JOY'S COUSIN, HOPE

Hello again everybody! In case you didn't already know today is Friday, guess what? Today is Friday. And that means it's me, Dutch. I suppose I'm Dutch on all the other days too. But I only get to be me here on Fridays.

Anywho. Reading about everyone's joy last week made me very warm and pink inside. Pug will never admit to feeling pink, but I know he felt it too.

Now that I'm 10, I like to thing about things. Big lifey things. Like joy. And joy's cousin, hope. Google says hope is when you want something to happen or be true and think that it could happen or be true. I don't know about you, but I hope all the time.

The thing about hope is it's a bit like a trip to the dogfood store. Sometimes there's a bucket full of cookies on the counter and the lady behind the thing gives you many, many tasty things to eat. Sometimes the bucket has nothing but crumbs, or there is no lady (or no bucket!) and you don't even get crumbs. 

Hope won't make crumbs any less crummy, but it will make going to the dogfood store extremely exciting. Every. Single. Time.

That's why I think hope is just as big a thing as joy. You never know when life's going to give you cookies or crumbs or nothing at all. But hope will keep going back to the bucket again and again, even when the checkstand is closed.


Love + Fuzzies,

Dutch

PS: I won't think so much next week. Dying to show you my a-maz-ing new sweater!!

NOE SO CUTE

So we finally got some rain. Not really enough to need raincoats or fix the drought, but more than enough for me. My human says the best thing about bad stuff like rain is it makes the good stuff (like rainbows) seem even better. 

Silly human.

ME: can't we just skip the rain part and buy some rainbows?
HUMAN: you can't buy a rainbow, Pug.
ME: can too.
HUMAN: let me guess, on the internet?

Duh. Of course you can't buy rainbows on the internet. But you can totally buy them at a store down the street from us called Noe So Cute. The little dude and his mom who own it are supernice, it's totally dog-friendly and always open. 

Kinda like the internet, but better.

Dutch says Noe So Cute is more like a stand than a store, but whatever. They sell stuff. All sorts of stuff. Stuff places like amazon.com doesn't even know exists.

Like crossword hints:

 

 Untied knots:

 And whatever this is (something Dutch??):

And get this - practically everything at Noe So Cute is only FIVE cents. Well, except for Sunday crossword hints, shaves and haircuts. You know how many things you can buy five cents on the internet? Zero.

The only thing that could make Noe So Cute more awesome is if they sold bacon. You know how much bacon you could buy if it only cost FIVE CENTS?!? Hmmm. I wonder if they take special orders?

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF RAINCOATS

I know rain clouds probably don't seem like a big deal. Especially if you live on the Other, Middle or Bottom Coasts and outside your window it looks like this:

But when you live in San Francisco and it's warm enough to wear nothing on your butts in January and you haven't seen rain since... I don't even know when... I guess even a few little rain clouds are a big deal. 

At least that's what the weather people say. Of course they don't have to pee in it or wear goofy raincoats. Ok, I guess they wear raincoats. But they don't have to pee AND wear the coats at the same time. I'm pretty sure they'd hate rain as much as I do if they had to do that. 

I've only been around snow once and I was having way too much fun to think about peeing, but it seems like peeing in snow would be kinda cool. I know you're not supposed to eat yellow snow, but is it any fun to make it? 

Can someone from the cold coasts fill me in? Feeling kinda left out :(

ALMOST WORDLESS, ALMOST WEDNESDAY

If you've been here awhile, you probably know I suck at Wordless Wednesdays. It's true. Everyone makes it seem soooo easy, but every time I try to do one it ends up being at least a little wordy. Sometimes a lot wordy.

But when I saw today's picture I knew you'd know *exactly* what I was thinking - words or no words. But since I always have something to say, I thought it might be weird to suddenly say nothing. And...

See what I mean?

Then I came up with the genius idea of being almost wordless on almost Wednesday (aka, Tuesday). It was actually Dutch's idea, but it's still pretty genius. I think it might almost really work!

BUTT WEATHER

what? it's not food!

I know I just talked about the weather like last week. But it's being so weird I have to talk about it again. Besides, if you live somewhere that's not as tropical as San Francisco, seeing some butts might warm you up. 

My human is a little freaked out about taking pictures of naked dudes, so it's not the greatest butt picture ever. But hopefully it makes you feel warm inside:

I know from experience that butt weather = picnics. If you don't know, picnic is just a fancy human word for eating food on the ground. Usually at the park or beach. Sometimes on a blanket. Obviously, picnics are awesome. 

In theory, anyway.

Because yesterday on the way to the park my human reminded me how much trouble I'd be in if I tried to eat anyone's ground food. When I pretended not to hear her the first three times, she told me four more times and threatened to take away all future bacon.

HUMAN: if you eat anyone's food, bacon will never pass your lips again.
ME: so... if I don't eat any food, I'll get bacon?
HUMAN: nice try.
ME: is that a yes?

Sometimes it's hard to tell if a human is telling you the truth or just saying stuff to get you to do what they want. I wasn't 100% sure if the bacon threat was serious, so I decided not to risk it with the ground food. Luckily I found a pile of stray ice cubes to munch on. I mean, ice isn't technically food. But it's still eatable.

ice cubes = brain freeze

So I ate the ice. And then my brain froze. Uhm, yeah. FACT: just because something's eatable, doesn't mean it won't make your head implode. 

Dutch thought this was kinda funny. My human knows what it's like to have a hurt brain and felt a little bad for me. But not enough to bend the rules about eating other people's ground food. Or give me sympathy bacon.

DUTCH FRIDAY: JOY EDITION

Hi again everybody! It's still me, Dutch. 

Today I want to talk and think about joy. It's a very big thing for such a short little word. Sort of like Pug without all the snoring. 

Sometimes my human worries our life has become joyless. I know because I've heard her say it. The funny thing about humans is they very are good at making simple things complicated. Joy is not complicated. It's everywhere you go.

 

My favorite joys are rolling around in clean green grass. Playing in the water with my rainbow ball. Chasing a squirrel. The way my human's kissy noises sound. I think for Pug, joy is being here with all of you. Sitting on strangers laps in the park and forcing them to pet him. Eating things he shouldn't. Creepy Nikon.

Life can't be joyless when the world is full of things like grass and balls and kissy noises. It's practically impossible! What are your things? What is your joy??

Stay cozy & see you next week!

xoxo

Dutch

CRISPY BABY PIG FACE

sitting on a truck doesn't count

So, after the radio man was done talking about another snowmageddon on the Other Coast, a radio lady came on to talk about something even more serious: a bacon shortage. Something about China, economics, sick baby pigs and corn? 

No idea.

I didn't really get all the facts because radio lady used the word BACON a lot and every time she said BACON all I could think about was BACON. Until she said this:

Our deep love of bacon is pushing us to boldly brave new frontiers of pork eating. 

Huh what?!? Brave new frontiers of pork eating?? I have a deep love of bacon. Maybe I'll deeply love pork too. 

I  mean, talking my human into giving me bacon is practically impossible. The closest I usually get to bacon is the outside of the Bacon Bacon Truck. But I've never tried asking for pork. First attempt went like this:

ME: can I have some pork?

HUMAN: pork?

ME: y'know, bacon's cousin.

HUMAN: (confused) (or just ignoring me)

ME:  NPR says crispy baby pig face is delicious.

Ok, so I didn't have any better luck scoring pork. Dutch says I shouldn't have started with something with with the words "baby pig face" in it, but that's what the radio lady said was so tasty. 

The good thing about having a gimpy-brained human is in a few days she'll forget this ever happened and I can try again. So if you know of any good pork eatables that don't have a face and aren't a baby, please let me know!

SUNNY WITH A CHANCE OF BUTTS

The NPR radio dude talking about winter again this morning. Snow and freezingness and stuff I don't know much about. Then I remembered: oh, right. In some places it's January. 

The weather here has been so ridiculously not-normal, it's kinda hard to tell what part of the calendar it is. We should be wet and chilly, but  . Feels more like summer than winter. Only warmer. And sunny. 

So warm and sunny, the butts in my neighborhood are out:

Winter hat, summer butt.

Since I can't send actual warm sunniness to everyone freezing their butts off on the Other and Middle coasts, here are a few rays of sunshine from around here. I was going to call them pictures but Dutch said "rays of sunshine" sounded, uh, warmer. 

Weirdo.

warm goofy trees

the day it was almost colder than 40 degrees

ME! (and sunshine too)

JUST LIKE THEO + BEAU

So we were at the park the other day when I heard a bunch of humans awwwwing at something. They were saying stuff like:

Awwww, my heart hurts just looking!

Awwww, TOO CUTE! 

Awwww My God, that's ridiculous.

Of course I thought they were talking about me, but no. They didn't care about me at all. Because they were too busy starting at their phones, looking at these two on some thing called instagram:

If you don't live under a rock (like us), you've probably seen them too. Honestly? I totally don't get it. I mean, I guess it's cool if you like baby humans and puppies. But they're just sleeping. Me and Dutch sleep all the time and half the internet isn't awwwing at us. 

Well, last night I decided to fix this.

ME: can you take a picture of me and Dutch sleeping?

HUMAN: like, just lying there?

ME: it has to be cute sleeping. 

HUMAN: awww, like Theo and Beau!

Sigh. 

If me and Dutch aren't cute enough sleepers for you, check out Theo + Beau over on that instagram thing.

BABY STEPS

mysterious sidewalk shoes

Sorry about the whole Dutch Friday takeover thing. I'm glad you don't mind it as much as I do. Not that I don't love Dutch or anything. And not like his US LOVES YOU sign wasn't better than all my stupid signs put together kinda cool. But I missed like half of 2013 and I'm kinda sick of missing stuff.

baby step shoes?

Anyway. Last week was a little easier for my human. She's still slow as a slug in slow motion, but getting better. The word around here is baby steps. Even though my human's feet are ginormous. 

I didn't understand how anyone with such giant feet could walk like a baby. 

HUMAN: it's a metaphor, Pug.

ME: metaphor is just a fancy word for doesn't make any sense.

HUMAN: Dutch understands metaphors.

ME: exactly.

A little sucky, but I guess lame little sluggy steps are better than no steps at all. And I guess as long as everybody keeps walking that's kinda all that matters. Uh, that's a metaphor. 

I think.

WHAT MY SIGN WOULD SAY

Hello again! It's me, Dutch. 

Since our human decided 2014 is going to be the best year ever, I get to be here with you on Fridays from now on. Of course Pug doesn't think me "stealing" one of his days will make 2014 (or anything else) better, but I think it's a fabulous idea. 

Except for the taking pictures part. But for you, I'll do it!

I know Pug's been pretending to know everything about signs this week. And I don't know how much of what he said is true. But he was right about one thing: humans really do like sticking words on things! 

I am NOT kidding. 

Next time you go for a walk, look around and you'll see what I mean. Unless you live in Sao Paulo, the whole entire planet is practically covered in words.

This got me thinking. If I had thumbs, what words would I stick?? I came up with sooo many, I couldn't decide. So I told Pug some of my ideas. Big mistake.

PUG: you sound like the government.
ME, DUTCH: is that bad?
PUG: I don't think the government even wants to sound like the government. 
ME, DUTCH: stop trying to confuse me.

I have no idea what Pug meant about the government and didn't know how not to sound like it. The whole thing got very confusing and a little sad... until I saw the wall I'm posing with in today's picture. It belongs to a church and had some other words and stuff on it, but all I could see was my perfect words.

So I asked my human if we could make a picture of just the parts of the wall that say what my sign would say if I had thumbs. She said yes, but only if I was in it. She was surprised when I stared deep into Droid's creepy little eye, but I didn't mind posing for something so special. I think it came out perfect.

See you next Friday!


Love + Carrots,

Dutch


PS: if you guessed yesterday's may-or-may-not be Austin, TX sign was really about Oklahoma, you were right! We asked the man inside the store that made the sign to explain it and he said they were celebrating Oklahoma's new&improved marriage laws. I don't think a sign that mysterious does a very good job of celebrating anything, but at least it tried.

MYSTERIOUS

Today's sign lesson is short and sweet. Kinda like me. That's because this sign is so mysterious, it could take us all the whole entire day to figure out what the heck it's trying to say.

Here's what we know:

None of the words are crooked underlined BIG or bold, so I don't think it's an angry sign. There's nothing about Caution, Danger or Hazardous so what it's saying might not be all that important. And it doesn't seem to care if or where we p-i-s-s, pee or P.

It's like a government sign, but better and worse all at the same time.

HUMAN: I think the big state-looking thing is Texas.

ME: that doesn't look like Texas to me.

HUMAN: well, the star in the middle could definitely be Austin.

ME: but if the thing on the outside isn't Texas, the thing in the middle can't be Austin.

HUMAN: (silence)

Suki, if you're out there, can you please tell my human just because you put a star in the middle of something, doesn't make it Austin, TX?

And if anyone else has any idea what the heck this sign means, please tell us.

I won't be here tomorrow because my human came up with the genius idea to let Dutch hijack my freaking blog be here on Fridays from now on. I'm working on an even more genius idea to make that idea go away, but until then you're stuck with Dutch.

See you Monday!

HUMANS IN WRITING

Since signs are really just humans in writing, there are like a million different kinds out there. 

Exhibit A: nice

There are NO PISSING ON THE BUILDING PLEASE! kind of humans. And then there are this kind: 

Now I don't know about you, but I'd feel reeeeally bad about peeing on the nice plants. The angry building? Not so much. Not like I'd pee on a building or anything. But still.


Exhibit B: helpful 

And just like humans, some signs are supereasy to understand... and some are not. This one is painted on a busy street near our house:

If my human and her gimpy brain was in charge of of saving the world from oncoming traffic, we'd all be squashed by now. But whoever made this LOOK sign knew exactly how to save us. Superhelpful, right?


Exhibit C: huh?

Uhm. Anyone know what this sign is about??

My human says a circle with a line is like universal for NO. I get that. But I still have no idea what the sign is trying to tell me. I guess it could mean No Pee, but it seems kinda weird to be so worried about pee you paint a great big giant sign on the front of your house. 

Dutch said it could mean No Pugs. Or even No Puglet. Whatever. I say if a sign is too lazy to spell stuff out, you shouldn't have to worry about doing or not doing or whatever it's kinda-sorta-but-not-really telling you.

Exhibit D: government signs (aka, all of the above)

This is the smoking sign I didn't show you yesterday. The city put them all over our neighborhood so it wasn't hard to pose with find one.

I guess this sign kinda makes sense. If you read it four times. But even then it's still kinda confusing. Google says government stuff is like that. I guess the government isn't exactly human, but you'd think it could hire one to put words on signs. I'm just glad the government isn't in charge of keeping us from getting squashed.

PS: I totally agree that I deserve/need/MUST HAVE some bacon, asap. You think there's a sign out there for that?!? 

ANGRY SCARY & CONFUSING

So there's this building between our house and a whole bunch of other places we go. It's pretty much like every other building, except it's got signs stuck all over it. Angry signs. Scary signs. Confusing signs. 

We can learn a lot from this building...

Angry signs

You know a sign is angry when words are underlined, crooked and bold in BIG LETTERS with a ! thingy at the end. My human says these are a sign's way of yelling at you. 

I guess I would yell too if I was getting, uhm, peed on. And I guess the sign is being kinda nice by yelling PLEASE! But don't let the yelling fool you. Aways remember: signs are just human words written down. Just because you're getting yelled at, doesn't mean you have to listen. 


Warning signs

You should probably pay at least a some attention to any sign that starts with WARNING. Trust me on this. You don't *have* to do or not do or whatever the sign says, but bad things might happen if you're not careful. 

Think: cliff. 

Or the c-word and reproductive harm? I don't even know what that is.

You might also want to think twice about any sign that says entire State of California knows something. Or at least thinks it does. 


No Signs

No signs are kinda everywhere. My human forgot to take a close up of the NOs, but I'm pretty sure you'll know a NO when you see it. This building has two of them: one for smoking and one for something called trespassing. 

Of course smoking is a NO no-brainer, but I have no idea what trespassing is. I'm guessing it's probably not too terrible because all the letters on that sign are tiny but Dutch does not agree. 

He thinks a lot of tiny letters are just as serious as a few underlined, crooked bold BIG LETTERS, but I'm not so sure. Thanks to Miss Gimpy, I can't see what the stupid sign actually says so I have no way of being right knowing the truth. 

Arrgh.

So for now, let's say NO signs are somewhere between serious and... a suggestion? If anyone out there knows more about this, please speak. Especially if what you know makes me right.

SIGNS

So, I think I might know why it took an entire freaking week to tell you about falling off a cliff. I kinda really want to blame Dutch's princess bladder, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly because my human's brain is still waking up and everything she does takes longer than forever. 

Because I'm a nice pug (and am trying to negotiate more thumb time for comments) I'm going to make things easier on her this week by s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g o-u-t everything I want to say out. In big letters. Like the ones you see on signs about dangerous cliffs.

And electric fences (more on that in a minute). 

Speaking of signs, ever notice how much humans like to stick words on things? DO this. DON'T do this. Leash. Danger. Caution. Beware. Seriously? Life would be soooo much easier if they just peed on stuff like we do. I mean, with so much to read it's kinda hard to tell what is important and what is just... words. 

Am I right? 

It's superconfusing, even for me and I'm practically a genius. Imagine what it must be like for, say, Dutch?!? Now I'm no sign expert or anything, but I *think* I'm starting to understand how to tell a good sign from a bad one:

Signs that say CAUTION and ELECTRIC are bad.

Uhm, yeah. I learned this yesterday. My human thought she knew more about electric fences than the sign and I didn't know anything about fences at all.  I don't have a picture of what happened when I touched the electric fence with my face, but trust me - touching an electric fence with your face hurts more than falling off a cliff. 

How bad does it hurt? So bad you will run off into the woods, hide behind a tree and refuse to come out - even for cookies. So bad you'll make a hideous scary noise that COMPLETELY freaks out your human and all other humans within a two mile radius. 

Both of these things might get you loads of sympathy (+/- cookies) but I swear it's not be worth it. Repeat: touching electric fence bad. Especially because you won't even be able to *look* at a sympathy cookie until like two minutes later. Maybe three. 

Now we both know not to mess with signs about electric fences. Tomorrow we'll talk about peeing...

THE CLIFF, THE END.

Holy Cowpies. It's taking longer to tell you about falling off a cliff than it did to get rescued from it. I don't know about you, but I fell asleep before the dude on the bike came back with the rope. Last time I let Dutch tell a story!

(totally not my idea, by the way)

So, back at the cliff... 

My human's tied to one end of the rope and the other end is tied to everyone else. I don't know any of this because I'm on the side of a freaking cliff and can't see anything but ocean, sky and the side of the cliff. 

Oh. And did I mention that every time I move, the cliff falls apart and I go with it? SO awesome.

By now, I'm pretty sure this might be my first not-near death experience. But just as I'm about to really freak out, I see my human and, uh, "Kim" coming down from the top of the cliff (from where I was it was mostly Kim). 

Now. Remember the thing about the cliff falling apart every time I move? Well imagine how the cliff must feel about my human and Kim. Who are muuuuch bigger and heavier than me, even at my most tubiest. 

Uhm, yeah. Not good.   

As soon as my human touches the side of the cliff, it totally falls apart. She starts sliding, then I start sliding and if it wasn't for the scary rope and the four dudes it was tied to, we probably would have ended up like this:

You can probably guess we didn't fall into the ocean and drown. Dumb Idea #3 didn't exactly go as planned, but the rope didn't break and the four dudes were strong enough to pull us to the top. I got a few cuts on my feet, bits of cliff in my eyeballs, and a cool story about the time I fell off a cliff.

THE END!

DUMB IDEA #3

Sorry I had to go so suddenly yesterday. You know how sick bladders are (wink, wink). So where were we? Oh, right. The top of a cliff with four men and an extremely scary looking rope...

Now that my human had a rope, she had to figure out what to do with it. One of the Vizsla-men suggested trying to lasso Pug. Let's call this Dumb Idea #1. My human has never lasso'd anything in her life and suddenly she was expected to be a cowgirl? Right. She tried a few times but didn't even come close. None of the men even tried.

Dumb Idea #2 was so dumb I don't even remember what it was. I do know it didn't work though. 

Which brings us to Dumb Idea #3: tie one end of the scary rope around my human, the other end around the four men and... oh my... I think you can see where this is going.

I did not like this idea AT ALL and neither did two of the four men. My gimpy-brained human, the crazy Bikeman and the dumbest Vizsla-man seemed totally OK with it. My vote didn't count for some reason so gimpy, crazy and dumb got their way. 

There was a lot of talking. What to do, what not to do, what to do if x,y and z went wrong. When Pug started cackling again, my human grabbed the rope and started tying.

In case you don't remember, this is the scary rope:

SMART VIZSLA MAN #1: do you even know how to tie a knot?

MY HUMAN: yep. I used to climb a lot in Yosemite. It's fine. I'm fine.

SMART VIZSLA MAN #2: this does not seem fine.

CRAZY BIKEMAN: man, this rope can hold a crab pot. They're stupid heavy.

MY HUMAN:  It's fine. I'm fine.

I've seen pictures of my human on cliffs in Yosemite. The rope there did not look scary. She also wore special shoes and a helmet and all sorts of special cliff-climbing things. Soooo not the same as a crab rope, four men, three vizslas and me. So not fine.

human, Yosemite

I know better than to try and talk my human out of something so I just watched and worried as she tied the scary rope around her waist. And as she disappeared over the edge of the cliff, I only said words she might actually listen to:

Hold on tight. Please try not to die. I love you.

Pug will absolutely kill me if tell you what happened next because he was the one on the side of the cliff with my human, not me. He'll be back tomorrow. Sorry!!

Love you like cashmere,

XoXo
Dutch

FOUR MEN & A SCARY ROPE

Hello everybody! I'm so glad to see you!! It's been a very long time and there are soooo many many things I want to tell you about - but today I'm supposed to talk about Pug. And because I'm nice, I will.

Even though I feel sick from a pee infection and would rather much rather talk about warm & fuzzy things (like my new pink sweater), I will talk about Pug. I am that nice. But first, for the record, I'm not 100% convinced Pug didn't fall off the cliff in an attempt to ruin my birthday and/or get sympathy cupcakes. He swears that isn't true but I still have doubts.

Now back to the cliff...

My human knew from seeing other humans on the evening news that climbing down a cliff to rescue your dog usually ends in everyone being rescued by the Coast Guard. But there weren't many other options.

ME (DUTCH): maybe you should just call the Coast Guard people?

HUMAN: uggghhh, there will still be helicopters.

ME (DUTCH): yes! And Pug will be on the news. You know he'd love to be on TV again.

HUMAN: ughhhh

Then along came a man on a bike. My human pointed to Pug on the cliff and explained the situation. Bikeman didn't think the cliff was steep enough to kill anybody, but agreed it would not be good to climb down it. At least without a rope. So Instead of calling the Coast Guard, my genius human asked the nice man on the bike if he knew anyone at the harbor with a rope. 

I kid you not. 

Why a rope seemed like a better idea than the Coast Guard, I have no idea. But we all know my human isn't excellent at thinking about all the things that might go wrong so hanging by a rope off a cliff probably sounded just fine. I would have gone for a helicopter, but that's just me. 

So Bikeman peddaled off and we waited. And waited. And waited. Do you know how hard it is to stand around doing nothing when someone you love is on the side of a cliff, freaked out and cackling? It's hard. Very hard. My human took pictures and called Miley's mom to make herself feel better while I just stood there getting an ulcer.

A few minutes later, three new men came along. They had Vizslas, not bikes, and I got in trouble for grumping at one of them for having testicles. A Vizsla I mean, I don't care if men have testicles or not.

Vizsla-man #1 thought Operation Rope was a really bad idea and suggested we call 911 instead. He mentioned a helicopter. Vizsla-man #2 thought it'd be better to go to the bottom of the cliff and get Pug to go down instead of up. He volunteered to stay up at the top with me so Pug wouldn't think we abandoned him. Vizsla-man #3 just shook his head and said nothing.

My human wasn't sure if Bikeman was even coming back with a rope and wasn't entirely sure what she'd do with one if he did, so she decided Viszla-man #2's plan was probably a better idea. She handed me over to one of the Viszla-men, told Pug to hang on and headed for the trail down to the beach.

She didn't make it very far before running into Bike Man. He had a rope.

Now, I don't know a thing about ropes. But this one looked extremely scary. Here is a close up:

See what I mean? Scary. My human used to tie herself to ropes and climb giant rocks all the time and didn't seem to care, but I could tell by the way the Viszla-men were looking at the rope that I wasn't the only one who was afraid. Bike Man said he got it from his friend's crab boat like that was supposed to make us all feel better. This didn't help.

I really want to tell you what happened next, but just thinking about it is really stressing me out. I'm feeling a bit faint. Must lie down. 

More. Tomorrow.

Love & kisses,

Dutch

PS: Please tell Pug I had to leave because my bladder is sick so he won't make fun of me for being a princess. 

CLIFF HANGER

Sorry I left you kinda hanging on the whole cliff story. Here goes...

It was Dutch's birthday. We hadn't been hiking or done anything fun in like FOREVER so I figured I might have a chance at guilting my human into taking us somewhere. Y'know, since it was Dutch's special day and all. 

I knew she'd say all our usual hike-hikes are too long so I guilted suggested we take a short stroll at beach. I didn't think she'd go for it, but never hurts to try. Right? Well, my plan worked. After snarfing down our birthday cupcakes, my human surprised us with a trip to the harbor near Half Moon Bay. We used to go there all the time with the crazy labrador brothers and it's one of Dutch's favorite places on earth. 

Mission accomplished. Go me.

So we go for our walk. Dutch runs around, I sneak a snack of poop, my human relaxes in the sun. Everybody's happy. And then... I kinda fall off a cliff. Yeah. Just like that. One minute I'm walking along a trail, next thing you know I'm... well... doing this:

Yeah. Remember that sign from yesterday? The one about unstable cliffs and people and dogs falling off them? Well, it wasn't anywhere near where we were, but it was still right.  

Ok. So there I am on the side of this cliff. The ocean is waaaaay down at the bottom and Dutch and my human are still up at the top. My human does not look happy anymore. Or relaxed. Definitely not relaxed.  It's kinda windy (and I'm down a cliff) so even though she's obviously yelling, I can't hear a single word she is saying. 

Does she want me to stay? Come? Sit?? I try to do all of those things but none of them work because every time I move, the cliff falls apart and I fall down. By now, I'm starting to get kinda freaked out and I'm pretty sure my human is too. She's still yelling things I can't hear so I pretend she's saying things like fresh hot bacon!! and lots of cookies!! because it makes me feel better about the whole cliff thing. I close my eyes and think about the bacon and the cookies. Lots and lots of cookies.

When I open my eyes, my human is gone.

Yup. Gone. I can't see her or not-hear or anything. Being stuck on the side of a big scary cliff is bad enough, but being stuck on the side of a big scary cliff ALONE? Not good. So I start cackling. Still no human. Cackle some more, nothing. Not even Dutch. Just me, the scary cliff and the ocean waaaay down below.

Cackle cackle cackle...

Now, I hate to do this to you two days in a row but you'll have to wait til tomorrow for the rest of the story. My human promised Dutch he could tell this part since he was on top of the cliff and where it all happened. Unfortunately His Princess is too busy napping right now to tell you about anything. But here's a hint:

See you tomorrow!