Some New Finds!

Can you believe this find? I didn't get this fencing, and I'm pretty pissed off about it too! This was found by a good friend of mine over in Dartmouth while she was out walking her dogs - and it was enough to finish fencing in her yard so that she doesn't have to put her dogs out on a long line when she takes them out to pee now. Is that awesome or what? What an improvement in the quality of her canine life companions lives! She noticed that the house she found it at had just put up a nice wooden fence. Wasn't it nice of them to put out their old fencing in such nice condition?


I found this hat that Charlie is modelling up in the woods behind my house. I'd say some stoned teenage hoodlum must have just lost it off the top of his head because it's in perfect condition and it hadn't suffered any effects from any weather. It says "snowboarding" on it - so I'll look just like a punk kid when I'm out walking the dogs now. Or maybe Charlie will - I haven't decided who's going to wear it just yet.

Man, this was a find. I love this garbage can. I found this on the way home from the beach last week out in the middle of nowhere - well actually it was on the side of the road out in the country on the Herring Cove Road - but it's in excellent condition even though it's really old - and the person loved it so much that they had even put wallpaper on the inside lid - SO country. And it even had a clean garbage bag inside so when I brought it inside I didn't even have to put a new garbage bag in it. Is that great or what? Life is GOOD! haha!

An Adirondack Chair Makes for a Perfect Deck!

I am really sorry that I forgot to get a "before" picture of this chair - but it was missing an arm and it was really jiggly - and green. But I saw it's potential.

So I took it to my Dad and he fixed it right up. I think it was the thing it gave him the final impetus to finally give me a jigsaw! hahahahaha! So now I can fix up things like this myself! hahaha! Thanks Dad! But I did paint the chair my own self. And my Dad put a ton of screws in it to make it nice and secure.

The brand name on it says "Bear Chair" - and when I did a search on the internet - it comes up as a brand made in Ontario - sold exclusively down here in the Maritimes at Kent, which is a store that I refuse to shop at because it's not dog friendly - so when I looked online for pricing it comes up as being $90.00 AMERICAN!! So I got a chair for free that's valued at $90 American! Now that's savvy shopping!

How Garbage Walks Solidify a Pack Structure

I've been doing a lot of research lately on Cesar Millan and his philosphies on living with dogs and dog training.

Some of it I agree with, some of it I think he talks about about just so that he can flap his gums and some of it I do not agree with. I am not in favour of the "flooding" method of dog training - where you teach a dog to get over his fear of something by exposing it to him 1000% and then making him deal with it like that so he has to get over with it or die on the spot. It doesn't work with humans, and I know it wouldn't work with any of the dogs I've met in my life. It's the same thing as making a kid smoke 2 packs of cigarettes when you've caught him smoking for the first time. Sure he's probably going to throw up - but it doesn't deal with any of the underlying reasons WHY he was smoking the cigarettes in the first place (peer pressure, thinks it's cool, piss his parents off, etc.) - it's the same thing with flooding. Dragging a great dane onto the middle of a shiny floor when he's terrified of shiny floors and making him "just deal with it" - is not the way to go. But that's not why I'm writing this post!

One of his other big things is proper exercise - he exercises the dogs in his care 4 hours a day - which just about NO one else can do - but he also says that classical dog parks are no good because dogs just wrestle and dogs need to feel like they're going on a hunt with their pack leader every day. So it's really important to WALK your dog.

Well I'd like to submit that my garbage walks and my going for walks in other people's neighbourhoods in general are the perfect example of going "hunting" with your dogs. And the prey is other people's garbage. Me - I just surf the top layer - and I hardly ever take anything anymore. Last Sunday when we went for our garbage walk we walked for so long that by the time we got back to the car I was too tired to go back and pick anything up. The picture above is a little wicker basket (a garbage can actually) I picked up just on my own street last night when I had Charlie out. It was a gross white and I just painted it up tonight and now it's perfect.

But I think there are extra benefits to going for garbage walks above and beyond finding urban archeological treasures - you will also be solidifying your pack structure - if you believe what Cesar Millan teaches. He believes that dogs need exercise where they move forward with their pack leader - not just moving around in circles or wrestling and playing - or even chasing a ball with a chuck-it or doing flyball and getting out their energy that way. They need to walk and go from A to B.

And garbage walks are perfect for that. So check out which nights are garbage nights in your town and get walking! haha!

A nice new to me desk!

I drove by this table for a couple days before I picked it up. It was on my route to work on Herring Cove Road - I don't know why someone else didn't nab it before I did! Someone put it out more than a week before garbage day. So last Friday I put it in my car and then Saturday I looked to see if it was worthwhile.

It had completely fallen apart - every screw was loose in the whole table - but someone had spent a lot of time sanding the table to try to refinish it and then just thrown the whole thing in the garbage for some reason! Why? Maybe it's because obviously the under part of the table and the legs are obviously from a different older table and the top is just 1" plywood, and the person wouldn't have realized that until they'd finished removing all the paint - and then said "SHIT!" It's plywood on the top! All that work for plywood!

So I tightened everything everywhere, painted the top light brown, left the rest of the table "distressed", and bob's-your-uncle - I've got myself a beautiful desk that fits with the rest of my decor!

Beautiful. And the price is very right! And the landfill thanks me too!

After I screwed everything together, but before I painted the top
Buttercup modelling the finished product!

An Amazing Find that I Couldn't Get

I came upon this Armoire / Medical Chest / I don't know what the hell it was meant for this morning:








It was on the curb on Bloomingdale Ave - which is off on Connaught Ave - which is on my way to work - in the south end of Halifax. The shelf that's sittingon the top has a glass front.

It is totally really old - it was way too heavy for me to drag to the car on my own and I think it was too big to fit in my car anyway.

I saw it there on my way to work and it was still there on my way home from work.



I was totally upset that I couldn't get it because it is absolutely gorgeous. The things I could do with this piece of furniture. It could be fixed up to be absolutely beautiful. It is a complete shame that it's going in the garbage don't you think? I am crying wooden tears for this piece of history...

Something to stick in the ground

The 2 little wooden horses I found in a wooden box on Allen Street one night - my parents put out these kinds of ornaments on their lawn at their cottage - this is but a small selection that I put out for the photo's purposes - but those 2 on the right are ones I found while on a garbage walk. I don't know if my parents know that the 2 flamingo's that they've had on their lawn for years are ones that I knicked from someone's lawn while I was in university..... Oops!

Before picture of the lounger

I was just on the computer doing something else with my pictures and came upon the "before" picture of the lounger when I brought it home from curbside - this is how it looked in it's original form - it only had one completely visible rotten piece that made the original owner throw it out.

I ended up replacing about 5 pieces of the top - but that's no big whup when you've got a father who has every tool known to man - right Dad? And then slap some paint on it and you've got a brand new to you piece of furniture!