Friday, December 15, 2006

Puppy thoughts and other matters of importance

Hi friends,

It's me, Pippin, writing from my crate. Now that the secret is out about our new pack member, I have been able to safely return to the sanctity of my safe space. And none too soon. This very morning, as I was called to go for my morning walk, I carefully looked left and right to make sure that the scary Fox-kitty was not in the hallway. I really don't wish to rock any boats. I even took the alternative route to the front door--it's a longer route, but hey, if it means not confronting the cat, then no expense is too great. Do you know what happened. The scoundrel ambushed me again--leaping down from the piano and chasing me. I think war is on. Not at all helped by the fact that the cat has allegiances with all the other dogs in the house already--including the 7-week old puppy, with whom he plays and plays. Why, oh why, am I the only one who can see through his tricks? Sigh.

Kyzer, the new puppy packmate, is kind of boring. He mostly sleeps, eats, wrestles with the dastardly cat and pees. And pees. And pees. My people had completely forgotten how much a puppy pees. It's like every hour on the hour. Here's a very sweet picture of him sleeping in my person's arm. Doesn't he kind of look like a little Thumbelina? He's all curled up. That's Hamish's head trying to get a sniff of him. Today, Kyzer seems to be noticing that we big dogs will play with him. Up to now, he's mostly just interacted with his toys, our people and that cat. I've done several play bows and spins to try and entice him, but so far no luck. But he did bow at Hamish this morning outside. He got a bit overwhelmed when Hamish started to play with him, though--Hamish is a pretty rough fellow, but I think in time, he should have fun. Rafe, the oaf-puppy, is being a surprisingly outstanding older pack mate, even though he's hardly more than a puppy himself. He's only stolen Kyzer's stuff a couple of times.

The other big even in the house is the people's testosterone reduction program that has been on-going. As I think Hamish mentioned in a previous guest blog, Rafe left one day and then came back without his testicles. Boy, were Tansy and I overjoyed at that. Even though it takes a few weeks for the flow to really stop, we knew that we were on the downward slope with him finally. Little did we know that Hamish was scheduled for the snip-snip too. He got a brief reprieve so that he could finish his agility class, but lo and behold, on Monday he went away and he didn't come back until Tuesday. And since then, he's had to wear this contraption which is supposed to keep him from licking--poor guy can't do any normal grooming at all. His "procedure" was a bit more involved than Rafe's since Hamish was a "monorchid" (I'll let you look it up--I had to), so instead of surgical glue, he had to get stitches and be shaved and all of that. He doesn't seem too worse for the wear and that thing the vet said about no exercise except leash walks--well, you can imagine how that's been going. My person is trying hard to at least keep him from leaping on things. Poor guy doesn't know it yet, but he won't get to go herding on Saturday (or the next Saturday either)--talk about adding insult to injury.

Well, I've gone on long enough. I'll end with this very cute picture of Kyzer--he doesn't only sleep, eat, pee and forge alliances with the cat. He's also pretty darn cute almost all of the time.












Sunday, December 10, 2006

Our newest recruit

Hi everyone,

We are proud to join Hershey and FuFu (and we are sure many others who are waiting in the ranks) as honorary Huskies in the fight to take over the world from the people (or, maybe, we should say take back the world by overthrowing these human interlopers who keep just screwing things up and leaving huge messes for us to clean up afterwards)

We in the pack are just elated over our induction into HULA (the Husky United Liberation Army) and we are honored to stand up with Meeshka and her band of Sibes in such a noble cause.

Of course, we are not Huskies, but we believe that it isn't necessarily the breed that matters, but the heart of the dogs and the dedication to thwarting people when they have stupid ideas. We have joined as a brigade, meaning that we can be mobilized as an entire unit. We are fleet of foot and quick on the spin, so we look forward to our marching orders from Meeshka, the soon to be queen, to whom we have pledged allegiance.

And, we already have a new recruit to the commando. Everydog, meet Kyzer, our 7-week old private straight off the farm--a.k.a our people's secret.

We have lots to teach him yet (but first he'll have to stay awake for more than 10 minutes at a time), but he seems like a quick learner. We explained to him right away how the people get really cranky if they haven't had enough sleep, so on his first night here, he slept through for almost six hours before his little bladder said "I can wait no longer." He's also already figured out that the little fences the people have up around their flower gardens are meant as guideposts into the garden rather than as the deterrents the people think they are.

I have to be honest and say that I wasn't all that excited when Rafe finally told the rest of us what he'd learned at herding camp. At that point, we knew that a young dog was on its way. But, now that he's here, I have to say that I kind of like the little buckaroo. Reminds me of back when the people brought home my goofy little brother Hamish and I adopted him as mine right away. Kyzer isn't quite the same, but I've still already been showing him some play bows to make him feel welcom

Plus, Fox, our new kitty, doesn't seem to like him much--score one for the puppy!