I Got a Present from Oz!!

Mommy came home from work tonight and there was a package waiting on the front stoop.  It came all the way from Oz!  (That is what Mommy calls Australia).

 See, you can see it says AUSTRALIA right there on the postage!

 The package was addressed to Mommy because my friends in Oz tried to send ME a Christmas card and the poophead mailman sent it back saying that it couldn't be forwarded to me!  I've gotten mail before without any problem, but our new poophead mailman seems to have been confused by the fact that I have a different last name from Mommy.  Poophead!

Anyway, Mommy opened the package up and inside were TWO Christmas cards, one from my internet friends Siobhan and Shiro and their daddy and one from  Ebonie and Siobhan and Shiro and Ebonie's mommy!  AND there was a WONDERFUL genuine Australian oil skin dog coat in it too! 

 See, it says so right on the package that it is a genuine Australian oil skin dog coat.

I tried it on and it fit wonderfully.  It has a nice fleece inside and an oil skin outside.  I can't wait to wear it tomorrow on my morning walk. This coat will be MUCH classier than Mommy's old sweatshirt which I have been wearing for the past two days.  We have been having very cold weather lately and it is around 0 when Mommy and I have been taking our morning walks.  This coat is going to be very toasty warm.

 

 Me barking "Thank you, Auntie Sarah for the classy coat!"

A photo from a few years ago of me in my not classy hand-me-down sweatshirt

The funny thing is that just this morning Mommy was saying, "I wish I could cover your hips on your walk, you really need them covered these days, and the sweatshirt just isn't cutting it."  You can see from the picture above that my hips are covered perfectly.  No more cold arthritis hips for me!

 

And thank you Uncle David for the card and for mailing the package for Auntie Sarah!

And Ebonie, Siobhan and Shiro I hope you stay cool since Mommy tells me it is summer where you live and you've had a lot of really hot weather lately.

Happy Gotcha Day to Me!

Today is my gotcha day!  I've been with Mommy for 12 years now.  I'm a bit sore from having fallen on the ice a couple days ago so Mommy and I kept the celebration mild today.  I got to sleep in this morning and have a long snuggle after we woke up.  I got 1/2 a toasted cheese sandwich with breakfast and then we took a three and a half mile walk around town this morning and I stopped for cookies at the feed store.  This afternoon we took a mile long hike.  I also got a fried egg after dinner, which was very yummy.  Mommy says tomorrow she will make me some chicken.

Here is a picture of me on my first ever hike with Mommy all those years ago:

and here is a picture of me on today's hike:

Black & White Sunday...Sort Of

Mommy and I went for a hike around one of my favorite little lakes yesterday, and when we looked at the pictures Mommy took we realized some could qualify as a Black & White Sunday posting, without actually tweaking them to grayscale.  It was VERY windy and we saw lots and lots of waterbirds.  We also found three goose kills.  Two were definitely the work of coyotes, but we aren't sure about the third.  We'll start with the "black and white" pictures

There were temporary signs saying "Keep Off the Ice" and "No Ice Fishing" but when the ice looks like this I'm not sure how stupid you'd have to be to go out on it.

This is a coot

There were a ton of geese on the lake and they just kept coming

Now for the not black and white, but still with a black and white theme if you consider I am black and white and goose feathers are too.

 Me getting a drink out of the lake

 It was very windy as you can see by my flying leash and how all my tail fur is backward

One of the coyote's goose kills

 This is the goose kill we weren't sure about.

There were a whole lot of cleanly plucked feathers, and no real signs of coyotes.

Mommy wonders if maybe a human was involved.

My Monthly Diary for December, 2012

Well, December was a busy month as always.  First off, this month I found a really big and yummy dead thing on our Sunday walk.  Mommy thinks that it was maybe a half of a squirrel.  Anyway I found it and I grabbed it and I started chewing as fast as I could.  Mommy yelled, "Drop it!" and "Spit!" but I chewed faster.  Mommy then grabbed my jaws to pry them open and force me to drop the yummy dead thing, but I did something I NEVER do, I locked my jaws and even when Mommy pushed the secret spot at the joint she couldn't open them.  While she was wrestling with my jaws and shaking my head back and forth I worked my tongue and swallowed the whole dead thing.  Boy was it tasty.  Anyway, it was a good thing I ate the dead thing, because that afternoon I didn't feel so good and had a tummy ache.  The tummy ache continued all night and the next day and the early morning after that and I hardly ate anything at all for those days.  If I hadn't eaten the dead thing, I would have starved.  Then, just before sunrise on the Tuesday after I ate the dead thing I woke Mommy up and told her I really had to go potty.  She let me out and I did a lot of pooping, then we went back to bed and I woke up about a half hour later and did more pooping, then more every half hour or so until Mommy took me for a walk around 9 a.m. and I gave her the challenge of figuring out how to clean up a pile of runs on someone's lawn.  About fifteen minutes after that we got to the corner where I'd found the dead thing on Sunday and I searched and searched and searched, but couldn't find any more yummy snacks.

Mommy and I did my annual howliday photo shoot for my Howliday Card.  Here are some of the outtakes:

As you can see, I did my job PERFECTLY, but Mommy kept forgetting I had a tail.  The last shot is me telling Mommy to get her act together.

Mommy got sick this month and we got to spend two days snuggling in bed.  It was nice.  I had some trouble with the weather changes and was sore on and off for most of the beginning of the month.  One day I slept funny and woke up with my tail asleep.  When I stood up it was jutting out to the side instead of curling up over my back like it is supposed to do.  Mommy laughed at me, which wasn't nice, she knows I don't like being laughed at when I'm not trying to be funny.  I tried to wag my tail and while the first six inches or so wagged normally the rest of it just sort of flopped around out of control, which made Mommy laugh even harder.  Then it got all pins and needlesy and I kept staring at it until it finally calmed down and became my tail again.  Mommy told the vet at my next laser treatment about all the troubles I'd been having and she upped the time and intensity of the laser and it really helped.

We got our hiking badge for doing the county hikes this month too.  It features bats this year because they are going to give a free guided night hike for ten to one lucky participant.  We won't know if we've won until February, but keep your paws crossed for Mommy (and if not for her for her friend at work who also entered because they have promised to take each other if they are the winner).  Dogs aren't allowed, but that's okay, because I'm scared of the dark...um...not a big fan of night hikes.

We got two new squirrels this month too.  They just showed up one day and the weird thing is they are RED HEADS!  Yes, they are gray squirrels with strawberry blonde ears and tails.  How weird is that?  All our other squirrels are normal gray gray squirrels and we briefly had a black gray squirrel come visiting this spring when all the other squirrels ceded the yard to the vicious robin family, so we are wondering who their parents were.  Mommy has dubbed them Ginger and Blondie.  Here is Ginger:

Mommy says I should not chase Ginger or Blondie because she wants them to stay and raise babies because she wants to see what color the babies will be.

Of course this month we also had Christmas.  Mommy and I went to Grandma and Grandpa's house and celebrated Christmas Eve with her youngest brother and Grandpa's friend with Alzheimers.  Then we spent the night and my cousin Missy and her family came over (along with her uncle on her mommy's side) and we celebrated Christmas Day and got presents.  I got a squeaky crocodile and Missy got a squeaky hippo, but she thought my crocodile looked better, but I didn't let her have it.  I also got a new deer antler and Mommy gave both of us some homemade cookies.  She also made some for my cousin Walter, and Missy found his present and tried to take it for herself.  She got in trouble which is silly because we both don't like Walter and it would have served him right not to get any cookies.

A couple days after Christmas Mommy and I went up to Wisconsin to celebrate Christmas again with Mommy's grumpy oldest brother and his family.  (They think dogs shouldn't lick the dishes, how ridiculous is that?!)  Missy and her family came too, but she stayed at the brother's house and so did Walter (who now lives with his human sister and her new husband and not the grumpy brother) so I didn't see her or him.  Mommy bought herself some new boots and we took a long walk on the lake and through the woods and along the road to test them out.  Then the next day Mommy's grumpy brother and his soon to be new wife (who isn't grumpy at all) and I went for a walk through the 18 acres of land that is soon to be Mommy's across the street from the family place.  Mommy was showing them where she thinks she could build a house.  About half way through the hike I started following some deer tracks instead of Mommy and I kind of wandered off.  I swear I didn't hear all of them calling me or see Mommy backtracking and trying to find where my tracks veered off and I am sticking with that story.  I hadn't fallen and/or gotten myself stuck somewhere in the swamp (which Mommy says is what she was most worried about) and I did come back eventually and we finished the hike with Mommy only having to haul me over one big log that I couldn't climb over.  Later that afternoon I took another long hike with Mommy on the lake and I found a muskrat den and chased him around as he swam under the ice from air hole to air hole.  By that night I was EXHAUSTED and was happy to head home the next day.  In the past, Mommy and I would take a hike on New Years Day, but I'm too tired to do so this year and since it is only 19 degrees out today, Mommy isn't too upset about that.

This year we walked 708.98 miles.  That brings us to just short of Prince George, BC on our imaginary walk to Anchorage and back.

Happy (calendar) New Year everyone!