Happy Gotcha Day to Me!

So a funny thing happened yesterday. Mommy came home from work with surprises for me and said, "Happy Gotcha Day!!" There was

FRENCH FRIES!!

A CHICKEN SANDWICH!!

MOMMY'S THUMB!!! um...oops.

and there was a new squeaky toy with SIX SQUEAKERS in it and then I got some ice cream too and while I was eating my ice cream Mommy happened to look at the calendar and see that it was January 18, not January 19, so it WASN'T my Gotcha Day yet! BOL!! Mommy can be awful goofy sometimes. She laughed when she realized what she had done and said that I would have a quieter, actual Gotcha Day today. She came home tonight with sweet and sour chicken and wonton soup for me! I got some chicken bits in with my food and some of the chicken broth with a couple of wonton skins in it (but none of the pork filling because I can't have pork). It is my 11 year celebration so it seems right to celebrate it twice, once for the first 1 and once for the second.

In case you wondered what I looked like when I first came to live with Mommy here is one of the first shots of me. It was taken about a week after my adoption. I could sit comfortably on Mommy's lap back without towering over her.

The pound where I'd lived for a few months and was rescued from just days before I was to take that final walk thought I was 6 months old. They told the rescue people I had just gone through my 6 month growth spurt which meant that I was almost as tall as I was going to end up being. The rescue people told Mommy I would probably end up about knee high at most, but boy were they wrong! I was probably not even 5 months old and the growth spurt I had just had was my 4 month one so, once I got to Mommy's house I grew and grew and grew. By the time I stopped growing I was three feet tall at the top of my head, which means that Mommy can pet me while standing up without even straightening her arm all the way and when I sit on her lap it looks like this:

Happy New Year!

This post is to both say "Happy New Year everyone!" AND be my December update.

December was a busy month and a fun one. First off, Mommy bought her annual bag of nuts in the shell which she thinks looks "Christmasy" and, besides the tree, is the only Christmas decoration she puts up. I love it when she sets them out in her stemmed glass bowl because it makes it so easy to help myself. Here is some proof of that:



Second, we have been having a really mild winter so far. It hasn't gotten down to below zero cold at all. I have therefore been insisting on being allowed to hang out on the porch. I don't know if I mentioned it, but a few months ago a friend of Mommy's from work gave her two old down comforters FOR ME!! Mommy put one in my second rag bed (which I had never really found comfortable) and she made a big pillowcase with a drawstring out of an old sheet and a hunk of rope for the second one. Because I had enough beds in the house I Mommy kept these two out on the porch for me to use. I REALLY liked my new feather beds and I got into the habit of insisting on being on the porch so I could sleep on them. Mommy finally drew the line when it was about 25 degrees and I insisted on being outside on my beds. She peeked out the window at me and saw I was curled in a very tight circle and shivering a bit, but I refused to come inside until she gave in and brought my feather beds in too. One is now in the kitchen where my travel bed used to be and the other is in the bedroom half on top of my regular bedroom bed. Sometimes I sleep on the feather bed and sometimes I sleep on the regular dog bed and use the feather bed as a pillow. It is very comfy.

In November I had some tummy troubles which I didn't mention in my last blog update because they are so common. So anyway, because of the tummy troubles I was sometimes pooping in the house so Mommy put the puppy papers down in the back room for me. I didn't use the papers for three weeks so Mommy picked them up one Saturday when she was cleaning the house. The following Monday I pooped in the back room. I thought it was funny, but Mommy wasn't amused.

Also in December Mommy made the fabulous Emily Cookies that Emily made for me when I had my toe amputated. They are the best cookies on earth. Mommy made two batches and I helped by picking up any spare bits that fell and taste testing when they came out of the oven. They were sitting on the counter cooling FOREVER and I only got four or five of them and then Mommy packed them up in containers and I only got four or five more of them and then she put all but one of the containers in the freezer and told me that I had to wait until Christmas to have them! I know she left one container out to give me cookies from, but that is just wrong. Then on Christmas SHE GAVE AWAY almost all the cookies!! Oscar got some and Benji and my cousin Missy and I only got one large container!! This is totally the wrong way for a Mommy to behave.

Right before Christmas Mommy had a day off and she needed to have her car serviced so I got to go along to the car place! I had been there once before when I had just gotten out of the emergency vet after my bleeding ulcer and couldn't be left alone, but I mostly slept through that. This time Mommy brought me in and I said hi to people and then Mommy took me outside and we took an hour long walk down a bike trail that wasn't far from the dealership. It wasn't a very interesting bike trail being mainly a trail for people to get to and from a train station, but it did have good sniffs. When we got back to the dealership and went inside I was greeted by a lady who said, "There's the dog!" I was not surprised by such a greeting because I KNOW I am very important, but Mommy was taken a bit aback. When she went to the service area someone called out, "The dog is here!" More proof of how important I am, and the service guy came out and told Mommy he'd been looking for us as our car was just finished and the keys were at the cashier's desk. Mommy said, "See, they were looking for you because they were asking about ME." but I know that wasn't true because when we got to the cashier's desk all they gave Mommy was our keys, but they gave ME a cookie.

Finally in December we had Christmas. We went down to Grandma and Grandpa's new house and spent the night. I wore the Merlin Cam both days and took some shots. Mommy's youngest brother was there and Grandpa's college friend and his wife came for Christmas Eve dinner. Mommy cooked the meal.

Mommy cooking.
I'm told it was good, but since it contained pork I wasn't allowed to have any.

Mommy's youngest brother and Grandpa and Grandma in the living room

The Christmas tree had gifts for me under it but I wasn't allowed to touch even though Grandma got to open a present on Christmas Eve just because Grandpa's friend's wife brought it for her. This was no fair.

The most disturbing thing about Christmas Eve was that at night when I got tired I and wanted to go to bed after my night walk (where I saw a FOX by the way!!) I couldn't find our room. We always stayed upstairs in Mommy's oldest brothers' room which later became Mommy's grandma's room. This house has NO UPSTAIRS!! I found our suitcases in Grandpa's office, but there was NO BED in the office! I therefore wandered around with Jack in my mouth whining. Mommy brought me into the office and pointed to the couch and said. We are sleeping here. This was TOTALLY wrong because I AM NOT allowed on couches at Grandma's house so how was I supposed to go to bed??!
When the guests left and Grandpa and Mommy's youngest brother were getting ready to go to church (Mommy and I don't go to church) Mommy worked some magic and made A BED appear out of the couch!! It was amazing and I climbed right on and went to sleep.

The next morning Mommy and I woke up before everyone else and Mommy hid the bed again.
Then we went for a VERY long walk. We found a nice park and walked some of the paths, but Mommy wouldn't let me walk all of them because she said they were too long and I still needed to walk back to Grandma and Grandpa's house. I was kinda mad about it, but then when we were 1/2 mile from the house I decided I was done with walking and wanted to cut through the backyards of the houses and go straight back to the house. Mommy said that was no and we had to walk the whole 1/2 mile. I was very tired when we got back and I decided to nap while Mommy and her brother played cards and dominoes and Grandma and Grandpa even played dominoes too! Then Missy and her family and her mommy's brother and his son came for Christmas and I got to open my presents! Because there were so many people in the living room Mommy and I sat under the piano.
I got a stuffed animal and a cloth ball which I tore apart within about 3 minutes, some more nuts, Mommy cookies, a big bone, and a tug toy. Grandpa and Grandma were in charge of putting the wrapping paper into a big garbage bag.
They have a gas fireplace in the living room, but it was too hot to turn it on.
After presents everyone went downstairs to look for a certain game. I'm not supposed to do stairs by myself, but I did.
I was worried about going up by myself after the game was found, but Mommy walked behind me and kept her hands on my hips just in case and I made it up without falling. They played the game and got really loud because Mommy and her brothers and her brother's wife take games very seriously. Missy and I hung out in the dining room to be safe. Then they had dinner and Missy and I couldn't have any even though it was turkey and I can have turkey because Missy CAN'T have turkey or she throws up. After dinner when everything was all cleaned up and put away Mommy and I went home and I went straight to bed on our proper bed that doesn't hide.

Finally, Mommy calculated how many miles we walked this year and it was 944.6. 867.9 were regular walks in town and 76.7 were hikes. That is less than normal, but not so bad if you consider that I was on limited walks for quite a while due to my toe amputation. You can see our Imaginary Walk to Alaska and Back if you want.

I hope you had a good holiday this year, and for those of you who don't get an actual physical copy of our Christmas card, here is what it looked like:

Happy Howlidays!