Pet Portraits and Wildlife Art

This is the start of a full body portrait plus montage of Ralph the springer spaniel. The image above is much larger than the actual area worked so far.

Ralph is another 'working' dog like Willow in that he doesn't actually provide any service or use aside from company and is able to go to work with his Dad, Pat. It makes me wonder how many other lucky dogs are 'working' for their biscuits around the country and what different 'jobs' they do!

Ralph was born at two minutes past midnight on millenium day and will soon be 11 years old. He was born in a sawmills and true to form now accompanies his dad and 'works' as a timber haulier. Ralph is shut in the cab when the heavy machinery is at work and is then allowed to play in the forest afterwards and he searches each area for plastic bottles in the hope that someone will throw them for him to collect relentlessly. In Ralph's favour, it's a good job the visitors to the forests are lazy and stupid and leave him plenty of cast off bottles to collect and Pat says Ralph is happy to collect them all day long if he could.

Just to show you, this is Pat hard at work. He is moving an oak log which is to be auctioned for the forestry commission. This particular log alone weighs 12.5 cubic tonnes. Each year we hold a hardwood auction in the south west and all the commission districts fell hardwood logs and sell them as parcels at a big one day event. You can just see in the background some more of the oak logs and also chestnut logs were added. Pat delivered and arranged all of the local logs for the timber merchants to view and calculate their value before bidding.  At this point Ralph was sleeping in the cab as Pat did all the hard work!!! What a wise boy!

And my other bit of news is we are being home vetted tomorrow by a lady from german shepherd rescue and she is bringing Stan-Lee to visit us and our home in the hope that we will be able to rehome him. Stan-Lee has had some general meetings with chickens but we are hoping he will be able to cope with our clan. Also we may not be suitable to rehome him but I do hope so as I have heard so much about him and he sounds wonderful. If we are lucky enough to have him with us, I shall of course be taking him to work with Willow and he will also be able to spend all day playing about in the woods. Fingers crossed for me everyone!

And so this one is now ready for framing. I'll blog a post of it in the frame but today I am off to meet a lady from Builth Wells who wants a portrait of her sister's horse. Unfortunately the horse has passed away and I have my fingers crossed the photos are clear enough to use!

Also, a little news from the bunny shed, poor Bob had a trip to the vets this week as I noticed his eye was running. It turns out Bob has lost some of his back molars at the top, this led to the lower ones rubbing against his jaw so he is now recovering from his little op to sort it all out. Hopefully the remaining teeth won't grow back too quickly otherwise he will have to have them removed entirely. Poor Bob, however, all is not lost as he is happily munching away on fresh carrot this morning and still has a healthy appetite so it's obviously not too much of a hinderence to him!