Happy Monday peeps and pets. The big day is almost here…are you ready? Today is Monday and we always like to start the week out with a smile.
You may recall that last week Sam worked at hospital and West Pines bringing relief and smiles to staff and patients alike. We’ll share some details of a couple of those visits soon.
As we were leaving West Pines, for some odd reason, Sam was mesmerized by the fish tank in the lobby. In the past he’s never paid any attention to it, we’ve walked past it a jillion times. Yet, this time he just couldn’t stop watching one of the large angelfish and seemed to be captivated by this swimming creature following his every turn, from one side of the tank to the other.
Sam seemed to be wondering if Santa visits those fish. The funny thing is that fish followed him as much as Sam followed the fish. Maybe he needed some pet therapy too?
Here’s hoping the smiles are plentiful this week and you are filled with the love, joy and peace of the season. We will be taking a few days off from posting and wish you all Happy “Howlidays!”
Happy pre-Thanksgiving Day. As many of you know, Denver was hit with a gigantic storm yesterday that buried the city with a foot of snow. It prevented Sam and I from doing our hospital visits and has us pretty much confined. It did however allow me to enjoy my favorite blizzard beverage, hot chocolate. With Schnapps and whipped cream. We are warm and fine if not a bit stir crazy. It’s too cold and deep to take the dogs for their usual walks and apparently not possible for Sam to use the dog run to relieve himself beyond the occasional pee over Elsa’s spots in the freshly created pee-atio in the dog run. Elsa however could practically pee or poop on command but Sam is nothing, if not discerning about where he goes. I have to chuckle about his refusal to not poop in the run, but know if I scooped out a square over at my neighbor’s house, he’d drop a log in a heartbeat.
Where the heck will Friday’s snow go?
We wish all of our US readers a day filled with good cheer, good food and a football win tomorrow. To all of our readers, we will spend the day staying warm, cozy and being grateful for your digital friendship and good company every week. We are truly blessed you are in our lives and we thank you for our good fortune for the connection. Cheers!
It’s almost here, the eat-yourself-stupid ‘howliday’ that dogs all over America howling their approval. Sam gave his sister the “talk” about how it goes down.
But before Thanksgiving arrives, Sam and I will be working at the hospital the next couple of days bringing cheer to patients and staff at the hospital. We will also be training a new therapy team who is joining our ranks. Woof woof! Let’s just hope Sam doesn’t give the new guy a similar Thanksgiving “talk.” Our hospital visits may limit our ability to post or comment much this week but we will do our level best.
Mother Nature plans to factor into the holiday with a winter storm watch being issued with up to 10″ of snow expected to start arriving later today. We’re keeping our fingers crossed it doesn’t impact travel plans.
We hope you have a safe and happy ‘howliday’ and Elsa in particular, is wishing you drop a few peas or gravy drippings for the 4-legged visitors. Remember though, turkey skin is bad for dogs but sweet potatoes/yams are good if you’re sharing any bounty.
Sam here. I managed to live through a pawsome day of celebration yesterday, otherwise known as my 14th birthday. Many thanks to everyone who left sweet comments wishing me loads of treats and many happy returns. I wagged my tail with appreciation.
Mom whipped up my favorite treat, a lip-smackin cake quiche (recipe is in our BarkBook if you want to make it for your own pup). Both Elsa and I love this snack and what could be better for a paw-ty than a tasty yet healthy birthday ‘cake.’ This time it was made extra special with the addition of rabbit meat (mom never has ham in the house and Elsa can’t eat it anyway due to the salt content when it’s cured which is bad for epi-warriors). But get this…I even ate the veggies! You guys know I’m no fan of veggies, right? But in this quiche…eggs, cheese and rabbit with those veggies, even this anti-veghead ate. every. morsel. Can you say….Y.U.M.? It was so tasty in fact, the Ninja snarfed two of the bone-shaped mini-quiches before mom had her camera focused. #baddog
Mom took that photo of me before we were allowed to dig in (but after Elsa made like a thieving raccoon hitting garbage bins around the neighborhood). The Ninja however, absolutely refused to wear the birthday celebration hat though. Little brat…you know I’d do it for her. Oh well, she said she wanted to enjoy the game of pinning the ‘Tail on the Squirrel.’
So, do you think she should have been allowed to nosh on that tasty goodness?
Thanks again for making No. 14 extra special. It was the pawfect autumn day, very sunny and bright. Mom says our forecast calls for a big freeze with the first snow by Thursday. What the dog?! Good thing I’m good with snow. So long as I don’t have to wear those stupid boots. Happy Tuesday.
Happy Monday and Happy National Dog Day. NDD celebrates all dogs, whether mixed breed or purebred. That includes celebrating Knuckleheads of all stripes and which I’m especially celebrating a certain Knucklehead who was presented an award this past weekend for having ‘pawticipated’ in more than 200 hospital visits. I couldn’t be more proud of this silly goofball who demonstrates pure loving attention to all he greets. Even when he faces the wrong way during the awards photo, he steals the show.
There will be more photos and a special post later this week but for now, please join me in saying, “attaboy, Sam.” Way to go, dude.
No resting on our laurels now though. Tomorrow we return to hospital to bring more smiles to patients and staff.
If you own a dog are owned by a dog, you probably have this same conversation on a regular basis. These guys seem to think they’re some kind of legal dream team.
It’s a brand new week, month, and a fresh Monday-whoa…how’d that happen? You may have noticed our conspicuous absence last week. We were supposed to visit the hospital and West Pines but by Monday evening, it became clear that Sam was too sick to do any visits and needed to see the vet. Happy to report he has begun to rejoin the canine-race after a very rough week; this despite steadfastly holding on to the notion that he must be catered to every waking moment of the day. The boy has come to expect an on-call short-order cook now and someone to hand feed him.
For a few days, he refused to eat or drink anything, requiring subcutaneous fluids from the vet. By Thursday, he would only eat a couple of small (and I do mean s-m-a-l-l pieces of freshly cooked chicken breasts. If…mind you, they were hand fed to him. By late Friday, Little Lord Fauntleroy decided that chicken breasts were far too Plebeian for his tastes and with sad puppy eyes moved on to other heretofore unknown preferences, finally accepting venison and buffalo as a suitable meal fit for his Lordship. Elsa naturally stepped up offering to eat any chicken (or any other food her brother refused to eat) as her contribution toward helping out. She did seem to know something was up with her older brother and tried sitting on sleeping next to him all week long, which made him more than slightly adverse to the close quarters but too weak to move out of the way. Can you say gun-shy of the Ninja? What can I say about these two other than I’m very grateful things are mostly back to normal now for all of us. I no longer have to sleep with multiple rolls of paper towels and cleaning supplies at the ready and my bank account can finally take a deep breath after all the vet visits.
I still wonder however why, when you’ve only had 2 hours of sleep because of a sick dog, why the damn smoke alarm feels compelled to start chirping at 2:00 AM. Any explanations on that one? No…well then let’s just chalk it up to the universe’s many unexplained weirdness and instead start out the new week and month with a silly pun, probably spoken with a heavy Southern accent. Since we kind of went from chilly temps to broil, we can only hope you’re not sweltering too much and hope it’s a great week.
Holy cow, it’s April…how did that happen? April is the pretty month, sweet and full of springtime promises. Today also happens to be my baby sister’s birthday so I’m sending her oodles of poodles of digital birthday greetings. Happy birthday, sweet sis! Can’t wait to give her birthday hugsin person later this month.
The Knuckleheads celebrated her birthday over the weekend with Elsa making confetti for the occasion.
We hope you had a wonderful weekend and today offers a fresh new slate for exciting adventures this week. No doubt these two are planning more ‘pawsome’ fun. I can hardly wait.
Every New Year’s Eve mom gathers us to have ‘the talk’ where she goes over, for the umpteenth time, “rules for poodles.” Elsa here. “Like we’ve heard it all before, mom.” Besides, we know “poodles rule” anyway. This year I decided to beat her to the punch before she starts whining waxing on about her stupid rules.
🦴 Yes, mom, we know it’s called a walk. In Doglish we think that means a ‘sniff’ and a leisurely one at that when the temperatures are extra cold. Chilled leaves and grass smell much different, trust us.
🦴 Of course we know that minding our leash manners is impawtant for everyone’s safety and that it’s not necessary to dash after every cat or squirrel we encounter. Don’t blame us…explain the rules to the cats and squirrels. We know exactly what to do. Can we help it if they don’t want to ‘chat’ with us?
🦴 Walking exercises. Sometimes the sidewalk ends and we have to walk out in the street so Sam and I think that’s the pawfect time to extend our leashes in opposite directions so you have to rein us in. It’s called upper arm strengthening exercises. Have you looked in the mirror lately and checked out that flab dripping off your triceps like a wet bag of mice? You’re welcome.
🦴 As for when you’re picking up our poop, we’ve got other things on our minds. And most often that involves walking behind you to get our bearings. you’re on your own. 💩 Besides, I always thought moms had eyes in the back of their heads to keep an eye out on us. Guess I got that wrong.
🦴 Follow the leader to us in Doglish means something more like that cool Fleetwood Mac song…Go Your Own Way. Oh sure, you’re barking ‘heel’ but you need to start thinking of Sam more like Lindsey Buckingham. They’re both weirdos.
🦴 Yes, we pestered you to take us for a walk and jumped around like pogo sticks till we left and then s-l-o-w-l-y meandered around on said walk like we could care less. It’s called a poodle agenda. Sheesh, don’t you ever read the editor meeting memos where we clearly spelled that out?
🦴 In the winter when sunlight on our early walks isn’t in plentiful supply, we are quite sure that shadow we saw IS too a serial killer, therefore barking is imperative for everyone’s safety. The neighbors need to get up and get to work anyway.
🦴 And while we’re on the topic of safety, I know for a fact that all Akitas will trigger insanity on my part. You can call it racial profiling if you like, but blame the next door Akita, not me. He’s already proved that he would tear down the fence if he could. I know his crazy MO and will act accordingly whenever we encounter others of the same breed, irrespective if they’re nice or not. I gotta let all dogs know not to mess with this Chica. Us Ninjas have a reputation to uphold. Maybe you should think about carrying more treats in your pocket for distraction purposes. Just saying.
🦴 Nose nudging while you’re trying to paint. Hey, we’re just improving your lame artwork. Picasso probably had interns, so chill. If you painted with acrylics instead of those unforgiving watercolors, you could save yourself a lot of aggravation. Then again, if you petted us enough, we wouldn’t need to remind you.
There are probably other areas where we rule, but am sure when you least expect it, we’ll be sure to remind you so that you might eventually ‘get it,’ by pointing out who really rules around the Ranch. That’s called training, woman and you need lots of it.
We wish everyone a Happy New Year. Let us know when we’re gonna pop open the Dog Perignon, Sam and I will get the hors d’oeuvres ready for ringing in 2019 with some serious style.
