Another kind of bliss

Mr. P.'s birthday card to me showed this darling puppy. Apparently ours are not the only dogs who like to sleep in their food bowl.

Bliss!

Polly, Georgie & the 4 puppies are inside. Patch is outside, all by herself. No one to chew her tail, bite her paws, or disturb the peace. She thinks blissfully, "Man, this is the life, lying here on the deck in the sun, sniffing the good sniffs. When does the masseur get here?"

Another busy day

Another busy day here at 9 Dogs Howling.

Jinx stole Mr. Parker's little red notebook off the dining table and ate it, including most of the wire spiral. The last time one of his notebooks perished in a dog's mouth, the dog received death threats, but today Mr. P. thought it was funny. I guess he hadn't left any important notes in there. That he's remembered yet.

Berry ate the French wire from one of my earrings. Apparently the earring fell out of my ear and was just too tasty-looking for him to resist. I rescued the dangling decorative part (slightly chewed) but the French wire was long gone.

Meg and Teddy shared one of my Bic pens. A little piece of the barrel and one shred of the cap were left when I discovered this theft.

We're going to have some interesting-looking poops out there tomorrow. Mr. Parker suggested that I feed Berry some prunes so I would be able to identify his poop from its consistency and search through it to retrieve my earring, but I declined.

I see you!

Fritz and Ziggy live with four cats on their Washington estate. Only two dogs to police four cats...? Hardly fair when you consider that here in Tennessee, we have seven dogs to deal with one cat. But F&Z deal with it manfully. It may be due to other factors, such as temperament (though F&Z gladly accept credit for it), but those cats are very shy, especially Sadie and Pashmina. I did manage to photograph Pashmina once, peeking around a door frame.

I see you, Pashy!

Lionheart Pet Care Services

My friend Mary runs a pet care services business in central New York state. She is one of the few people on this earth that I would trust to take care of my pets - and who is equal to that daunting task. This photo shows Mary and two critter friends.

For more info, go to: www.lionheartpetcare.com or send a message to: lionheartpetcare@hotmail.com.

Thank you, Auntie Lisa

Dear Auntie Lisa,
Thank you so much for finding my grammy and sending her home where she belongs. She has a terrible habit of wandering off and we were afraid she was lost forever this time. And thanks for the neat toys! Grammy put some dog kibble in the red toy and I enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately there was no kibble and not much toy left by the time the other kids got to play with it. Grammy said the toy was inedible but it tasted fine to me. Meg and Jinx chewed the rope on the purple toy until it was in a zillion tiny threads all over the living room carpet and Grammy said some swear words while she was cleaning it up. Then she cut the rope off the toy and gave it back to us, but it isn’t nearly as fun without the rope to shred.
When Grampa came home from work, he put our new dog collars on us. Berry has the red plaid, I have the red and brown paisley, Meg has pink polka dots, Jinx has blue argyle, and Mom (Patch) has purple & pink. We all look very stylish now but I am the most handsome of all. Here is a picture of me playing with the red toy, and a picture of the toy when Grammy took it away from me. I had only been playing with it for, like, 5 minutes. I wasn’t done yet!
Grammy showed us lots of photos of you and Uncle John and Fritz and Ziggy and Harley and Pashmina. I hope you can come visit us some day. You can sleep with me in my dog bowl if you want.
Love,
Teddy

I cheated on my dogs

I cheated on my dogs while I was vacationing in Seattle last week. Here's proof: me cuddling one of the 9 Dogs Howling West Coast correspondents. I think it's Ziggy. Or is it Fritz?

The Great Escape

Like a WWII German stalag (prison camp), we have a system of fences and barriers here to keep the dogs in. In one location, the layout of the house and yard creates a series of sally ports with several doors. As long as the doors are all closed, no one can escape. Unfortunately, one of those doors hasn't been shutting securely lately and the dogs tend to leak out. No harm done - just some snacking on cat turds and maybe some illicit piddling.

This morning I looked out back and saw that two doors in our sally port system were open, with the big bad world beckoning beyond the last door. I did a quick head-count: 4 dogs missing. Teddy, Meg and Polly were in the fenced-in yard and the rest were AWOL.

How do you chase 4 dogs at once if they're not moving in a pack? With my luck, they had each chosen a different compass direction and gone on their merry way. I grabbed a leash and a handful of cat kibble and ran out to search for the missing prisoners. Immediately, Jinx and Berry galloped up, both soaking wet (I wonder if they joined our neighbors cows in their pond), and begged to be let back into the yard. I didn't even have to give them kibble. Then I headed out to look for Georgie. He is, after all, the one we paid Good Money for, complete with AKC registration.

As I walked the perimeter of the yard, calling for Georgie, my eye fell on our wildflower garden. It's about one acre, next to the woods at the edge of our property. The flowers and weeds in there must be 3' high. I thought, "Crap, if he's in there, I'll never find him, and I'll be covered with ticks after 2 minutes in there." But suddenly Georgie burst out of the wildflowers onto the mowed part of the lawn, running as fast as a boulder on legs can run. When he saw me, he trotted up to me, let me put the leash on him, and followed me back to the house. He was wet with dew up to his chest and had a big smile on his face.

But no sign of Patch. I figured she had gone out to do the rounds of the neighborhood, check in with her old pals, maybe beg for food from the neighbor who used to feed her spaghetti, and would eventually return, so I stopped worrying about her.

Polly, however, was absolutely frantic. Every 3-4 minutes, she asked to go out and searched the yard for her best friend. The other dogs didn't seem to care one way or the other, but when Patch finally came home (about 6 hours later), the puppies greeted her joyfully.

My, how you've grown!

Puppies Now & Then

When I was growing up, every time I saw my maternal grandmother (at least once a week, because we took her to church on Sunday), she would look at me and my brother and exclaim, "My, how you've grown!" as if she hadn't seen us in 7 years.

That's how I feel when I look at our puppies.

Mutt & Jeff

Mutt & Jeff were the stars of a cartoon series that started in 1907. Mutt was a tall dimwit and Jeff was a runt. We have our very own Mutt & Jeff here at 9 Dogs, in the form of Teddy & Jinx. When you look at this photo of them, you have to believe that it is indeed possible for the puppies in one litter to have different fathers, but Patch won't discuss that, so who knows?

Back to school

What is Teddy thinking?

I'm so depressed. Summer vacation is almost over. School starts next week. Grammy says I have to go to kindergarten. I don't want to go to kindergarten. What am I supposed to learn? I can already count to ten and do arithmetic (7 dogs + 1 cat + 2 humans = 10). Why do I need to know the alphabet? It's not like I'm bound for Harvard. And colors? What's color? And Georgie says the other kids will beat me up and steal my lunch. I don't wanna go! Please don't make me go!