We may be dogs, but.....

...we're not as stupid as the South Carolina governor.
And that's a fact.

Old friend J-Jo!

Staffer Mom was happy tonight because she talked to our old friend J-Jo. We remember J-Jo because she would play with us and she could beat Staffer Dad at Trivial Pursuit. One time she buried a cat in our yard. She also dressed up like a crazy lady and put snakes in her hair for Halloween. We admired that.
(The staff found a lot of little plastic snakes in the yard for a year or better....we liked that, too.)

Anyway, she tells us she'd like postcards from us and from all our friends from where we live.
You can mail them to:
J-Jo
c/o the ME
300 Massachusetts Ave.
Boston, Mass. 02115.
She's got a new boss, so be kind in what you write....this time.

Wimbledon time!

As careful readers will know, we love tennis. And Wimbledon is here.
It's our custom to watch early rounds at home, and then watch the rest at the beach with Aunt Jenn and Uncle Brad. (Aunt Jenn always brings champagne.)

We can sit in front of the TV and watch the tennis ball go back and forth for hours. Roger Federer and the Williams sisters are our faves, but we do wish we'd see something out of Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova.

While we do love Staffer Mom's Wii tennis matches, we prefer ones on TV -- they are quieter and the language flying around can't be as bad as what we're exposed to here. We're not even sure what some of the words mean, but it can't be good. You'd never hear that coming from Maria. (Staffer Mom says the only difference is Maria says it in Russian, but we prefer not to believe that.)

Roasted wieners

OK. It's gotten awfully hot outside. Today it was near 100 and it's supposed to be that way for a couple more days. We thought we should offer some tips for those of you who may not be used to this:
- When you're as close to the ground as we are, you need to stay in grassy areas under trees. Heat radiating off a patio or sidewalk is dangerous. You can stay sprawled in the grass for a while and be ok.
- Dig a hole. If you dig deep enough, the cool dirt will feel good.
- Don't crawl under a car or other vehicle. You never know when the staff will head for the mall to stay cool, and you don't want to be near something that moves.
- Drink lots of water. If your dish is empty and panting's not getting the attention it deserves, pee on something your staff is using or will need very shortly. Garden gloves or the door mat come to mind.
- As much as we hate to say it, if you're destined to get a bath anyway, bring it on sooner by rolling in something nasty and smelly. Baths feel good on hot days.
- Act lame and try to stay inside. You can even fake a limp if you have to. It can magically disappear as soon as the sun goes down.

We'd love to know your advice about dealing with the heat. Please share!

It sleeps. It screams. It has a temper.

So, we figure you're tired of hearing about the kitten and we're sorry about that. It really is a bizarre animal.

It bounces off walls, literally, and then just drops off. You can't wake it up. You can shake it, toss it and move it around. We know that's true because we've seen the staff try. Did they bring home a narcoleptic hairball?

If by some miracle you do wake it up, it screams at you. It also screams if it's out of food or wants a head rub. We heard the staff say it's birth owner named it Screamer, and we know why.



Ernie says you won't believe us, so we conned Staffer Mom into helping us prove it.
Think it's cute now?
(Humans are suckers. You probably do.)

Our post and compost

Gardening must be harder than it looks. Staffer Mom is taking it very seriously, and the intensity doesn't seem to work. A few tomato plants died after the monsoon a few weeks ago so now she won't let us play in the garden at all. We think they just drowned. Either way, Staffer Mom is not amused.

Yesterday, she decreed we can't go near the new hydrangeas either because we made a mess. That's too far. She's cutting into our yard territory, and it's not fair. We didn't hurt the plants. We might have performed a bit of core aeration around them to allow more compost and minerals to flow deep into the soil -- she says that's important to a healthy yard and plant roots. But accusing us of trampling the stalks seems wrong.

It's probably no accident she found a little extra fertilizer this evening in the rows between the new tomato plants and the squash. Hope she gets it off her shoes before she comes in the house. Now that would be a mess.

Out of balance

It's been a normal Sunday around here -- outside time, eat, nap time, outside time....you know the drill.
Except the staff left for a while and came back sad. Apparently, a friend of theirs died when they didn't expect it. Same thing happened a week or 2 ago to another friend of theirs.
We know how it is when you kinda expect it -- we saw that with our old friend Hattie, scrappiest dog ever, and Mr. Tibbs, the cat who was Bandit's best friend. They were tired and just wanted to sleep.

But when you don't expect it, like with our old fat friend Ozzie, it's weird. You keep looking for them, expecting them to nudge you out of the food bowl and wondering how they are doing even when you can't see them. Things are just out of kilter for a while and for no good reason.

It's still cute

The kitten is still cute. It's been 9 weeks, and it's still cute. Surely it will wear off soon. Maggie's used to being the adorable one, so this is really driving her nuts. She's just not dealing with it well.

On another front, the staffers are watching "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here."
We're good dogs. Get us out of here.

P.S. Happy Birthday Uncle Brad. Your present from us is that we've decided not to post the annual embarrassing photo. We're saving up for next year.

We're home

The spa was great, and we're tired. Too much play.

While we were gone, the kitten and Ernie made friends. Now they want to play all the time. We have to endure them as they run around and smack each other.

And another thing: Their toys are all over the house. Looks like we'll have to dispose of a few of them. They apparently forgot about the stuffed fabric and feather thing we destroyed last week. You'd think they'd remember the hot pink feathers we left all over the bedroom as a warning.

Just wait until the staff leaves us alone. Those new fuzzy round things that rattle are going to disappear.

Much-needed time out

We're posting sporadically this weekend since we're at the spa.
The staffers were good enough to recognize we needed a few days away from the manic kitten and took us to the spa for some R&R. (Why do they insist on calling it "the vet"?)

We figure the staff must be planning to take advantage of our absence to take a trip away, because they had a suitcase out and were talking about something called "primo pool time." At this point, we don't care. We're getting great attention, toy time, special treats, a mani-pedi and hot-tub time.

We really hope the staff comes back smelling as nice as we do.

It chases its own tail, and ours, too

The new kitten is getting an unwarranted amount of attention. The staffers have given it toys, and its favorite toy is its own tail. And ours. And Ernie's.

And they've finally named it. Skeeter. What the hell's a Skeeter?

Anyway, we're fine. They are still serving us well, and so far they haven't missed a beat with us. But, we really don't understand the consternation about a kitten. It'll grow up to be a cat and lose all its cuteness. Granted, we love Ernie. He's our buddy, and he's special. This one, though, he can't even get past his own tail. Or ours.

WE'RE BACK! ...and we have a kitten

We took a sabbatical, and we'd planned to return in another month or so. But, events drove us back to the blog.

The staff got a KITTEN (We obviously don't keep them busy enough.). It's tiny, fuzzy and loud. The thing screams all the time. And it keeps spitting at us -- it's capable of these explosive, full-body spits. And belches. You'd think it eats beans all day.


Yeah, we know it's cute. So what? We've seen kittens before.
They roll around on the floor a lot, get plenty of attention, chase stuff and eventually get in trouble for clawing or eating something they shouldn't.

Ernie, by the way, hates it. He's gotten better over the last few days, and he's mellowing a bit. He feels like he's lost a bit of territory. We tell him it won't last.
We remember when he was a kitten. He was pretty well-behaved, but he was a kitten and he can't change that.

Big night(s)

So last night, a dog named Stump won the Westminster.....we like that. If our choices can't win, then an older dog with a great name should. Bandit's inspired by Stump -- he always thought he's be a good show dog and now he's wondering if it's too late to get on the circuit. His Staffer Mom is always telling him how handsome he is.

Tonight's another big night: UNC vs. Duke in the season's first matchup. Careful readers will know we proudly wear Carolina Blue collars for the Tar Heels, and we stand ready to bite almost any Dookie who comes near. (Except Uncle Kevin.) See you later. We have to park ourselves in front of the TV now. Go Heels!

We're on Westminster break

While we're already pretty honked off about the Hound Group finals, we're still hoping for better in later rounds. Right now, we're blogging during the Poodle, Pug and Strange Dog Group -- ok, Non-Sporting Group -- whatever. We do like Dalmatians OK, since our friend Yuki seems to be a very stand-up customer. But what kind of group is it when you mix chows, bulldogs and bichon frises with the pugs and poodles? And the standard poodles always win. Why do the others bother to show up? (It's got to be the stupid ball of fur on his tail.)

Tomorrow night, we root for those dogs with dreadlocks....if they're still in.
Now that the wieners are out, we've to find a kindred spirit somewhere.

It's so cold.....

As many of you know, it's pretty cold here this week.
Yes, we've seen low temperatures before, but not here. No way. In fact, we didn't think the staff would ever move us anywhere freezing again because they don't like it much either.

You're probably asking "How cold is it?"
Glad you asked.

It's so cold:
- The grass cracks when we walk on it.
- Staffer Mom told us not to lick our metal food dishes.
- Ernie the cat had to defrost a freshly killed mouse last night. (He left it on the window sill.)
- We have to break the water before we can drink it.
- Our food is a little extra-crunchy.
- Bandit leaves icicles when he takes a break next to his favorite bush.
- We can see steam coming off our poo.
And,
- We can't roll in deer pee; we slide on it.

Super Bowl stupor

It was a strange weekend at our house. First of all, there was no internet. Again. The staff has to get this figured out.
We do have a few observations to share:
- Puppy Bowl. We noted they'd added an extra deck on the "stadium" this year, but we didn't see nearly enough dachshund action. The Kitty halftime was a nice touch, and we definitely liked it when they dumped a bunch of paper on the cats at the end. We often want to do that to Ernie.
- The Boss. Bandit likes Bruce very much, but neither of us understood why he needed a football game for an opening act. Bandit felt that was disrespectful to Bruce and the Band.
- Commercials. Again, a bunch of big-ass horses. Remember the Sprint dachshund commercial anyone? Dachshund...oxen....you know.
- The Australian Open. Thank heaven it's over. As careful readers know, we love our tennis. But, those 3:30 a.m. match starts were killing us. If the Aussies really want us to watch, could they please move the times to something normal? Maggie was crazed for Serena, so those early mornings were vicious and interrupted our routine. We both admit the Williams sisters doubles team is so scrappy and strong, they should be honorary dachshunds. Definitely on the Fierce List. Definitely.
- The Tar Heels and great basketball. What a great basketball weekend -- buzzer beaters and the Heels on a roll! Oh yeah...Duke lost. Staffer Mom was happy about that.
- And finally, Staffer Mom cooked a lot and we found some pizza cheese on the floor!

Quick rant

How is it fair that the staffers can eat 2 dozen chicken wings in front of us and we don't even get a lick or a bone or anything?
How is that fair?
Just wait until we get back outside near Staffer Mom's new plants.

Nighttime can be funtime

Winter can be tough because it's cold, but for us, it's sometimes worse because it gets dark outside earlier. We can still smell all the good stuff, but it's harder to find our good holes and the neighbor's cat or chihuahua. It's also harder for the staff to figure out we've left the yard and gone exploring.

The other night, we discovered we could run into the neighbors' yards and their outside lights would turn on. Ernie the cat explained it to us: If you move in front of the special spotlights, they come on.

Then, we figured out that all five neighbors have one of those cool lights to scare off bad people and deer. (Doesn't work for deer -- we know that. Willis just thinks they are funny. He says they help him find the good plants to eat.)

Anyway, when it's time to go in the house, we can run away from Staffer Dad and set off the neighbors' spotlights. He tries to track us by following the lights that pop on across the back yards.

So that brings us to the new winter game: Turn on all five backyard lights before we get caught and have to go in. Maggie's up to 3 at a time and Bandit's managed all 5 once. We're considering a point system where each week's winner gets first roll in the fresh deer pee.

Staffer Dad is not amused.

We've been slacking

No, we haven't been in timeout -- and we're pretty sure that's what you thought. We've just been slackers. We've just been having a pretty good time, and we took a break. But we're back.

We'll try to catch you up with our latest adventures:
- Right before Christmas, we woke up one morning and heard all sorts of strange sounds outside...it sounded like the chainsaw and giant suck machine (vacuum cleaner?) all at one time, so that couldn't be good. When we finally got to go outside and check out the noise, we found our favorite big pine trees were missing from the backyard. Bandit was particularly upset to find all the excavation work he'd done around the tree near the weird bush was all gone. Now there was a big hole full of wood chips. We're not really sure what caused this, but we figure there will be lots of termites and grubs in that part of the yard when summer comes. That can't be bad.

- Christmas was fun. Grandma came and slipped us food under the table a couple of times. Staffer Mom took some time off and when she does that, she tends to cook a lot. This time, she cooked so much, she dropped food on the floor a lot, so that worked out well. She can stay home more often.

- The staff got a Wii. And frankly, we think those things are hazardous. First of all, they always move the furniture to play with it, and when Staffer Mom is Wii boxing she gets pretty violent. Last night, she nearly stepped on Maggie twice. When Staffer Dad's playing Wii bowling, he won't let us in the den at all. This was quite unexpected for us and remains an annoying situation.

- Then, we spent New Year's at the beach. It was cold there, but the staff lets us sit on the couch at the beach house and that made up for a lot. Unlike last year, they didn't make us watch all five "Planet of the Apes" movies. Instead, they took the stupid Wii to play with. Now we're worried they'll take away our Wimbledon and U.S. Open vacations to play with that stupid toy.

So that puts us about even...except for our new nighttime yard game. We'll tell you about that later.

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.

Baby pictures

At least some good has come from the staff's recent push to clean up the house.
They found some baby pictures of us!


Here's Maggie in the back yard for the first time.
Then, it's a picture from her first bath, courtesy Staffer Dad.
And next, it's Bandit as a great-looking youngster.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We've had a great day!
The staff was home with us all day (except they did leave for breakfast -- where do they go? can't they just eat out of their bowls like we do?) and we got to go outside a lot and we had a T-bone steak bone each. Maggie left hers outside, and Bandit buried his. We'll pull them out later when they've marinated well in the dirt. We hope they are still there when we go back out -- somehow the staff seems to always confiscate them. (They say it's because they care. Sure seems mean to us.)

We also got to help the staff clean up the back room where they pile boxes and stuff they can't figure out what to do with or stuff they just don't want to fool with. They say a lot of people have one of those rooms, but we don't understand why. Humans seem to have a lot of stuff.

And that brings us to a couple other things: Since it's Thanksgiving, we wanted to say we're thankful for our blankies, staffers, grandma, our aunts, uncles and buddies and our blog friends.
Thank you all!

Aunt Allison turns 6+

Here's something really cool: Aunt Allison turns 6ish this weekend. We think. The staff tells us that dog years and human years are really different and it takes about 7 dog years to equal 1 human year. So if we did our math right, she's not really very old. Or, if we didn't, she'd be really, really old like a dinosaur or something.
We think we must be right on this because she doesn't look really, really old.
Now we're confused.

Cold weather is here, and so are the deer

This week, it turned winter around here. Staffer Mom pulled out the blankets for the staff, and we got an extra blankie, too. All that thoughtfulness is nice, but we still had to go outside to do our business -- and it was below freezing.
Staffer Dad insists we go out and walk and stuff. Bandit doesn't like it, but he remembers when it was worse. When he lived in Kentucky and had to go out in the snow and dig a hole. He thought it was pretty neat since his poo would steam when it was really cold. He keeps trying to make it happen here in this yard. Maggie just keeps crawling up on Staffer Dad to snuggle.

The other big thing this week is that we have a pet deer. Staffer Mom doesn't like him at all because he ate all her new pansy plants, but we think he's cool. The staff couldn't figure out why we won't chase him out of the yard or even acknowledge his presence. It's probably a good thing they don't realize how long he's been living here. We see and smell him all the time. We roll in his pee a lot. We think he's now peeing exclusively in our yard just because we appreciate it so much.
He was here all weekend, and that's why Staffer Dad made us take a bath today.
Anyway, we like the deer and we're going to try to keep him.
Staffer Mom's not going to be happy about this. She'll have to deal: We've named it Willis.

While we were out

We got to thinking. We should probably give you some idea of what we did during our timeout. We weren't in trouble the whole time. We did regular stuff like get baths and go visit the spa while the staff took a weekend off. We also looked out the window at squirrels a lot when we couldn't get outside to chase them off.


We also got to watch some TV. Dog shows are pretty boring unless you're in them, we guess. We're not really sure we'd want to see this scene all day, either.

And then there was Halloween. The staff wouldn't let us out, but we saw enough horrors on the Internet to serve us for some time to come. It's bad enough seeing people stick fake hotdog buns on wieners like us all the time, but bananas? Please.

We are back (OK, out of timeout)

First of all: We're sorry.
Second: We are making a public apology to Ernie. We didn't really mean to knock over the cat food tower (right), and we're pretty sure we weren't the ones who put cat food all over the den and dining room. If we didn't, it was truly an accident because we truly believe in immediately picking up any food we drop. (Sometimes we even fight to see who gets to snarf it up!)
Here's what happened: Staffer Mom filled up the self-feeding cat food tower, and we got a little excited and at some point it went flying across the kitchen and food went everywhere.
We admit mouthing off a bit about Ernie even needing a self-feeder and if she didn't want us to taste it it shouldn't be on the floor...yadda, yadda.
Basically, she told us we couldn't blog again until she quit finding food in the rugs and floorboards across three different rooms and until we figured out how to share our toys and when we quit digging up her new bed of pansies.
And then she wouldn't let us try to help by sniffing out the strewn food -- one of our more refined skills, she had to pull out the sucking vacuum cleaner thing and it never works right....anyway...more than you wanted to know.

But we're back.
Staffer Mom says that the first day of Tar Heel basketball season is special one and all household shenanigans are forgiven for another year. We are really glad every year when that day comes.
Go Heels!