Merry Christmas!

Hello all of our doggie, kittie and other friends!

We hope you had a very Merry Christmas! We got some presents on Christmas Eve and on Christmas morning! It was all looking pretty sweet and then Mom and Aunt Bec got in their cars and drove away! But then we remembered that they drive away almost every day so we decided we wouldn't worry about it. We took naps instead.

Well, it got late and dinner time came and went but dinner did not show up. You can imagine how stressful this was to us. Fortunately, Aunt Bec finally showed up and gave us some dinner before we starved to death. It was a good thing Aunt Bec came home because Mom never did show up. And she didn't show up the next day either. She finally came home today and ... she smelled like FIVE other dogs!

Can you believe she would leave us alone (okay, yes, Aunt Bec was here but ALONE has a bigger effect) for almost three whole days??? What kind of mother does something like that. We think the DWBers need to set her straight!

She smelled like our Aunt Sue's dog, Missy. And she smelled like our Uncle John's Labradors, Kaiser and Hannibal. She smelled like Grandma and Grandpaw's dachsie who is our Aunt Lexie. AND she smelled like MONA!!! We think it is totally unacceptable that she found time to visit Mona when she was neglecting us. The only reason we MIGHT forgive her is because she helped Mona's mommy with her new computer. Her other computer decided to be mean right before Christmas and not play anymore.

But she is home now and we are sitting on her and next to her. We really missed her and we are pretty sure she missed us.

Well that is about it for now. We still need to post pictures of our new cousin, Emma. She is getting big but we still boss her around. She knows to be afraid of us ... especially Maggie and Roxie ... heck, the rest of us are afraid of those two! It seems only Mom and Aunt Bec aren't afraid of them.

Anyway, we wanted to wish everydog a very Merry Christmas! We hope you got some rawhide or equally great present!

(We are keeping our paws crossed that we can make another entry before the end of they year. It might be at 11:45 on Dec 31st but that will still count!)

Merry Christmas!

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas! We hope you are blessed to spend lots of time with the ones you love. That is best the gift you can receive!

Whew! Almost Finished ...

Hmmm ... it seems we missed a couple of days. Well, we guess we have to forgive Mom. She has been sitting in front of the printer feeding card stock sheet by sheet for what seems like hours ... days! First she printed the outside, then she waited until she was sure it was dry, then she printed the inside. She wasn't so silly as to do this one card at a time. She did 40 in a stretch so it took a while!

She also printed mailing labels and return address labels.

We've already mailed the international cards. You should see those sometime in January ...

She has all but the last 40 domestic cards signed and in envelopes. Our hats are off to those of you who did this so promptly. Next year we want Mom to be better prepared ... like designing the card in August! You know we are going to do this. You can design the card and print the first 100! Then you don't have to disappear for hours at a time and leave us to wonder what you are doing instead of spending time with us!

Well, as you can tell, exactly nothing fun has happened around here. Mom apologizes for being so dull. Perhaps printing non-stop does that to you humans.

Sammy's spot doesn't seem to bother him but it is still bare of hair.

It was thundering loud this morning but, when we went outside, we couldn't tell what or who made all of that noise. It did rain some because the grass was wet.

The lawn people came today and made lots of noise outside too. We had to bark at them until they went away even though we were inside the house. Mom was in the other room (printing) so we don't know if she realized how dangerous the situation was!

Roxie ate some grass and threw up. That was interesting. Wouldn't you know ... Mom was there for that and wouldn't let us check it out.

We've discovered how much fun it is to throw Roxie's blanket into the water bowl. It soaks up all of the water and makes a mess when Mom carries it to the washing machine. This way we get fresh water every day instead of alternating days. Of course, it's kind of hard to drink after the blanket soaks it up. We are still working on that part which is why we have done it three times in the last week.

Finally, we want to remind humans to keep your pets safe this holiday season and every day ... please do NOT feed your dogs:

Chocolate
Onions
Grapes or Raisins
Drinks with caffeine (like Coke, Mountain Dew)

These are all very bad for doggies and probably kitties too!

Progress!

Today Mom designed and started printing our cards! Woohoo! We like the way they came out. We would have really liked for them to have been mailed two weeks ago and all of our friends to have them already but we can't have everything. Mom has been printing up a storm. She has the fronts of 20 of the cards printed and the insides of ... 2. We gave one to Grandma and Grandpa because they are special and we love them ... and Mom needed to know if the cards looked okay. We hope Grandma and Grandpa were honest about what they thought because we want Mom to spend time printing up the rest of them.

Sammy went to the vet today to have his side looked at. He got to see Dr. Wagner today. She took a scraping of it and said it didn't have any mites or fungus. She also said Sammy didn't act like it bothered him to have the area manipulated. He has some antibiotics and some kind of spray that is good for abrasions. He gets the spray for 5 days and the antibiotics for 10 days. We hope his hair grows back soon because he is Mom's handsome boy.

Mom and Sammy went to see Grandma and Grandpa even before Mom finished the Christmas card. Mom said Sammy needed a reward for being such a good boy at the vet. Unless Mom takes all three of us to the vet at the same time, she usually takes us to see Grandma and Grandpa or we get to go to PetsMart. This time Roxie and Andy had to stay home. Sammy sure was lucky. He got to explore Grandpa's back yard. There are all kinds of different smells in their back yard! And you can usually look cute and get a treat at Grandma and Grandpa's house!

But Sammy has to be careful about treats. He weighed 16.8 pounds! Last time he weighed 16.4 pounds. Dr. Wagner says he should weigh 16 pounds. Poor Sammy, those spoons of cottage cheese and canned dog food are going to get smaller. It's not fun being a little dog. The food portions are just too small!

Well, we need to get to bed so we can get up early tomorrow and print more cards! We hope our friends forgive us for being so terribly late. Just remember ... we are cute!

53 to 8

Yes, 53 to 8. That is the Christmas card count. We have received 53 cards and Mom has received 8. And WE know that there are more coming for us! One day there were 11 pieces of mail -- two were junk mail and the other 9 were cards for us. Do we have great friends or what?

Sorry we have been lax about blogging lately. Mom seems to be pretty busy and has some lame excuse almost every day. She went to an office Christmas party the evening of the 6th ... so no time to blog. She went to see the Irish Tenors the evening of the 7th ... so no time to blog. She worked on Christmas card labels last weekend so that is her excuse for not blogging. Then her office had the accountants from the subsidiaries come to town for a meeting so she was out late on the 12th when they all went to dinner ... so no time to blog. She worked until almost 8:00pm on the 13th (since she was starting vacation the next day) ... so no time to blog. She went to see our cousin graduate from college yesterday (the 14th) ... so no time to blog. TODAY she has time to blog. We are also working on our cards ... still.

Not much is really happening around here. It rained really hard this morning and now it is cold ... okay, not cold but chilly for us. We are hoping we can go out to the country and run around for a little while but not until we finish the Christmas cards. Anyway, Opy left us a message saying she was worried about us because we hadn't blogged in a while. Don't worry, Opy. We are fine. We just have a lazy Mom. She is off of work until the day after Christmas so, hopefully, we will see some productivity out of her.

Our Christmas cactus is blooming again! How does it know that it is Christmas? It much be because of the cards we have gotten. It sure isn't because of the decorations! Mom is so lazy ...

Sammy has to go to the vet. He has an area on his side about the size of a thumb where all of his hair is gone. Mom said it looked like there were some little bumps like bites so maybe it was itchy and he pulled the hair out while he was trying to make it stop itching. It's not scabby or oozy or anything but she figures she might as well take him to see the doctor in case it is something she needs to treat now instead of later.

Roxie is still a princess and Andy is still cute so nothing new to report on that front. We will try to get outside and do something so we can report back to you. Until then take care!

Our New Collars and Road Trip!

Hey Dogs! Sammy Here!

We've been telling you that we got new collars but we haven't been able to show them to you until now. Mom sat on the sofa and took all of our tags off of our old collars and put them on our new collars. We used to have Roxie: Green, Sammy: Blue and Andy: Red. Our harnesses and leashes are still like that but Andy went to a black and grey collar. Mom said the red looked too pink and she didn't want people mistaking him for a girl! Anyway, here are pictures of us in our new collars!

Roxie, beautiful as always ...


Me, Sammy, keeping guard because I'm the man of the house!


Andy, being Andy!


Once we were all dressed up in our new collars, Mom pulled out Sammy's old harness and Roxie and Andy's new harnesses and we went on a road trip! We went to Mona's house! Mona's mommy said Mona needed somedog to play with since Jacks, Toby and Evander went to live somewhere else.

Mona's mommy also wanted to add some things to Mona's blog and asked our mom if she would help a little bit. We were glad to go help.

We were really glad to go help when Mona's mommy gave us some treats we had never had. We got some rawhide rolls with chicken inside. We have never had anything like that and, let me tell you, I finished mine off in about 10 minutes and then tried to steal Andy's. Mom was mean and wouldn't let me or Roxie have Andy's treat. She even reached into Roxie's mouth TWICE and took it out to give back to Andy. I'm glad it was Mom and not me! I think Roxie would have tried to bite off my nose if I tried to take it from her. How would I be able to sniff out food and treats if I didn't have a nose?

But, before we forget, we do want to say something important ...
Mona's mommy, thank you for the yummy treat! If you ever want us to come visit again, we will be glad to come over!

We would show you some pictures of our visit with Mona but Mom forgot the camera. If you go look at Mona's blog, you can see a picture of her in the profile. Isn't she a pretty little girl?

Anyway, after we visited for a while, we came home. We decided it was naptime after all of the inspecting and adventuring we had done.

Pretty soon we will have to supervise the printing of our new Christmas cards since Opy sent the list to us. We need to get busy ... after our nap.

The Escape Route, Mom Found the Stash and Roxie

Hey Dogs, Cats and GirlGirl! Andy here.

Last time, Sammy told you all about going on a great adventure. Aunt Bec found the escape route and here is a picture of it.



You'll notice there is already a board across the bottom of the fence because Mom thought the bottom edge was the most likely area we would use. Little did she know that Roxie and Sammy have been slowly digging out by breaking up the board. The reason the picture is in shadow is because the hole was behind the magnolia trees. Needless to say, it is blocked now. Mom bought some nails and will be nailing the new board in place and we will be captive again.

Mom has also been trying to find the tennis balls. I carry one out every time I go outside, so she knew there must be some out there somewhere. She looked under the magnolia tree and she looked all around. Finally she looked in the doghouse and found one.



But wait a second! What is that at the very back of the doghouse? BUSTED!



I was hoping she would buy me some new ones so I could have lots and lots of tennis balls but I guess that isn't going to happen.

And finally, we haven't posted any doggie pictures in a while. We posed for our Christmas card picture today. We will show you some of the funnier rejects later but here is a pretty one of Roxie. Once we left, she made herself comfortable. Roxie hopes Thrawn and Pippa both like it.



Well, gotta go. Mom is going to a wedding tonight. She says she needs to get a nap in so she can party the night away. Yeah, right ...

Snausages!

As a quick reminder, here is the picture of our Christmas Loot.



Part of the loot were three cans of Snausages! Oh, they smelled so good! Roxie was really checking them out. She was trying to figure out how to get into at least one of those cans! (Mom got the tripod out again after she took this lousy picture.)



Mom took one of the cans, so Roxie went on guard by the other two. You can never be sure what Mom is going to do.



The good news is Mom opened the can she was holding! She took out three Snausages and gave them to us! If you look really close, you can see Roxie finishing up her Snausage.



There aren't pictures of Sammy or Andy eating theirs because, by the time Mom found us, we had finished them off. Uh ... NO, WAIT, we didn't get ANY. Roxie got ALL of them. We think all of our friends should tell Mom that Sammy & Andy deserve THREE Snausages EACH.

(Do you think they believed us? That would be so cool to get three more!)

Finally ... The Christmas Loot!

Just a quick reminder that this is what our tree looked like after Mom and Aunt Bec decorated it so carefully.



And this is what our tree looked like on Christmas morning. Please note the new arrangement of the ornaments. Also note that Mom and Aunt Bec did not use the tripod to take this picture so it is the picture that is blurry and not your vision.



This is all of the Christmas loot that we got. This is just our loot. Maggie and Jake took their loot home but you will see it in some of the pictures. The three cans of Snausages came from Grandma and Grandpa. Mom has not opened them yet but we will get to that ... (Oh, and don't look too closely at the edge of the area rug. We decided the edging could be removed. Mom did not agree.)




We have not been allowed to play with these toys. Mom says they are on vacation and will return later. Why did some of our toys get to go somewhere without us and how did she get this picture that looks like our sofa?



Here is a picture of the area rug after Roxie "played" with one of the toys.



Hmm ... it might have been Andy. He looks like he is making a run to get away from the evidence.



These are the toys that are in the toy ER (emergency room) awaiting surgery before they can come back to play with us. The square green one on the left has been restuffed with the grisly remains that were left on the rug. They just don't make toys like they used to ...



Maggie sat very ladylike on the other sofa and enjoyed her toys.



This is Sammy with Red Bear. Sammy picked Red Bear out of all of the toys.



Mom realized that Sammy loves Red Bear so much that she'd better have a Red Bear 2. Here is Red Bear 1 already missing an arm thanks to Andy and Red Bear 2 who is somewhere we can't get to him. Sammy sleeps with Red Bear and carries him around. In the morning, Sammy stretches and then goes back into his crate to get Red Bear. He runs into the den and drops him on the rug before he goes outside. When Sammy comes back into the house, he picks up Red Bear and takes him to wherever they are going.



And to end this exciting entry, we have a picture of Hot Diggity. Mama Lana sent him to us from Florida! We don't get to play with him but Mom likes him so he is going to get a place of honor ... that we can't reach. Sometimes it doesn't pay to be short.



And now, the Snausages: Mom says we can have them but she gets to decide how many and when. We think she is mistaken because Grandma and Grandpa gave them to us. We are going to ask them the next time we see them. They should be able to set Mom straight!

Texas, one of our dog friends, requested pictures. We hope this satisfies him!

We Almost Forgot!

We are so excited about Christmas coming, we almost forgot to tell everyone that Christmas day is also Roxie's birthday. She will be 3! She is a big girl now but still acts like a puppy around Mom. Mom falls for it every time. We know everyone will be busy with family and celebrations but we hope a few of you can stop by to wish Roxie "Happy Birthday".

Auntie Maria and Mama Lana

We sent cards and presents to two ladies who work with Mom and live in Florida.

One is our Auntie Maria. She and Mom have worked together for a few years now and Mom has visited her and met her doggie, Nina.

The other lady is Mama Lana. Mom has worked with Mama Lana for a little over a year. Mama Lana loves Andy!

Auntie Maria loves all of us. (Mama Lana loves all of us too but she tells everyone that Andy is her doggie. She takes all the pictures of Andy from this blog and puts them on her computer. But don't tell anyone because it is a secret.)

We can tell everyone what the presents were because Mom talked to Auntie Maria and Mama Lana and they already received them. We sent them each a 2007 Dogs With Blogs Calendar #2! (We are August.) They really like the calendars and the cards.

One of these days maybe Auntie Maria and Mama Lana will come visit us and we can show them how much we love them!

Roxie Makes the First Grab!

Boomer, thanks for letting us have the picture!

Mom made dinner for us and wasn't watching us very closely. After she fed us, she was keeping an eye on us. That's when she saw that Sammy was trying to grab an ornament off of the tree. Mom saw him and told him to leave the tree alone. That got Mom to looking at the Christmas tree and she noticed a bare spot. She looked a little more and decided to move one of the ornaments. Then she remembered that there weren't any bare spots yesterday. She looked around and Roxie had an ornament. Mom took it and put it back on the tree but maybe we don't need to ask for help from the huskies ...

Hmmm ... we might have to apply to Meeshka for membership in the HULA hoop.

You Like Us! You Really, Really Like Us!

Just wanted to make a quick note to tell you that today was a banner day. We got SEVEN cards. And we need to go tell Jojo and Russell that we got their card. (Their mom was concerned because the mail center didn't tell her to put enough postage on the cards.) We have gotten so many cards, we can't even count that high! Mom (hee hee) has one ... from some real estate lady who sends cards to everybody so they will hire her if they want to sell their house.

Time to go kiss on Mom. She needs to know we love her even if no one sends her cards ...

Country Roads Take Me Home (or a Visit!)

Today we go to the country house for the whole weekend! We are so excited. We were afraid we might not go after what happened on Wednesday night. Aunt Bec had come over to help Mom make labels from Miss Sunshade's DWB Christmas card list. Mom got home so we all ran outside to welcome her. She pulled into the garage and pushed the button to close the door and it came part way down and stopped! She pushed the button again and all she got was that funny noise you get when something isn't working correctly. She pulled the release and the door came down the rest of the way but it wouldn't open up. Finally Aunt Bec and Mom took some tools and disconnected the arm thingy so Mom could open the door and get her car back out. While Mom was working on this, she yelled at us to quit barking but we didn't. She wasn't very happy with us so we were afraid she might change her mind about the trip. Fortunately, she went to buy another garage door opener yesterday and she is just waiting for them to come install it. In her words "I'm not getting up on a ladder."

After all that excitement, we went to the office/computer room and started working on the labels. Aunt Bec is really smart about doing things in Word so she made the labels in almost no time at all. We just need to make one more for the new participant and a new one for a family that has a new puppy dog member (yea for finding a home!) Mom opened up one box of cards we were going to use and, in the middle of the front cover, every single one says "attach picture here". Mom was so irritated. Now she has to take them back and buy something else. How stupid is it to write words nobody wants on the paper? The only way to use them is to make pictures and then attach them. We want to just print our picture right on the card!

Mom wants us to send a thank you to Greg (Charlie and Opy's dad). Mom wants to do some creative work with some of our pictures and she didn't want to buy Photoshop because it is pretty expensive. She asked Greg if he could suggest a more economical alternative and he sent her an answer right back. Even the humans make friends at Dogs With Blogs! We are so glad Charlie and Opy invited us to be a part of Dogs With Blogs. We do such fun stuff -- calendars, Christmas card exchange and just making friends around the world! And you don't even have to be a recognized breed of dog to join ... check out Fu fu the hamsterrier!

Well, gotta go pack treats for the trip. Something tells us we are going to have lots of reading to catch up on when we get back!