Pardon the diversion from neon signs & all that.  The big news:  there’s a new addition to the family.  Fixie passed away about a year ago and a few months later, I began my quest at Petfinder.com to find a young Jack Russell Terrier.  It was quite an ordeal being rejected by various shelters & Russell Rescue groups for not having a fenced yard or for living out of state, etc.  In frustration, I even hooked up with a reputable breeder which is completely against all my ethics.  She had puppies on the way and I really had a dilemma on my hands.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I wandered over to the Rat Terrier listings at Petfinder and DANG! there she was.  I was looking for a bold, ball-crazy, water-crazy, monster of a JRT and she is anything but that.  She’s delicate, attentive, sweet.  In other words, perfect!  Well, sort of — the barking, biting, and housebreaking need some work but she’s only five months old, so, we’ll get there.  Here’s the photo from Petfinder that I fell for.  Although she looks almost Border Collie in color/proportions, she’s all of eight pounds and probably won’t get much bigger:

Just in time for my birthday (turned the big Six-O on Xmas) and I can’t think of a better gift.  I emailed the shelter on Thursday and adopted her on Saturday.  It was a killer drive (12 hours roundtrip) but I did make a few stops.  One stop was to shoot the replacement sign at Gillman’s Frosties in Oakdale, CA.  The sign was blown off the roof earlier this year.  Here’s what it looked like in 2014:

And now — I kinda liked the earlier version better but I like the sesame seed bun & lettuce on this one:

In context:

The shelter was in Jamestown and while I waited for the place to open, I shot this neat ghost sign downtown:

The following weekend, I took a little daytrip down to L.A.  The new kid was pretty fearful of cars — both being in them and cars whizzing by on the street.  But after one manic day, she had a big turnaround.  Here’s Griz & puppa Dilly in the back seat — looking pretty cozy (sorry for the blur — this was an over-the-shoulder, in traffic shot).  Yes – she’s ready for the big summer trip already!

Here are a few roadside photos before the onslaught of doggie photos.  Two from Malibu.  Even thought this is a modern KFC bucket, it’s still fun to see one repurposed:

This one is pretty hidden — far back from the road and foliage in the way.  Still such a cutie:

A nice plastic sign in Venice:

 

I uploaded some other L.A. photos to my Flickr account. I added those & others to my website.  Moving on to more doggie photos taken at the beach this morning — starting with one of the new girl:

Dilly’s “stay” is not solid enough for long distance shots yet but here’s the master class of stays.  There are two of these smiley faces at one of our fave local beaches (Seaside Wilderness State Park).

And with that — I wish you all the best for 2018!

dj
sputnik, gremlin, griswold & dilly

P.S. More blog posts coming soon since I’ve been hard at work with the annual combing of my entire website for updates.  I’ve got some partially written posts with the good news/ bad news about what’s been removed, demolished, remodeled, restored.