Vacation snooze

We've been due for some time out after having to deal with the kitten for a few weeks. The staff obliged this weekend.
They took us to our favorite place: the beach.

We've spent most of our time wisely, sleeping, walking and watching Wimbledon. Aunt Jenn has been around to run us through some Yoga practice -- we prefer the term Doga, but whatever. At left, you'll see a move Maggie likes to call Downward Facing Dog Facing Dog.

Today, we get to chase birds off the deck!

Of course it's good

The staff likes wine, and one of their fave stars of the wine world is Gary Vaynerchuk, Jets fan and online wine guy.
While we're used to good food that comes in bags and boxes, the staff is not. Generally, they've made fun of wine and liquor that comes packaged in boxes. Until now.

Recently, they bought a box of "Bandit" brand wine. They probably bought it because Staffer Mom can't resist anything that has anything to do with us or reminds her of us. (Or it could've been that the box had a whole liter in it and that's more than a regular bottle. Whatever.)
And, she really liked it.
As it turns out, Vaynerchuk likes it, too!
Here's a video to prove it, courtesy Aunt Jenn and Uncle Brad.

Bandit's quite proud a drinkable wine is named for him. Maggie expects equal treatment very soon.

It's 201

Yep, we just passed our 200th blog, so this is 201st! Yay!
Thanks for reading us.

We've been pretty busy this week, and here's an update on a few things.
- Aunt Jenn's doing OK. Her good knee was injured, but she's feeling fine. She didn't have the scoots after all.
- It's rained a lot. A lot. The staff blames it on something called "Fay." We don't really care except that it gets our feet wet in the mornings.
- Our buddy Amanda was here for a few days, and she's fun. She had to leave to do something called "City Chase." Apparently dogs weren't invited, because we're certain she'd have let us go, too.
- We ate all of Ernie's food one day and got a little "windy." But it was still worth it to get the good stuff.
- Last night, it was really noisy outside. The trees kept blowing and making things flash.
We're really glad it's Friday and the staff will be home for a few days. We need a break.

Feel better Aunt Jenn!

So yesterday we heard that Aunt Jenn got hit by a car while scooting around town. Now, it's bad enough that she got a case of the scoots (careful readers may remember Maggie's recent bout), but she must have been doing it in the street. We all fear cars, and we thought she knew better. Bumpers hurt.

....Oh wait....Staffer Mom says Aunt Jenn was hit while riding a red motorized scooter that takes her places like a limo. Oh. We only had one point of reference on that. Sorry.

Feel Better Aunt Jenn!

We earn our keep and we're scary, too

Lately, when we irritate the staff by asking questions like "When do WE get a vacation?" or "Why do we have to eat in the laundry room?", it's been suggested that we might should consider getting jobs. As ludicrous as that notion may be, we know we'd be successful at many careers.
For instance, a cemetery owner in Fremont, Nebraska, uses a dachshund to clean moles out of the cemetery. You can read about it here.

We think that's absolutely something we could do. Heck, we do it now and we should ask the staff to pay us for that!

Also, Foster's and Henry's mom sent us a story recently suggesting dachshunds should be used more in comic books as the scary, threatening beasts instead of gorillas or dinosaurs. It's true. There's no way we wouldn't win those matches. No way.

Here are some quotes from an essay she sent over:
- "While a ticked gorilla is still throwing leaves around and having an ostentatious hissy fit, the wily dachshund will have already tripped you, crushed your trachea, and, as you suffocate, be sitting on your chest chewing on your ribs while farting in your face. And wagging his tail."
- "How many gorillas do you know in real life interested in world domination? Zero. Again, gorillas pale as a threat when compared to dachshunds, all of which are bent on world domination. Charles Heston would've lasted about 3 seconds on the Planet of the Dachshunds...."

And we've been forced by the staff (and Uncle Brad and Aunt Jenn) to sit through all five Planet of the Apes movies in one day, so we know this is true. If we were in charge, ol' Charlton sure wouldn't be doing all those NRA commercials, and he'd never say this because we don't allow people to talk to us that way. He'd be a believer in dachshund justice and working for DRNA (Dachshund Rescue of North America).

So, the staff should pay us for our star potential, too. We'd compromise for getting to eat dinner in the kitchen...near the cat food bowl.
Especially if it's full.

A perfect career?

The staff just told us something very cool: Aunt Jenn, right, has a job that allows her to spend all day digging up stuff. Sometimes she finds bits of rock and sometimes she finds dead things....AND she gets paid for it!
We're very good at that type of work, and if we had to have careers outside of being landscape artists, guard dogs and stress busters, that might work for us.
It does alarm us, though, that Staffer Mom told us about Aunt Jenn's new job and then made several remarks insinuating we should earn our keep.
We are heartened, though, because if we could get that kind of paying job, it might be just perfect!

Pretenders & the kennel

The staff abandoned us this weekend. They said they were going on a "road trip" and kept singing "Boogie-Oogie-Oogie" and said something about Alabama. They said they were going to some place named Boogie and Aunt Jenn and Uncle Brad would be there, as well as Aunt Meg and Uncle Eric.

All we know is that we ended up in the kennel. They tried to tell us it was a spa and we'd get manicures and pedicures, but it was just a kennel with toe nail clippers and no TV.

And it was bad enough that we had to share the weekend with two truly obnoxious Golden Retrievers named -- yes, it's true: Maggie and Bandit. Those two were too perky to live. All weekend they sucked up to the kennel staff and wanted to play ball and play in the water pool and chase a stuffed duck. Showoffs.

They tried to send those two hyper furballs out with Staffer Dad when he came to pick us up! The kennel staff actually took those 2 out there to him and left us just sitting there in the pen! We were pretty horrified.

Thankfully, Staffer Dad noticed they weren't us and sent them back to their pens (the dogs, not the kennel staff -- however we think it might have been better the other way).

So now we're home and the Staff still hasn't apologized. Maggie's already targeted a couple flower pots to knock over and Bandit's real sure he's going to pee on something good early tomorrow.

Fierce fun

Staffer Mom found a great web site, and we must share. It's all about adults doing kid stuff -- something the staff seems to enjoy, especially when they are at the beach. When they get together with Aunt Jenn and Uncle Brad they do strange things like shoot sparklers across the deck and try to see who can eat the most pancakes. They always seem to making some strange food or colorful drink. This site is perfect for them!
Here's what we liked best -- and we found a reference to it already on The Daily Dachshund, our fave site. It's cupcakes and chocolate icing built to look like a wiener. You can't top that!

A guide for our kind

Here in Savannah, everyone knows a reference to "The Book" doesn't mean the Bible. It means "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." But we beg to differ.

Aunt Jenn and Uncle Brad gave us a tome for Christmas that has become our sacred text: "The Dangerous Book for Dogs" by Rex and Sparky. It addresses all of life's most important topics like why some smells are better than others, types of squirrels, how to drink out of the toilet properly, best dog books, how to defend your territory and how to build a bed out of your owner's laundry. TDBD's an endless amount of information. Bandit says he knew a lot of it, but it's great to have it all in one place for reference. He suspects that the new breeds of yappy dogs who ride in purses will need this info, since they don't appear to have proper genetic imprinting.

We're attaching the Amazon link to it, as well as video about it (There's a bunch on YouTube.). It's really a call to action to throw off your domesticity (something the stupid monkeys in the Planet of the Apes movies thought was important, but that's another blog). There are two other videos about this on the Amazon page, including an interview with Rex and Sparky. All are must-see events.

We urge you to buy this book. If you don't need the info, your human might be able to get more insight into why you do what you do. And don't worry about them stealing your secrets. They just aren't that savvy. After all, they eat lettuce.

We see, monkey do

Wow. What a holiday! We went to the beach. We rode lots of miles. We walked a lot in the sand and got a lot of sandspurs in our paws. (Luckily, we're really good at pulling them out on our own.)
We saw our aunts and uncles and made new friends. But with all that, we got a bit irritated. It seems that all the humans had a new friend, too. They adopted an inflatable monkey and took it everywhere we should have gone. They said since some folks couldn't be there, they'd take the monkey everywhere and send pictures to those who missed out. So wait a minute: They have 2 perfectly fine dachshunds and decide to take the monkey all over town? What is the deal?
If they hadn't kept it up on top of the refrigerator, that monkey would have a few puncture wounds as souvenirs.

2 old men and a hound

From Bandit: Ok, we got stuck at the vet all weekend. We got decent food and Maggie eventually got thrown into a cage away from me. So it worked out.
Mom and Dad brought us back pictures of dead animals in a window in downtown Columbus. Wow. One was a spitting beaver and the other was a fox. Both were cool. We never see dead animals in store windows in Savannah, but they probably don't sell a lot of them here. That's more of an Alabama border-town kind of thing.
Mom also brought me a picture of dad and Uncle Brad and Sidda. It's like one of those old photos with old men rocking on a porch with their coon dog. We did notice that Uncle Brad and Aunt Jenn let Sidda and Seamus sit on the couch. We need to get mom and dad to allow that. Any ideas?

Happy Birthday Aunt Jenn!!!

From Maggie: This is Aunt Jenn (and that is not Uncle Brad with her). And, we hear that she's changed her hair color to bright red, and we think that's very cool.
Most importantly, she had a birthday this week, and I want everyone to wish her happy birthday. Even if you don't know her any way but through us, it's OK. You can do that here on this site by leaving a comment to this message, because we know she reads our stuff.
She's 40, right?
From Bandit: NO, she is not 40. Mom's threatening a big party for that one. (Sorry Aunt Jenn. You know Maggie just wants everyone to be older than she is. In dog years, she's ....nevermind. She's staring at me.)

Fuzzy-ball holidays

From Bandit: We refer to Labor Day -- and the 4th of July -- as fuzzy-ball time. In our experience, fuzzy balls have been things we chase across the yard to humor mom and dad. But, in our house, they are on TV. If we are at the beach, Aunt Jenn (left) usually hits the champagne early and eats strawberries. Mom has a thing about making pancakes and forcing everyone to eat them. Then she makes a pitcher of Bloody Marys; sometimes, she shares. Dad and Uncle Brad just watch the game, roll on the floor and scratch their backs with us. The important thing is that there's always Wimbledon or US Open tennis on the TV. And this Labor Day will be no different. Maggie's planning to blog for the week about the Open, because her friend Sidda will not be able to watch. Sidda's sick, and it's important that Maggie keep her up to date on the action. As for me, fuzzy balls are about as close as I'll get to ever having any again.

Thundering attack dogs

Mom says we can't go outside when it's thundering and lightning. But it's ok for Dad to keep mowing? ......We're just asking.

Speaking of Dad: Today we bring you a video of us attacking Dad.
It's really a play attack, but from it, we think you can glean how vicious we could be if we were really angry.
Scary, isn't it?

(Thanks to Aunt Jenn for documenting this for us. )

Grumpy boy and nothing for us

From Maggie: We spent a day with dad, and he got mad at us because Bandit kept trying to steal my favorite toy. He just kept looking at me. I had to fight back. He was so grumpy that I couldn't even snuggle with him without him barking at me. It's my toy, though.

And another thing: Mom got home and didn't even bring us anything. She brought Dad some pizza from some place he likes, but nothing for us. She stayed with Seamus and Sidda and only brought pictures back of their parents. They do have a cool house in Bibb City. Mom says they even have a toilet in the guest room. I can't figure out why that's a big deal.

I'm really happy to hear Sidda's still figuring our how to get out from Uncle Brad's new fence. She's keeping up the tradition for us all. We did have kind of a breakthrough on Saturday when we found a hole in the backdoor neighbor's fence. Now we can go all the way over to the next street before we get caught. Mom's a bit irritated by that, but again, that's what she gets for not bringing us anything from her trip.

They are found

From Maggie: Aunt Jenn and Uncle Brad are home. They got stuck on an airplane for a really long time and then in an airport. I think they couldn't go outside for a long time.
That must've hurt.

Has anyone seen our buddies?

Uncle Brad and Aunt Jenn have been gone, but they should be back by now.
Has anyone seen them? They went to Cambodia where we hear they have dog dishes. We wonder if they brought one back for Seamus and Sidda.

Wait..... Mom says that's not what that means........Yuk.
Nevermind.

At least he didn't call it a Wiener Roller

We've just seen something very scary and we felt we should share it.
Our favorite blogger who's not Uncle Brad or Aunt Allison is named Jeff Houck. He's a food freak in Tampa who scares us (in a good way).
His blog, Side Salad, is full of fun stuff that only a sick, crazy person like Jeff can find. But he went too far recently when he started a series about his new toy, a hot dog roller. Bandit has a hard time looking at this entry.
His site is searchable if you must read all about his experiments with the hot dog roller -- Twinkies, Oreos. The horror!