Merry Christmas!

A Visit with Santa!

I got to visit with Santa! I was REALLY excited to meet him!

My girl went with me and mom to see him. She seemed enthusiastic about our visit, but yet once she caught sight of him, she didn't want to get near him. Weird.

Mom said it reminded her of my girl's visit with Santa two years ago (see below)...

Hopefully my girl will have a change of heart about him this year so mom can get a nice picture of them together too!

Bring on the Snow!

Yesterday when I got up, there was this amazing white stuff all over my yard! I couldn't believe it! At first I was a little leery of it—after all, I've never seen anything quite like this before!

Initially I didn't want to leave the top step to go down into the yard to potty, but with dad's encouragement I did. Ooh! It was so cold! And so intriguing!

Soon my little girl came out and joined me in the yard. Once I saw that she enjoyed the white stuff, I started to enjoy it too! We started running around in it, traipsing all over the yard. I ran laps around my favorite tree, kicking up lots of snow with every lap! I especially had fun running and sticking my nose in it!

After we had tread in all of the snow in our yard, my girl started to get cold and was ready to go back inside.

I can't wait to play in it again! Hope you get snow where you are!

Lessons Learned the Hard Way

For the last few weeks mom has been leaving me out of my crate when she's running short errands. I've been doing great about being a good girl and not destroying anything while unattended—well, at least I HAD been...

Lately my girl and I have taken to learning things the hard way. The other day my girl got a gift of fruit-flavored lip balm from a friend. She was SO excited! It was her very first tube of "lip stick" (you may recall she's only four years old). The scent absolutely delighted her! I watched her happily put it on her mouth a number of times and figured I might enjoy some on mine as well. Eventually I found it unattended—OOH! ...and the SMELL...! I couldn't resist! And the tube fit so perfectly in my mouth! Needless to say, my devastated girl learned the hard way not to leave fruit-flavored lip balm laying around. Meanwhile, for a few days I continued to learn that fruit-flavored lip balm doesn't digest. Gross.

Then one day while mom took my girl to school, I found TWO of her giant bubble wands just lying around! I LOVE bubbles! Especially when my girl blows them for me to catch and pop! Well anyways, I knew that my girl wouldn't be home for a few hours and I really wanted to play with the bubbles. I had seen her blow bubbles a number of times and thought I'd try to blow some without her. I tried desperately to unscrew the wand from the tube of bubble juice, to no avail. I just couldn't quite get it out! However, I did succeed in chewing up the tube and getting bubble juice all over the carpet. Once my first attempt failed, I thought I'd try again on the other tube. Alas, failure again. My girl was not happy with me when she found out what I'd been up to. She was upset to learn that leaving bubble stuff where I can get it isn't such a great idea. Meanwhile I learned that I can't blow bubbles without her. Mom said she was just waiting for me to start barking or farting bubbles...

Believe it or not, I managed to find my tail in the hot seat again a few days later. My girl has a stuffed animal that she absolutely adores named "Downstairs Dog" (she also has "Car Dog" and "Bed Dog" so no one gets lost, although "Bed Dog" is no longer the alpha dog of the group). She likes to cuddle with "Downstairs Dog" when she's especially tired and takes him to bed every night, tugging on his fur and sucking her thumb (mom likes to tease my girl and tell her that "Downstairs Dog" looks like he has mange for all of the bald patches she's made on him by tugging his fur). "Downstairs Dog" is OFF LIMITS to me, although a few times I have gotten a hold of him and gleefully scampered around the room playing "Keep Away" while my squealing girl would frantically chase me!

Well, one afternoon I found him sitting in the chair waiting for my girl to return from an outing to snuggle and take in their favorite TV programs. He seemed bored, so I thought I'd entertain him for a while. Then all of a sudden... WHOOPS!! ...Well, imagine my poor little girl's horror when she discovered that I had plucked an eyeball off of him. She cried a lot. Mom suggested we change his name to "Ol' One Eye". That made my girl cheer up somewhat and she finally forgave me. Needless to say, she is learning the hard way not to leave beloved items where I can get a hold of them...

So mom has taken to crating me again. I'm not crazy about this at all. Hopefully she will trust me again soon! She tried to take some pictures of me to include in this post since you haven't seen any recent pics of me lately, but I wasn't feeling very cooperative (I had my eye on the cat who was coming into the room I was in).

Looking forward to hearing about your escapades! Hope you're managing to stay out of trouble where you are!

Super Soaker Sunday

"The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog."

—Ambrose Bierce

Crunch, Thump, ...RUN!

I turned nine months old yesterday! Hard to believe how much I've grown in such a short time. I've had a lot of interesting experiences since I came to live with my new family in late March, many of which have been chronicled here. My latest experience has been what mom calls "Fall"...

I've noticed that my yard looks a little different these days—all of the beautiful green leaves on the tree in my front yard changed color and fell to the ground. I love the way these colored leaves smell, and I love munching on them and trying to sneak them into the house after potty breaks, but I do NOT like walking on them!

When I go outside for potty breaks, I try to avoid walking on them as much as possible and seek out a place just off of the sidewalk and as leaf-free as possible to do my business. I don't mind a few leaves here and there, but crunchy piles of them bug me. It just doesn't seem right that so much noise should be coming from my feet!

In fact, when I go for walks, I am adamant about not walking on the iron water meter covers that litter my route. When I was a young pup, I made the mistake of walking on one once and it made a jiggling sound as it shifted slightly under my weight... scared me to death! Now I am sure to make a wide arc around them and quicken my step as we pass. Sometimes mom walks on them and I get the willies when they thump. Imagine how difficult it is to avoid them when they're covered in leaves! UGH...! But I digress...

Thankfully mom got out the rake and lawn mower and pulverized the leaves. Now it's not so noisy when I play in the yard. I have discovered that in a few spots, the mulched up leaves are a little thicker and when I get the zoomies and brake really fast or do hard cornering that I can get them to kick up and spray in the air. Trust me, it's really cool! Mom just shakes her head and smiles. So now that there are no more leaves to smuggle in, I am back to trying to sneak in large chunks of mulch from the flower beds to munch on. : D

Hope you're enjoying fall where you are! I'm lovin' it!

I'm Still Around!

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post! A lot has happened in the last few weeks!

I had an eye infection for awhile. My vet thinks I may have gotten it from dog school. So I had to take eye drops and some other medicine for a few days. I was NOT crazy about the eye drops. One night when mom tried to squeeze them in, she squirted about a dozen drops everywhere on my face except my eye ball. That was funny!

In other news, we're having some work done to our house, which probably has a lot to do with why I haven't blogged in a while. Anyways, we have a covered porch and the ceiling needed some major repair work done. While the contractor was here, mom and dad decided to have the porch screened in. The contractor even let mom help—she got to use power tools and everything! Mom had a blast. The screening starts this week!

Oh! And guess what? Mom has been letting me sleep outside of kennel at night! I have tried to sleep with her on the bed, but just can't seem to get comfortable. Laying on the floor close to her is much better. I love it!!

And finally, I got to go back across the mountain to see cousin Hendrix this weekend! I haven't seen him in MONTHS! We were SO excited to see each other! We had a blast playing our favorite games and wrestling, despite getting put into "Time Out" a few times for our shenanigans (tee hee hee!)... My aunt and uncle couldn't believe how big I'd gotten! I think I was about 45 pounds the last time they saw me and now I'm 60! My coat is much longer now too. Mom says I am truly a "magnificent creature".

I hope you are having a great fall! The changing leaves are so pretty! I love trying to sneak them in to munch on when we come in from potty breaks! Mom calls it "contraband". More to come later!