Thank you, he appreciates the scritches and ear rubs hehe <3

A German Shepherd sitting in front of the door of a closed bakery, looking at the camera with an expectant and betrayed expression.

The face of a dog who has arrived at the bakery expecting his party pie and frothaccino only to find it closed. His disappointment is immeasurable and his day is ruined.

Beautiful pup.

My friend (who works in an art supply shop in Italy) lost her previous GSD a few years ago to a sudden health issue, and was grateful for having the paintings to commemorate her.

A watercolour painting of a woman and a German Shepherd at the end of a path between autumn trees and shrubs, silhouetted by the sky.

A watercolour painting of a 3/4 profile of a German Shepherd.

A watercolour painting of a winter meadow scene with blue/violet sky and stars, and a German Shepherd sitting and looking out over the scene, facing away from the camera.

An acrylic painting of a German Shepherd, in the style of Van Gogh's Starry Night.

A collection of German Shepherds I've painted over the years. The watercolour autumn forest and 3/4 profile are of my friend's previous GSD, while the winter meadow one is her current dog. The Van Gogh-esque acrylic is a portrait I painted of my boy, Rosco.

Years ago @mikeduncan.bsky.social told me "you can rewrite shit but you can't rewrite nothing" and it's made every draft easier since.

I had heard people at #CHI2026 say that they didn't want AI-generated podcasts to be made on top of their work. While this perspective is totally understandable, I thought the podcasts could potentially be useful. But after looking up one of mine, I can't believe this feature was allowed to launch.

We're in autumn but already getting decidedly winter weather. This is the first time I've had success growing carrots as they'd always be twisted or tiny, but I think it was because I was growing them in premium potting mix. Now in old rubbish soil, they're thriving.

We don't get much scrap as I give away any vegetables I have excess off, but we usually throw the carrot tops into the garden as a lazy compost.

😁 What's your dog's name? Looks like a beautiful pup (though all GSDs are beautiful, of course)

A German shepherd sitting with a bowl of freshly harvested tomatoes, yellow beans, silverbeet and small orange chillies, plus several carrots of different sizes.

Today’s harvest with my helpful woof machine. Probably the last tomatoes I’ll get this season, but some of these carrots are absolute units; turns out they really do prefer shitty soil.

Closing in on the target Having hit a bit of a wall with my writing recently, I hadn’t really done much work on my novel until the last couple of weeks, when I was procrastinating from marking assignments. After even…

New post on my writing blog: Closing in on the target.

rebeccajfleming.wordpress.com/2026/04/19/c...

"Oh, I can't move my writing away from Substack because my audience is there, it's too hard ---"

I ended a 15+ year friendship with someone because she insisted on dating and making excuses for a Neo-Nazi. I promise you the world will not end if you switch to a different blog service.

During winter patches of our backyard turn into a bit of a bog, so of course Rosco always insists on playing in them. He comes back to the house with his legs and snout absolutely black with mud and we have to towel dry him before he can come back inside hehe

Muddy zoomies <3

They grow so quickly ❤️

I remember when Rosco was a puppy and was barking outside and wouldn't come in when I told him, so I picked him up and carried him in. Dad was like "Good luck doing that when he's all grown up" lol

*seeing an article about an interesting or important topic*
Me: Oh, this should be a good read, let's click on the link-
*realising that the article is on Substack*
Me: ... Never mind.

Aww look at the precious little baby 😍

Didn't make any progress on the chapter I intended to work on today but I did finish off that earlier chapter that I'd abandoned a few months ago with one short scene left to write.

Hopefully I can get a few scenes done for the second-last chapter tomorrow.

(now to sit back and see how many of those pointless proofreader/editor spambots pretending to solicit work I get to block)

Finished my current portion of assignment marking, so I'm working on my fantasy novel manuscript again.

The entire second-last chapter, plus the first half of the final chapter need to be written (and a paragraph in one of the middle chapters), and then the first draft of the book will be finished.

It was like... I am purchasing an item. We are not going on a date. You don't need to know where I live or how to contact me. Ma'am, this is The Body Shop, not fucking Tinder.

I once got to the counter of a store with an armload of products I wanted to purchase and still ended up walking out without buying anything because they wouldn't even start scanning my items unless I gave them my email address and postcode.

I do not want to create an account or open a subscription I just want to buy a thing and never hear from you again why is this so hard.

Headline in today's Guardian that reads "Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40 percent, study finds. Cognitive health in later life is 'strongly influenced' by lifelong exposure to intellectually stimulating environments, say researchers."

This is why you need to be reading books and writing your own emails, by the way. When you outsource your thinking abilities, you risk turning your brain into soup. Heavy dependence on AI has already been linked with severe cognitive decline. What you don’t use, you will lose.

Sorry for your loss. Rest in peace little kitty 🐾❤️

A German shepherd sitting with a bowl of freshly harvested carrots, yellow beans, small coloured tomatoes, rosemary and a lime.

Harvest with the Gardenhound.

Didn’t look like a bad one (I could see tow trucks etc but no ambulance) but still resulted in a whole lane being closed during peak hour.

loki from avengers : age of ultron is pointing at the camera and says `` you had one job . '' Alt: Loki shaking his hand and angrily saying, "You had one job."

Like, thanks, but that would have been useful information to have earlier, before I passed the turn-off that would have helped me avoid the congestion.

Was stuck in traffic this morning on the way to uni because of a crash on the freeway.

After I'd been sitting completely still for a solid five minutes or so, my car's navigation system said "Attention! In one kilometre, stationary traffic!"

Yeah, as soon as we bought him a different dry food, the problem went away immediately.

We do have to be careful with giving him leftovers though; some human food he used to be able to eat now also causes him tummy issues.