An Energetic Composition - take two - Barbie and Mouse get a turn

I took Bender for his first painting class as part of An Energetic Composition a couple of weeks ago, and I enjoyed it so much I decided I needed to take the greyhounds to have a turn. 

Barbie had just been stitched up from her little incident on Friday, but she was really excited to be able to come out with us. She loves Billy's and she worked really hard on the big community painting. She added some very straight, strong criss-crossing scratch marks. 

They even worked together on the community piece as neither wanted to be left out at the start. Barbie was keen and threw all kinds of tricks, but when she was tired, she just kept giving me 'play dead'. Anyone who thinks greyhounds are smart needs to meet her, she did such a good job of communicating her wishes through her tricks! 

We bought a bed in for Barbie and when she had enough she went and lie down of it in the corner. She is so comfortable at Billy's now that she can just take a nap while all the other dogs and humans are working. 

Mouse kept at it, and somehow managed to get the paint all over her head. A few people complimented her on her new hair colour. She would paint for a bit, then run over to other people for cuddles, then paint a bit more. I am glad I bought super stinky tuna fillet treats because she was a bit bored of the liver treats. In fact she chose pats and cuddles over liver treats!

The greyhounds were a lot easier to keep contained on to the drop sheets so they didn't leave too many painty footprints everywhere like Bender did. 

Mouse proudly posed with her picture before we let the doggies have playtime in the other pens. Barbie and I stayed in the far pen so that Barbie wouldn't run around and stretch or tear her stitches. They were both exhausted when we got home. A weekend outing well done! 

Bender's 8th Birthday and An Energetic Composition

Bender is becoming an old man. Of course I made him a cake for his birthday using the recipe I worked on for Mouse's birthday. This time I added a bit of honey, and whilst the cake tasted good to me, I don't think the dogs needed the extra sugar. It left them bouncing around a bit more than normal. 

Waiting patiently, tolerating birthday hats

I topped the cake with ricotta cheese that was a bit past it's used by date. It doesn't give as nice a surface as cream cheese but the dogs didn't mind one little bit. 

can I eat this NAOW?

They all very much enjoyed the cake and the quick rendition of 'happy birthday' that I sang to Bender. That was not his whole birthday celebration, however. I had a little weekend surprise for him. We went in to our favorite training venue, Billy's Daycare for Dogs, to take part in an art workshop where he got to create his own masterpiece.

An Energetic Composition is a series of art workshops which will in the end culminate in an exhibition, raising money for people with Lyme disease. At the workshop we worked on small piece to take home and a larger 'community piece' which many dogs contribute to. 

Bender's artwork

Some of the dogs delicately paw target the artwork, whilst others have their own 'style'. Bender didn't really want to paw target, so I got him to commando crawl and spin on the canvas. He did go at it with his face a couple of times, and took a big slurp of the blue paint. Good thing it is non-toxic. Apparently all the dogs who have tasted the paint so far have gone for the blue paint. I wonder what is with that? 

Then when I put the big community canvas down for him he bit at it and then dug as hard as he could. That canvas board is tougher than I imagined. The scratch marks looked really good and provided a 'finished' look to the big piece. The only problem was that Bender tried to pick it up and carry it away. I had to quickly get it out of his mouth before he damaged the board that everyone else had been working on! 

Bender is proud

I got him to use the same technique on his smaller board then and it added some great texture to the piece I think.

All in all it was a very enjoyable thing for Bender. He was pretty tired afterwards. When bought his piece home the girls were very interested in it, giving it a great big sniff. Next time I will take one of them to try it out.