My Wonderful Christmas

We had a very nice Christmas. It started Christmas Eve. Mom had to go shopping because she also waits until too late to buy gifts for her family. She and dad cooked a wonderful special dinner of pheasant for Christmas Eve dinner. Selfishly they ate the food without sharing and even, unusually, ate at the table downstairs where I could not even beg for scraps.

After dinner mom came back upstairs and helped me by typing on Twitter for the Catmas Eve Pawty given by George the Duck and the House of the (Mostly) Back Cats, benefiting Black Cat Rescue. I DJ'ed for an hour and stayed until 3 a.m., the end of the pawty. I was following Santa's delivering of presents around the world via @NoradSanta on Twitter. I loved the Google Earth view of Santa' s trip.

The next morning was Christmas and mom and dad gave me my present (more on that below). Mom and dad did leave me for a while at night to go over to mom's sister's house for dinner with the whole family, but the rest of the day they stayed with me!

My big present was a brand new, whole piggy foot.


I worked really hard on this hoof and in a few hours had chewed it down to these pieces:


Don't worry - I will continue chewing on all these little pieces.

I'm on Facebook

First I had a Twitter account. Then I found out many of my pals had blogs so then mom promised she would help me start a blog when we were on vacation. She kept her promise as here I am.

But then all my friends were getting Facebook pages. Mom said No, she was too busy to keep it up. She does Twitter, Facebook and blogging for work too so she knows it takes time. She added Dogbook for me and the other animals in the family on her page.

Then Bunny Jean Cook got her page and mom said, okay when she had time. I kept whining and she said when she was on vacation for Christmas. So, tonight she set up my page!

Now I'm on Facebook, I can finally rest!

Come be my Friend on Facebook!

O Christmas Tree

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, How Lovely Are Your Branches!

Mom loves Christmas and her Christmas Tree is always very important. But, she has had active cats for a lot of years and didn't have a lot of luck with her trees. She told me that she put up a really big tree years ago and would come home from work every day with all the ornaments on the bottom third of the tree on the floor. Some would be disappeared all together. That year she rehung the ornaments every night.

After that, she didn't have a big tree for a lot of years for different reasons. Then she tried another big tree and again, kitties, this time the ones we have now, would make a mess. This was six years ago.

After her dad died, she and my dad cam back to live with grandma. This meant she had a lot less room and most of her stuff went into storage. On Halloween mom was tired of paying for storage and had a giant yard sale. She did not get rid of her Christmas decorations and seeing them all made her think about how much she missed a big tree. But we still didn't have much room.

Friday night dad got the little tree out. It was a cute tree but when they plugged it in the lights didn't work. It was the kind of tree that had the lights built in. Mom knew she could cut the light string off the old little tree and put new lights on, but she kept thinking about all her favorite ornaments. Then she thought about the kitties. But the youngest kitty is now seven years old and besides they are afraid of me and I promised I would guard the tree. She was a little worried about me too because I am so ex-u-ber-rant. Not sure what that means but she says I just around a lot and wag my tail. But I promised I would be careful. So mom and dad went to one of those horrible big box stores they hate to shop in and got a good deal on a 6 foot tree.

And viola'! Hey @Simonelechat I actually spoke French there.


I love the lights on the tree - they twinkle. And the pretty balls reflect the lights. But the most important thing is the tree makes mom very happy. She told me about her favorite ornaments and when she got them. Then she said her new favorite ornament was the one I won from her at one of our pawties. There have been so many lately I am not sure if it was the November Pawpawty or PepiPawty but it was the beautiful woolly by @elineof and it came all the way from Norway! Since we all know what would have happened to the poor woolly if I kept him, I gave him to mom for her tree.


Mom sits and watches our tree a lot and I like sitting with her and watching it too. And bestest of all, after Friday, she is on vacation until next year! I hope that is a really long time.

Family Christmas Card

We been busy getting ready for Christmas. We put up our tree and all the animals in the family got together to pose for this picture.

The V-E-T

I am 18 months old so this is not technically my first visit to the Vet. Last December 9th mom and dad took me to this Spay and Neuter Clinic in Gloucester, Virginia. The worst part about that was they left me there but the nice people there put me to sleep and I missed the rest of what happened. They neutered me, gave me all my shots, and trimmed my nails.

No such luck this time. I really didn't know what to expect. A couple of my friends on Twitter joked with me about it. We went to a pet store - Care-A-Lot Pets in Newport News where they have a wellness clinic every Saturday. We had to wait a long time in line because lots of people come here to save money on shots according to mom. The picture at the left is me with my daddy waiting in line.

I met a whole lot of really neat dogs and people. There were some cats too but they were all safe in their carriers. Considering there was a dog there that even scared me, I don't blame them one bit. There was a real cute Jack Russell Terrier and a Toy Poodle. I saw a little pug dog dressed up in her Christmas outfit and the poodle had a cool bomber jacket on.

Mom and Dad were real proud of me because I haven't been exposed to that many people and other dogs before and I was real good. The dog behind us was real aggressive and I just ignored him (he was the scary one). I even did "SIT" when the Vet Tech lady asked me. I thought Mom would faint.

Mom and dad stayed with me the whole time and even helped hold me when the Vet Tech drew blood for my heart worm test. Mom says those kinds of worms are very bad and I get a treat every month to keep from getting them. Anything that involves a treat is fine with me. Then the Vet came, a very nice man, and examined me all over and gave me a shot, some tasty stuff in my mouth and some unpleasant spray that went up my nose. I think I liked the nose stuff the least.

Dad held me while I was on the Vet table

Then we were done. Or, I thought we were because "since we were there" we dropped by the grooming place for a nail trim while mommy waited for the test results. Yay! I passed. And, they bought me this giant hoof which I am going to go back and nom on after I post this.

Mom explained that going to the Vet is very important to stay healthy and it really was not that bad. And, it was something that the three of us did together!

This is the nommy hoof I got as a treat for being so good.

Santa Paws Drive and the #PepiPawty

All the anipals got in the holiday spirit with this mini-pawty to raise money for the @SantaPawsDrive. Here I am dressed up for the occasion is my James Bond Dog outfit, holding my barktini, shaken not stirred. You can support the SantaPaws Drive from my blog - see the widget on the left.

I was dashing but I did not hold a candle to the guest of honor @PepiSmartDog who came all the way from the Rainbow Bridge to be part of the festivities. He is a well known poster dog. My pal @BuddyBentley did a really cool tribute for him.

After what was bound to be a tiring event last weekend for the special pawpawty and wedding, @frugaldougal was quizz master for the entire event. The anipals and their friends were so very generous that there was a pwize for every fifteen minutes! I bet @frugaldougal sleeps good tonight!

I got to DJ as well as some of the regular gang: @BunnyJeanCook, @MattieDog, @GeorgetheDuck, and @Flicka47.

It was a wonderful afternoon for me. And mom found some really cool Etsy and other shopping sites from some of the pawty supporters. She is going to be soooo broke.

PS - Mom finally found a site to get me dressed up! It is cool but she has gone a little overboard.

The Monster in My House

I am not afraid of stuff under normal circumstances. Thunder booms, firecrackers and loud noises are ho hum boring. But there is one evil monster I DO NOT like and it lives in my house. Fortunately it sleeps a lot. But today it was awake and growling and I was very afraid it was going to eat one of my favorite bone pieces.



One of my bones is to the right of that big ugly spot on the carpet - which I did not do, by the way (silly dad spilled coffee). I know the monster is on when the light is shining. Dad seems in control over it but I do not take any chances. You can see I have taken a respectful distance but I am watching carefully.

Good news is the monster did not get my bone. Mom said if it ate my bone the monster would break. Hmm - might be worth losing one bone to get rid of the monster once and for all.

My Blind Date

I'm sure all of my readers know about the spectacular Anipal Wedding at the end of the November #PawPawty. All I can say is wow! @Hanseebundee married @Poppy_Dog in what was THE event of the season. While many helped make it happen, @FrugalDougal was wedding planner extraordinaire.

Just in case you missed it or were living on Mars somewhere, the wedding album, compliments of @javathecat can be found here. But I digress.

While I usually go stag to all of the #pawpawty and related anipal events, I thought the wedding was something special and I should have a date. I am only 18 months old and inexperienced in the ways of romance. So I consulted my human mom for advice. I should also mention that I'm on the shy side. She suggested I tweet that I was looking for a date to the wedding and see if I got any takers.

Well, I did! A wonderful cat, @SimoneLeChat, also said she was without a date and agreed to go with me! I sure was lucky to find a date with a sexy french name. She has the most amazing tortoise color fur. This is her picture:


We danced at the #pawpawty Saturday evening and she was a fantastic dancer. So we had a good chance to get to know each other better. I am amazed she did not have a date already because she seems to be very popular and has a wonderful personality, not to mention she is beautiful and a great dancer.

We had a great time at Hans and Poppy's wedding. Simone did get thrown into Twitter jail during the reception but it was a memorable event and certainly a date that I will never forget! Thank you Simone!

DJing for Pawties

I have been a DJ for several #Pawpawty and other anipal events now. It is a rush!

I usually use blip.fm for my spinning but this time I checked out Grooveshark. It was slick. If any of you anipals are interested in DJing, I will pass on my limited wisdom.

Maybe some folks are better than me at this, but I believe that planning is important. First thing I do is think about the pawty's theme. Like #dudefest or the Halloween #pawpawty, you try and think up songs that fit the theme. One caution - remember that other DJs may be doing the same thing so you have to be extra creative (and it doesn't hurt to listen to the DJ before you to avoid duplicates). It is all just fun, but I am a perfectionist.

When I use blip, I turn off the Twitter service, find the songs and add them to my play list. When the pawty is on, I turn Twitter back on and reblip them. I use two sessions going - one for the song I'm playing so I know when it's time for a new one, and the other queuing up for the next song.

Grooveshark was pretty nifty because it is not set to tweet automatically. I developed a play list and then when I was DJing I started the song and clicked on to share with Twitter. Grooveshark lets you have multiple play lists too.

One thing to watch - make sure you don't forget the hash tag for the pawty!

My Special #PawPawty Pwize

My Twitter anipal @PetietheCat lives way up north in Canada and donated a pwize for the Halloween #pawpawty I last wrote about. He told me he always waits to see who wins the contest before he buys the pwize so he can pick out one special. Well, he did an exceptional job!

It is my perfect toy. It has all the important elements: a stuffed toy with a squeaker! a rope to tug and chew! and a tennis ball! He also sent me a couple of nommy cookies.

Thanks @PetietheCat!

Halloween PawPawty

Maybe you are not familiar with PawPawty. Mostly once a month animals on Twitter get together for a virtual party to raise money for various animal charities. It might be hard to imagine what a virtual pawty is.

First there is a theme. The one this weekend was, of course, Halloween. Last month it was a farm theme and the month before it was Woodstock. We all dress up our avatars in keeping with the theme. For this pawty, some of the anipals were really dressed up in their Halloween costumes. Not me though. I put my foot down when mom tried to get me in the costume. So I just decorated my avatar.

Really talented anipals get together and develop a nommy menu of food we would love to eat and drinks, including alcoholic pleasures, that fit the theme. I'm afraid many anipals over indulge on the alcohol and do crazy things or pass out. I worked my way through all 8 of the very special cocktails offered by the barktending staff. I did not make it much past midnight.

Really organized anipals schedule the barktenders, sekurity and DJs. This is not easy. Pawpawty is an international event and trying to do a schedule of folks all over the world is enough to make my head spin. Barktenders make the drinks and pass them to the anipals who ask for them. They do the food too. Sekurity reports spammers, resolves any issues where one anipal might put the bitey on another (that doesn't happen very often), and reminds folks that stop by, using the #pawpawty hash tag what we are all about. They also remind folks about the charity and where to go to pay the "cover charge."

I saved the very best for last because we have DJs too. This time there were so many DJ volunteers some anipals only got to DJ for 45 minutes. It was fun. I got to DJ from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT. The Halloween theme was fun to find music for. I tried to pick songs that had the flavor of the celebration but probably would not be played by ever DJ. We use blip to tweet the songs. @Fergusthedog did a great job scheduling the DJs.

All anipals may not use TweetGrid for their #pawpawty tweets but I like to use it. You can set up three columns. One to get all of the #pawpawty tweets, one for your @ replies and one for the DJ (it is easy to miss the song playing if you don't do that).

If you want to be in on the next #pawpawty, follow @frugaldougal. He is the host with the most. Lots of work go into these pawpawties behind the scenes. @Georgetheduck did a masterful job putting together all of the anipal avatars into a wall of photos for the event so we can always remember how much fun we had!


http://www.twitpic.com/n2f1b

Meet My Family

I think people call what we have a blended family! I have sisters and brothers who are cats and dogs. He He He.

Mom and dad live upstairs. They live with my mom's mom. She is a very nice lady but I am not allowed to jump on her. She seems nice but mom and dad worry about her. She lives downstairs along with two other dogs. One dog is my older brother Goliath. (His picture us at the right with my dad) He has bad arthritis and doesn't climb the stairs very good. He doesn't like me to jump on him either because I hurt him even if I am just playing.

The other dog is Roscoe (see left) and he does like to play. We have a good time in the back yard. He doesn't go swimming with me though. I am not real sure how we are related. People might say he is my uncle because he is my mom's mom's dog. People have complicated relationships!

Upstairs with us it's all cats with me. There are four. Majel is the oldest one. She is pretty but I get yelled at when I try to play with her. Mom says she is delicate because she is seventeen years old.

Ceasar and Cleo are brother and sister for real. Mom and dat adopted them six years ago after Majel's sister Isis crossed the rainbow bridge. They were only going to adopt one kitten but the two kitties were all alone in the Pet Smart kitty adoption area and they could not leave one alone there could they? Their mommy kitty was run over by a car. So sad.

Then came Sabrina. She is kind of a wild cat. She was feral when someone who worked with dad found her. Dad tried to call mom to check it was ok to adopt her but mom was in a meeting so he made his own decision. So then there were four kitties. They lived in Chesterfield then. Soon after that mom's dad died so they all moved to Yorktown.

Here are the kittehs (top row Cleo left, Majel on right; next row is Ceasar on left and Sabrina on right):













I only came along last year. Mom's boss lives next door to my dog mom and helped deliver my doggie sibs. There were nine of us. He mentioned the cute puppies and mom and dad could not resist. I am very happy. Mom and dad love me and all of the kitties. We have a great yard with a pond. I get lots of treats and we go on neat trips to great state parks.

Here is Majel and me in daddy's chair.

Pedicure! Oh No!

We don't have much concrete around so my nails grow really long. For some reason, mom and dad think this is bad so they had to take me to get a Pedicure at Pet Smart. I had one before and didn't like it but it seemed I had no choice.

Here I am in the car on my way to Pet Smart. That's dad sitting next to me. I didn't really know where we were going because they didn't tell me until we got out of the car. It was a mean trick. I thought we were going to have fun.

One good thing about the Pedicure is it meant I got to meet new people and dogs. First, really cool smells when I got out of the car. Oh boy, other dogs have been here! By the way, dad tells me I pee like a girl. Any anipals out there that can clue me in to what I am doing wrong please let me know!

Then we went inside the store. Overload!! People, animals, noise, smells. Wow! Then we went through the door to the bad place I remembered the GROOMER. They have some really nice people in there but I do not like what they do! I let them trim my nails but I draw the line at the noisy grindy thing. No way! I jump and buck and the poor girl gives up. Victory! Here I am waiting for my appointment.


It's okay. My nails are clipped good for another couple of months and mom bought me a cool toy and some hooves. I guess Pedicures can be okay if you get presents after.

My Trip to James River State Park

I am a very lucky dog. Because my mom works for Virginia State Parks, I get to visit a lot of different parks. You won't believe how many different smells there are all over these parks and how many different kinds of animals leave their poop behind!

We got to stay in one of the park's really new and modern cabins. First problem though - really slippery hard wood floors. I would get so excited and run around and then I'd end up flat on my side or back end from slipping on the floor. I told mommy they need carpet. She told me to stop running.

On vacation, we were away from the other people in the park so I could run around without my leash but that is against the rules so mommy and daddy blocked the ends of the cabin's porch and I could be outside on the porch with them and look at the beautiful scenery. Once daddy didn't block it so well so I had a bit of a romp in the tall grass until I heard mom call me. I was a good dog and came right back. Mom said it would look very bad if she got a ticket because I was bad. I don't want to get mom in trouble.

Mom had to work while we were there. She was there for some meeting, but dad stayed with me most of the time and we had fun. When we had too much fun, I just chilled out on the couch in the cabin.



I hope we have some more trips soon!

Just in case you missed my mom's blogs from our vacation that had my pictures in them, see these links: My Visit to Shenandoah River State Park and My Visit to Shenandoah River State Park Part III.

Chewing is my Life

I am a world class chewer. Here I am making headway on a bone from the big red bag mom gets me from @bestbullysticks (http://www.bestbullysticks.com).

Fortunately, I have a couple of toys I have so far been unable to destroy. One is my goughnut from my friend @babypatches (http://www.suppliesjustforpets.com). Here I am playing with my goughnut with my dad.

Hello Blog World!

Hello Blog World. My name is Yoda. I decided to start my own blog partly because some of my best anipals on Twitter have a blog and also because sometimes 140 characters just isn’t enough. I go by @Yoda_the_Dog on Twitter.

As much as I hate to admit it, I need my human mom’s help to type the blog. She has a very busy job with Virginia State Parks including doing their blogging and Twitter plus a lot more things I don’t understand. She works more hours doing it than most humans (daddy says too much), so I may not be able to post new blogs as often as I like.

We are starting this first one because mom is on vacation.

Some background about me. I was born May 28, 2008 to a wonderful dog mom, an English Shepherd, who lives in Powhatan, Virginia. It just so happens that my dog mom lives next door to the Director of State Parks who even helped deliver me. Since my dad, the neighborhood black lab, did not stick around to make an honest woman of my dog mom and her nine puppies, when I was old enough I went to live with my human mom and dad.

It’s great where I live. We live on a pond and I get to go swimming in the pond. There is a big back yard but I get to stay in the house whenever I want. We live with my mom’s mother. She has a dog named Roscoe and my mom and dad have another old dog who doesn’t like to play with me. His name is Goliath. Mostly I stay in mom and dad’s area of the house with my four kitteh sibs: Majel, Caesar, Cleo and Sabrina. They don’t really like to play with me either.

Mom and dad take me whenever they go away for a night or longer and I have visited five state parks so far. Apparently mommy loves her job so much she even likes to vacation there although sometimes we go when she has a meeting or other business. This week at Shenandoah River State Park has been vacation. We are right on the river and I go swimming in it everyday. Mom and dad have also come in with me here although they won’t put one toe in our pond at home.

Mom and Dad have been leaving me at the cabin when they go out afternoons but today I put my paw down and insisted I come too. I did this insisting by refusing to let daddy close the door with me inside. I have learned it is pretty easy to frustrate daddy so he just gave up.

We have a few more days left here and I get to go to another new park next week because Mom has a meeting. That will make 6 state parks for me!