Rockin' that beard.

Despite the furrowed brow, Rowan is a very good natured dog. I think she was giving me her serious pose because she doesn't want people looking at her picture thinking she's a softie - which whe kinda is.

Rowan was left tied to a tree in a park in the east end of Toronto. She had a bad ear infection when she first arrived but it's clearing up now with care and the right meds. I think she's still a bit on the skinny side, though, so a little indulgence in the snacks department wouldn't hurt.

Super puppy energy. Get it while it lasts.

The hockey game is done and the crowds exit the stadium beside Toronto Animal Services. I've got Georgie with me and I'm trying to find a spot to take her photo where we aren't in the midst of the throng.

I find a spot and pull out my camera. After a few shots, someone comes up from behind and asks if she can pet my dog. Without looking around, I explain that Georgie is from the shelter but sure she can pet her.

The girl turns out to be a high school student. She steps around me, pets Georgie and starts to coo over her. Then there's a surge from behind me and suddenly there are at least a dozen of the girl's classmates all trying to do the same. Georgie is being swarmed and I'm worried until I look down and realize she's luxuriating in all the attention.

The high schoolers ooh and ahh and offer up all sorts of wisdom on how to take care of Georgie. At least five of them say they want to take her home. Then, a few minutes later, their bus arrives and they're gone.

It's a full on day of rain outside. The backyard is a soup of ice and slush. The sidewalks are minefields of thawed poop. The parks are slime, goop and crud. I opt to spend the day inside. I'm on the computer. Rocky is beside me, sleeping, dream kicking and farting.

Rocky farts a lot these days. No manners left. It's like he doesn't care anymore. Sometimes Elizabeth and I will be watching a movie and one of us will get a waft and try to fan it away, to no avail of course. It's like trying to fan away mustard gas. You can't fan away that which is omnipresent.

"Put the blanket over him," Elizabeth says.

I put the blanket on him, double it up even, a futile attempt to keep the gases contained.

"You have to tuck it in around his ass," she says.

It's the Dutch oven strategy but the blanket is too porous and can't hold back the inevitable. We wait. We know it will come.

First, there's just a hint of it and you think maybe it won't be so bad. But hope is soon dashed and if farts could sing, we'd have a hallelujah choir in our living room. Elizabeth and I furiously try to wave the vapours away. Elizabeth pulls her sweater up over her nose. It's the gas mask strategy which we both know doesn't work but you have to try, right?

I'm not sure if we just build up a tolerance or the odor actually dissipates but after a few minutes, we breathe easy again. We relax, fall back into the movie, forget about the stink grenade lying beside us.

And then, "Phfft."

(I missed going into Toronto Animal Services South this past weekend which means I've got no new photos of dogs to upload so instead I'm going to tell you about what Smitten did last week.)

Elizabeth and Smitten are already at the front door and I'm still putting on Rocky's jacket. Elizabeth opens the door. Without looking up, I hear a scramble and then Elizabeth yelling, "Smitten!" and then something else more guttural.

I look up and see the tail end of Smitten round the end of our fence, bolting into the neighbour's yard. Elizabeth chases after her.

I finish dressing Rocky and step outside with him. Elizabeth has Smitten by this point and comes back over.

"Look what Smitten did," Elizabeth says and she shows me the ring finger on her left hand. It's bent halfway up the first joint at a weird angle. "She broke my finger."

You know that latest Rambo movie that came out a couple of years ago? I watched it. Didn't flinch once at the slop buckets of on-screen carnage but show me a real life injury and I get woozy. I look at Elizabeth's busted finger. Now that's quite gross, I think. I try not to faint.

"What happened?" I ask.

"That stupid cat was on our porch and Smitten took off after it. The leash caught my finger," Elizabeth explains somewhat calmly. I don't understand why Elizabeth isn't screaming in pain. I'm pretty sure that's what I'd be doing.

One problem with having a ring finger snapped into an odd, distorted angle is that it becomes impossible to take the rings off. There are three of them. By the time we get to the hospital, they are constricted around Elizabeth's now ultra swollen finger like string tied between two links of sausage.

The receptionist suggests that Elizabeth try to take the rings off. Camel through the eye of a needle, I think but Elizabeth still tries. The receptionist gives her a tube of polysporin for lubricant and I slather it on the finger. Elizabeth starts working at the first ring.

"Is it budging?" I ask.

"I think so," she says.

She's really tugging at it, twisting it around, trying to squeeze the swelling and the broken bone through it. I can't look anymore. A few minutes later, it's apparent the ring isn't going anywhere.

As we sit in the hallway waiting, the pain really starts to kick in. A nurse says she'll bring by some pain killers but she doesn't. I walk around the hospital looking for some ice. Someone tells me the ice machine is around the corner. I go around the corner and I'm told the ice machine is broken. I ask for a plastic bag. I go outside and fill it with snow. I bring it back to Elizabeth and she wraps it around her finger. There's some relief.

Later, various doctors and nurses tell Elizabeth things like, "Wow, that looks painful," and "That's really going to hurt to get those rings off."

At some point, a couple of hours later, Elizabeth is brought into a room by a nurse. The nurse closes the door. I don't hear anything for a few minutes and then I hear an electric whirring sound. I hear it off and on for the next 45 minutes. Finally, Elizabeth comes out of the room. She shows me the remains of the rings.

"The wedding ring was especially difficult," she says.

Another wait and finally a doctor sees Elizabeth, puts a splint around the finger. She has to phone back in the morning and make an appointment with a plastic surgeon who will do the final set for the bones. Who knew that's what plastic surgeons do.

We get home and Smitten and Rocky greet us at the door.

"This is your fault," Elizabeth says to Smitten but it doesn't sound like she means it.

Spay/Neuter: Join The National Movement from Humane Alliance on Vimeo.

The Toronto Humane Society wants to set up a low cost spay neuter clinic based on the highly efficient Humane Alliance model. During the day, the clinic will conduct pet speuters by appointment. After regular hours, the doctors will get to work on the feral cats in the city as part of the ongoing trap neuter release program.

You can help the THS build the clinic by going to the Refresh Everything site and voting for this project so they can win the $100000 to get things started. You can vote once a day and the voting ends on April 30.

More information on the THS Spay Neuter Clinic can be found on their Facebook page.

In case anyone hasn't seen this yet, there's an excellent article by Linda Diebel in The Toronto Star called Ernest’s big adventure on the underground railroad for dogs. It's about a lovely Lab named Ernest and how he got to be saved from death by gunshot and brought to Toronto Animal Services South. It gives an indication of the amount of effort put in by many good people to get a dog rescued.

It's kind of funny that Toronto Animal Services South is now a well regarded dog shelter especially since only a few years ago they were considered by most people in the rescue community to be just another typical city dog pound where unwanted dogs were unceremoniously deposited and euthanized.

The change has been almost like night and day. Nearly 400 dogs, over 1000 cats and almost 300 small animals were adopted out to new homes from TAS-S last year. The vast majority of those were direct adoptions through the facility but TAS-S also works closely with several rescues in the city and, as the Star article describes, rescues in other jurisdictions.

It goes to show how much affect a few dedicated individuals can have on an institution, transforming it from a place of general misery to a place where hope is given to so many.