I needed more Teddy in my life

Some more Teddy pics from our session on Saturday. Here's a secret I'll share with you, but brace yourself: Teddy is ELEVEN! His mom actually took out his birth certificate because she knew I wouldn't believe her. He is so spunky and has such a spark about him no one ever thinks he is as old as he is.

Here's to many more years with your wonderful Mommy and Daddy. Thank you for having me!

Sneak Peak:

Meet Oni, the happiest, bounciest red Labradoode I've ever met. Her Mommy and Daddy Sarah and Terry mentioned that they were thinking about getting another Labradoodle puppy. And that's when I melted into a puddle on the ground.

Teddy sneak peak:

Teddy, the Harley riding Pomeranian :)

Look for a longer post soon!

Hump Day

Happy Wednesday.

This has been a weird week. There's no other way I can describe it. For instance I'm pretty sure Llana is in heat. And before you toss me in the street and run me over for not having her spayed, remember she's sick! She's immune deficient! We haven't yet determined when it will be safe to do surgery on her, if ever. In the meantime I get to deal with incessant meowing. Like all evening, and at 2:30am, and all morning. Did I mention it was incessant? I've tried letting her in the room, out of the room, giving her food again, giving her new water, cleaning the litter box. Nothing. Nada. Except meoooooow. meeoooow. mowww?

Yesterday I went home downright miserable, and then felt bad for dragging Carl into my misery with me. What can I say, I feel awful that we struggle, and it's mostly because of me. Starting your own business isn't easy. I could have made it okay on both of us and just gone to school to be a brain surgeon or something. You know, easy money. Just kidddding. Some days, after I tell him I'm going to spend some more money on something glorious like a canvas or a lens, I know he wants to just toss his hands in the air and sacrifice himself to The Federal Reserve or The Credit Reporting Agencies. We capitlize those in our house. Their big players.

Also huge huge huge shout out to my Mommy (yes I still call her Mommy) for all of her help on Saturday. Those of you who were there may have noticed her hanging out with me and going above and beyond to make sure my table was noticed, that people entered the drawing, and that people know HOW PROUD SHE IS of me. Thank you Mommy. I couldn't do any of this without you. Not only did she come with me on Saturday, but she also helped me get multiple frames for basically like a dollar from yard sales, and then painted them black. That's because she's awesome. I also receive text messages from her frequently with ideas and questions such as: why don't you have this this and this picture in your gallery on the new website? You need to put it on there. Now. And she reads my blog. Almost every day.

Also, for those of you that received my e-mail after the walk, apparently there was a misspelling in the subject line. What I don't understand is that it's spelled correctly in my outbox. Go figure. It makes me get a pain in my lower back to think of people going jeez, she doesn't have spell check? I promise it was spelled correctly, but just in case: announcement! LOL.
edited to add: For those of you who don't think typos are hereditary, check out the comments under this post from Mommy. Love you Ma;)

I have some sessions I'm really looking forward to in the next few weeks. I know its going to be a great time :)

Anyway, here is Bear saying HAPPY HUMP DAY
and letting you know he has a huge head.

I know when Carl and his mom read that their going to beat me with a pillowcase full of bars of soap. BRING IT!

little does she know, I'm only testing her to see if she reads my blog. Like when I call her cat the Devil (which, seriously, she is).

ROXANNE!

Hello meet ROXANNE! She is currently up for adoption at the wonderful Animal Welfare Association, and if you think you would be a good match for her and vice versa, you should go adopt her, because she's pretty cool.

ROXANNE! is a two year old Sheppard mix. Let's get the rough stuff out of the way: ROXANNE! prefers to be an only pet. She also should be a home without young children, as she can be mouthy on occasion. Now lets get the stuff that I am downright impressed with out of the way: ROXANNE! can pretty much clear a six foot fence from a standstill. The first time I saw it I was like "nuhhhh uh." So to say the least she needs to be leashed when outside. She is VERY smart and loves to learn. Stuffed toys are her favorite, along with chew bones. ROXANNE! is also drop dead gorgeous. Her favorite volunteer is working very very hard to help her be the best she can be. Can you come and pick up where he leaves off?

Why am I obnoxious and saying ROXANNE! ? Because anyone who even knows The Police song will sing that to her, or at least say her name in that manner. Unfortunatly without uploading a soundbyte of me singing (trust me, your better off) this is as close as I can get. And if your crazy like me, you'll continue on with:

ROXANNE!

You don't have to put on the red light

I loved you since I knew you

I wouldn't talk down to you

I have to tell you just how I feel

I won't share you with another boy

And I'm lucky if I make it that far cause I really don't know the lyrics that well.

Come meet ROXANNE! She's as special as her song :D Plus check out that gorgeous smile.

The WALK!

As I blogged before I attended the Paws and Feet Walk for the Animal Welfare Association today as a vendor. Big shout out to Sue the AWA's awesome director for the awesome photo above!

I HAD SUCH A WONDERFUL TIME!

Overall, I was pretty happy with how my table came out, although I did want another easel in the back, but we wont get into why that didn't happen. Besides the picture frames frequently blowing over (at one point they were in a completely different arrangement), everything was great. I also had my easels in completely different areas at one point, but apparently the wind was much stronger in that exact spot? I have no idea.

I saw SO many amazing dogs, and their owners of course. I'm sure the sounds of squeals followed by "ohmigosharen'tyoujustthecutestEVER?!" was heard from my table so many times the vendors next to me wanted earplugs but I just can't help myself.

It made me think, WOW I want another dog. And then I came home, and there was a CHAIR completely turned over in the living room, along with another massacre in the family room. I looked at that big, wagging tail of death and said, "Maybe just one is enough for a while."

I really enjoyed being around so many people who loved animals as much as I do, and holding conversations about our fur babies.

Excuse the picture heavy post, but I couldn't choose between these ones. At least I didn't upload the whole album, right? If any of the pet owners below are interested in a print, shoot me an e-mail at jenniesloan@comcast.net

And lastly I would like to announce the winners of the free photo session. I was originally only doing one session but I couldn't help myself and decided to do two. Drum roll please.......
Susan S and Sarah M! I'll be shooting you both e-mails a little later!!!

Update: Piper, the Burmese Mountain Dog below is one of the winners! Congratulations Piper and Sue!

Llana update

This is Llana's new favorite place. Someone had moved a chair in the hallway and threw a blanket on it, and she's now claimed it as HER spot. I moved the blanket the other day and she was all you must be kidding. Sorry kiddo. A wonderful friend of my mom's Jane gave us a window perch that her cat wasn't using anymore and she's starting to really love it. Her chunky butt was not fitting on that windowsill alone anymore.

She's officially off of antibiotics. She had three rounds of them and we determined we should give her a break, even though she is still sneezing. Honestly I can't tell if she's doing better, worse, or what. All of that wonderful snot seemed a little bloodier the other day, but I think I was just stressing. She isn't the type of cat that I can really tell if she's having a good day or bad day. With Bear I can tell when he doesn't feel good because he isn't doing the typical BOUNCING OFF OF THE WALLS or shoving something he shouldn't have in the first place in my lap to throw. With her she lays around most of the time anyway so what am I supposed to base this off of? Carl asked if we could take her temperature the other day, and I was like yeah sure but your putting the thermometer in. To say the least once I explained where it went he was past that idea.

We've also started this awesome routine of spraying a saline mixture down her nose. It's great. Really. If anyone wants to come over and experience this miracle themselves, shoot me an e-mail. It would be hard to give this responsibility to anyone else, but I guess I could let go for one round. I tried explaining to her, after I basically tackled her so I could prevent her escape, that this was to HELP HER and she should be HAPPY that someone will take the time to shove this bottle in her face and spray stuff down her nose. No dice.

I mean heck she only gets Interferon and Lysine everyday, what's a little saline four or five times a day?

If we could get some good thoughts sent her way that would be great. I need to get her over this last hurtle. The saline is hopefully going to help heal the burst blood vessels in her nasal cavity. We also have a cool air humidifier going to help keep it moist in there. Her eye looked goopy yesterday too so I'm praying she isn't getting a situation in her eye too. She has enough situations.
Some days I stare at them and think, if I worry about you two this much, how am I ever going to have a human baby?

There is SOME progress. She can actually meow now, versus when she would just open her mouth and nothing would come out. She is using this to her advantage to let me know it's time for breakfast at 5:00AM.

We also worked on fixing Bear's food issue some more. He wasn't doing any better on the dry food with the canned wet food mixed in. Thank you so much everyone who offered suggestions, it was a huge help. On a suggestion from someone I know who works at PetCo, we started mixing in half of a pouch of the Nutro with his food. Did it make a difference? A little. This morning I made the mistake of moving from where I was sitting on the bed to the closet to put laundry away, and that was it, he wasn't eating anymore. He HAD TO KNOW what I was doing. I could be getting ready to do something much more fun than eating. I told him he could always hang clothes and I'll go eat.

I think our next move is to try the fish kibble recipe that Nutro offers. I mean he loves to eat the cat food. And the cat treats. And THE CATNIP!?!?!

5-11-09

Bear would like everyone to have a beautiful Monday.

Lagging

So sorry for being absent. I've been super busy and then as Murphy's law would have it starting having migraines again. They are usually very well controlled with a daily medication and injections for when I have the onset of one, but nothing was helping this past week. It doesn't help that its been raining for about a week now. Hopefully that's over with (the migraine part at least), and I'm pushing forward.

Some news: My new website is up and running! It is still at http://www.jenniesloan.com/ but, in my opinion, looks a lot better! I'm still doing some tweaking, and working on getting the galleries where I want them but overall I'm pretty happy with it. I actually did it myself using a flash template. If you'd like a link to the service I used please shoot me an e-mail.

I will have a table at the AWA Paws and Feet Walk on May 16th at Cooper River Park. Come out and walk for the animals and come see me! I will be doing a drawing for a free photo session and some free prints so be sure to toss your name in!

I am now on Twitter! Lets be buddies and "tweet" about our day to day activities. As before I am still on Myspace.

Llana is doing very well. We are learning all of the rewards, trials, and tribulations that go along with owning an immune deficient cat. She is still improving, and it is like night and day from when I first brought her home. No more coughing, and only sneezing. She likes to aim it right at my pillows or walls so there has been a lot of laundry to do.

I had my own little breakdown this morning. It has been tough having the four of us basically living in that little room (by four I mean Carl, Bear, Llana and myself. And for those of you that are just joining Llana is a cat, not a third person. It gets cramped, and I am constantly battling the smells of the litter box and cat food. Our whole schedule recently changed, as in an effort to get Bear to start eating more regularly we started mixing wet food in with his dry.

I own a weird dog. Bear does not care about eating. There have been many times where I've said "You know Bear there are dogs in Africa who don't have anything to eat." It didn't get through to him though. He does not eat unless someone is with him, and has on occasion gone over a day without touching his food because someone wasn't near the food bowl long enough. In an effort to get him to eat we had dog food bowls on both levels of the house. He also went on a hunger strike the last time we tried to change his food. This lead to the ringworm epidemic in the house, because his immune system wasn't on the same level as usual when I brought home Satan Kitty aka Sophie who was the original Typhoid Mary.

Anyway to make this long story even longer, I woke up to start my morning feeding, which includes mixing Lysine into the grosses smelling cat food EVER, mixing dog food into kibble, microwaving all of it which makes the aroma even better, and wrestling with Llana to give her her Clavamox and Interferon. She thanked me by sneezing in my face. I used to stay in bed for another hour and half after Carl left in the morning before this all started and decided to drag my butt back into bed to try to catch another hour. No dice, because ALL of these animals eat in our bedroom all I heard was chewing, and all I smelled was animal food. I was exhausted from being sick yesterday and decided to have my own little fit, but just as the first tear rolled (I know, uncharacteristically dramatic for me) Bear jumped in bed to spoon with me and Llana curled up on the other side to purr. My lovable lab turned to look into my eyes and breathed a deep sigh right in my face. It was like he was saying "Stop whining buddy, your animals are (for the most part) healthy and happy and so are you." Everything was wonderful and completely worth it.

To make this complete, here is a picture of my very happy Bear Bear standing in his pool. This was before the rain started. Last week.