Weekly Bird in the hand

My bird in the hand this week, (the things I am grateful for) is actually a dog!

Photo by Toronja Azul

Dogs are such lovely creatures. They invariable make you smile when you see one, especially if they are in a car with their head stuck out of the window and their ears blowing in the breeze!  They are loyal, funny, and show unconditional love.

And this week I heard of two dogs stories that caught my attention:

• The first was written about in our local library newsletter.  The library has started a "reading to dogs" program. The idea is that children go to the library and read out aloud to the dogs.  Often kids will never read aloud at home and hate it when asked at school, but the dogs are affectionate and playful and non judgmental listeners.  Unlike humans, they don't notice mispronounced words or other reading mistakes and don't interrupt or correct.  Instead, they are soft and calm and help build confidence to new readers.  Doesn't that sound a wonderful way for kids to become more confident?

• The second dog story was about Liam and Theo.  The SF Chronicle reported that they were a team searching for bombs in Afghanistan.  Liam was a British soldier and dog handler and Theo was a bomb-sniffing springer spaniel.  They had been working - and playing - together in Afghanistan for 6 months when Liam was killed in a firefight.  Theo, later that day, suffered a massive seizure and also died.  Many are saying he died of a broken heart. Liam's body and Theo's ashes were returned to England this week and saluted by a long line of military dog handlers, with their dogs at their sides.  There are some wonderful photos of Liam and Theo here both looking so happy.

So this week, I'm grateful for dogs and all they give us and teach us.

Home is where the dog is - silver necklace

I've just finished off a couple of new pieces today so thought I'd share the first one with you.


When I was making the "anyone can train a dog" piece last week, I actually made two dogs - so I decided to use the other dog in a new piece - "home is where the dog is"!


Yes, it's like my "home is where the heart is" - but instead of the heart, is the dog!


So for all those dog lovers out there........

Commissions - VI - Anyone can train a dog

A buyer from Australia asked if I would make her one of my "anyone can train a dog" lariat necklaces. Here's the latest one:



And here's my original one:


You can see that the dogs are different.....That's just the way they are "born"!

Mother's charms

I seem to be getting more and more commission work to make individual charms for people. They generally tend to involve creating a silver miniature version of something that is meaningful to the person or their friend - ranging from either a pet, to a child's favourite toy, to a silver version of a larger household item, to........

I'm thinking that commission charms is something I could get more into. I do like making things only once, and it's great to hear people's stories behind what they are choosing me to create. I'm doing one this week - but I'll write about that later..... Lovely story behind it....

Anyhow, in the meantime, I've created some simple toy charms that would be suitable for a mother's charm bracelet, or one could go on a bookmark, or key ring or.....

Here's a little toy train



















A plane




















A doll's house



















And a rocking horse.



















Sweet little reminders of your children.......

Anyone can....train a dog

Dogs.....oh how I've been wanting a dog........A cute dog that will travel with me in my car. I just love to see dogs in cars with their heads out of the window, the wind blowing back their ears....it's just a picture of pure joy! And I've never seen so many dogs in cars and trucks as I have in California. The dogs here must just love the weather and the "wine country living"! You see them yapping in the delight of it all. I've mentioned to some of my friends my desire of having a dog passenger in my car and that maybe I could borrow their dog sometime and take it for a drive.........

All this talk of "borrowing" is because I can't have a dog of my own :-( Yes, we have a great lawn that it could run on....but we do travel quite a bit...and so I've been "told" it just isn't practical....and also, we grow grapes and grapes are poisonous to dogs (but loads of wineries have dogs????). Anyhow - right now, it's not dog time for me - (although one day I will replace my husband with a dog.............)!

So currently, I just enjoy other people's dogs - like KJ, and Scout......and those that I see in cars in trucks!

As I can't have a dog - I thought maybe I could live vicariously through "anyone". So my latest "anyone can...." piece is "anyone can train a dog". But Anyone isn't content with commands like "sit"..he is much more adventurous! This is like agility training!!! Anyone is teaching his little dog to jump through hoops!! Way to go anyone!!!!

It is a lariat style necklace - and features "anyone" holding the loop and then the little dog - with one ear up and one down jumps through the hoop and hangs down below. There is a little hook on the back of the hoop to secure the chain at the length you like.

This was my first attempt at sculpting a dog and it was an interesting process! I first tried making a dog in regular clay...and it took a while to find that the nose was an important feature that distinguished it from some other animal. Once I cracked the nose (so to speak) I tried the dog in the silver clay. I was thinking of adding silver wire legs with hammered feet - but when I tried that - they looked too skinny. So I made some legs from clay and attached them...along with a curled up tail.

But it looked like a pig!!! So I figured it must be the tail...the ears looked good...the nose looked good....so I pulled the tail off. I tried another tail curling up - but it still looked like a pig.....so off it came. Then I tried a stubby tail like lots of dogs have. It looked like a dogs tail alright - but it still looked like a pig.....

So I started working on the back legs....making them more muscley where they join on to the body......but it still looked like a pig!! What was it???

Then I got it - he didn't have any paws!!! I'd done legs but not little paws...so it looked more like trotters and thus a pig!!! It was interesting how one characteristic can change an "animal" so much. The face was a dog, the legs were dogs, the tail was a dog.......but it was still a pig!!

So, I gave him four little paws and Anyone now has a dog!!! And a name for Anyone's dog.......??? How about Doug the Dog....(as in "dug"??!!)