Me & My Girl

Back From Vacation!

I know what you're thinking, "Back from vacation?! Your last post was at Christmas! That's must have been some vacation!" But no, friends, I have not been on vacation since Christmas. The truth is, mom has been a blogging slacker. (Get with the program, ma!)

The vacation of which I speak is the one where I get to stay with my beloved cousin Hendrix for a WHOLE WEEK while my family is out of town! You may recall that I love, ..love, ...LOVE him! We have so much fun together!

And guess what? Hendrix got a new baby brother (a kitty) named Hitch since I last posted! I like him a lot and he likes me too. We like to chase each other and he especially enjoys playing with my tail, which I am usually wagging. My aunt shot this picture of us catching some Zzz's...

The other morning all of us fur-babies jumped in bed with my aunt and uncle to snooze before starting our day; what you don't see is my other cousin Harley (also a kitty) who is cuddling at my aunt's neck! My aunt says she might need to get a bigger bed...

My mom told my aunt once how sometimes I think I'm a lap dog (I love my cuddles!), but my aunt was still surprised when I tried crawling into her lap one day! This is one of my mom's favorite pictures—mom loves the expression of delight on my aunt's face! xoxo

My aunt is really good about taking pictures of me and emailing them to mom when we're apart. But as you know, I am not always the most cooperative pup!

Here my aunt tried repeatedly to get a nice mug shot of me, but I'm a busy dog! I've got stuff to do! I can't be sitting around posing! This last one was just a lucky shot...

In other news, I regret to share with you that my feline sister recently crossed the rainbow bridge. Holly would have been 19 years old this fall! She had a great life with a lot of neat experiences and was a great kitty. She got to live overseas for a few years and loved to eat tomatoes! Silly old puss... Mom misses her terribly! My little brother Smokey (a kitty) misses her too; she was 10 years old when he joined the family at six weeks of age. She's practically all he's ever known. I'll try to get mom to post a pic of her so you can see how beautiful she was!

Hope you have been having a great 2011! I certainly have! I know mom is looking forward to sharing some of my shenanigans with you soon!

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