busy paws

Just a little happy tiny chumley video today cuz yippee, it's Thursday!! :)

practice makes perfect

dear diary,
yippee! even though me, duk duk, chocobot n lil pink puppy at all the popcorn and cotton kibble before our show started, our circus was a big hit!  but wait, we figured, there's got to be more.  so me n duk duk decided it should be even more danger doomy and so i am practicing a new trick - walking the pirate plank!  well, it would be a pirate plank if only my mom would let me paint it and put chains on it and stuff  but boo hoo we are only borrowing something from my mom's display stuff and she says the people at bucktown might not understand why there is a pirate plank with purses on it in her and auntie robin's booth.  i say, arrrrrrrrgh!  but that is okay, cuz me n duk duk have a spectacular backup plan and not to give it away or anything but let's just say right now he is searching the internet for a place that will sell fireworks to a dog or a duk.  because, well i am a dog and duk duk is a duk.  and chocobot and lil pink puppy are too little to buy fireworks.

anyhoo even though we do not have the fireworks yet, methinks i will practice more with my mom's help.  want 2 watch? 

hee hee, i hope u have a happy weekend! :)

toodley-doo!
b. :)

something borrowed

a happy little video to close the week, featuring a little something borrowed! :)

sentinel

There's a reason why the little kielbasa is willing to forego his daytime naps right now. Why he is willing to stare faithfully outside the back window like a steadfast soldier for most of the day whilst perched atop his little orange tuffet, patiently waiting for the planets to align.

Squirrels of course, will do, but it's the bunny sightings that really make his day.  And if he is really lucky, if I or his dad can suit him up in his blaze orange duds and unlock the door fast enough, he blasts off like a bottle rocket into the backyard, focused on a misguided mission targeting the places where he remembers the bunny to have been on previous encounters, rather than immediately going to the place where he just spied his cottontailed friend.

Baxter's reliably happy go lucky tracking strategy often gives me time to go back inside to get the camera after I've launched the little kielbasa cannon. But I, too, seem to be cut from the same "seconds too late, a few kibble bits short" fabric of our lives, which explains why this video starts just moments after Baxter flushed his bunny from its hiding place, and the little kielbasa yips with ear piercing delight while the object of his desire had already scampered safely away. :)

front window

So yeah with the house all discombobluated we've been kinda of missing our evening ritual of watching tv all spread out on the sofa, but then times like this are perfect for reminding myself that all the entertainment we ever need is right down by our ankles, especially when a certain little someone is sitting on his tuffet, barking at his birds and prey :)

sunday moment of zen: a grazin in the sun

It's supposed to be cold and wet again today, so yes, it's time to break out another Sunday Moment of Zen, courtesy of the little kielbasa, made earlier in the week. Called A Grazin in the Sun, but really, it could easily be called What I Like to Do Every Spring. I'm not sure what it is about grass and springtime, but for tiny chumley no spring is complete without a nice nibbleypoo of the tall green stuff, all while being serenaded by returning songbirds.

my special thank u :)

hello world! i have never sung before so i hope u will forgive me if i am a little out of tune and my moves aren't exactly right.  but i really wanted to do something special to thank u all your support and if u like it maybe me and duk duk will make more, cuz we totally had fun makin it.  so with further ado - oh wait,  duk duk thinks u should watch this in full screen and so before u hit play,  click on the little arrowy thing over on the lower right of the video - okay, without further ado, here is my special performance 4 you.   :) b

sunday morning bliss

Sunday morning TV was slim pickins in the days before cable television entered our household, and I remember as a kid resorting to seemingly desperate measures.  Watching CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt, which always ended with a 60 second nature scene.  A moment of contemplative zen that I couldn't appreciate back then, because at least when I was young, it was all about the noise and excitement.

Thankfully, I've outgrown all that.  And nowadays I am thankful for the nature scenes that I am lucky enough to encouter, especially the ones that unfold every day, right inside my house.

lunch lady

So yesterday I made lemon poppy egg bread. With a real lemon pulled from what was once a full bag of lemons.  And then the mail came.  And somehow by now, homies that we are, I think you can understand how one thing led to another, that led to this.

happy feet friday

Almost always near the end of Baxter's meal time training (and sometimes even from the beginning), the little kielbasa gets ahead of himself and completely ignores the things I ask him to do.  Executing random act after random act, in hopes that something, anything,  might merit the shower of snackies he desires.

Some days, I'll wait til he settles down and we can start his training properly anew. And other days, his cuteness wins out, and I just watch him twirl and jazz and jump and whatever else he might come up with, all to the music playing in his own tiny little head.

hee hee, hope u have a happy twirly Friday!! :)

(ps - got a pair of headphones in that tiny cubicle? plug it in, turn up the volume, and rock out to a special extended version of happy feet video here  on baxter's facebook fan page - no facebook id required.  :)  )

(update 2/25: well i'll be. today the viddy is unmuted on youtube. so enjoy it while you can here. :))

me likey dat: my new snackie toy

Some treats for tiny chumley in the mail this week, a box of goodies ordered from ihelppets.com in exchange for use of a couple of the little kielbasa's photos for an upcoming book, proceeds of which go to helping animals in need. A serendipitous event, considering I had already made up my mind to splurge on Nina Ottosson's Pyramid toy anyway, and a few others that I had planned to originally get at the pet store anyway for Christmas.

With a little bit of excess energy to burn, it seemed only fair to give tiny chumley an early Christmas. Much to tiny chumley's delight, I filled the pyramid toy with snackies, put it on the floor, and watched the little kielbasa assess his new toy. The verdict? Looky looky! :)

rear view mirror

A tiny video of Baxter today, demonstrating his "sixth sense". Powered by pawtato chips, and better, I dare say, than any rear view mirror. :)

there will be bath

Taking back the backyard is something we always end up doing when cooler weather hits. Cleaning up yard debris that fell from storms over the summer, chucking misdirected lacrosse balls into the closest neighbor kid's yard, all these things and more are much easier to do when it's not a hundred degrees out.

This past week, during a break from crafty chores, I took time to unearth stepping stones that had been washed over with dirt and mulch from the summer rains. Much to my surprise, the little kielbasa gave up the squirrel hunt to join me in my endeavors, moving dirt with surprising effectiveness, and flinging it with such distance that I finally had to stop what I was doing lest I get a mouthful unwanted earthly goodness.

I'm not sure if it qualifies as technique, but curiously, Baxter's little sausagey body moved like the hands of a clock as he dug, rotating himself in a circular pattern, digging, sniffing, rotating, and digging again. Flinging dirt every which way, and muddying his paws to the point where a bath was inevitable. Sorry little puppino, but o what fun we still had!

top goose

dear diary,
okay, so i was totally bummed to find out that i am a little too short to be flying jet planes, but with my friend madwilly's help, i think i might have found another way to satisfy my need for speed!

toodles!
b.

multiplicity

dear diary,
hee hee, so duk duk almost had a heart attack late yesterday morning when he finally dragged his feathers out of bed and saw this. yep, that's right, three of me!

well, okay, it's really not all me. i'm in the middle and on either side of me are lily and marshall. they are my house guests for the weekend! so cool, right?

now, even though i originally came from a household with forty dogs in it, i'll be the first to admit that it takes getting used to, this multiple dog thing. so it's been nice that we've had things to bond over, like, well, hunting and, duh, food of course! this is me n marshall n lily, all working on our first amazing feat of autumn!

well, i gotta make a bones run while duk duk n lily n marshall finish watching cartoons, so hasta luego!

toodles,
b.

superdog returns

baxter and duk duk's amazing feats of summer: part 3 - world's longest stay

dear diary,
well what can i say other than it is hard to believe that labor day is already here and school starts tomorrow. everything crept up so fast that duk duk and i really didn't have a lot of time to prepare for our last and final attempt this summer to break a world record, so i thought i should try my paw at the world's longest stay, cuz i have so much practice with it every night at meal time when mom puts my bowl down at the end of our training session.

now, i know this video is reaally long, but duk duk thinks we have to present it in its entirety else nobody might believe us. nothing is evident without evidence,right?

so anyways, besides making our last attempt to break a world record this summer, i also got to go to the flea market AND the hot dog place with mom n dad. not the hot dogs like me hot dog place, but the kind that u eat. not that i had any, boo hoo, but it was nice to enjoy the coolness of the shaded outdoor eating area.

well i am off to hang with mom n dad again today cuz it's labor day. hope u are having just as fun a day!! :) -b

echo

dear diary,
o happy day! the weather was really nice out so mom n dad n me all walked to the park and back. and i got to scare some monsters away. check it out below!

anyways, then i goofed around all day which is a good thing considering school is starting back up soon. boy where has the summer gone?

toodles!
b.

skink-a-skink-a-doo

A tiny little video today, put together with footage from schlomo schneebly's serendipitous kitty perch encounter with a baby skink, and a track that I like to think Baxter and Duk Duk would have cobbled together after messin with wii music on a boring, housebound hot summer afternoon and discovering what they think to be the very hilarious bark instrument. Extreme tail wagging meets extreme barking, courtesy of Baxter, Duk Duk, and Sting. O happy day! :)

baxter & duk duk's amazing feats of summer (part 2)

Lending a paw to science. Two and a half years ago I would have never thought I'd be typing a phrase like that, much less think it. But two and a half years ago, I didn't have Baxter in my life.

I'm also pretty sure that Baxter couldn't foresee this phrase, this action, whether two and a half years ago or pretty much ten minutes before he was actually lending his paw to science yesterday. That's just my boy, happy go lucky and always hopeful that things will work out. And they practically almost always spectacularly do.





Today, part two of baxter and duk duk's amazing feats of summer documents snippets of tiny chumley's first ever participation in a canine cognition lab study. Not a world record breaking moment for Baxter, mind you, but for reasons you'll soon find out, a treasured personal best.