2 Month Check-Up

Lily went for her 2 month check-up today. I overheard Katie telling Greg about it when she got home. Lily weighs 9 lbs. 5 oz. now. She's up nearly 3 lbs. from her last visit a month ago. She's 21-1/4" long. She's now in the 10th percentile for both height and weight. She had to get 5 vaccines...1 oral and 4 shots. Ouch! Katie said she screamed when they stuck her (I don't blame her), but calmed down quickly afterwards. I wonder if she's going to cry a lot tonight? I would imagine her legs will be pretty sore where they stuck her. This may be a good evening to hang out in the basement by myself.

A photographer came by the house on Saturday and took some pictures of Lily. Katie tried to snap a few from the side as she watched. Here's one. I'm guessing the photographer's version will look better since she was actually in front of Lily. Anyway, gotta love the Mizzou theme.

Amazing Dream

I had an amazing dream the other day. I don't remember very many details, but I know it was a good one. My people were weird and recorded this video. It is a bit dark, but that is not important. Make sure you have your speakers turned up.

This week's update

It has been a week since my last post. I have a lot to share.

Tigers win... finally
My Tigers beat up on Colorado last night and recorded their first conference victory. This lifted my spirits quite a bit. I have been pretty depressed ever since they barely lost to the chickenhawks last week.


Downed limbs
There were several big branches laying in the yard last week. I think it had something to do with all that ice. A big truck came by and chewed up all the branches. Greg seemed rather relieved about not having to cut up the branches himself. Although, he did mention going to a friends house to climb a tree and cut down several broken branches. I think he is crazy. I prefer to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground. My friend, Bailey. No acquaintance... No nemesis is more like it. Anyway, I saw that Bailey's people had to climb up on the roof for some reason. I don't understand. Just when you think you get them trained, they go and do something silly like that.

Snow
Shortly after the branches were taken away, more nasty stuff started falling from the sky. Although, this time, it was soft and not quite as slippery. It can be a lot of fun to play in if you don't mind getting a little cold. Sunday morning, Greg and I headed to the back yard for some good clean fun in the snow. Greg complained about not being able to install his fence again. While I ran around, he pushed around a big ball of snow. I got bored and decided to go check out the neighborhood. I knew it would upset Greg, but I just couldn't resist.

I took off into the woods. Greg tried to chase, but he just can't keep up. Usually he gives up and goes home pretty quick. However, this time he followed my tracks in the snow. I didn't care. I knew he couldn't catch me. I toyed with him for a few minutes. I would stay kind of close to give him hope. I even layed down in the snow a couple of times. After luring him away from the homestead quite a ways, I made my real break. I thought it was pretty funny knowing that he would have to walk all the way back to the house.

I took quite the walk that morning. I was all over the neighborhood. I spotted Greg in his big moving box a couple of times. His senses are not as keen as mine. He never spotted me. He seemed to be following my tracks in the snow along the road. So, I doubled back around once he passed me and was free to run for a couple more minutes. Eventually, my feet got pretty cold, so I headed home. I was glad to see Greg was there waiting for me. I thought he might get lost without me to lead him home. We decided to play in the snow some more. He would make small balls of snow and toss them to me. It was a lot of fun dodging and eating the snow. Although, Greg seemed a bit grumpy.

We eventually went back inside to warm up. I have Greg trained to wipe my feet for me when it is wet outside. He noted that my back paws were pretty raw and little bloody. I didn't care. that little bit of pain was totally worth the adventure.

No privacy
On a competely unrelated note, I have not been able to get any privacy at all this week. Every time I go outside to take care of business, Greg is out there staring at me. He's been acting weird lately.

GPS collar
I found this GPS collar on the internet today. It would be fun to show Greg how fast and far I can run. Maybe he would finally stop trying to keep up when I go out for a stroll.

Lily Update
Here are a few recent pictures of Lily. She keeps eating like a horse and has gotten a lot bigger. I understand that she will have an official weigh in next week. You will notice that I am "guarding" her in one of the shots. At least, that is what my people call it. Really, I'm just enjoying the constant stream of delicious aromas coming from Lily.

On a related note, a few days ago, Lily pooped all over herself and Katie. I can't figure out why she doesn't just go outside to take care of business. You don't see me pooping all over myself. My people seem rather disgusted at times. To be honest, I do think it is a little gross. Regardless, the smell is amazing.












Updated Snowman pictures
Here are a couple of more pictures of my stuffed snowman. You will notice in the second picture that the tennis ball has been shredded. I'm quite impressed with myself. This was complete and utter destruction.

Baxter & Guinness
Here is a picture of some friends from Florida. We have formally met yet, but I hear stories. They have a blog of their own now also. Guinness is the younger one in the picture below.










Dirty Tricks
I took a walk with Greg this morning. We used a new route. I was rather upset when we arrived at the vet's office. I hate that place. They are always poking and prodding me. They gang up on me and hold me down. Most of the time, I have to wear that stupid "party hat". I was so upset with this surpise that I vowed to not let them trim my nails at all costs. I won. Although, when we were leaving, they gave Greg a bottle of doggy valium and a pamphlet about an in home dog behavior counselor. I'm not sure what that is all about. That's all I have for now. I'm off to take a nap in the sun.

Rough Times

Greg and I have been butting heads a bit the past couple of days. The other night, after polishing off the snowman (I need to update the snowman blog with more pictures), I wasn't feeling so great. I convinced Katie to let me out so I could take care of business. Since I was out and it wasn't quite time for bed yet, I decided to take a stroll. By the time I got back, Greg was pretty upset with me. I retreated to my safe place, the crate in the basement, in order to stay out of his way. He quickly calmed down and all was right with the world once again.

Last night, Lily smelled especially good. I was trying to get close in order to more fully enjoy it. Her little hand dropped down close to my nose and I tried to lick it. Greg flew off the couch, chased me around the room, grabbed my collar, dragged me to the basement and locked me in my crate. He kept saying something about keeping my mouth closed when near Lily. All I wanted was a little lick. I think maybe I will keep my distance from her for a few days.

Later that night, after my release, I headed to bed a little early. In an effort to mend fences a bit, I decided to warm up Greg's side of the bed. He never seems appreciative of all the things I do for him. Last night was no exception. He kept pushing me and complaining and not getting any respect. If he would just learn to curl up into a ball like me, he would have plenty of room. But no, he has to sleep with his long legs spread all over the place. I finally gave up and retreated to my alternate bed. They rarely bother me back there.

Hopefully today will be a better day. Maybe I'll try to catch a rabbit or a squirrel for Greg. That ought to cheer him up.

Icy Sunday

I got to spend all afternoon at Grandma and Grandpa Stewart's house on Sunday. Freezing stuff was falling from the sky and caused our house to get dark and cold. My people said something about not having power, whatever that is. They decided that little Lily wouldn't enjoy spending time in a cold house, so we packed up and went to Grandma and Grandpa's. I don't see what the big deal is. I spend every day in the cold, dark basement. You don't see me complaining about it. In fact, I enjoy it. Anyway, I love going to Grandma and Grandpa's because they have a big fenced in back yard I can run free in. It's great. I can sit on their deck and survey the neighborhood and then take off down the stairs when something looks interesting. However, the cold icy stuff put a damper on my outside time while we were there this time. Bummer.

Nine Easy Steps For Properly Eating A Snowman

I received a tasty tennis ball snowman for Christmas. It turned out to complement the duck quite nicely. I have learned a few lessons over the years about how to properly devour a new toy. Being too aggressive may scare the people and result in a shortened period of enjoyment. There is an art to this. I will attempt to share my knowledge with this short tutorial based on my snowman.

Step 1: Give it some time and space. Attacking a new toy too quickly may result in a scared and unsatisfying toy. I concentrated on my duck for a couple of weeks in order to make the snowman feel safe.

Step 2: Build some trust. After giving the new toy some space, you can now start to establish trust. Without trust, you will never be able to get close to it. I did this by snuggling with the snowman during naps.

Step 3: Start slowly. Nibble on less painful extremities. With the snowman, the first thing I did was rip the puffy ball off of it's little hat.

Step 4: Incapacitate the toy. After this step, there will be virtually no chance of escape. I chose to remove an eye. The poor little snowman was only able to stumble around in circles after this step.

Step 5: Don't get scared if the toy screams. During the eyeball removal, the snowman let out a few squeeky pleas for help. It caught me off guard and I backed off for a day or too. In retrospect, the screams only prolonged the agony for the poor guy.

Step 6: Remove the vocal chords. In order to keep things quiet, I tore a hole in the back of the snowman's head and removed the squeeker. No more screams.

Step 7: Remove guts. I proceeded to remove the tasty insides of the snowman. Unfortunately, everytime I pulled out a nice snack size pile of snowman guts, my people would clean it up. I need to be more discrete in the future.

Step 8: Finish it off. Just to make sure the snowman was really dead, I removed it's head.

Step 9: Proudly pose for a picture with your conquest.

Basement Retreat

I've learned that the basement is a peaceful retreat. If I sleep on the couch down there then Greg can't kick me off their bed in the middle of the night and Katie won't wake me up when she gets up to feed Lily. I also can't hear Lily crying when I'm down there. I come up in the mornings to say hi to everyone and let Greg feed me then I head back down there for an early morning nap. When I sense that it's light out, I come up to sun myself on their bed. What a rough life.

Electric what??

A package showed up the other day. My people opened it up and got excited. They started saying my name a lot and using words like "boundaries", "containment" and worst of all "training". Greg got out an outline of the property boundaries and started drawing a line around it telling Katie where he was going to put the wire. What?! Did they just purchase an electric fence?? I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I won't be able to roam the neighborhood anymore. On the other hand, maybe after they install this they'll actually let me out of the house once in a while to enjoy my own yard. Hmm...I need to decide if I'll humor them and let them "train" me or if I'll continue to bolt and just risk getting shocked. Decisions, decisions...

Scary Duck and Gross Nose Stuff

So, the duck that I've been tearing apart since Christmas squeeked at me last night. That was NOT cool. I'm not sure I'll be chewing on it anymore. Maybe if enough time goes by I'll forget it squeeks and will tear into again.

Lily has a stuffy nose right now. She sure does snort a lot. She screams bloody murder when my people use the bulb like torture device to suck the snot out. Poor thing. I should teach her my trick of getting in one of their faces and sneezing. That's a great way to clear everything out and it doesn't require having anything stuck up my nose.

New friends and more Tigers

I would like to say hi to Thor, a new commenting friend. We haven't met, but I have heard a couple of stories and received this picture. It would appear that the Mighty One just finished devouring Frosty the Snowman in this shot.

I wanted to watch my favorite basketball team play last night, but Greg got distracted. He kept talking about watching a bowl of fruit in Florida. It didn't sound very appetizing to me. If there were a bowl of tasty cats, squirrels, and rabbits, I would watch all day long. Anyway, he finally turned the game on in the second half. I was quite pleased to see the Tigers beat Mississippi State and improve their record to 11-2. I hear that one more win and they will have matched last year's sorry performance.

Tigers

I've been a little depressed for the past couple of days. My beloved Tigers failed to beat the Beavers in the Sun Bowl this past week. They lost by one point (38-39) when Oregon State went for 2 pts late in the game. Everyone knows a Tiger would destroy a Beaver in real life. I place all the blame for the loss on my people. They left the house prior to halftime and turned the TV off. How did they expect me to cheer for our team? They know I don't have thumbs. I can't hold the remote and surf like Greg does. I'm positive that my cheers would've made a difference.