Valentine’s Day is approaching quickly so I thought I’d share one of my favorite poodle valentines.
As always you’re welcome to use my illustration for your own personal use. Enjoy!
Love’s Greeting to my Valentine (PNG) Download
It doesn’t often get very cold here in Texas, but today it is rainy and colder so I thought it was a good day to share this poodle drawing with you.
It was one of my first poodle illustrations using a 1920 Norman Rockwell painting as inspiration. I always used this drawing for greeting cards and once or twice in a 12 month color-your-own calendar. As always you’re welcome to use my illustration for your own personal use. Enjoy!
Poodle Reading a Thermometer (PNG) Download
The scary thing about standard poodles and other large deep chested dog breeds is they can bloat suddenly. On poodle e-lists and groups you hear of owners not being able to get their poodle to the vet in time. Bloat always sounds so scary to me but I had never seen it before despite growing up with standards.
Last Tuesday night Sunny woke me up and was retching but not throwing up anything and his tummy was tight. I had read about the symptoms of bloat before and was afraid that he was bloating and that we were far away from a vet. I called our local vet in town at 1:30am and he recommended that we drive down to San Antonio to the Emergency Pet Clinic ASAP. J and I rushed down there where they took him immediately to a room for a vet to look at and ultimately to get x-rays. (I would upload Sunny’s x-rays but the CD the vet gave us with them must be for a PC or a certain program. 
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His x-rays showed that his stomach was stretched more than normal but not folding back on itself as it does when bloating. During the car ride his tummy released some of the air so wasn’t so tight once we got to the vet. Fortunately the vet said that Sunny was fine and decided that Sunny just had severe gastric distress causing the bloat like symptoms. She gave him some antibiotics to take for the next week because he was coughing when pulled on the leash and he had been with other dogs at our vet getting his teeth cleaned the week before.
We’re very happy that Sunny was ok and learned more about bloat and poodle anatomy going to the emergency vet and seeing his x-rays. I didn’t know that a poodle’s stomach is up in the ribcage! The vet in SA had some recommendations to prevent anymore bloat like symptoms.
The funny thing was that evening Sunny was watching J eat yoghurt after dinner, obviously hoping he would share a bit. Guess J should have taken the hint! 
Like I announced last Wednesday, I’m going to change things up a bit around here. The first new pattern is a hand applique poodle. In April of 2010, I designed him for my hand quilted wall hanging.
I suppose it’s hard to tell but he’s white with light gray legs in the shadows with embroidered nose and eye. You could make him any color and if you want to keep him with the right depth use a darker toned fabric for the legs in the shadows.
This wall hanging was my first foray into needle turn applique. When I did it, I used the freezer paper method. I traced my design onto the paper side of the freezer paper and ironed the shiny side with a dry iron to the right side of the fabric. Next, I cut out the fabric leaving about a 1/4″ margin all the way around and pinned it to where I wanted to stitch onto the background fabric. I used the freezer paper edge as a guide to the finished edge I wanted and used the needle to poke the edges under as I stitched the piece down with extremely fine thread that matched the fabric. I used Mettler Machine Embroidery thread but I hear another popular choice is silk thread. I didn’t bother with ironing under the 1/4″ margin as it seemed a little fussy. I did snip curves and corners as I went to help with puckering.
Here is the PDF with the pattern pieces. Download Feel free to ask any questions!
Saturday the Poodle Club of San Antonio had their annual Poodle Social. We took Sunny who had so much fun with all his friends he met last year and new ones too.
This year they had some “poodle games” but they ended up to be more “dog games.” Poodles just don’t dig in sand and they don’t like to flop in the water unless given permission! 
Here some poodle moms are trying to tell their poodles that it’s ok to dig for treats. Sunny (white standard in center) didn’t look very convinced.
Here Sunny’s friend obediently picks up the rubber duck after it has floated to the side of the pool.
