Bad Twitter

Twitter froze my account and they froze Mummy’s too.  Mummy doesn’t tweet, and I have never said anything bad about anyone in my tweets, unlike that human with the bad head fur who lives in a big white house in Washington.  The excuse Twitter used was that I’m too young to tweet.  Really?  In dog years I’m the same age as the guy with the bad head fur and I’ve been tweeting for a while with no objections from Twitter. What’s the deal with freezing me out now?  Neither Mummy nor I follow the bad fur guy, but we constantly get notifications when he tweets insults about other humans.   In fact, we're more than a little annoyed that despite our accounts being suspended, we still get emails saying he’s tweeted, but we can’t look at the tweets because our accounts are suspended!  Twitter – get your priorities straight.   Block accounts that deserve to be blocked.

 

Being entrepreneurial, I see an opportunity here.  I’m talking to some of Daddy’s venture capital friends about starting a non doggist platform like Twitter called Barker.

Talisker

I'm from Microsoft and I'm here to "help" - hmm, not so much

Just when Mummy had promised us that we could use her writing box regularly to resume our writing career, it got sick.  We have very good doctors who always make us feel better but writing boxes don’t seem to have that luxury.  I was listening while she spoke with a writing box doctor at a place called Microsoft.  He said his name was Phil.

Phil told Mummy he could make the writing box better, but he would need access to his brain.  Mummy sat and drank her brown breakfast liquid with frothy cow juice while we watched the little pointy triangle move around the screen and lots of boxes open and close.  One was black with lots of white letters and symbols in it.  Mummy got worried.  She hoped Phil knew what he was doing, because he was really diving deep into the little guy’s brain.

Suddenly all the boxes closed, and Phil told Mummy the writing box was all better again.  Well, that didn’t last long.  He started getting sicker and within a day, he couldn’t help any of us write anymore.  Mummy decided that it was time for her to take over his care and nurse him back to health.  The surgery and recovery took Mummy almost two weeks, she growled a lot and used a lot of very bad words.  She’s very attached to her writing box and this was obviously very emotionally distressing for her.

I’m pleased to report that the writing box now has a clean bill of health, so our writing can now resume.  Needless to say, Mummy says she will not be using the worthless “help” of F*!?%&G Microsoft anytime soon.

Talisker

Who trained who?

It is now the start of Howling Human season in our town; they call it Jazz on the Plazz.  There are several purposes of this event.  It’s great for socializing your humans, many of whom bring their security detail with them, so we get to compare notes.  Also, if you need practice with mastering the art of looking cute to attract humans who like to take pictures with their talking boxes, this is a perfect venue; there are lots of them.   However, the most useful part of these events is the opportunity to hone begging skills as there are a lot of unsuspecting humans who can be duped into giving us bread.  Talisker takes the subtle approach, gently tapping them on the leg with his paw, or nudging them from behind with his nose.  Although very effective on humans who don’t live in our kennel, this doesn’t work very well with ours, so I had to devise a way to get around this problem.  It’s taken a few years to perfect.

The important part is to try to think like a human and take advantage of the props given to you.  In this instance, the desire of our humans to socialize with others with as little disruption as possible is the first part of the equation.  The second part, the props which I initially discovered by accident.  There are always large dogs that I don’t know walking past so I like to yell loudly to get our humans’ attention about the potential threat.  They started to give me bread every time they noticed a large dog coming, thinking that they were distracting me.  I now rarely need to yell … the bread is mostly forthcoming as soon as a dog rounds the corner towards us.  Every now and again, I have to give a low growl to jolt them into action, but for the most part it now works like a charm.

Tobermory

Clandestine Swimming

I would like to justify my behavior last night.  You do understand that as fish retrievers, swimming is in our blood.

We have just returned from a trip with our humans for them to test falling over juice in Healdsburg and Sonoma.  We usually sleep at a travelling human kennel called the Krug Event Center which has a big hole in the ground with water. Our humans won’t let us jump in which is horrible torture for a fish retriever.

Last night, Daddy took us out for our end of night sniff and we don’t usually put our humans on a leash at that time – where are they going to go?  I really wanted a swim, Mummy was sleeping and Talisker seemed to have a pretty good handle on Daddy, so I thought they wouldn’t notice if I snuck off for a few minutes.  There were big gates blocking me from getting to the hole in the ground with water which you can only open by putting magical door opening cards into a slot.  I managed to sneak in un-noticed behind some humans with one of these cards.

I was having a really great time and had only been gone for a few minutes when I heard panicked shouts from Daddy calling my name.  I got out of the hole in the ground with water but getting back to him presented me with the same problem.  I jumped at the gate and “yipped”, as Mummy calls it.  I hoped Daddy would hear me, but he was too far away.  Eventually, some other humans came by with a magic card and I just ran.  By this time Daddy was standing outside the door of our temporary kennel looking distraught.  I jumped at him and gave him a really big hug.  He doesn’t usually like this when I’ve been swimming, but on this occasion, he actually hugged me back.  I think he suffers from separation anxiety.   I need to talk to Mummy about getting him checked out.

Tobermory

Remembering

Monday was a day when we remember the brave humans from this country and the dogs that fought beside them to ensure that we have plenty of kibble and a nice kennel to live in.

I have been doing extensive research for my book and I was amazed to find out that there are around 2,500 dogs in military service with at least 700 deployed at any one time with a little under 200,000 humans.  That means that each dog has around 275 humans to take care of and they have to chase bad guys too.  There are 2 of us in our kennel with 2 humans who we can mostly keep in our line of site which is still a challenge.  The thought of watching 275 humans leaves me with a whole new admiration for these courageous canines.

Talisker

Falling Over Juice Theft

This weekend our humans went to visit their favorite falling over juice kennel, Testarossa.  The purpose of the trip was to find out how well the young falling over juice was growing.  Before they left, I overheard Mummy telling Daddy that she had paid to take a thief with them into the falling over juice nursery.  I found this very disturbing on several counts.

I have always considered our humans to be of high moral standing.  Stealing is bad, and I know this because whenever I try to steal something from the kitchen counter, Mummy growls at me really loudly.  I also don’t understand why they would pay a thief to help them steal juvenile falling over juice when they could just pay for bottles of the mature stuff.

Tobermory

Anyone for Cake?

We have been very quiet for a while.   Four human years ago, Mummy started to spend more and more time out earning the green stuff that buys us dog biscuits.  She always took her writing box with her which seriously hindered our ability to connect with our extended family of readers.  I am pleased to say that she now has got her priorities straight and is spending more time at our kennel with us and is allowing us access to her writing box again.

A lot has happened since we last wrote.  I have now officially turned over my Head of Security duties to Tobermory.  He’s sometimes a little over enthusiastic, but for the best part does an excellent job.

 

Tobermory has always been a very thoughtful pup and so when I turned 10 in human years last week, he threw a Birthday/Retirement Party for me.  He had all our best buddies over and Mummy made her famous carrot cake with cottage cheese frosting.  Tobermory tried to use it as a seduction tool for our Great Dane friend Loki, but she wasn’t having any of it.  We of course had plenty of falling over juice on hand to keep the humans occupied with appropriate edible antidotes on hand.

Now I need a retirement project.  In the 3 years that I spent with my dearly departed brother Bowmore, he taught me as much as he could about the care of humans, but in the subsequent seven years, from personal experience, I have learnt a whole lot more that needs to be documented.

I am now writing a guide to young dogs on the care of humans.  Tobermory will be filling in for me on writing our blog while I’m busy, but I will have the time for the occasional post to update you on our view of the world.

Talisker