2x golden

Dogs, dogs, dogs. They like their pack, which now seems to include my sister, the cat, me and of course them, Diamond and Shakespeare. In December, Diamond will be 5 years old, her little brother, Shakespeare 3 years old.

They recently had the pleasure of their black leather couch coming up for them to sit on at the house on Georgian Bay. They already had a couch there, but an old familiar perch is always welcome.



Diamond sitting on the "old" couch. Photo taken with Canon G1, image altered in Adobe Photoshop, watercolour filter used.

Clearly visible in the image is her trademark birthmark on her front left leg. When she was little, this was an almost perfect square on its point like a diamond. It now looks more like a bad map of Italy. Many people have come up and asked about this mark. Is it tar, did she get burned? All kinds of theories. I never thought to look until someone asked, but the black is the fur only. The skin underneath is the same as anywhere on her gigantic form.

One thing has not changed since she has grown up to be a big dog: when she lies down and settles comfortably, she emits a sound like a groan from a 3000 year old little man. Most unladylike but really her only faux pas, no pun intended.

This fall the township has been putting in water mains along our road. They have just about completed the work. One thing they have left behind are reshaped ditches, lots of shiny new culverts.

The "old" ditches in many places were not terribly deep and the dogs liked to trot along in them while being walked on leash. Now many sections of the ditch are very deep with very steep slopes. We will see what the winter does to them. The construction company will return in the spring to put down grass seed. There is a reason why I might want to descend into these ditches, plastic bag in hand, but I won't go into any further details, save for my fear of doing a half gainer while trying to slide down the steep ditch slope.



Canon G1 image altered in Adobe Photoshop, watercoloure filter applied.