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Foo Dogs


Rattlecan
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The foo dogs, aka Guardian Lions, are all over Okinawa. I was told during a visit there that one is female the other is male. The male’s mouth is open. Baring teeth and growling, he keeps bad spirits away from the house. The female’s mouth is shut, to keep the good spirits on the property to protect the residents. 

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23 minutes ago, Rattlecan said:

You have probably seen them even if you don’t know what they are. They are always seen in pairs, often standing guard at the entrance of a Chinese establishment.

My next door neighbor is a black belt in multiple martial arts and operated a taekwando studio until Covid put him out of business.

he is getting close to the age where he was considering retirement anyway, so by cashing in on their property and moving somewhere cheaper, they were able to see their way clear to do it.

anyway, he has a pair of these foo dogs that guarded the entrance to his studio and he wanted to take them to their new house in Quebec a move of a little over 300 miles.

He offered to pay me to haul them down for him, and always ready for an adventure, I said sure.

So we packed up the camper, made reservations at a camp site near their new home, loaded up the dogs ( this was much more involved than a passing mention here would indicate) and headed off.

we made the trip on Tuesday and made the delivery yesterday.

much more to the story but I will tell it later.

Does this make you "unretired"?  :) 

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24 minutes ago, Rattlecan said:

You have probably seen them even if you don’t know what they are. They are always seen in pairs, often standing guard at the entrance of a Chinese establishment.

My next door neighbor is a black belt in multiple martial arts and operated a taekwando studio until Covid put him out of business.

he is getting close to the age where he was considering retirement anyway, so by cashing in on their property and moving somewhere cheaper, they were able to see their way clear to do it.

anyway, he has a pair of these foo dogs that guarded the entrance to his studio and he wanted to take them to their new house in Quebec a move of a little over 300 miles.

He offered to pay me to haul them down for him, and always ready for an adventure, I said sure.

So we packed up the camper, made reservations at a camp site near their new home, loaded up the dogs ( this was much more involved than a passing mention here would indicate) and headed off.

we made the trip on Tuesday and made the delivery yesterday.

much more to the story but I will tell it later.

Shipping foo is not for the faint of heart.

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  • Solution

Our last house in Vancouver had three "4"s in the address.  It was also at the top of a hill where car lights would hit the house driving by.  The Asian invasion was well under way so we bought 2 big concrete Foo dogs for the front porch.  After being on the market for 4 months, it sold a week after the installation. :)  Coincidence?  Maybe but I doubt it. 

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1 minute ago, Wilbur said:

Rattlecan Freight Forwarders has a nice ring. ;) 

Well once I process the video of the loading and unloading, the word rigging will have to come into play somewhere in the name. For now I will just say it involved my two ton engine hoist at both ends of the haul and the poor little half ton Ram was pretty much at its payload limit 

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The trip to Quebec on Tuesday went smoothly. We were rolling at about 04:30 which is about the latest you want to start when you have to traverse Toronto.

It was still quite early when we got east of Kingston so we decided to take the Thousand Island parkway and go for a bike ride on the bike path that parallels the parkway.

 After the ride we decided a little nap was in order. Check in time at our camp site wasn’t until 15:00 anyway so we would have been way early.

One more stop for lunch and fuel got us to the destination shortly after 3.

we no sooner got camp set up and the rain started.

It rained all night and I was really concerned what our unloading site was going to look like. It’s in a new development with no pavement so it could have been nasty.

Wednesday morning dawned bright and sunny , so we took the bikes to one of the great local trails and went for a ride.

After lunch we headed off to the new place to unload.

It went not too bad considering we were working on loose gravel and there was no way we could roll the hoist with the weight suspended, so once we had them on the ground we would give the straps as much slack as we could, push the hoist until the straps tightened up and lift. We could move it about a foot on each lift so it didn’t take too long to move them out of the way enough to clear the driveway.

Ultimately, they want them up on the porch but we were not equipped to put them there.

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So Wednesday’s weather was a blessing because later that night a big storm blew through dropping a lot of rain. It stayed wet and dreary all day today and unloading those beasties would have been much more difficult than it was. The camp ground has grass cover but the ground is so saturated that there is huge puddles everywhere.

this morning a guy in the next row over got stuck trying to pull his 5th wheel trailer out. Even in 4 wheel drive he was well and truly stuck.

His English was no better than my French, but when I brought the truck over to hook on to him we were both speaking the same language and I had  him pulled out in about a minute.

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6 hours ago, Rattlecan said:

Well this is a male female set but both are showing teeth. The difference between the two is that the female is protecting a pup under her paw while the male has a ball under one paw.

as it was explained to me, the male protects the building while the female protects the inhabitants.

So were foo dogs very heavy to deal with?

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2 hours ago, Rattlecan said:

Finally got one to upload . This is just after my son in law and I got them loaded.

FB765D9C-3169-4EE9-A6A8-D67C5B22A81D.jpeg

Admittedly I'm trying to figure out the faces of foo dogs.  It's not entirely what I expected. Anyway, may he be protected and have better luck in next phase of life in new home.

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8 minutes ago, Rattlecan said:

Not bad with mechanical assistance 

I'm glad got chance to ride the Thousand Island Parkway. Dearie and I rode it all the way from downtown Toronto along Waterfront Trail, etc. to Cornwall.  We camped 50% of the time along the way. It was in August...humid, hot time of year.  It was close to 500 kms...cause by bike, you take detours to get off the 401.. and other major roads/highways.

 

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Tonight is our last at this camp site. The weather looks decent for tomorrow so the plan for the morning is to pack up after breakfast and head over to a nearby bike trail for a ride. There is room at the trail parking area to park the trailer so we will take it with us and head to our next destination from there.

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  • 4 weeks later...

My (former) neighbour just posted photos of the foo dogs now properly positioned by the front door and the machine that put them there.

With all the construction going on in their new development, I knw it wouldn't be long until somebody with the right tool would come along.

foo dogs 1.jpg

foo dogs 2.jpg

foo dogs 3.jpg

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