O Christmas Tree

Another plus about Christmas is that we have a big tree in the living room and it is planted in a big bowl of water. I really am glad that they added the new dish in the living room. The water has a bit of a kick to it, a slight pine flavor. Mmmmmmmm, I love it!

Molly and Anthony brought the tree home one night and Jason and Megan helped them decorate it. Right in the middle of the tree is my soccer ball. The tree is decorated in pink and one of the boys found my soccer ball and figured out how to hang it on the tree. Mamma left the ball there since it is pink and almost looks like it belongs there. They put it high enough up so that I can’t reach it. I am hoping I get to play with it again after Christmas. Our tree is very pretty and I am a good dog because I don’t chew on the ornaments!

It's Christmas!!

Christmas is a special day, there are presents under the tree, lots and lots of presents, and food everywhere. I am not allowed to eat people food, only dog food but I have made a most remarkable discovery. If I sit by the front door very quietly mamma forgets that I am here and she puts food on the bench next to her chair. If I am very clever (which I am) I am able to sneak up and help myself to the food. Sometimes they forget that I am tall enough to reach the coffee table and people put food on that! Molly is definitely a big help when it comes to finding food, she always leaves food on her plate. I have discovered that all I have to do is follow her around and wait till she walks away from her plate because she hardly ever remembers to take it to the dishwasher.

We also have a lot of shiny presents with pretty bows. I am not allowed to touch any of those presents but I discovered this morning that one of those gifts is for me, it’s a bed. I thought it was a big chew toy and started to chew the ends of it but mamma quickly explained that it is a dog bed. I guess I was confused because I have never seen a dog bed before, I sleep in a crate at night. I am very excited about the new bed because I am hoping the dog bed means freedom at night!!! Yeah, that would be a lot of fun to explore the house at night. I’ve already got some ideas about that and can’t wait till I’m in my bed pretending to sleep and everyone else goes to bed and closes their doors.  I’ll be sure to let you know about those adventures! Yeah, I’m sure I like Christmas!!!

Pappa's In Trouble

Today when mamma came home from work I could tell that there was going to be trouble! The first thing she noticed was that the newspaper had been shredded and unfortunately it was the sports section, the part that mamma reads first. My pappa is retired and his job is to watch the dogs but mostly he watches TV! Today he was upstairs on his computer and I was bored. I found the newspaper on the sofa and had a good time shredding it, well, shredding it and eating it...

I don't think older dogs get bored during the day because Rusty seems quite content to just sleep and watch TV with pappa. I like to explore and taste things and I have a real enthusiasm for life!

Soon before it was time for mamma to come home I went upstairs to see what pappa was doing. Pappa is a retired art teacher and he has a room with lots of interesting things. When I walked into the room with his computer I noticed a big orange crayon. It was quite interesting and looked like it would taste really good, so I ate it. Yep, I got it before Rusty or the cats found it! Later I followed pappa downstairs and all of a sudden it hit me, I was not feeling so good!!! Hmmm, I'm thinking it might have been the crayon. Sure enough it didn't take long at all before I blew orange chunks of crayon all over the carpet. About that time mamma came home and it didn't take her long at all to find it!

She took one look at the carpet and called for pappa to come into the sunroom. She figured out real quick that I ate something that was not on my diet and pappa was in trouble. In fact, he had to clean it up. According to mamma, puppies need constant supervision and I was not being properly supervised so it looks like pappa is going to have to do better on the supervision part and he will have to play with me more. So as it turns out, today was not such a bad day!

Sparkie!!

One of my favorite things to do is to tease Sparkie. One afternoon we were playing hide and seek in the living room and it was Sparkie's turn to hide so she jumped into mammas basket filled with dried hydrangeas. Ok, we didn't know at the time that the dead looking weeds had a name but I learned pretty quickly that they are actually hydrangea and mamma picks them from a bush in the yard and arranges them into a basket to look pretty. Who knew all that!! Sparkie sure didn't because she saw those weeds as a cool place to hide. She jumped into the basket and tried to cover up with them so that I couldn't find her. About the time she got comfortable mamma walked into the room and took one look at the basket of cat and was very angry, it seems that when Sparkie jumped into the basket she crushed the flowers and they dropped off the stems and onto the floor and the bottom of the basket.

We both got into big trouble for that. I don't get it that she was mad at me, I was on the other side of the room watching. But she yelled at us both. Here is a photo of Sparkie hiding in the basket. Don't ya think this is a great place for a cat to hide!

Obedience Training

It seems mamma has reached her limit and she has decided that I need obedience training! Yeah, tonight was my first lesson. A very nice guy that was one of pappas art students came to give me my first lesson. His name is Ray and mamma took a photo of us together. Ok, so I am a little confused about this obedience training. So far what I gather is that I am no longer allowed to jump up on people and bark and show them how happy I am to see them. I am also no longer allowed to jump on Sparkie and play with her. And it looks like I have to sit whenever mamma thinks I need to sit and there are quite a few more rules that I don't know if I will be able to remember. It was quite a night....and all the attention was on what I do wrong in life. On the plus side, I heard Ray tell mamma that since I am a terrier I need lots of exercise and she will have to walk me everyday.

I heard Ray tell mamma that my next lesson would be on how to walk on a leash. I think that lesson might be a lot of fun because we will be outside. I'll keep ya posted on my progress.