Nizhoni Pet Photography Blog

These two crack me up.  I could seriously watch them for hours.  Jack is a Chihuaha/Dachshund mix that was being fostered by a friend of mine.  We have watched him on several occasions and he is best best friends with our dog, Mama.

In spite of how ferocious she looks here, she lets him climb all over her, chew on her ears, hump her head… you name it.  And when they wrestle, she is super gentle with him.

Jack recently got adopted, which is fantastic, but we will definitely miss his visits. 

I am done exercising.  Seriously.  The last time I tried to take a walk with my friend Amy, two poodle mixes followed us around the block and when we stopped to ask some people if they knew who the owners were, we ended up with a cat.   A cat, which Amy carried the rest of the way home and which is now living at her neighbors house.  This morning, I went on a walk by myself and the most adorable little pit mix puppy followed me for almost forty five minutes.  Followed me all around the neighborhood and right to our fence, in spite of me pointedly ignoring it.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to ignore a face this cute??

I almost put him in one of our kennels to keep him out of the street, but decided to leave him out in case he knew his way home.  I did put a big bucket of water out in the alley for him, since it was hot as $%&@ out today.  After a few hours of whining and barking, he either wandered off or his people found him.

Speaking of the kennels, you can kind of see them in the background there.  The hubby and his buddy finished all the trim yesterday so all that remains to be done is running a water line to it.  I won’t lie… they. are. awesome.  (please ignore the tacky, bright yellow banner.  its hanging there for shade for Jack, who has to stay in a crate and can’t follow the shade around the kennel).

Its been a crazy few weeks here at the Nizhoni household.  I started a new “day” job, which has kept pretty much all other aspects of my life to a minimum.  I’m sort of getting settled in there, so I am trying to make more time for myself now to help relax and get my mind off work.   Due to my crazy schedule, I’m no longer in charge of all the dogs for the HSWT, though I am still fostering and volunteering regularly.  Penelope is our most recent foster (though she did overlap with another who was recently adopted) and she may become a permanent resident.

She came to us just after Thanksgiving after being dumped and accused of attacking people.   I will admit, it was a bad time for the HS and I was almost part of the decision to have her put down, as the organization was not prepared to take on the liability of an animal with a known record of aggression.  Luckily, I decided to talk to the owner of the kennel where she was being temporarily boarded.  I was told that there was no way she was attacking people based on her current behavior, so she came home on a “trial” basis to evaluate her temperment with both people and other dogs.

I am so, SO glad that I decided to bring her home and give her a chance.  She was terrified, and it was three weeks before we were able to pet her consistently without her bolting when we looked at her.

She gets along well with Nizhoni, and LOVES Kodiak.  She loves to chase him around and lick his face, much to his annoyance.  And our entertainment.

She still barks a lot when there are people over, and is very nervous around strangers.   But she loves to cuddle on the couch, and she sleeps on the bed.  And she occasionally takes field trips to Petsmart, and is getting better around other people.

Its been a while since we had nice enough weather for an actual outdoor photoshoot, and I had the day off so I decided Nelly deserved a chance to show off how beautiful she is.

We found not one, but TWO awesome, brightly painted walls downtown and she looked great against the colors.

She has turned out to be such a great dog… and she gets along so well with ours, we may end up keeping her.  Its not certain yet, but its starting to look that way.  I am just totally smitten with her.

We’ve sort of kept this mum because we wanted to make sure all the details were ironed out first.  And because I was afraid I would jinx it and the whole deal would fall through.  Tomorrow Dash and I are making the long drive to Dallas to meet his new family.  I know we said we were going to keep him… and we really meant it.  It breaks our hearts to give him up, but we had one hell of a dog fight two weeks ago and it did not end well.  Two parties needed stitches (not me, luckily) and Kodiak still doesn’t want to admit that Dash is bigger and stronger.  So we decided that it was in everyone’s best interest to find Dash a home where he won’t always have to be butting heads with Kodiak.  Luckily there is a wonderful family in the DFW area that expressed interest in Dash right around the time we decided to keep him.  They were still searching for a companion for their female Akbash when I emailed her two weeks ago, and after much emailing, they have decided he may be the dog for them.  So tomorrow we make the long trek to say goodbye to our gentle, goofy giant.

This is one of my favorite things that Dash does.  He’s so big that you forget he’s still a youngster, until he has one of those goofy, puppy moments.  He does this thing where he flops from side to side with his legs all stretched out, smacking whatever happens to be within his reach.  He just looks so ridiculously carefree and happy when he does it, that you can’t help but laugh.

Before we get to Kodiak, a quick update on some of the recent dogs that have made an appearance here on the blog.  Dash is staying with us.  Tomorrow I will register his microchip with our information and we will officially be a three dog family.  Prince Edward is going to be adopted by the family that was fostering him.  They changed his name to Harley and are filling out the paperwork on Saturday. YAY!!

As for the dogs from the last post…  Throw Away, the german shepherd mix is going to go to the same home that is taking Lil Girl.  They are staying together in the same kennel while the adoptive family closes on their house and they get along fantastically!  The tiny chihuahua went home with an older woman who really wanted a very small dog.  Red and Blondie, the two nursing mommas are staying with one of our vet techs as both have gotten an infection. (mastitis for Red and a uterine infection for Blondie)  Both were caught early and they are doing great on antibiotics.  Cutie Pie and Ladybird went up to our adoption event, but haven’t found homes yet, so we will try again next week.  As for the rest,  the woman who has been taken care of them thinks she wants to keep them.  Unfortunately, she’s headed into the hospital for a two week stay starting tomorrow so if her health doesn’t improve we may have to work on convincing her its in everyone’s best interest to place a few more of them in other homes.

Now… on to Kodiak’s unfortunate incident.  In case you are new to the blog, Kodiak is my mostest favorite boy ever.  He is a total momma’s boy and he is very sensitive (more than I ever thought was possible for a dog).  He is a long haired Chow/German Shepherd/Golden Retriever mix of some random percentages.  That’s him and I in that picture up there in the intro, just for reference.  Today he had an appointment at the groomer.  We take him on a semi-regular basis to get a bath and to get the long hair on his legs and paws trimmed.  Apparently they misheard Ken when he dropped him off today because he was bald when we picked him up today.  Instead of the usual trim, they buzzed him down so he is just a poofy tail and a poofy head with a skinny little body in between.

You wouldn’t think a dog could get embarrassed, but I think he was because he wouldn’t even come out from under my desk when I got home.  And he ALWAYS comes to say hi to me when I get home.  The fact that I was laughing hysterically might not have helped…

Thank you everyone for the kind comments on the canvases.  Grace’s dad picked up the one of her today and I think he was pretty pleased.  On a less happy note, this week Ken and I joined some others from the HSWT at a home on the east side of town to help a woman with over twenty dogs.  This gal actually called us while we were at Petsmart on Saturday requesting help with some puppies.  She said a stray had given birth to a litter a few weeks ago and wasn’t showing interest in feeding them.  One of our volunteers agreed to pick up some puppy food to take to her and to help her see if the puppies were big enough to try eating mush.  When she got out there, she realized that we needed to help this woman with much more than just these puppies.

She lives outside town, relatively close to an area shelter.  When this shelter is full (and even when its not) she says folks just dump their dogs out and leave them to run wild.  This woman lives in a tiny house all by herself, and her only income is a social security check… $66 dollars a month.  And yet here she was, trying her best to keep all these dogs fed.  Surprisingly, most of them (with the exception of the nursing mothers) looked fairly well fed.  Clearly, she was sacrificing her own well being to help dogs that others had abandoned.  In the last week, she has put up several large, makeshift kennels, using tarps and plywood to give the animals shade.  She did this all by herself, with no assistance from anyone.

We took her enough dog food to last her a while and some flea and tick spray for everyone.  We also wormed everyone we could get a hold of, and several of our volunteers headed back last night to take those dogs they could catch to get their rabies shots.  A local groomer/boarder picked up both litters of puppies and took them to their kennels where they agreed to care for them until they are old enough to be adopted out.

Now, meet the dogs…

This is Red, a lab mix and recent mother to nine puppies.  She is very sweet, but incredibly timid. Red was dumped so we don’t know her exact age or story but she looks to be rather young.

This is Blondie, a yellow lab mix and mom to a litter of seven puppies.  Blondie is probably older than Red, but not much.  She too was dumped.

Ladybird is a shorthaired pointer mix.  She is the shyest of them all, and my personal favorite.

Little girl is a lucky girl.  She has a home all lined up and is just waiting for them to come pick her up.

Radar (left) and Pakito (right) are chihuahua mixes of some sort that have also been dumped.  Radar is rather skittish, but Pakito doesn’t mind having his ears scratched a bit.

Throwaway (top) is a 4-5 year old GSD mix who was hit by a car and rescued by this gal.  He is not a fan of vehicles, for obvious reasons, but loves people.    Cotton (bottom) is a beautiful, white GSD.    She was shot in the chest at some point in the past and is a bit touchy about the area where she was hit. She is at around 5 years old and nervous around people, but with some time and a lot of love, she will warm up.

This guy is a handsome pit mix, whose name I forgot to write down.  He can be somewhat aggressive so he will likely stay with his current owner.  But he’s handsome so I wanted to post him anyway

Pigtail is red pitbull with a curly(ish) tail.  He is comical and sweet, and he loves to wrestle with Ladybird.

Cutie Pie is a 3 year old black lab.  She’s a bit overweight, and needs more exercise than she can get in her kennel.  She is incredibly sweet and loves people.

And lastly, just for some happy, cuteness… the little guy on the left is one of Red’s pups and the little guy on the right was just running around.  I never got the story on him, but he’s awfully precious.

Tomorrow morning, I am heading out there to pick up Ladybird, Cutie Pie, Red, and Blondie to take them to our adoption event at Gander Mountain.  We are desperately hoping that we can find them some good homes.  We have Throwaway and Pooh Girl listed with a GSD rescue group in Texas, but their fosters are full and they aren’t able to help us with housing.  Radar, Pakito, and Pigtail will continue to stay on her property until we free up some resources to help them out or until we find some place to put them.  The black pit mix, as well as two other large dogs that are somewhat aggressive are going to stay with the owner.

A while ago, I ordered two canvases from Simply Canvas to test them out.  I never got around to blogging them, but they are AWESOME!  I got a 20×30 of Coco (the little boxer belonging to by brother-in-law and his wife) and a 16×24 of Kodiak.  Then I had a client order a 20×30 wrap as well.  That arrived on Tuesday so I thought I should get a picture of them all.

Dear Mom,  Yes those are poop bags off to the side there.  I was too lazy to carry them through the houseand out to the dumpster in the back alley.  Don’t worry, I got rid of them before company came over.  Love, your daughter

Coco and Kodiak are hanging in my “office.”  Kelly, Coco’s mom, thinks its funny that her dog has a bigger spot in my house than my own dog does.  What can I say, I’m in love with that image.  The big empty space under Boots the cat is no longer empty.  It now sports the biggest monitor EVER!  I have the best hubby in the world

Coming up soon(ish), a long, picture filled post from our rescue trip out to the east side of town on Monday night.  Tune in for some sad pups who desperately need new homes.

For those following my dramatic saga as a dog fosterer and humane society volunteer…  I think I may now be serving as the “Interim Dog Coordinator” for the HSWT.  It hasn’t been explicitly stated, but I have been handling a lot of the dog info since the previous dog coordinator left last week.  Perhaps more telling, I have overheard myself being referenced as the dog coordinator twice now.

Either way, I have been helping out quite a bit, and part of what I’ve been doing is finding places for a couple “return” dogs to stay.  Prince Edward was adopted several weeks ago and returned because his owners were having trouble with housebreaking (from information gathered later, I’m not sure Eddie was the problem).  Regardless, finding him foster care has required that he be shuffled around a bit, and this resulted in him being at my house for a few hours on Monday night between picking him up at one home and dropping him off at another.  While normally I would prefer to avoid the shuffling game, in this case I thought it well worth it because I suspect that I may never see Prince Edward again.  The foster home I was taking him to had kept him overnight previously and had quite fallen for him.  I am HOPING that after keeping him for a week, they will decide that he should stay with them forever.  Fingers crossed til Saturday!

He is so sweet, its easy to see how they fell for him.  He’s the most docile little dog, and terribly shy, especially around men.  But we got him out in the yard with the rest of the pack and he lit right up.  And that little pink nose is to die for.  He reminds me a bit of the dog on the RCA commercials.

As for the story of Dash, I was set to give the Akbash rescue the go ahead to begin the search for a forever home when Ken showed some hesitation.  So he is “thinking about it” and, pending his decision, we may be keeping the big white beastie.  The downside to this is that it would put an end to our fostering until we move out into the country and can consider putting in some kennels.  That and there is a gentleman here in town who has expressed some interest in Dash and who has an incredibly special story.  I think Dash could be really good for him, and it would be a good home for Dash, so if Ken does decide against keeping him, hopefully we can get the two of them hooked up.  Stay tuned for further developments…

West Texas pet photographer, Lubbock pet photography, animal photography, Texas, dog photography

Are you all sick of seeing Dash yet? I can’t help it… he’s just such a sweetie, I’m infatuated with him. Check out these long, supermodel legs!

And lord knows no one is going to break into our house anytime soon. This is the backside of what anyone coming up to our front door sees. Poor mailman probably thinks we’re crazy.  Not the best quality, but not bad considering it came from my phone!

The poofy tail in the back is Kodiak, then Nizhoni, Dash, and Penny. It can get seriously loud in here from time to time.