The dog beach!

Found this on YouTube... It's a video of our (my and the pack's) favorite beach. No, sadly no dogs in the video...

B&W Sunday -- In Tandem

Sam and Benny explore the beach in tandem.

Thanks to Nola and Sugar for hosting the B&W Sunday hop! Best gathering of pet bloggers e-VUH.

Quiet (#atozchallenge)

I grew up in quiet. An only child, a large (too large, maybe) house, a father who worked a lot, a mother who believed in Montessori. I learned to read early. I spent a lot of time immersed in counterfactual worlds. Quiet is where I thrive. Quiet is where I feel at home.

But now that I have seven dogs, quiet is naught but chimera. Vain fantasy glimpsed as a shadow through mist.

Or fog. Dense fog.

Duncan & his favorite toy: any cardboard box.

There's the ripping sound of Duncan destroying a cardboard box or an old bedsheet. There's disputes about who gets to use which mat and when. There's barking, howling at sirens, roughhousing. There's nails scraping on the floor as they bolt out into the yard to chase a hapless iguana. And when none of that is happening, there's the clink of collar tags as they follow me around the house (yes, even to the bathroom).

Don't get me wrong. I love my dogs and therefore I love it, all of it. I love the company, I love the challenge of understanding their behavior and of getting them to understand what I want from them. I love to watch them interact with each other. I love to interact with them.

I love it so much, in fact, that I forget
the beauty of quiet.

And then one day I'll be at the beach with them and they all run off chasing after--well, whatever they find to chase, and I'm suddenly all alone with the wind and the ocean and the sun. And I feel recharged.

I need to remember.

I need to remind myself to get some quiet. Just a little. It makes me a better person--and my dogs are the first to benefit from that.

What do you give up for the ones you love? Have you found a way to recover it, even in bits and pieces?

~ * ~

Thanks for the visit, and a special hug of gratitude to everyone that's been coming back post after post to join the conversation. Every time you share a thought or an experience, an abandoned senior dog somewhere finds a loving home :)

Happy (Easter) A-to-Z-ing!

Black & White Sunday -- Duncan in Water

No, those aren't fangs. He doesn't fly, either, though he thinks he does. (He thinks he has fangs, too.)

You must be fed up of water- or beach-related pics on this blog. I do apologize for the lack of image variety... It's just that, first, that's where we spend most of our time, and (kind of an obvious) second, that's where I snap most of our photos. I do hereby solemnly promise to jazz it up (i.e., no water) next week. Solemnly.

Thanks to Nola Dachshund and Sugar: The Golden Retriever for hosting the Black & White Sunday hop. And do come back next week for my last B&W post--last until May, at least. With two blogs in the A-to-Z challenge and fiction writing deadlines I can't seem to keep up with, I'll need those Sundays off. But I hope you'll stop by for the April posts--lots of dog joy planned for those, too :) And this Tuesday I'll be posting an A-to-Z tips & tricks for those of you awesome pet bloggers joining the April challenge. 

(P.S. - If you're joining the challenge, let me know in the comments and I'll add you to my to-visit-daily blogs.)

Black & White Sunday: The Chase

Just another day at the beach...

Believe it or not, no dogs were harmed in the making of these photographs.

Thanks to Nola Dachshund and Sugar: The Golden Retriever for hosting the Black & White Sunday hop. Take a stroll through the other posts; some amazing photos, and all-around great bloggers. That's just how we animal lovers roll ;)

Black & White Sunday

This has been a serendipitous Sunday. One of these serendipities is finding Black & White Sunday, via... Well, I guess I took the long way, but the hop is hosted by Sugar the Golden Retriever and Nola Dachshund, and it'll be a regular feature in Life In Dogs.

Starting today. Meet Sam.

Sam at St. Joris, January 2014
Hard to believe this 22-kilo dog was not so long ago a tiny puppy that fit in my hand.

Thanks for the visit, and be sure to stop by the other awesome B&W bloggers. Beautiful photos, wonderful blogs.