he's so fine

yep! it's that Noodle dog - Jake ready for wranglin'

Back when he was just a young boy, aside from his first love - retrieving (only from water) he discovered that he also had a passion for cows, and the wrangling or herding of them. Occasionally we would find ourselves walking, off leash, near a pasture and off my boy would go while we gave chase humming the theme from Bonanza all the way. Farmers around here don't take kindly to dogs running with their herds. This illustration is from a series of sketches done years ago for a potential line of stuffed toys, all dogs. Miss Winnie Dixon had a sketch as well and another of a friend's miniature dachshund Francesca (or Frankie). That job never did materialize, but I thought I'd post this illustration from the archives of SBD (Susan Black Design). A goal for 2008 is to include more of my work on this blog and to create many, many new illustrations.

Those of you out there that have been reading lately know that the boy, my boy, Jake has had some health issues of late and I thought you might like a little update. He's so fine! He's back to his normal self. I'm really mostly amazed at him. He behaves and has the trim muscular body like/of a much, much younger dog. Thank goodness! I keep reminding him that in 5 short months we'll be back on the beach and fetching sticks in deep water season (his reason d'etre) will begin all over again. Oh yeh, and chopped liver, I mean Winnie Dixon, would like you to know that she's fine too (just in case you were wondering), she's curled up here beside me on the sofa, curled into a little ball of wiry black fur, with her little black & white kerchief on and looking too sweet for words.

It's bitter, bitter cold here this morning - but all plus temps next week and climbing to +9 Wed. (dancing around my living room). A week of very mild temps should melt some of the depth of snow and we can get back to our great walks through pastures and at the golf course. It's way too deep at the moment and we've been walking up and down a quiet dead end country road - on leashes, it's OK, certainly better than no walks at all, but we look forward to getting back to our regular hikes.

1:15 update - just to qualify I did mean the he's so fine ... he blows my mind ... kind of fine. You know fine in that complete, all encompassing way. And speaking of fine, he (Jake) is in the midst of one of those, last Thursday night, dreadful spells. We've just come back from a brief trip down to our spot for a quick walk with Carol. It's still really cold and overcast and the sun's not warming things up - so we had a very quick walk and then stopped to do a few errands, grocery store, post-office, bank ... etc and each time I got back into the car I did think to myself Geeeezz! stinking farts in here. My sweet Noodle is presently lying on the kitchen floor in the throws of what seems to be a really bad case of gas or indigestion, complete with the occasional really stinky fart. I'm just going to let him be ... it's very weird, it's been hours since he had anything substantial to eat ??