Garbage Heaven, Pedigree Adoption fun, Macaskill glory, Lobster, and Dogs Asses

I cannot believe it. This weekend the HRM is allowing people around the HRM to put out stuff at curbside that they want people actually drive around, puruse, and if you think you want it - you can get out of your car and pick up - and take it for free! for thousands of would-be dumpster divers - it's going to be heaven on earth! There are going to be people going around on the edge of going up in spontaneous combustion they are going to be so excited and happy! I have a blog that I haven't blogged anything on in a really long time - basically because my house in now full and my 80 year old father would fall down and kill himself if I brought anything else in - it's called "Dogkisser's Sweet Dumpster finds" - and it's all about finding great stuff in other people's garbage. There is a whole movement of people in this world called "Freegans" - who believe that consumerism is something that is killing the world - just about everything can (and should) be reused and then repurposed a lot longer than we currently use it - so initiatives like this weekend are really important for the environment, and for society - and for people who like to get free stuff - it's veritably ORGASMIC! Yea!

I don't know how much stuff I'm going to actually go and pick up - but I think I'll go out and take some pictures of what people are putting out - that's what I like to do - and as well - it's a great reason to go walk the dogs - on my "great neighbourhood walks" page I talk about taking "garbage walks" - and that I used to like to "surf the top layer" of people's garbage - it's like an anthropology lesson. It's all good.
If you're up for doing something fun on Saturday - from 8am to 6pm - Halifax Dogs and their owners are invited for a "Tail Wagging Good Time" at the Pedigree Adoption Drive Art Display at Victoria Park - which is the park on the corner of South Park Sreet and Spring Garden Road.

To help the thousands of dogs admitted to shelters each year, the makers of Pedigree® have kicked-off the third annual PEDIGREE ADOPTION DRIVE ® to highlight the realities facing shelter dogs, raise funds to assist dogs living in shelters and celebrate those four-legged heroes who have found loving homes!

There will be a guy called "Chalkmaster Dave" spending eight hours creating a chalk art display that depicts a shelter dog’s journey towards adoption.

A recent survey commissioned by Pedigree® and conducted by Harris/Decima showed 24 per cent of Atlantic Canadians surveyed adopted their current dog from a shelter, the highest of any region in Canada and higher than the national average at 17 per cent.

Local dogs (and their owners) are encouraged to come out and support shelter dogs and enjoy an opportunity to socialize with fellow dog lovers.

This weekend it paid to be on Facebook - I belong to the Shore Club's Facebook page - and they sent out a message saying that were having a special on - $19.97 for their lobster dinner! What a deal! It's usually like $27.50 - so down to Hubbard's we went.
It was totally yummy - and if you've ever been to the Shore Club - the place is beautiful, homey, and the lobster is cooked to order and amazing - a true taste of Nova Scotia - so you should join their Facebook group - and you'll be kept up to date too!
I mean - wouldn't you want to eat this - AND save almost twenty bucks?
For the drive home from Hubbard's - for some reason my Dad decided to take the long drive home - which meant driving by the Swissair memorial - so I had him stop so I could take a couple pictures.
Unfortunately we arrived at the exact same moment as a family of 10 people who decided to plunk themselves down right in the middle of the memorial who decided to have a laugh fest - which was completely inappropriate to the memorial - which really affected the quality of the pictures I could take - but I took a couple peripheral shots of the site, such as they are -
To the left you can see Peggy's Cove off into the distance
And the bulk of the memorial is 2 large stones that have text written about the tragedy -



Now this is something that is SO neat - the Nova Scotia archives website has like a ka-jillion photos on it that are amazing - and they have a virtual online exhibit of Wallace R Macaskill photos -
and the neatest thing is that you can click on the photos and save the images in a really good file size - and actually print them out so that they look really good!
So you know all those really beautiful Macaskill tinted photos that your grandmother had on her walls and you were really pissed off because they went to some other family member? You can now have them on your walls too!
Thank you Nova Scotia Archives!
I actually recognize this photo - this little boy was in a photo that was on the wall in my living room growing up - but there wasn't a dog in it - but now I can have it on my wall - but it's got a dog in it - which is even better!
I was going back through some old postings on this blog - and a post I wrote back in September of 2007 jumped out of me - it's of a "dog's kiester" - isn't it cute? It's inspired me to buy a couple of new domain names as a matter of a fact - so now I own http://dogkiester.ca/ and http://dogkiester.ca/ - I don't know why, I just felt like it. I think it's a really cute name, actually - funny! People should really delve back into more of my archives and realize that I have really written a post on every topic imaginable. There really is nothing I haven't covered. Really, there isn't.

Cody the therapy dog is in the paper today!

Cody and his Dad Don are in the Chronicle Herald today - they have been regular contributors to Charlie loves Halifax pretty much since I started the website - Cody is the same age as Charlie - and I think that Cody has gotten in the newspaper almost more than Charlie!


I've put a couple links below of other times that Cody has been in the paper or on this blog - he's also involved in the "Therapeutic Paws of Canada's" Paws to Read program too - where Cody goes and lets children read to him, which is probably a pretty awesome way to spend an afternoon - if you like children, that is :)

This is today's article that was in the Chronicle Herald -


Don and Cody go sliding down a hill on a toboggan together - March 1, 2009

Cody at the Metro SPCA Dog Jog - June 21, 2009

Today's SPCA Yard Sale + Flowers

So I went over and had a cruise around the SPCA's yard sale and picked up a couple things, and saw some people I knew - this here is Nancy Northcott and Pat Lee - Nancy is the organizer for all the yard sales and the stall that is at the Harbourview Market - she is one of the hardest working volunteers the SPCA has ever had and has somehow been able to stay committed and above all the politics, which is amazing - and wonderful - she's raised a ton of money for the organization and all she cares about is the animals. She is great. She is one of the unsung heroes.
This is a long shot of the yard sale with all the people perusing the stuff - I even lost my wallet there - but luckily a kind soul found it and I was able to get it back - with all my stuff still inside it - I was lucky to have left it at a dog event, eh? Yea!
It's a little known fact, or maybe an annoying fact - that I like to take pictures of flowers.
I take pictures of flowers and post them here for everyone's enjoyment - or at least my enjoyment!
And right now in my backyard I have the unbelievable - never has happened before - coincidence of having some buttercups growing! Can you believe it? So today Buttercup was chewing some grass next to a couple of said buttercups - so I attempted to take a couple photos. For some reason she was feeling a bit cantankerous - she is a diva afterall, and some days she actually does not like having her photo taken - even though I have taken literally thousands of photos of her - but some days she says - "I don't FEEL like giving you that money shot today"
And I just have to patiently sit a way's away from her and let "it be", as it were. The buttercups will still be there tomorrow, and so will my Buttercup and I, I hope.

Some of these photos were taken with my I-phone - the ones that look all "fancified" are I-phone photos - I love my I-phone.
This is a shot of the sky taken with the I-phone
And this is a shot of those afore-mentioned buttercups.
These are some pretty flowers that grow in what I was trying to cultivate as a "pooping area" when I first landscaped my backyard, but for some reason the dogs never pooped exclusively in the very expensive area that I made for them - maybe they knew that these flowers were going to grow there and they didn't want to kill them.
We also had a fire in our chiminea today - we got rid of a lot of wood, which was good - although I think I'm wheezing a lot tonight, but it was worth it.

New Funny Cartoons

I love it when my friends send me these funny pictures with the captions - I especially loved this one - it is just TOO cute. Can't you just picture this little dog munching down on some flavoured lip gloss? I don't know why my guys haven't eaten some of my raspberry flavoured lip smackers - I suppose it's because the washer and dryer always gets to them first. haha!

It was a pretty good weekend

Me and the dogs had a pretty good weekend - today me and Charlie had a family reunion with a couple of his siblings at Point Pleasant Park which was a lot of fun - I have been very lucky to meet up with 9 out of 12 of Charlie's siblings over the years, because somehow Charlie's brothers and sisters have all looked exactly alike -
and because back yard breeders don't really care who they sell their puppies to, just about everyone in the litter has ended up at the SPCA - so I've been lucky to always been notified that a dog who looks exactly like Charlie is at the SPCA - and I've always gone over and met them, and in some cases adopted them. Today we had a great time - until Charlie hurt his foot, and I had to drive my car into the middle of Point Pleasant Park and pick him up! Poor Charlie. It sucks to be old - but I was very lucky to meet very friendly people - a family with a miniature schnauzer named Rudy - who are regulars at the park - were very kind to wait with Charlie while I went and got my car - so it was great. He's now resting, and groaning like only he can do - you can see a facebook photo album if you care to delve further into our morning.

Saturday I went over for supper to my friend Janet's house - this is one of her dog's Paxton - who as you might be able to guess is a little bit intense - but he's a beautiful dog.
And guess what we had? Yummy. One of my favourite foods in the world, if not my favourite food - I was definitely born in the exact right spot on the planet, that's for sure - if only I could go and catch lobster myself and owned a cow so that I could make my own butter, I would for sure be living in the middle of the garden of eden.

Sunday morning was spent shooting the shit over at the Harbourview Market in Dartmouth manning the booth for the 2nd Chance Charity charity that raises money for the SPCA - I spent quite a bit of my time reading up on a case that I'm going to be talking about this week about a development agreement over in Lawrencetown where they are trying to have pet care facilities defined and trying (as in HRM Bureaucrats) to also say that kennels are illegal - even though that land use bylaw has a definition for kennels - not every land use bylaw in the HRM has a definition of kennel in their bylaw - so the fact that Lawrencetown has one would say to me that they should in fact be legal in that area - sounds like some bullying is going on over there - but I'll get more into that later this week

I spent some of Sunday afternoon over in the Metro Animal Emergency Department - Buttercup had knocked one of little front teeth out - a 16 year old dog with gingivitis finally taking its toll, and I wanted to make sure it had completely fallen out and not broken off - because I know what tooth pain feels like, and I didn't want Buttercup to feel pain unnecessarily - so over we went. Luckily the tooth is completely gone and maybe now I can teach her to whistle and we've got some tramadol cut up in half for the next few days instead of just silly old metacam. She hadn't stopped eating so I knew she wasn't in too much pain, but I just wanted to make sure.

But while we were there I saw the owners of this dog in complete torture - for some reason there doesn't seem to be any meeting rooms at the emergency clinic where the vets can give bad news - and the vet delivered the horrible news to the family of this dog that this dog - who's name was Bear that this dog didn't have any hip joints left - they had obviously brought him over because he was in agony and couldn't walk - and upon examination the vet couldn't even pop the hip joint back into place - there was no socket there to pop it into - all she could do was to give the dog pain medication and send him home with the owners so that they could discuss things with their own vet - he needed 2 total hip replacements.

Even before she brought the dog out I absolutely knew she was going to be bringing out a bernese mountain dog. I knew it. When they brought him out I asked if I could take a picture - and I asked them where they got him - if he was from a pet store, or a breeder - and they said they got him from New Brunswick - which as we all know is - the 2nd puppy mill capital of Canada.

So tragic. They were obviously so bonded and in love with this dog - the whole family had come to the clinic - when I arrived they were all outside the clinic crying. Awful.


Here's a couple pictures from Saturday as I was outside in the backyard continuing on with my ongoing project of installing my vinyl wing slats on to my chain link fence - one slat at a time....
And here is Jackie peeing on stuff...



Now here is something that is seriously neat - at the bottom you will see an article that I got from the Chronicle Herald last week - I thought it was a great idea - a playground for adults, after I read it - it occurred to me that Muscle whatever at Venice Beach California is probably the same thing - but in the article this playground was targeted at people older than 60 years
And then today I was at Point Pleasant Park and here is this thing here that is an exercise thingee - that is for the public and you can exercise on! And I think to myself - wow, this is great! What a great start! I hope people use this - and people get to know about it, and thank the city for it - and tell them what a good idea it is - and ask for more at other locations around the city.
Because truly, I think this is a great idea.

There's no words you could add to make this video more poignant

My Cuteness & A new blog that's going to be SO CUTE!!!!

I am 3/4 of the way through Buttercup's haircut. I am not as resilient as professional groomers are - so I can only handle about 15 minutes of Buttercup being cantankerous with the clippers at a time, so I spread the misery out over several sessions - I still have to give her a bath and then finish her back legs, her pooping area, and clean up the body area before she's completely groomed - but she is looking very cute in the facial area. Sometimes I think that when I clip her she looks even cuter than what groomers do because I actually clip her the way I want her to look. Damn, she's looking cute now.
Here's a couple shots of Jackie tonight - you can really tell in these pictures that he can't see - they were taken right at sunset, so I don't have any lights on in the living room yet, and his eyes are all bugged out trying to figure out the shadows in the room - he's sitting down right next to me - and he's trying to listen to see what's going on - he had just gotten out of his bed underneath my desk.
It is hard to watch when someone you love completely loses some faculty that has been fading for a long time - and it finally goes - at least it waited until he was 16 years old - that's pretty good considering how his life has gone for him.


On very happy news - a lot of us locally know Lisa and her dogs Delta, Brosa and Oscar - they have started posting regularly to a blog that they have! I have posted about Lisa and her dogs regularly on this blog - and I've told Lisa over and over that she should start her own blog because her dogs are completely photogenic and she's always having great adventures - and she regularly fosters for Boxer Rescue Atlantic - so she's always taking in regular new dogs that add humungous hi-jinx to her life - so I am super happy that she's now going to (hopefully) be letting us into her world a little bit. I can't wait to add her blog to my regular surfing. Thanks Lisa!! The blog is at http://doglove555.blogspot.com/