Oh how I love our sweet Ellie!
Tag: black lab
She’s a pot roast away from heaven
Ellie curled up with her two favorite toys on the dog bed in my office. She is crazy for these orange balls, I can’t take one on our walks because she spends the entire walk trying to poke it out of my hand. I wake to Ellie and her ball in the morning (she climbs in beside me when my wife gets up). I used to not let her have the balls in the house as they carry a lot of energy when they bounce, but in her advancing years she’s happy enough to play gently with me on the couch.
Playing Catch in the Snow
Taken in the midst of several days of snow, it won’t last long but Ellie and I made merry while it was here.
The Pitch
It might look like she’s catching the ball, but Ellie is actually throwing it back to me. We adopted her when she was five and she was already doing this cute little trick so I can’t claim any credit for it.
Frisky
Age is taking its toll on her mobility but the snow (and my unexpected day off) had Ellie feeling frisky and in the mood for a game of catch.
I’m Ever So Happy, Really I Am
I’ve photographed Ellie many times over the years but most of my pictures don’t show her goofy and sweet personality very well. The problem is that the moment I stop playing with her so that I can take her picture, she pauses and waits for me to start playing again, and if her mouth isn’t open she just looks sad or even, as she does here, a little bit angry. Her eyes aren’t as wide open as they normally would be to help protect them from the falling snow.
But all of that snow on her snout is from rooting through the snow to get her ball, I assure you we were having a great time.
Snow Day
We got hit with a bit of snow the past few days and, since the city is not well-equipped to deal with it (our winters are generally pretty mild), we were sent home from work early on Thursday and told to stay home on Friday. Since Ellie loves the snow, I hoped to get some shots of her playing as the snow fell, but unfortunately much of the snow came late in the day on Thursday and Friday, and Saturday we were out during the day.
But I did get some pictures on Friday even if most of them are not action shots like this one, as its rather hard to both throw the ball and take the pictures. For this shot I think she was coming to get a treat as the ball is in the snow behind her. It’s a bit back-focused, the autofocus on the little EOS M is not at all quick, but to be fair even my SLR has trouble tracking her black fur.
Simon says “Stand on three legs with a stick in your mouth”!
Play Simon Says with Ellie and you will not win. She’s good, oh but she’s good.
Our Black (and Increasingly Gray) Lab
Our sweet Ellie, taken on the day my Canon EOS M arrived.
The Bed Thief
While Sam would occasionally sleep in one of Ellie’s beds, particularly the homemade one, the thieving of dog beds began in earnest in late July. Coincidentally, this is also when Boo was given free reign of the house. This is Boo on his first day out after a couple of weeks in isolation in my wife’s office in the basement. That week began his gradual introduction into the house at large, we’d let him out for a while but at night or when we were away we still kept him isolated.
Boo was shy and nervous when we adopted him and you could see on his face how exploring the house and meeting the pets was both exciting and exhausting for him, so we paced his introduction even slower than normal. Several times on this first day he’d go up and explore the ground level and meet the other pets and then come back down to Ellie’s dog bed for a little rest. The bed was right outside my wife’s office so he could enjoy a taste of his newfound freedom and yet easily scoot back in to his comfort zone if needed.
He showed little fear of Ellie from the start, and for her part, she was nonplussed by the arrival of the little fellow. So when he stole her bed, she laid down beside it on the hard floor, making life a little easier for the kitten as he began to understand what it meant to be home.
Boolie 