This is my life: Creating videos, living with 2 border collies, living with Collette, watching too many movies, not reading enough books, and constantly baffled by how they get the caramel in the Caramilk bar
OK kids, slip on your elbow length leather driving gloves, your goggles and your bonnet and jump into the back of VJ's Way Back Machine
Don't worry, it will be a short trip, we won't burn much gas and we can avoid the toll roads
Feb 8, 2013 Toronto was hammered by a significant snow storm. People freaked out, traffic snarled and politicians whined "we need more money who would know it would snow in Ontario in winter!"
My reaction is different, I have a border collie. I grabbed a toy, strapped on my GoPro and took out Terra to play in the snow
A year has passed and a lot has happened: We live in a new house, I have a new job and Collette works in a new school. But guess what ... winter in Canada doesn't change all that much
Feb 5 2014 Toronto was hammered by a significant snow storm. People freaked out, traffic snarled and politicians whined "we need more money who would know it would snow in Ontario in winter!"
My reaction is different, I have a border collie. I grabbed a toy, strapped on my GoPro and took out Terra to play in the snow ....
An escape from the stress and routine of our daily lives. Here in Canada there is a long standing tradition of taking advantage of the wilderness that often lays close to our door, offering us some sense of tranquility and even peace, shedding our drudgery for sunlight and water and the wind in the evergreens.
Yeh, life is hard, especially for Miss Terra, so much stress that is derived from so many decisions that need to be made, like: Which bed should I take a nap on, or which stuffie needs to be tossed around the house and which ball (the orange and blue one or the blue and orange one) should I drop in somebody's life .. Damn, the pressure. A girl needs to escape it and get up to Springhaven Lodge on the Georgian Bay and let the wind flow through her fur and the water splash across her whiskers
Miss Terra is, of course, from a very high and rarified society. Much like the blue bloods (or more accurately wannabe blue bloods) who lounge in the million dollar mansions that command the islands which dot the Bay, this border collie concerns herself with the most erudite of social activities
Such as, Olympic javelin:
Or a rousing game of tennis:
A highly charged soccer match:
The new hybrid sport of soccer and water polo called Water Polo or in the vernacular: I'm gonna drown this soccer ball
And one must always make time for a rousing game of: Find the amphibian
One, of course, can not over concern oneself with all this physical activity, that would simply be boorish. One must take some time to be still and enjoy all of nature's bounty ...
... or one could simply obsess over one's frisbee, border collie style
And if you have concluded that the sole purpose of this post was to post more pics and videos of Terra playing up north .. well .. the proper blue blood response to that would have to be ... duh
Yee-haw and howdy neighbours and welcome to another episode of Outdoor Life's latest attempt to make a TV show with absolutely no budget ... Let's Go Froggin!
This week we is gonna profile a champion frogger from south of the border .. well not the Mexican border, nor even the Mason Dixon Line .. but Nares Inlet is south of the 60th Parallel so it's still South, pardners, yee haw!
(Yes this entire post will continue in this vein so you are fair warned)
This here little lady is called Terra and she is a self taught frogger.
Legend has it that Miss Terra was out explorin the wild swamps of Springhaven Lodge when she put her paw down on a hank of grass and out pops a frog! So excited was this little lady that she instantly knew that froggin was the sport for her!
With a combination of resolve, fast paws and natural talent .. well, ok, maybe not so much talent but resolve and fast paws, this rookie dove in to the ancient art of froggin, that bein, scarin you up some little green amphibious type varmits. We call it froggin, but his here border collie may call it herding frogs
Although a rookie, our little lady came well prepared; when she was havin a hard time rustlin up them pesky frogs, she brought in her own personal trainers and her own personal imported frogs. That's a city frogger fer ya, brung her own darn entourage ... not that it seemed to help her much
Although new to the sport of froggin, Terra did demonstrate some mighty slick techniques. She was quite fond of the "SOS" technique, which involved tapping her paws staccato-like hoping to draw out the critters.
When that didn't work, she resorted to the Submarine technique, using her face periscope-like to try to find her prey
I can't say that she were real successful but you gotta give her the A for effort. Mebbe herdin frogs is different from catchin frogs; I don't really know how them foreigners do things.
Here for your viewin pleasure is an expert from what I'm sure will be an award winning episode of Let's Go Froggin, so enjoy, have fun and go froggin!
Readers in central Canada and the eastern US with relate to this today:
"Snowmagheddon!"
"Storm of the century!"
"Stay inside!"
"WORST WINTER STORM EVER!"
Indeed, my area's first real winter storm in a couple of years. More snow falling in one day than most of last winter .. but last winter we barely got 30 cms of snow altogether.
Anyway, the media never wastes an opportunity to drum up some hysteria.
Some of us expect this sort of thing in winter. And others even welcome it
Case in point, the following video
(Most of this was shot with my GoPro, I decided to play with the settings, let's call it an experiment and leave it at that)
It may not seem like it, but there is usually a reason for me to post something here. Stop laughing, mullet head, I'm being serious.
And I never said it had to be a good reason, or even interesting. Heaven forbid.
There is usually a reason I make a video; sometimes to tell a story, sometimes to record a memory, sometimes illustrate a piece a music that inspired me.
Sometimes I don't need a reason. Sometimes all I need is a sunny late summer day, a rocky beach in Kingston Ontario and Miss Terra, hunting driftwood.
I could have titled this post Life's A Bitch .. Two of Them .. but that would have been tacky and potentially offensive and when would I ever want to offend anyone *cough cough*
This week has been extremely spring like here in southern Ontario and it also happened to be Collette's spring break. So being us, when we saw the sun shining and the temps going into the double digits we packed up the girls and off to the beach we went
Hayley looked forward to the day so that she could work on her tan Terra, however, decided the day was more suited to hunting sticks Hunting sticks is not a simple endeavour. Sticks are crafty quarry. Devious you could say. You never know where they could be hiding. Sometimes they go turtle on you and dig themselves into the sand Some times the wild stick could be hiding behind hills. Luckily, sticks cannot resist the super secret border collie inducement cry and can be "hollared" out of the hollows. Roughly translated into human speech, the cry means "Hey stick, get your ass over here so I can chew on you" Hayley doesn't cry for sticks. She would much rather appeal for cookies. And who could resist such an appeal?
Back to the stick hunting. These Toronto Beaches sticks are particularly clever. When being hunted by puppy border collies, their last resort is to flee into Lake Ontario. This was especially effective. When we first took Terra to the beach last summer, she was very eager to swim. An entire winter has passed and now she finds herself having to relearn this skill. At first, she tried doing some kind of funky border collie dance to entice the stick out of the water ..
But the stick was impervious to this dance so Terra knew there was only one thing to do: Go swimming Wrangling a stick out of the lake is no easy task. They are wily and agile and perhaps this particular stick came from special underwater trees cultivated by a race of sentient dolphins ... No, I haven't been smoking anything, I'm just tired. At any rate, it was no small feat for Terra to grasp her prey but she had help, with Hayley coaching on the side .. So even though the waves looked pretty daunting to her, Terra is not easily put off her prey. She's never seen a sheep. For all she knows, this is thing she's supposed to herd
Hayley is not overly impressed. Here she is asking "If she eats the stick, does that mean I get her cookie? So wrangling sticks is a solo activity. But there is one critter that requires two border collies to herd. A critter so baffling and strange it requires all the brain power to two herders to bring successfully home. Yup, it takes two border collies to safely bring home a "dad" Below is a little video with some of our high lights of our day at the beach
The good news is, Terra is a perfectly healthy border collie pup .. the bad news is, Terra is a perfectly healthy border collie pup.
Terra is making great progress; her house training is pretty solid, we have had no poops in the house since the second day, really, and only a couple of piddle accidents. She has learned to go into the hallway and look at the door, and when we let her out, she goes right down the stairs and "does her business" She doesn't bark as a warning, but neither does Hayley. Miss Hayley just comes up to you gives you a mild version of the border collie eye then you ask "Do you want to go ..." and she flies to the back door before you can finish the sentence.
On her own, Terra has been immediately peeing when she gets down the stairs. Hayley went out with her once and did a sniff around first, and Terra totally emulated that behaviour. Terra simply loves Hayley but so far the old girl is remaining aloof; she will occasionally give a little snarled lip display but has not made any contact. We feel this is a kind of karma; when we got Hayley as a rambunctious pup, she terrorized our cat Gypsy. Now the karma is on the other paw.
Mostly, Miss Hayley is being extremely aloof to the puppy, as you will see in the little video at the bottom of this post.
As I stated, Terra is a perfectly healthy border collie puppy .... which means there are times her little brains leave her head, and she gets possessed by the Puppy Demon from Hell; her body is clearly being controlled by a Red Bull infused 12 year old gamer in the sky. We call these times Terra Terrors and it is just best to keep your feet off the floor and keep anything other than designated toys, away from those little jaws. By anything, I mean tissues, books, shoes, slippers, bags of dog food (with dog food still in it), shopping bags, picture frames, water bowls, socks, underwear ... Hmm, if border collies are so smart and since Terra seems fascinated with the dirty laundry, maybe we should show her where the washing machine is ...
In light of this, we have found a new kind of Paradise, a blissful, enlightened state of Existence that transports us to Nirvana. We call this state of being ... Nap time.
Like most puppies, Terra will just suddenly crash, right out of a Terra Terror, as if a switch has been flipped, and the power suddenly goes off. Oh where oh where is this switch and can I operate it by remote control?
Collette and I have become like parents of human babies; we are beginning to schedule activities around Terra's nap times. Besides here little power naps, she tends to take a long nap, two or three hours, around noon. When she goes for this nap, or goes for her night time sleep, she trundles herself off the bedroom, all by herself. She has a bed in there but generally she ends up passing out on whatever laundry I have laying about on the floor. She has done this almost since the beginning; everyone always remarks, from Gigs to Miss Hayley to Terra, that we have some strange voodoo that encourages our dogs to "go to bed" I can't really explain it, but we certainly always seem to get animals who just love to go to bed.
Terra's sleeping habits brings to mind the many things she has in common with Miss Hayley, things that we had assumed were unique to the old girl. They both love to sleep with their heads jammed into things, like between a couch cushion and the back of the couch, or with their heads hanging off the edge. They are both sound sensitive; Hayley to this day is not happy with thunder or fireworks but has it mostly under control. Terra is very sound sensitive, when outside, people speaking down the street will send her scurrying up the stairs to the front door. We are not letting her in at these times, and if the noise has stopped her from "doing her business" we insist that she remain out there till the job is done.
Terra is doing very well in the dog park. If dogs come running up and barking at her, she will seek shelter between the legs of a human. Once the dog calms down she will come out and greet him, so we are happy with that. Yesterday at the park a large Husky was very interested in little Terra. At one point he tried to grab her by the scruff as if to pick her up and I was very surprised to see my eight week old puppy turn and give him a little nip to back him off. So I would say her socialization is coming along.
American gov't issues terrorist alerts, by some colour code I still can't understand. But be on the look out for the the T-alert ... for the Terra Terrors.
Sometimes I am a video editor who sleeps in the hull of an old U-Matic deck and subsists on lightly buttered B-rolls
Sometimes I am a writer and poet who would rather think it than write it
Mostly I am a barely reformed hippie, co-owner of a border collie and lucky enough to have lived for over twenty years with someone who has a good enough sense of humour to know that I think I have one too
