The spirit of giving

Today, one of our Yahoo alerts -- yes, we can do that -- brought us this great story of a man who got a new recliner with the help of his dachshund.

We think this is good for every dachshund to know, because it's important to know you can have fun on good projects to help your staffers. For instance, if your Staffer Dad says something like "Wow, I wish I had a new pair of dress shoes....", that's your hint to go do a bit of surgery on them to make them absolutely unwearable. That way he'll get new shoes, and you'll have helped in a way you enjoy.

We helped Staffer Mom out several times with some shoes and a couple pairs of socks we felt she really needed to get rid of. Maggie got a tooth hung in the strappy sandals, but it all worked out OK. We were banished from the closet for a week or so, but there wasn't much else to do there anyway.
At this time of giving, think of it as more than an average chore. You're helping out the staff and they can give each other something the other really needs now!

A Wiener Dog chair!

Yesterday Aunt Laurie went shopping and sent us the coolest picture of a chair....it's made of wiener dogs. (Thank goodness they weren't real.)
We like it when she goes out with her Iphone and sends us stuff she sees in California. (The staff says that's all the way across the country from here.) She found this at the Peter Alexander store there and thought we'd like it.
She was right.
For those of you who don't know, Peter Alexander is our favorite designer because he always tries to include dachshunds in his pajama designs and other things. He honors his old dachshund friend Penelope with the designs. We think it's a nice thing to do, and we hope our staff will do something that nice for us.

More Maggies! And puppies!

Here's another sharing shout-out for our blog friends Joey and Maggie over at The Long and Short of It.
Check out this blog entry and the live streaming web cam of dachshund pupppies!

And if you've paid careful attention and watched the show, that's 3 Maggies in one blog!

Thanks Joey and Maggie!

Can't they call him something else?

From Bandit:
Here's a news note, courtesy Aunt Meg. It's pretty insulting for those of us out here named Bandit. I seem to get in trouble enough just for licking my own behind. I certainly wouldn't do anything like this.

Dec 8th, 2008 | VALENTINE, Neb. -- A man dubbed the "Butt Bandit" for making greasy imprints of his nether parts on windows in the north-central Nebraska city of Valentine has been sentenced to more than a year in jail.
Cherry County Attorney Eric Scott says police caught 35-year-old Thomas Larvie in the act on Nov. 19.
Scott says Larvie was sentenced Thursday to 13-1/2 months in jail after being convicted of eight misdemeanor counts of public indecency and one of disturbing the peace.
Authorities said Larvie used lotion or petroleum jelly to make imprints of his naked behind -- and sometimes his groin -- on the windows of stores, churches and schools in Valentine beginning in the spring of 2007.
Townspeople dubbed the vandal the "Butt Bandit" even though no theft was involved.

The Holiday Dachshund tree is up

The tree our staff calls "the Christmas Tree" is up and lit. It's really pretty. We prefer to call it the "Holiday Dachshund Tree" because it has -- by our own count -- 32 wiener dog ornaments on it. Ernie the cat can't even try to keep up with that count. Granted, there are cat ornaments -- too many. But, over time our staff has worked for as many cats as dachshunds, so it stands to reason they'd have a few.

Our fave ornaments are those with our names on them. Then, there is the memorial Hattie ornament and the fun memorial Max ornament -- they were early dachshunds in the house and have their own ornaments. The staff is true to them and hangs them every year, along with ornaments they got when they went to Jamaica and New Orleans and Colorado and Louisiana and wherever else they were when they left us at the vet all those times.

















Now that the tree's up, the next fun comes from watching Ernie get in trouble when he knocks things off the tree and tries to climb it. Maggie's betting he gets in trouble within 24 hours; Bandit says it'll be more like 12.

Magic bush

Today Staffer Dad found out one of our favorite hiding places.
It's a big bush in the backdoor neighbor's yard. It has lots of great smells around it, soft dirt to dig underneath and, best of all, we can't hear Staffer Dad yelling at us to come home.
Staffer Mom says it's probably a Magic Bush with something called a Cone of Silence over it. She thought that was funny, but we think she may be right.
All we know is we really like that bush, and even if we hear him calling, we're not coming back until we a) hear the dinner plates going down or b) we feel like it.