Category Archives: Llife with Lloyd

Saint Bernards in the mist

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If you listen to this video carefully with headphones on, you can actually hear the happy/terrifying sound of 42 Saint Bernards panting and drooling in unison.  You can hear the steady slap of drool on the leaves from 40 slobbery mouths, it’s rather soothing, like a rainforest.  This is from a breeder in BC, and these dogs are beautiful.  Possibly not as beautiful as Lloyd, but I am biased.  Several things come to mind while watching this.  First, breeding Saint Bernards must be a losing proposition since every available dollar would by necessity be going towards buying dog food for this herd.  Wow.  Secondly, remind me to NEVER take a walk through those woods without my rubber boots on.  🙂

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgIz1Add98s

While living with even one St Bernard has at times tested the limits of my love for dogs, this is simply awe-inspiring.  42 Saint Bernards.  I can barely keep Lloyd this clean and he lives indoors.  Amazing.

Seeing Eye Dog for another dog

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Until I saw this story about a blind Great Dane with her seeing eye dog buddy, I had never heard of this phenomenon before.

I love this idea, actually.  It could make things a LOT easier as Harvey’s eyesight gets worse.  I can totally see us tying Harvey to Lloyd to act as his Slobbering Eye Dog.  Sure, Harvey might end up going places he would rather not go, at speeds that his legs don’t actually travel at, with very little regard for Harvey’s actual physical well-being, but at least we can be sure that he didn’t wander off alone.  I’m actually starting to envision the ever present danger of signs, lamp posts, trees, small children (who am I kidding, that clothesline would take down most adults).  Harvey would probably be flapping along like a wet plastic grocery bag behind Lloyd, likely in the direction of the closest mud hole.

On second thought, maybe that’s not really such a good idea?

PS, for anyone concerned, Harvey’s eyesight is slipping a bit, but he was still able to chase a bunny out of our yard at 1pm the other night, weaving through the play structure with pretty good tracking, and didn’t knock himself out cold, so I’m thinking that we won’t need Lloyd to step it up for a bit.

Vallentyne Boys Septic Hilarity

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I love the way that life shapes our kids.  Forget all the parenting crap you ever read, all of the tactics and approaches you try.  In the end, the biggest influence on your kids will be their lives and experiences.  Sure you can hope that the experiences are positive, but even if they aren’t, they can prove to be useful in learning.  A good example would be the fact that we have had a poop composter in our backyard for a couple of years now, the guys are very used to that.  In addition to that, some close friends recently replaced their septic system, so needless to say they have lots of septic-related experience recently.  Sure, not really experience that would really make or break their success maybe, but who knows, it might come in handy someday.

For instance, the other day there was a big windstorm at our place, and it happened to be the night before our garbage pickup day.  As the boys and I were walking to the bus in the morning there was a garbage can lid laying on the grass near the edge of the road at the park next to us, blown off somebody’s garbage can.  Cael noticed it and said “Geez, I never noticed the septic system there before?”  I chuckled, and then Quinn jumped right in with all of the swagger and authority of an older brother and scoffing he said “No Cael, it’s a poop hole.”  I loved the fact that my two kids immediately and unquestioningly believed that this garbage can lid could be either of those two things, and in fact they have had direct experience with both things recently, and both are equally valid possibilities in their world.  It also leads me to take great heart in the fact that I am completely messing with their realities, and that years from now they will both reflect back and say to each other “What the heck was with Dad and those poop holes?  Man, that was messed up.

Yep, happy to be the guy doing this to my kids.

Bassett Hounds

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There are a few times when owning two dogs is less than fun.  Like this morning when somebody puked on the carpet, and there’s just no other place to puke than carpet, despite all of the tile and hardwood to choose from.  Or when I am taking dogs outside to pee for the millionth time in the pouring rain.  Or when I leave for work and I hear the sighs of two dogs as I close the door.  However, that quickly goes away when I see something like this:  Bassett Hounds Running

Good lord, I can’t handle the cute.  One thing is for certain, and that is Basset Hounds are not “Built For Speed”.  You can actually see the leg skin moving….  This guy is concentrating as hard as he can on just not tripping on his ears.  His lips must obscure his vision from time to time.

I just know that Lloyd has this kind of picture in him, he has almost as much loose skin as these clowns, and of course he can actually run, unlike these guys.  I need to get a picture of Lloyd running, or figure out how to take one.  My camera-fu isn’t up to the task.

Anyway, there you go.  You can’t tell me these pictures don’t make you willing to forgive quite a bit of carpet puke, and lots of trips to the backyard.  I know it worked on me.

Thanks Boing Boing