[personal log]

[effex]

* My sister and I are going to Washington DC next month! Apparently there is this thing called a 'vacation' (and places that are not Texas!), we are going to try it out (this is actually true for my sister - she's 19 and hasn't had a trip that didn't end in a horse show since she was 10). We will hit up the Library of Congress! And the Mall! Get lost in the Smithsonian! Take ridiculous pictures outside the White House! Meet fabulous people! Other things!

And I'll be getting first hand references for the Princess Project (totally not why I pushed for DC. Totally), I am so excited.

* Speaking of the Library of Congress, did you hear that they've acquired the entirety of the Twitter archive?

* Speaking of fabulous people, authors Sarah Rees Brennen and Holly Black are stopping in Dallas (for some unfathomable reason) during their US tour, ALSO next month! Shortly after I get back from DC, even. I have no idea where they'll be, seeing as how Dallas doesn't have a single indie bookstore to its name, but wherever it is I will be there.

* There is a volcano going off in Iceland (photos!) - are all you northern European types doing okay?

* A coworker brought in one of his dogs yesterday - a sweet yellow Lab who weighed in at about 96lbs. Which is admittedly large for a Lab! But everyone was all 'oh, he's so big' and 'oh, he's the size of a pony' and 'oh, that dog is huge' - all of which apparently pushes a great big Annoy button I didn't know I had.

You know what are big dogs? English Mastiffs (also all the other breeds of Mastiff). St. Bernards. Great Danes. Irish Wolfhounds (also Borzois. I <3 Borzois). Hell, even Rottweiler's weigh more than that (my parent's old Rotti/Heeler cross was 110lbs). 96lbs is big compared to, idk, a Jack Russell, but it's a pretty normal weight.

[sheepish] This is probably the stupidest rant I've gone on - I know not everyone grew up on a farm or has a veterinarian for a mother or has been otherwise exposed to large breed dogs (or has ponies available to compare said large breed dogs too), but still.


* I know I just linked him yesterday, but y'all should check out Ta-Nehisi Coates' Honoring CHM: One Drop and the discussion in the comments (TNC's blog is the only mainstream blog I'll ever say that for).

Comments

[sinatra]

My mom has a Rottweiler/black lab/German Shepherd/?? mix who is around that weight, and yeah...no. Granted he's not that much smaller than her miniature horse, but still - not that big! One of my professors has this dog who is some sort of mix that ended up with a husky-shaped body the size of a mastiff, and my old boss had a Pyrenean Mountain Dog. Now THOSE are big dogs!

Also, hooray for vacations!

[effex]

Ahaha, minis! Yes! My mom also has miniature horses (<3) and we've had several dogs who were taller then (some of) them. And I totally forgot to include the Pyrenees, great big drool monsters that they are.

A husky shaped dog the size of a mastiff sounds amazing.

Vacations!

[zanzando]

Aah, people and their concept of "big dogs". Last big dog I saw was Scotch. He's a Golden Retriever/Great Dane mix, and when he's standing normally and not looking up, his head comes even with my waist. When I'm sitting, his head is pretty much on the same height as mine.
And I'm 5'9", so it's not like I'm short.

He weighs about 150 lbs, and I'd actually call him thin. *throws up hands*

[effex]

[nodnod] The last litter of puppies my parents fostered (a bunch of Aussie/Spaniel puppies, except the one we kept who was Aussie/Lab. That litter had an epic backstory) had regular playdates with an English Mastiff puppy named Iris. Who just. Kept growing.

Right now my parent's dogpack is made up of 'smaller' dogs, which means they range in size from a miniature Aussie (20lbs) to an English Bulldog (75lbs).

Scotch sounds like a fun dog - I haven't seen a lot of Great Dane mixes.

[zanzando]

He is, and he's so well behaved. You can walk past him with a piece of meat in your hand, and he'll not even look at it (much).

That litter does indeed sound ... interesting.

I know that when I was really small, we had roughly a dozen dogs for hunting. Mostly German Spaniels (Wachtelhunde = quail dogs), German Pointers, and a dachshund or two for hunting badgers and foxes.
Now we just have the one dachshund. :)
One of the Spaniels was pretty famous in our town, because in her lifetime, she:
- jumped a 2 meter fence to get to the house during a thunderstorm
- saved my grandpa's life by distracting a boar who surprised him in the woods
- saved my mom's life by attacking a European viper (the most poisonous snake around) that was sliding up to her. Cora got bit herself, but my grandfather immediately raced to a doctor and bullied him into giving her the anti-venom intended for humans. :)
She was before my time though. The one Spaniel I still got to know what a black shaggy monster named Terry, who got a kick out of chasing 3-year-old me around.

You know this means I'm going to tell you ALL ABOUT IT

[effex]

:D

So the story starts with an albino Australian Shepard, blind and deaf (*really* blind and deaf - she never developed eyes and her ears never opened), named Teddy Stevie*. She was a stray, running with a Cocker Spaniel who was obviously taking hella good care of her.

She was picked up off the side of the road and brought to one of the rescue groups my Mom's clinic worked with, who had her checked up + vaccinated and placed her with a foster family (the one with the mastiff puppy).

Several people, including my mom, handled her processing and every single one of them missed the fact that she was pregnant - right up to the point where her foster family came home to find her having puppies on their leather couch.

She ended up having seven puppies - five boys and two girls - and her foster family just couldn't deal with their two dogs + the mastiff puppy + Stevie + seven newborns, so Mom ended up taking them in (she does this a lot).

Most of the puppies were two tone - white/red or white/gray - but one was a solid dark. And as they grew it became obvious that the dark one was *really* different - they had long wavy coats, he was short haired. They looked like Cockers, he looked Lab. They stopped growing at 40ish lbs, he went to 65, etc. Multiple fathers, hurray!

Most of the puppies got adopted out, but my grandparents kept one of the Cocker mixes, Einstein (a pretty blue merle and white) and my parents kept the Lab mix, Conner (a really dark self blue merle - he's basically a small, painted Lab).

And I don't have any photos. Dammit.

* or Gracie. My Dad and I are arguing about it. We're both wrong!

[effex]

BUT WAIT.

My father is ridiculously indulgent and also working from home today.

Conner:


EDIT, I dug up one of 'Steiner (he's been shaved for the summer here, his natural coat is much longer):



I don't talk about the animals much on my journal because if I did I would do it all the time.

[zanzando]

Wow, they're both so pretty, but especially Conner! That ended up being a really cool and interesting mix.

(But holy shit 7 puppies!)

This is Enno (von Löhenstein, yeah, he's pure-bred but definitely the wonkiest-looking out of his litter):


He'll be 13 in June.


He likes to sleep.




I can understand the impulse. If I had the time, I'd do picture posts all the time. Trees! Animals! The sea! The sky! Etc. ^^

[effex]

omg wirehair dachshund! With the wonky coat and little mustache <3

That first photo is pretty amazing, what with the almost perfect arc.

[zanzando]

Lol yeah, he totally has a fauxhawk that we sometimes comb against the grain. His colour is wild boar, which I think is the most common for wirehair dackel in Germany.
He's plagued by a stubborn streak a mile wide, a deep desire to procreate with cats (esp. tomcats) and lots of allergies. We have to cook all his food for him because he can't handle anything involving preservatives. *pets Enno*

[forthwritten]

Hah, no, labs are definitely medium to medium-large to me, but then again, I worked in a boarding kennel. Leading around two Great Danes, both of which were around chest height (I'm quite short) effectively recalibrated my assessment of what's big or not.

My parents have small dogs (a Shetland sheepdog and a Cavalier) and it still surprises me how little they are.