I Finally Got My Snow

It snowed most of Saturday and it was not a good day for pictures. But Sunday the sun came out and mom thought we could get some good pictures. She also remembered that her camera actually has a video feature. Duh.

Our backyard in the snow

We used one of the tennis balls that @frugaldougal sent me as a pwize from a pawpawty. I'm not really into fetching but as you can see, I play pretty well all by myself. Hopefully there will be a part 2 to this blog post later on.

Hide and seek with the ball in the snow

I'm sure you want to see more of me being so cute in the snow so here's a video (or two):

Viva Wags Vegas and the Pawcircle

I just finished my set as a DJ at the wonderful January #Pawparty in honor of Elvis's birthday and Viva Wags Vegas and to benefit animal rescue in the aftermath of the disaster in Haiti.

After the pawty, I pawed over to the special #pawcircle column I keep on Seesmic (the Twitter desktop client mom and I use). I try to check that column every day. It made me think about why I do that.

I am not even two years old but my mom has been around the block a few times but before I started in Twitter she had never heard of the rainbow bridge. She has had other animals that she loved who passed away. I know she remembers Christie her sweet little dog that she stayed with as they put her to sleep.

It wasn't long after we started on Twitter that someone's beloved anipal died. And that's when we found out about the rainbow bridge. What an amazing thing. And the community of us anipals on Twitter was so wonderful they were all support for the sick animals and humans, and helped them grieve when there was a loss.

As we watched, we saw how so many people appreciated the #pawcircle prayers. @Danapixie started tweeting all of the prayer needs several times a day and I started retweeting many of them. And now, Dana has started a wonderful blog so we can always know who needs our love, support and understanding. That's what it's about. I thought of it tonight when I answered someone who thanked me for my tweet. In the big world many people do not understand how people feel about us anipals. Even people who have pets do not always feel like the humans that are the moms and dads of the anipals on our Twitter community. So this is the place you can be to share your grief with people and other anipals who truly understand that loss. What an incredible support system!

Anyway, this gets me back to Haiti. When I first heard about the Rainbow Bridge, I came across this story about the Bridge and the September 11th Terrorist attacks. Now I think about how all of the animals at the bridge who had no loving human to wait for must of pitched in and still be pitching in as the many people from Haiti who have died cross over.

Photo by Tatiana Gerus (Creative Commons Attribution)

Sad for Arizona

Many of you know that my mom works for Virginia State Parks. She does the social media stuff for them in addition to a lot of other stuff. She works hard for them because she thinks parks are very special places. Other than to talk about how much I love parks and my visits there, we don't talk business on this blog or my Twitter very often.

But yesterday we heard some sad news I wanted to share with everyone. Seems like Arizona will be closing many of their state parks - maybe even all of them - by June. That makes us all sad - those that work for all parks and their families like me. Three hundred people will lose their job. Communities who rely on the tourism that the parks bring in will lose that. Like Virginia's state parks, Arizona raised a lot of their operating money with their own fees, about 40%. Like Virginia I bet that the Tourism and economic impact of the parks more than bring the state and local economy the balance of the $13 million.

Times are tight. The states face horrible budget cuts for essential services and things have to be cut. This same state is selling all of their government facilities to lease them back. But are parks a luxury? We don't think so, but you might have your own opinion. Parks make people feel good and I sure think they need to feel good now. Parks help people be more healthy and we certainly know that this generation of children need to learn healthy pursuits. But when you also consider the parks support the economy, well even a dog has to scratch his head.

My family has all their park staff families in our prayers. We also mourn for the park supporters and volunteers who work so hard and even offered to run the parks as volunteers. Now that's love. And we mourn for the people of Arizona and the state's visitors who won't have the parks to recreate in and to connect with the natural world.

Dudefest!

I apologize for not posting for a week. Mom has had a tough time at work. She has a very busy job and usually works way more than what she is supposed to. She had a number of big projects due this week with the deadline of today. She spent all day Friday and most of Saturday on it.

I only give you this background because as a result I missed a lot of the wonderful #Dudefest pawty. Although, we all know I was there at least 3 hours because I was a DJ. That was an experience because I DJ'd from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. EST and then at 6 a.m. But, after 7 a.m. and my work to protect some kittehs being pestered by @VampireKat, I snuggled back in bed with mom and dad for another couple of hours.

For posterity, I wanted to preserve mine and Caesar's avatar since we were two really cool dudes.

As you can see, I was working out a lot

Don't worry, they are all temporary tats

The best part of #dudefest is all the bacon - bacon beer, baconritas, bacon savory food, bacon desserts. The pawty was in celebration of my pal @Hankthedoggy's tenth birthday and the cake was a site to behold. It was topped with bacon and squirrels. And as usual we raised money for an anipal charity.

Next week if the regular monthly #pawpawty with an Elvis theme. Better start working on my hip swiggle.

Honest Scrap Award

I am so thrilled to have won this award I am writing my blog within ten minutes of the notification! Thanks so much to my good friend @CathyKeisha, World's Most Stunning Cat, for bestowing this great honor upon my humble bloggie. Cathy is a fellow DJ and music lover.

About the award

I actually did a Google search on the award because I am a curious dog and there were more than 7 million entries. I am actually pretty good at math so since the award requires you give it to 10 more bloggers (although I saw some places where it said 7), I could see it could grow geometrically. But nowhere could I find (or figure out a search to find) where it all started. I do know that it is wider than the anipal community.

Wherever it started, the award is given to "bloggers who put their hearts on display as they write from the depths of their soul."

The requirements for the award are to

(1) Highlight the award on your blog and link back to the person (or cat) who gave you the award. Not only am I dedicating this post to the award, I have permanently added the award to my side column. And I can't thank @CathyKeisha and her wonderful blog enough.

(2) Tell everyone ten things about yourself that no one knows

(3) Bestow the award on ten other worthy bloggers and make sure you tell them they have been so honored.

Ten things about me

Since I write from my heart, I tell you folks a lot about myself so I have been racking my brain to try and come up with things you don't know. Here goes:

1. I bark too much. Any person or animal I see approaching the house or come near the door to the room I am in gets barked at. A lot.
   
2. I jump up on people. Mom tried very hard to break me of this habit but dad likes it so I still do it. Mom keeps telling dad that they can train me to only do it if invited but no luck yet on that.
3. When my mom comes home from work I go crazy for five minutes including jumping and running around the room like a crazy dog.
4. I am a shameless food beggar. Lately I have added a pitiful whine. This is one thing mom and dad does right. They do not reward this behavior. For some reason I keep doing it anyway.
5. I don't really like to ride in the car. I like going places I just don't like the trip there. When I was a puppy I stayed on the floor of the passenger side under dad's legs and it was okay then but when I got too big for that it wasn't fun anymore. On long trips I get better after about a half hour.
6. I pull at my leash something fierce even though I have a head collar.
7. I hate to get my picture taken.
8. I like to eat cat poop. Mom and dad have gated the doorway to the bathroom where the cat littet box is so the cats can get under the gate and I can't get in.
9. I only follow my obedience commands when there is a treat involved.
10. I lick my mom's fingers when she is trying to type on the computer and I want her to play with me instead.

Award Worthy Blogs

In no particular order, here are the next winners of the coveted Honest Scrap Award. I apologize if you have won before. I did do a search on your blog to check.

1) Confucious Cat: I only learned of his blog and #Purrs4Peace because I was DJing at a #pawpawty one Sunday at 3 p.m. That week we were purring for the plight of racing greyhounds. Now I join in every week.

2) I only hesitate to bestow the award on the next recipient because he may get mad at me. But what the heck - you are certainly putting your heart on display when you try to talk folks out of reading your blog. Yes, the next recipient is Sir Fudge Esq. He's not for everyone but he tells it like he feels it.

3) The Shenanigans of Shawnee the Shepherd is great about sharing his wonderful park visits. Since my mom is in the park business, this is a blog we both enjoy reading.

4) My friend Dolly's blog is also great. The Little Dog Speaks is honest and compassionate. She speaks her mind. I really loved her 2009 in review blog.

5) Next is Boris Kitty: 4 Paws for a Cause. Of course I love @BorisKitty but I also love Edgar!

6) I enjoy Mulder the X-Kitteh but he hasn't been posting a lot probably because of his chemo and all those pills he hates to take.

7) Petie the Cat has not been blogging much either but he has had health challenges as well. He and Mulder are great fighters and I admire them.

8) Next comes Fido and Wino This blog always makes me and mom laugh! We love reading about Mickey and Kayloo and their mom Shauna.

9) Call Me the Breeze is another one of my favorites by fellow DJ @kittehboi.

10) Last but not least is Rockum Sockum's View on Things. He has an absolutely amazing family and I love reading about it and seeing the pictures.

Thanks again for this great honor!

Poor Pelican

Warning: Explicit violence if you are one of my stuffed plush anipals

As many of you might know, my mom works for Virginia State Parks. She usually is in on the details when they have deep merchandise sales, like usually when they are discontinuing something. For instance, for their 70th anniversary in 2006 they had a 70" copperhead plush snake. There were stuffed snakes everywhere! I think they finally got rid of them all this fall.

I loved those snakes - one LONG toy with lots of stuffing. They were on sale a long time at $5 and mom would pick them up for me. Since I have a bad history with plush toys, $5 was a good deal. The snakes would last me a little while because as I made a hole, mom would pull out stuffing and it would be ok for a while Dad gave her a hard time but all she had to do was show dad his blanket and ask what dad would rather I chew on. The snake won every time.

Then one sad day all the snakes were finally gone. : (

The woman in mom's office, Pat, who orders stuff showed her the sale items the week before Christmas. She had shown mom the pelican before but when he was full price mom knew it would be a mistake.

You can't see but the pelican has a stick in his back side so the human can hold the puppet. The stick was plastic instead of wood but still nommy.

This was the day I got the Pelican - not a factory second. Mommy couldn't even get the picture taken before one eye was gone. Second eye followed right after the picture.

Two weeks later the eyes are gone, the beak is hanging and mom has taken out most of the beak and head stuffing so it doesn't make the house MESSY. The stick is gone too. Mom was holding it and we were playing and I grabbed the pelican and mom still had the chewed up stick. Stick went in trash. Mom is spoil sport.

This is today. Last night I ripped his tummy out so mom had to take all the stuffing from his insides. He is still fun because he is still poofy cause of his fake fur wings.

I am hoping the pelicans are still on sale.

Snow Please!

It has been really cold. Mom says I am usually a hot doggy and I help warm her up but I have to say it has even been cold to me when I go out to do my business. Dad's zipper is broken on his winter coat. He is usually a hot daddy but there hasn't been much playing in the yard with Yoda this week! And, horrors, my swimming hole is frozen over!

So, the weather human says it may snow tonight. If we have to have the cold, could we at least have some fun snow too. It is a good day to snow cause mom teleworks so she won't have to drive in it.

SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW PLEASE SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW PLEASE!

Snuggling with My Humans

If I had to list my absolute favorite things to do (not counting food related activities), they would be in this order:

1. Swimming
2. Fetching Sticks
3. Chewing on bones
4. Playing with toys
5. Snuggling with my humans

Okay, so this post is about #5 but since it seems to be #1 on their list, I thought I would humor them. I have found that humoring them = more of #1-4 plus food related stuff.

Even though it's #5, I have to say I love waking up every day like this:



My mom may look like she is asleep in the bottom 3 pictures but she took the pictures with her Blackberry.

Fortunately since the kitties are still scared of me, I don't have to share the bed with them, although I would love snuggling with them.

Welcome 2010

Last New Year I was just an ordinary dog. I lived in a wonderful forever home with a mom and dad who loved me and four kitties who despised me (one stayed under the bed for a whole year).

Then in March mom decided I should be on Twitter. Yes, at first I was one of those #TwitterSlaves, forced to have a Twitter account. We dipped in to Twitter here and there but mom was very busy getting her work Twitter account established and until we found Seesmic she had a hard time keeping track of both accounts.

We had a hard time figuring out what was going on. Every once in a while the Twitter avatars would look really funny. Right after we started everyone had all these green decorations on. Mom is part Irish so she got it but she had no idea what a #pawpawty was. In fact we were clueless until we finally asked someone before the Cinqo de Mayo pawpawty. @Flicka47 helped us remember all of this in her blog tonight.

Funny - mom had enough imagination to have me on Twitter but not enough to understand #pawpawty at first. But we really caught on for #weekendroadtrip. If you anipals remember, I was DJing in the middle of the night and Twitter broke. I kept spinning the tunes.

Mom and I have met so many wonderful and caring people on Twitter. We want to adopt every dog and kitty that needs rescuing and we try to help where we can. We also see how wonderful the support system is for sick and dying anipals. Well, not for the anipals but for the humans who are broken hearted. What a wonderful thing. Mom remembers when pets before me crossed to the bridge and so many people just didn't understand how heart wrenching it was. All of the anipals understand and that really helps. We have so much fun here.

The only drawback is that most of the people mom knows thinks she is crazy. But that is okay, since you all know she isn't.

Here is to a wonderful New Year with all my friends on Twitter and Facebook!