GOODNIGHT SCHOTZI

So, I'm taking a break from my strike today because some things are more important than bacon. Yeah. You heard me. More important than bacon.

Miley's unspotted little big sister Schotzi went to sleep today after 18 2/3 years of awesomeness. She was a little bit like me: tough but sweet, small with very big insides. 

Schotzi was so big inside, Dutch was totally terrified of her. One time I saw her snatch an entire cookie practically out of his mouth. She was like half the size of his head but didn't even blink. And that was before she knew how completely whimpy Dutch is.

I guess I was kind of a little scared of Schotzi too. Not because she was mean to me or anything. She was just older and wiser and could totally snatch a cookie out of my mouth if she wanted to. And how many dogs are big and awesome enough to snatch one of *my* cookies?? 

Not too many. 

Now, not any.

Schotzi, you and your inner hugeness will be missed. If my time here with the people is half as good as yours was, I'll be one superlucky pug. Oh. And if/when I finally get some bacon, I'll eat an extra piece and snatch one of Dutch's just for you. 

Pink hearts from Dutch. 
Rainbows from me.

XXX

Pug

ALMOST WORDLESS: sigh

Still no real bacon. Still on strike. Woe is me.

SHAKEABLES

So, I can't really say too much today because I'm on strike. I'm sorry, but this is what happens when your human promises bacon and comes home with a can of Shakeables instead.

Seriously?

Nothing against shakeables. I'm sure they're totally eatable. But bacon they are not! I mean, if my human could freaking read she'd completely understand why I'm holding out for the real thing. 

Check out what's in a "bacon" shakeable:

INGREDIENTS
wheat flour, glycerine, poultry fat, natural flavor, water, potassium sorbate, bacon flavor, phosphoric acid, dried parsley, caramel.

See what I mean?? THERE IS NO BACON! Bacon FLAVOR isn't BACON, people. It's FLAVOR. It even says so on the front of the can, right next to the picture of the bacon. Arrrgh!

Sorry. 

Dutch says I should shut my snout and go back on strike so we can hurry up and get something yummy to eat. He might not be genius enough to understand the seriousness of the shakeables situation, but he will thank me when this is over. IF I'm nice enough to share my bacon with him. We'll see...

DUTCH FRIDAY: life is a delicious patch of poppies

Friday. San Francisco. Rain. Yes, RAIN! Here at my house. Right now. I really thought we were done with the rain. But I suppose the grass and flowers like it and I like them so maybe getting wet isn't the most terrible thing.

(Pug says: yes it is!!)

Nothing too miraculous happened this week. We went on a mini hike over by the cows. I rolled in a patch of yellow poppies, Pug rolled in mystery poop. He got in trouble and had to take a bath, I got my picture taken and made my human smile. 

Hmmm. What else. Well, I've been doing a lot of grass eating lately. Please don't tell pug because he'll make fun of me, but grass is my bacon. Especially fresh spring grass. Delicious!

I think today I'll take an extra nap or two. I might even put on the bunny hoodie because rainy days make me chilly. I'm sure Pug will tell you all about it if I do.

Love + Poppies,

Dutch
xoxo

HIPSTER?

Sorry about giving you to Ernie yesterday. But, you know... BACON. I mean, who can say no to bacon? Not me. 

Unless we're talking bacon *flavor*. Totally NOT the same. At all. But I won't get into that now. Let's just say my human has no idea what she's doing when it comes to bacon.

So. While I'm waiting for my real bacon, I need help naming our new fish. My human brought him home the same day as my new food with the nasty bits, but I was waaaay too distracted by the bits to think about fish names and you don't even want to know what my human came up with. You know how much she sucks at names.

Here is fish:

He looks a little less cool in real life because my human accidentally used one of Steve's filters or something when she took the picture. No idea what that's about, but it's why she thought 'Hipster' would make a good name for our fish. 

ME: Hipster? what kind of name is that?
HUMAN: he just looks so... cool. Like something on instagram.
ME: but he only looks that way in the picture.
HUMAN: oh. right.

Sigh.

I think fish should have a food name, but I don't know many tasty foods that have blue speckles on them. My friend Lulu's mom suggested Gorgonzola (Google says that's a cheese). Dutch came up with Blueberry Muffin ("Muffin" for short) and Scone. 

Scone? 

Uhm, yeah. Any ideas??

HI AND BYE

HIIIIII! it's me. ernie. remember? it's ok if you don't. i forget my name too. the Faceless One said i could be here one more time to say hi and bye. his lady said he would get bacon. i don't know what that is but Faceless is happy about it. 

my regular lady is back so i'll be with her again from now on. i still live in the next house so you might see me sometimes. i get bigger so next time i might not look like me. but i will try. sorry!!!

the Spotted One said i should tell you something i know before i go. i told him i don't know anything yet but he said *not* knowing things is just a different kind of knowing. i don't even what that means!! Spotted is soooo wise.

here is something i think i know:

when it's time to go into the crate and you don't want to go into the crate, hide in the couch not on the rug. our rug is green. 

BYE!!

ernie

ALMOST WORDLESS: my butt

What's cuter than my butt? Duh. Two of my butts!

HAPPY EASTER MONDAY

Sorry. I've been feeling kinda weird today. The radio people keep talking about the bad thing that happened in Boston last year and I know I'm not supposed to be sad but it still makes me kinda sad so... yeah.

Happy Easter Monday?

DUTCH FRIDAY: ernie edition

hi. i'm ernie. the Spotted One said you know who i am and i should tell you stuff. sorry if don't know all the best words yet. 

sorry!!

the Spotted One is my favorite. he lets me lick his lips but doesn't play so i just lick his lips a lot. i think he likes it. he is also a mystery. i think that's the word? what i mean is he does stuff i don't understand. like he eats grass.

Spotted is very nice and also wise. what i mean is when things don't make sense to me he helps them make sense. we have very long talks. so many things don't make sense! Spotted says this is because i am a puppy. he says i'll know everything he knows some day. 

the Faceless One is my favorite too. Faceless is not as nice or wise as Spotted but he is more fun. sometimes more fun. getting him to be fun is not so easy. i have tried lots of things to make Faceless want to play with me. maybe you have some ideas? 

here is what i've tried:

pretending i hate to play 

sharing my most favorite toy ever

letting him win at tug

showing him how to stalk poodles

none of those things make Faceless want to play with me. one time he got weird and ran around really really fast. maybe he was playing and i didn't know it? being me can be so confusing.

does this look like play to you?

ok. i think i'm done. thank you! sorry! good bye!

ernie

PS: Faceless let me hold his paw. it wasn't fun but i liked it a lot.

ERNIE GETS A PHYSICS LESSON

Hey! Sorry I'm so late today. I've sorta been... distracted. You can probably tell from the picture that's code for our giant neighbor Ernie came to our house and wanted to play. With me. AND all my toys.

Now, if my human was telling you this story she'd say the toys Ernie wanted to play with haven't been played with in years. Maybe longer. And maybe that's true. Whatever. When a toy is yours it's yours - MINE - forever. That's just how they work.

Right?

Well, not if you're Ernie. He decided the lion I spent months unstuffing (before it ended up under the couch) was his toy too. So what if he's the one who found it under the couch today? The rule of toys says once mine, always mine. 

I had to explain this to Ernie.

Of course because he's a puppy and puppies are dumb "cute", he didn't understand that a paw to the face means THIS TOY IS MINE! So I suggested we tug it out and he got reeeeally excited. Probably thought I would lose because I'm short. 

Duh. Of course I'm going to win. I might be short, but I'm practically a genius and geniuses know a couch can help you out-tug a giant puppy. Sorry Ernie, there's this thing called physics.

Anyway. The cool thing about Ernie is he doesn't get mad or feel bad about stuff. He was superhappy to have a tiny piece of the lion that fell off during our tug and picked out a different toy to play with. I was cool with that.

PS: don't think this means I love Ernie or anything. He's just OK.

NOT MY IDEA

You might have noticed someone new in the back of Mazda yesterday. I know I definitely did. Well, in case you didn't recognize him, that's our neighbor Ernie. He's hanging out with us this week while our friend Lulu's mom - Ernie's dog walker - is on vacation.

Yeah, I know. Kinda confusing.

But all you really need to know is this: even though Ernie is freaking huge, he's still a puppy (ugh) ridiculously cute (ugh) and that makes *me* completely invisible to all humans (ugh). 

Yeah. Ugh, ugh and ugh.

To make things even worse, Ernie is reeeally nice. So I can't be mean to him - even though I kinda want to take his face off for being so cute. Do not tell ANYONE I said this, but I'm starting to understand why humans go nuts over puppies. They're kinda hard not to like. 

NOT my idea

Since hating Ernie is practically impossible, I'm trying to pretend he doesn't exist. At least until he gets a little bigger/less cute. This kinda drives him a little crazy, which is kind of a bonus. 

Besides, a spazzy puppy makes me look very well behaved. And humans totally dig that kind of thing. Right? OK, maybe not as much as they dig Ernie, but at least I get a little noticed. 

Sigh.

ALMOST WORDLESS: whose idea was this?

One of these is not like the others. And he is not exactly happy.

NASTY BITS

NASTY!

So, it's Monday. And I'd say happy monday if I was happy. But I'm not. Nooooo. Not happy at all. Because somebody decided to buy me a new kind of food and whoever made this new food put bits in it. Totally nasty, completely un-eatable bits. In. My. Food.

Yeah. I know.

ME: I think my new food is broken.
HUMAN: broken, how?
ME: there's all this nasty stuff in it.
HUMAN: you mean the bits of healthy fruit and vegetables?
ME: fruit and vegetables? In my food??

In case you don't know how I feel about fruits and vegetables, I like carrots and blackberries. That's it. All the rest are gross and I hate them. Like, spit them out kind of hate. My human knows this. 

She didn't even have to read the bag to know how much I'd hate this new food. I mean, you can see the all the nasty bits without opening the bag. There's even a picture of what's inside. Blech-y bananas. Evil apples. Pukey peas. And a bunch of other stuff I don't even know but obviously hate because it's a fruit or vegetable that isn't a carrot or blackberry. 

And still. She bought me this food. Ugh. 

Of course I was so starving to death this morning, it's not like I could *not* eat it. I tried spitting the nasty bits on the floor but it's kinda hard to eat and spit at the same time, so I focused on the eating and tried to forget about the bits. It wasn't easy. 

The worst part is my human probably thinks I like my nasty new food because I ate a whole entire bowl of it for breakfast. I don't know what's going to happen when I have to eat it again for dinner. 

Help?

DUTCH FRIDAY: rainbows and donkey kisses

ME AND MY INSIDES

Hello everybody! It's that day again and I'm so happy to be back. 

Not very much has happened since last time. I've been sleeping on the couch so Pug and his snoring won't get lonely. My back or legs (?) got hurt swimming last weekend but now I'm fine. Oh! And we got a fish. I'd tell you more about that, but Pug would get so mad.

See? Haven't missed much.

Right now it's icky and foggy, but that's ok because I've got sunshine inside me. Pug says he's seen pictures of my insides and there's no sun in there, but he doesn't know. Hello! Vet pictures only show guts and things. We are all so much more than our guts.

If you could take a *real* picture of me from the inside, it would look a lot like today's kissing donkeys. There'd be hearts and rainbows. High heels and kisses. A quiet explosion of love and happiness! 

Of course when I made the mistake of sharing my vision with Pug, he turned my beautiful insides into... well...

PUG: a quiet explosion of love and happiness?

ME: yes.

PUG: is that code for fart? 

ME: do you always have to be so gross?

PUG: uh, you're the one talking about your insides exploding.

Sigh. I don't know why I bother sometimes, but I know you understand what I mean. And if you want to share your insides with me, it can be our little Friday secret. No gross Pug allowed! 

Rainbows + Donkey Kisses,

Dutch

xoxo

PS: I'm sorry Pug. Next time don't be so gross.

OPERATION MAGIC WINDOW

I don't know what it's been like outside where you are, but here in San Francisco we've been having some serious naked weather. Like, practically tropical kind of hot. 

So yesterday we were out for our walk and I noticed this open window. I don't know if it's a new window or if it was just open because of the hotness, but whatever, it was there. And open. And inside there were people eating. Kinda like a drive-thru, minus all the cars and stuff. 

Right around the corner from my house!!

I was too short to see what kind of food comes out of the magic window and princess Dutch is too perfect to beg, but humans were eating it so you know it must be good. And I'm pretty sure the dudes in the picture would have totally let me have a taste if they could've seen me stalking their lunch standing there so politely. 

But no. I'm short and starving to death and have rolls of skin to prove it. And since my human's obviously not in any hurry to fill my rolls with bacon, I guess I'll just have to find my own snacks. 

Operation Magic Window is now in effect.

WEIRDOS

Don't worry, it's not Friday yet. And I totally apologize for not being in any of today's pictures, but...

Ok. See that thing on the wall? Well, there are three of them. And they've been there since I was born. Probably even before that. Well, last week Dutch the genius finally noticed them. 

Yeah. And now he's obsessed. Completely obsessed. It's like he *has* to mess with them or something.

At first my human thought this was funny, but crooked things on walls drive her kinda nuts so now she's even more obsessed with the hanging thing than Dutch. He makes it crooked, she fixes it. Crooked. Fixed. Crooked. Fixed. 

Is it just me, or are they both weirdos? I mean, am I missing some fun here??

ALMOST WORDLESS: fat or skin?

I say my rolls are definitely skin. Empty skin. Skin that needs to be filled ASAP (hopefully with bacon). 

HUMANS

Sorry I haven't been here since TUESDAY. My human was being... human. Seriously. Whoever decided she should be the one with thumbs had no idea what they were doing.

I'm also sorry for making you stare at that dumb picture of me with the thing taped to my head this whole time. I don't know why we have to post that *every* April Fools day, but I guess it's better than getting some new thing taped to my head each year.

Anyway.

I'm back, it's not raining, and that makes me and everyone else here very happy. Not bacon-happy (not even close to bacon-happy) but I can tell it's going to be a good week. I can smell it...

ALMOST COMPLETELY WORDLESS

Still a fool.