50 Famous Dog Breeds- Wednesday's Dog

This lovely fellow is another cigarette card, which if you recall from a few weeks' ago were little collectible cards manufacturers put in cigarette packs to help make them stiff. They tapered off in the 1950s, but some of the series are very collectible! This is the second Welsh Corgi cigarette card I've found in an online museum gallery, so it appears not only were dogs a popular set to issue, but that corgis were of interest back then, too :)

"Hospital for Bitten Dogs" photo Wednesday!

This is from a collection of photos that the Victoria & Albert museum has by photographic journalist Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles. I love his style and the feel of the photos! They remind me of the images you see from Time and Life and Magnum... there is a lot of character and depth to them. He liked to capture the leisure activities of communities in the US and Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He has a great bunch on dogs, so I'm sure this won't be the last one I post!

Miss November

This is in belated celebration of Finley being named Miss November in Kelly and Gibson's calender over at Corgi Butts!! I loved loved loved all the pictures that she posted and am really excited about the expanded digital version she now has available!! Congratulations to everyone else who also won!! When Kelly emailed me I had to call my friends and family and tell them they will all be getting corgi calenders for Christmas this year :) 100% of the proceeds from buying them go to Lakeshore Corgi Rescue, so you should get a calender, too!

Check out how gorgeous! and I have to note that there are at least 3 Bay Area corgis in here, which is awesome!! I now work on Saturdays, which is when the corgis meet in San Francisco :( But I'm really hoping we run into Bailey and Karen one of these days soon!! Congrats on Mr. May, you guys!

Our corgis bring so much fun, love and perspective to us everyday just by being themselves-- it's so awesome that Kelly has put their quirky cuteness to work for the benefit of other corgis in need of homes!! It's a perfect system, and Finley and I are really proud we get to be a part of it. Thank you, Kelly and Gibson!! Lots of corgi kisses!!

We got the digital calender today from Kelly at Corgi Butts and it is beautiful! I now have Gibson as my desktop image, and can't wait for a new corg face next month!! :) Thank you Kelly! (Tomorrow I have a post with more on the calenders scheduled, so until then!) <3

Training.... I need help!

I need help! help help help. What do you think are the top... let's say 4, skills that you and your dog comfortably do or find the most useful? Things like coming when they're called, heeling, sitting, speaking, balancing food on their nose, lying down, rolling over, staying/waiting, etc... I'm open to them all!

My mom told me the other day that she and my dad are not comfortable with Finn when she is off leash, and it made me feel bad... so Finn and I are stepping up our game. I have learned that training/practicing skills old and new is something Finn and I should always be working on, and not taking for granted, which I don't think I fully grasped before. But I'm ready! We can do it.

I would love some direction and inspiration, though. Corgis, or at least Finley, seems a bit cat-like in her approach to commands, and I'm not sure how to beat that. Our first goal is to iron out her coming-when-called issues. Currently she knows "Finley, come" (in an authoritative voice), and she comes racing over, but that's sort of a last line of defense. I can't always talk to her like a drill sargent. I don't want her to be one of those dogs you either have to sweet talk or shout at in order for them to behave. I need to somehow get her to come on a casual basis.

Often, I get The Blink. Anyone else get this? When I ask her to sit, or when I call her while she's in the yard, she'll look at me, blink a few times, and then slowly mosey over or wait 20ish seconds and then sit. Should I expect and work toward instant response? That's what I'm used to! I grew up with retrievers and they would come racing over, whereas with Finn I feel like I'm dealing with a power-battling little child.

I realize it is my fault for not pushing her more-- I am the head honcho in our little shindig after all, and I take full blame. She is not badly behaved, and she's still so much a puppy, so I think I made the mistake of not training her more thoroughly since she wasn't difficult, and cutting her too much puppy-slack. I see that now... So I am putting us on the program!

Goals

1. Master coming when called on a casual basis/reinforce "Finley, come" for emergencies. perhaps this includes me getting accustomed to always having treats on hand. thoughts? what do you do?

2. Sitting in under 20 seconds after command word is said. I expect this to go the fastest.

3. Heeling on a leash. We have done zero work on this, so it's our first totally new skill! this will probably take a while :)

4. not sure... ideas? 

Tomorrow we begin! dun dun dunnnnnn

Fog and frenchfries!

Finn, Andrew and I went to Sausalito the other day for lunch, and ended up leaving the fog behind in exchange for some sun! It's always so crazy how crossing the Golden Gate and going through the tunnel into Marin makes such a huge difference in the weather. Here were are heading across the bridge-- it was so foggy that you couldn't see the second tower! See where it begins to go up, and then disappears? 

We made it to the sun! I love these boat gas pumps:

Finn got some French Fries, lucky little corg!

 

We had lots of fun! Andrew and Finley by the boats :)

and here we are heading back:

Dog Balancing on Two Chairs!

This image is from the Victoria and Albert museum and is of Lady Clementina Hawarden's poodle balancing on top of two chairs! :) According to the V&A, Lady Clementina took up photography in the mid 1850s and liked to use her family as models, often posing them in front of long, full-body mirrors to represent both the spiritual and material parts of life. I do not think Finn could do this!

Happy Labor Day Weekend!!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!! Anyone have exciting plans? I will be "helping" build a new back porch on our house, and then picking up my boyfriend at the airport on Sunday for his leave! yay!!

I helped my dad demolish our old porch today, which I really enjoyed--I like taking things apart and swinging hammers--, and tomorrow he and a friend of his are going to start putting the frame up for the new one! It's going to be bigger and better than the last, and I'm really excited. It means that for the next two days the dogs are not going to have access to their backyard, however, which is a big deal for them! So after work tomorrow I think we're gonna head to the beach for some exercise.

Here my dad and I are after we took the porch down today-- it's hard to tell, but my mom is in a doorway on top of a 6ft. retaining wall looking down on us. We're standing where the porch used to be! Note my hammer vs. dad's big crow bar :)

Do any of your Corgs use ramps? Finley flies down the porch stairs chasing Westly and I always worry about her back and wonder if she would use a ramp were one there. My dad's agreed to make a trial version for the edge of the new stairs, and if she uses it he'll make a permanent one. Thoughts? Anyone else tried this?

Corgi Butts' Corgi Calender!

Like most of you, I have been following Kelly over at Corgi Butts' calender contest, and I am totally in love with every.single.corgi.on.that.list!! I mean....they are WONDERFUL! I just love all the faces and expressions, the eyebrows and different ear angles, all the colors and all the corgi smiles!! I love how you can tell they live all around the country-- snow, rivers, farms, cities-- you name it and there they are! I think we need a 30+ month calender :) I talked a lot at the beginning of starting this blog about how amazed I was that there is such a strong corgi community out there, and this is just another cool example. I feel like Finn is part of a very fabulous, very awesome, very nice dog family, and she has let me in with her. and that makes me really really happy :)

So, in the off chance that you have not seen all the wonderful faces over at Corgi Butts, you should really go check it out! and if you feel like voting for Finn, she is numba' 20! I'm super excited that she made it into the finals, and I cannot wait to see the finished calender!

Wednesday= Dog Day!

Day One of posting cool photos of dogs from all over the place. I studied history and journalism, and I love art, photography and corgis, so for the next month I am going to try out posting a photo, artwork or some neat bit of information related to our darling little fairy dogs and their canine relatives once a week. I'm looking forward to it, hope you enjoy!

The Welsh Corgi, ca. 1934-1939

This fellow can be found (and printed!) at the New York Public Library's digital gallery. It is a cigarette card, which I learned is as trading card tobacco manufactures used in cigarette packaging to stiffen the packs! It looks like they were popular in the late 1800s and petered out in the mid-1900s, though I read that in 2000 a cigarette company named Doral started printing some again! They were printed in themed collections-- often of military figures, sports players, beautiful women, cityscapes-- and the record, according to wikipedia, for auction price is $2,800,000! Sadly, it was not for a corgi card :)