NEXT TIME

FRANK = BACON

Whoa. I had no idea there was so much to know about bacon. How did I end up with a vegetable for a human?

Next time we will totally:

* follow Chef Annie's secret bacon directions
* feed me the bacon juice instead of flushing it down the toilet
* make twice the bacon in case it shrinks

That is IF I can convince my human to go near the stove again. Her brain is so gimpy these days she left the burner thingy on. For like four hours. If it wasn't for Dutch barking at the "scary" blue flame in the kitchen we could have all ended up like my bacon.

Burned and crispy.

Frank is going home tomorrow but coming back again next week. With Frank comes bacon so I think a do-over could happen. If it doesn't, I'm totally guilting my human into getting me some of that squeezable stuff. Because bacon in a tube is better than no bacon at all.

My human says there is more to life than bacon (wrong) and says I have to talk about something else tomorrow. I don't know what can beat bacon so I better start thinking now...

MORE BACON THAN THE PAN CAN HANDLE

 

I was kinda secretly hoping Dutch would get towed away if we waited long enough to cook my bacon. But I guess that only works with cars. So I tried to snatch an extra bite for myself before the bacon hit the pan. All I got was a mouth full of plastic.

My human promised there would be plenty for everyone but I didn't believe her. How could one little bacon be plenty when I had to share it with Dutch AND Frank. Besides, what does a vegetable lover know about bacon? 

Then I saw this:

more bacon than a HUMONGO pan can handle

Yeah. In case you can't tell, that's one HUMONGO pan. Full of bacon. And just in case you can't tell my looking at me how excited I was about this, I was EXCITED.

At least I was. Until my human turned on the stove and ruined everything. I don't know what she did but one minute I had more bacon than a pan can handle, the next minute there was barely enough to fill my tiny food bowl.

where did all my bacon go?

Whatever she did made a whole bunch of stinky smoke and a really loud noise that freaked Dutch out so bad he ran out the dog door and refused to come back inside. Of course I tried to convince my human to let me eat Dutch's bacon so it wouldn't get cold. But she said I had to wait anyway because the bacon needed to cool.

Cool the bacon?

Ugh. I really wanted to say just GIVE ME THE FREAKING BACON NOW, but when it comes to stuff like wanting food humans don't understand plain english. It's weird. So I shut my mouth and kept my eyes on the bacon.

Don't tell my human, but even though she totally killed it my bacon was still supertasty. Me and Dutch are trying to talk her into a bacon do-over. One without smoke, scary noises or Frank.

THE MIRACLE

Dutch is parked there until there is enough light in our kitchen to take a picture of today's miracle. Yes. I said miracle.

The miracle started yesterday when the phone rang.

PHONE HUMAN: (no idea what they said)
MY HUMAN: only if he brings bacon.
PHONE HUMAN: (no idea what they said)
MY HUMAN: sounds like a plan.

Bacon. Plan. MIRACLE.

Next thing you know, Frank shows up. Frank was not supposed to be part of the plan. Or my miracle.

Or so I thought.

Because Frank *is* the miracle. I guess a certain gimpy brained someone was thinking for once and negotiated a bacon deal with Frank's dad. She said Frank can stay with us again, but only if he comes with bacon.

Yeah. I know. It means I'm going to have to share my bacon with Dutch and Frank. But some bacon is better than no bacon at all. Right??

HAPPY DANCE

Hello everyone! Dutch here. Pug is too busy sleeping snoring to blog so I thought I'd say hello. Things have been a little strange here at the Casa and I suppose we are all a little tired.

Tired. But happy.

When I'm happy I like to dance on my back in the grass. Back and forth, back and forth. Like those things that wipe the tears away from Mazda when it rains. I am very happy to say the only tears around here are falling from the sky. I have never liked rain more.

I don't have much else to say because we haven't done much lately. Our human has been too busy doing stuff like this:

Neil before | after playground removal

She says it's not Neil's fault they put a playground in the middle of the playground so she made it disappear. I wish I could make things disappear sometimes.


Love,

Dutch

 PS: there is nothing wrong with a boy loving pink. Or Justin Beiber.

HOLY SHEEP

So I don't know exactly what went down on Friday because a certain human wouldn't let me anywhere near her thumbs. Apparently it had something to do with jackals and a camel with a broken back.

Confused? Yeah. Me too.

I just know my human finally had it with mean people and kinda snapped. I don't know who she was talking to on the phone or what they said to make her leak so bad, but I did hear her say something like:

Maybe the (HBO word) jackals will leave me alone if they knew how much my life already sucks.

I wanted to know more about the jackals, but when it comes to humans there are times when you ask questions and there are times when you just try not to breathe too loud. This was one of the quiet breathing times. So I breathed quietly into my dog bed, let her hijack my blog and waited for (whatever) to be over.

Then my human's head exploded and she fell asleep.

She hasn't been sleeping much (at all) so we slept until the next day when my cousin Sophie's mom called to make sure things were ok. She ordered my human to step away from the Other 999, get caught up on sleep and stay off the freaking internet until Monday. Ok, I added the freaking part. But I guess moms know stuff so my human did what she said and we all took the longest most boring nap ever.

Today when we woke up, my human didn't want to turn HAL4 back on. It's all just bad, she told me. I'm still in quiet-breathing mode so it's not like I could ask any questions. Thank bacon for Miley's mom - she just called and said we need to get back on the internet ASAP. I don't know what else she said, but I'm pretty sure it must have been something like:

Something really good has happened.

On went HAL4 and about two seconds later the started leaking again. I kinda thought the leaking was over but I guess this was a different kind of leakage. The kind humans do when something makes them feel really good. Yeah. I know. It's confusing. Humans can be like that.

Anyway. I don't 1000% understand what or how or why or who or... uhm... yeah. Let's just say Miley's mom was totally right. Something really good really did happen. YOU happened. To me. And my human. And I guess Dutch too. It's going to take some thinking to find words big enough for what I want to say so for now I'll just make the letters as big as I can and add lots of those ! things.

THANK YOU!!!!!

I know when one of the mean people called you all sheep for believing in me and my human, they meant it to be a bad thing. But they obviously don't know squat about sheep. Sheep are warm and fuzzy and people like them so much they lay in bed at night and count them. Weird, I know. But that's what Google told me.

The best thing about sheep? They stick together (technical term: flock).

My human likes sheep so much there's a painting of them in our house. She bought it at a charity auction a few years ago to help kids who have cancer. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but that kinda makes me think sheep have special powers to help people or something. 

sheep power

I've never met a jackal in the fur, but I know a thing or two about them from watching Animal Planet. Like how they only show up when somebody gets hurt and nobody is ever happy to see them. Not even the hyenas.

Google says jackals are opportunistic scavengers who don't hang out in groups because they have no social skills. I say jackals don't belong here on our blog. Because here is a place for warm & fuzziness. Here is where kindness and goodness and awesomeness flocks. More than flocks. It kicks butt.

Take that, jackals!

ENOUGH

Hey everybody. Amanda here. I'm sure Puglet has plenty to say but this is between me and the other thumbs out there...

In case you didn't read the project recap (or any of the recent emails) and are still convinced I ran off to Mexico with your money, here's an unofficial update:

This project was supposed to be over months ago for me too. I've put my life & business on hold to do it. Worked my ass off. I'm tired. My health sucks. And I'm selling stuff on craigslist to pay the bills because this morning my bank account looked like this:

(click to biggify)

If I'm a scam artist, I'm not a very good one. I could have stayed home and made a lot more money with a lot less effort but I saw a chance to do something good and went with it. Life isn't about money.

In case your math is as bad as mine: $50,000 doesn't go very far when $10,000 off it goes to charity and you have to spend what now feels like a small fortune on plane tickets, rental cars and luxurious rooms at La Quinta. It goes even less far when you live in the second most expensive city in the country and don't have any other income because you put your business on hold to do some crazy project about pugs.

I'm sorry I'm not perfect, but I'm not guilty of anything but biting off more than I can chew (and subsequently choking on it). If that doesn't mean something to you, there's really nothing I can say.

If you live in a world where everyone is out to scam or hurt you in some way, I feel kind of bad for you. If you've never struggled or failed at anything, I hope your luck continues. If it makes you feel good to make other people feel bad, congratulations. You've succeeded.

Oh. And if you think real-world manners don't apply online, guess what: there is a real live person on the other side of what you type and maybe they don't deserve to be cursed at in all caps for trying to be helpful.

Not cool.

If you're angry or disappointed in me and want to express it, that's fine. I totally understand. But at least be truthful. I've never said boo about legitimate complaints and have been very honest and transparent about the mess in my camp. If you want to come up with your own twisted version of everything, I guess I can't stop you. Believe what you want.

I love everyone here who's stuck by me and the pugs and am sorry any negativity ended up in a place where people have always come to be happy. Puglet will be back soon. He's dying to tell you about an email we got from a publisher who's interested in *our* book. That makes three.

Back to the Other 999....