't sick his dogs (all combined 300 pounds of 'em) on me given they don't listen to him :)

This is not the first episode with theses danes (which are beautiful, btw) and next time, although it'll get me bitten almost certainly, I'll harness my anger so I'm putting my steel toed hiking boots to both of them if they so much as sniff Ruby's ass.

Peter Principle Invades GTA Chapter of Large Charity

Rather than talk about that headline, here are some dog photos instead. And yah, yah, I was throwing the ball AND taking the shots and thus the ass shots of the dog (versus some nice head on shots of Ruby's incredible ability to nab that ball on a bounce or to scoop it off the ground as it rolls and she flies past.

PS -- For those in need, the Peter Principle indicates the situation where an incompetent boob rises to the top of an organization as others promote or encourage the promotion to move the boob out, culminating in the major irony of said boob becoming THE boss.

Fire

Happened to have my camera in the car last weekend when downtown's sun filled sky was interrupted by a huge plume of black smoke. My reporter days behind me I had lunch first and then went to investigate.

Mexico -- some pics

Been home nearly a month.

Sorry for the lack of blogs. I do plan to change the frequency to just short of often from the sweet nearly nothing that I've adopted over the past year. For those (hello MS) worried about my well being due to my lack of blogs, I'm well; just too damn easy to play PS3 and slip into mindless slothful mode than blog.

Ruby's first snow (she was just three months old)

Meant to post this for Ruby's birthday wish but formatting problems played havoc... Hope it works now.

Happy Birthday, Ruby!

Ruby turned two years of age today. We celebrated as we do every morning with me in more layers of clothing than an onion has and her refusing to get cold.

And to think it seems like just yesterday I had a life before I had a dog :)

[Photo taken with my BlackBerry -- the touch screen version being the worst bit of technology I've ever owned..]

Happy 2010

Merry Christmas

Dang, I suck with photoshop!

That aside, the best of the season from me, Who Who is Now Landed and Ruby the Portuguese Snow Dog.

Judoka

A friend, and a sensei, was visiting with his wife from the southern part of the province for a Judo tournament at the university. He had three judoka with him competing. I always thought judo was a bunch of grappling with hands full of robe, but watching more closely today to try to anticipate throws in order to capture them with the camera, it became clear that judo is not simply technical attempts to kick the butt of your opponent's centre of balance, but profoundly beautiful in that technicality and its bow (forgive the term here) to strict formality and manners.

more Judoka

more Remembrance Day 2009

Remembrance Day 2009

In the photos here, included is a shot of double Memorial Cross recipients -- Kitty Elliot who lost her husband, brother and cousin in WWII, and Rebeka Bulger who lost her husband to the violence in Afghanistan in July. Insanity 65 years ago, insanity four months ago. Bulger's brothers looked so much alike and surely like their fallen sibling and I looked into the face of the 87 year old woman and tried to see the face of her brother so long gone.

Included too, a shot of an old vet fallen from his chair, later quietly carried from the hall he appeared okay, perhaps simply exhausted from a march on legs too distant from their last formal drill.

I wound up in the press pool taking photographs this morning so I felt a bit "distant" from the ceremony, somehow -- nothing more cynical than a reporter, except perhaps the camera guys.

The image of the young boy saluting so earnestly was the trigger for my tears today, however. Children. In uniforms. But as a friend said looking at the enlisted men and women today, they are all children, really....

Lest we Forget

11h 11/11/2009 Edmonton

Within days of arriving in New Zealand in the mid '80s, I hitched a ride with a man who stopped to offer a ride, he said, because I looked like a Scot, with my beard and plaid tam upon my head. Himself a Scot transplanted to New Zealand some decades earlier his face noticeably went to remembrance, when he learned I was Canadian.

As he drove he told me of being a kid during the second world war, the rationing, the fear, the doing without. Then surely I disappeared in the car and he held out the hand not on the wheel and stared at his palm as if on its horizontal plane it held something and he told of an apple, red and travel weary in consistency, but an apple still. An apple given him at school, to all the kids at school, a gift from the orchards of Canada.

"Thank you," he said, tears in his eyes.

We drove in silence until coming down a long steep hill a small village came into view and he asked if he might buy me a beer. Again, "thanks," as we downed the beer in a quick couple of pulls, and back to the car to continue on our way.

Lest we forget.

Happy Halloween

A giant pumpkin balloon.

Dog Park Balloons

Turns out one of the city's largest dog parks is the launch site of hot air balloons.

Dress Rehersal

Took He Who Is Now Landed to MEC today to buy him insulated pull over pants and gloves for the winter.

Edmonton has been having a remarkably warm fall; some days 15 or more degrees above average. My memory going back to my days in Brandon and Red Deer I picked up a few goodies of my own so as to avoid freezing my ass on the long dog walks in the frozen days to (soon) come.