Badly behaved humans

I’m getting very concerned that there may be a human biting epidemic.  When I take our humans out for our evening neighborhood sniff we see lots of humans wearing muzzles. Mine have started dragging me out into the middle of the road to avoid them which only shows that they must be scared of them.  Occasionally they let me exchange a few words with their canine heads of security but we have to do it at the very end of our leashes.

Even more confusing is that lots of my humans’ friends used to congregate at our kennel at the weekend and drink falling over juice.  Now, they just talk to the neighbors standing at the front of their own kennels with their own falling over juice and they are not allowed inside our kennel.  I have only seen this happen with my friends when one of them has a “marking” issue.  Have humans started marking too?

Tobermory

Humans in Crisis

Something very strange is going on with humans at the moment.  Ours usually go out every evening with their friends and now they stay at home all the time.  We go for neighborhood sniffs more than usual but they cross the road when they see other humans.  Of course, it means that I haven’t had the chance to compare notes with other household heads of security so I have not been able to work out what their take on the situation is.  Mummy only leaves the house when she has to go foraging for food so I don’t get much opportunity to get on her writing box to get more information.  I did manage to make contact with a canine news correspondent who gave this report.

I think what we can take from this is that the canine security profession now has a really important task to keep their humans safe.  I know it’s tempting, but no more dragging them across the street to compare security notes, and instead of whining at the front door to go for a walk, just find a chew toy. Mummy said that even though this is very strange, it is very important and as everyone knows your Mummy is always right.  Whatever it is, please keep your humans safe and make sure they have enough falling over juice to keep them sedated well because the writing box says they must “shelter in space”.  This is an old piece of advice from a famous dog called Laika who was the first planet based creature in space in 1957 who obviously thought it was a good place to hang out.

Tobermory

Learning to Beg

It’s been a tough couple of months since I said goodbye to Talisker.  We watched out for each other and shared the human care duties.  Now I’m doing it all on my own.  They are giving me extra cuddles, taking me everywhere with them and I now get nightly human bed privileges, but I still really miss him.

There are things Talisker used to do that I always took for granted.  I’m finding it especially difficult to ask for bread when my humans’ friends stop by to drink falling over juice.  Talisker always did it for us.  He just had this subtle way of begging which humans thought was cute and it always worked.  I should have studied him better.  I’ve tried sitting quietly behind them which I thought was what he did, but that doesn’t work.  I’ve tried a bit of gentle yipping to make them notice that I was sitting behind them, but that just annoys them.  In despondency, I then go and lay on Talisker’s spot on the sofa because Mummy says that is now my spot, but that only makes me feel sad.  Then they come and offer me bread, but by that point I’m too sad to eat it and then all the humans get worried about me.  Why can’t they worry when I’m sitting quietly behind them?

Tobermory

Farewell to a gentle soul

It is with very great sadness that I tell you that we said goodbye to our dear, sweet Talisker on New Year’s Eve.  It has left an enormous hole in our hearts.  He loved his little brother Tobermory and was always protective of him, a role which reversed as he got old.

Tailsker was the chief “begger” in this house.  This is something that is forbidden at the dining table, but all bets are off in the kitchen and around the breakfast bar and he mastered the art beautifully.  He would sit quietly behind unsuspecting guests and every now and again would gently nudge them with his nose.  If that didn’t work, he would tap his target with a paw and that very rarely failed which would benefit both him and his brother.  Tobermory now looks lost when guests stop by for a glass of wine.

 

Our beautiful boy had his favorite spot on the sofa.  For those of you who watch the Big Bang Theory, you will understand when we tell you that we called him the Sheldon of the dog world.  If his brother or a visiting dog were sitting on his spot, he would never behave badly.   He just sat and looked at me with a hurt look on his face until I had asked the intruder to move when he would triumphantly hop up onto the now vacant spot.

Talisker’s beautiful gentle soul will always be missed by us.

Mummy

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