double posties: honorable woofs!

 
Double posties today, before I forgot to say thanks. A tiny list of recent shouts that I could remember, from the ever fabulous Joey & Maggie at the The Long and Short of It All from this past Sunday, today's Wednesday Woofs interview at happy bark days (yeah,the price for finding out why this blog is named kalyxcornucopia? my old lady rant, which is later in that interview, so, um, enjoy), and I am told a little sumptin be might be on for today's Wiener Wednesday over at Nancy's Clubhouse...So, um, enjoy them all! And most of all thanks to Joey n Maggie n  Miss Little Red Mapleleaf and Miss Nancy for giving us a little woof! :)

family portrait

Because we adopted Baxter when he was ten months old, I've often found myself wondering what the little kielbasa looked like as a puppy.  What his parents were like and how he ended up in a home with 39 other dogs. Lonely, and little, and so in need of guidance and love.

Every rescued dog, it seems, deserves a history better than the one he or she experienced. And so today for Baxter, a new picture to add to the front of his family album.  A happy family picture from his puppyhood, the way I think it should have been.   :)

everything but the duk

There's a little game that Baxter and I like to play on occasion, and it's called fetch it.  In its most ideal form, I ask Baxter to fetch something in the house, and he brings back exactly that item. It works really well for items he knows well, located in a fairly close radius from where we are.  But ask for something less familiar, or ask for a familiar item that is a room or two or a floor level away, and what he brings back is always an endearing surprise. Which he is willing to repeat over and over until I finally proclaim that he has brought exactly the item I asked for.  Which is how I ended up yesterday night with this lovely pile of things he thought I wanted.







if we are done here, may i please have some peanut butter in my kong toy now??

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.

note to self

With me usually the one galavanting off on bizcations, it is rare that I am the one left alone with the little kielbasa.  Rare, that I become the sole provider of all that this little sausage boy might need.   Which is how I ended up needing to make a very important note to myself yesterday after I dropped Big Boyfriend off at the airport.  Take out the little kielbasa.

Now, I'm not saying we don't often go outside during the day when Big Boyfriend is working, but that's totally different. When tiny chumley and I are usually outside, we are lost in our little magical world, exploring intriguing smells and excavating for buried treasure.  Chasing squirrels and barking at bassetts.  Never in a million years would it cross either of our minds that one certain little doxie just might need to do his business.   Poopies and pee pees are in dad's realm, and that's just the way it has been, the way it is.  And the way Baxter expects it.  Mom + outside = play, Dad + outside = poop n pee.  Which means, come to think of it that, there will be two of us making notes to ourselves this weekend.  Me, to remember to take Baxter out to do his business, and Baxter, to remember that he needs to do his business when in the presence of his mom.  When both of us would rather be sleeping in the sun, waiting for dad to come home.

pretty in pink

It seems there are many days in Baxter's happy go lucky life where things take a sudden and interesting turn. Like yesterday, when he spent most of the morning staring at me.  Wishing, I think, that I would be more interesting. Or at least, way more susceptible to his telepathic powers of cuteness. Which I am most certain were trying to convince me to leave my sewing machine in order to serve him up a nice big tasty rawhide bone. Or, as he would later try to convince me with his twinkly eyes, at least perhaps a tiny little smackerel of something tasty?

By early afternoon, the little kielbasa had given up all hope of extra snackie love, and retired to his kitty perch to warm his sausagey body and his rumbly little tummy.

Seeing that this little wiener dog was sound asleep by the time I finished sewing, I figured I would quietly go upstairs with my freshly made purse to take a few simple pics to submit with an upcoming show application.

But no sooner had I gotten to our bedroom did I hear the the thunder of little paws. Baxter skidded into my feet, and a tiny trailing wind caught up shortly thereafter, stirring up dust that glinted in the afternoon sun.

u weren't gonna take pictures without me, were u, mom?? he seemed to happily inquire as he sniffed about the things I brought upstairs.

And just like that, things took an interesting turn for the both of us. :)

i will bend like a reed in the wind

dear diary,
boy, hidin from duk duk all day took some serious effort! i am so glad i earned my camo for canines badge in pup scouts cuz those skills totally came in handy.

whoops! i think i hear duk duk coming so i best get back to hiding.  hope u have a swell thursday! later today i guess i will need to face the music with duk duk but i am thinking maybe before that i should go dig up some worms from the backyard for him, just to help smooth things over.

toodley-doo!
b.   :)




ps - mom says a day without a picture of me is like a day without sunshine, and even though it is really me under here and it was sunny out, i guess to make mom happy, here is another picture of me. taken when the coast was clear and after i took tinky outside.  cuz i know u would want to know that. :)

messin with duk duk

dear diary,
boy was i totally wrong about that spycam mom got me.  it's the best thing in the whole world, even if u can't eat it.  cuz looky, what do u get when u mix one doxie,  a best friend duk that embarrassed u in front of all the backyard squirrels by tellin them i still sleep with my mom n dad, and spycam u hid in the bathroom?  hee, hee, hee, see for yourself!! 







i cannot wait to post this on facebook and tag him in it!  well i better hide my toothbrush and make myself scarce for a while.   let me know if u see a one winged duk with a spycam, will ya?


toodley-doo!
b.

return to sender

A little package came in the mail for tiny chumley yesterday, but not really the kind he could fully appreciate.

r u sure this thing is for me? cuz i'm not really gettin anywhere with it.  maybe u can send it back and exchange it for some delicious snackies instead?



Sorry baby dog, not this time. But soon you and duk duk can play with your very own secret spy cam!

d is for daffodil

dear diary,
guess what! mom n dad took me for rideys yesterday and we ended up at this restaurant and i didn't even have to wait in the car cuz they took me with them! yep, that's right. my first official dining al fresco parisian moment. at a place where they bring u water and menus and napkins and everything. well, for the humans anyway. me, i just got a bowl of water. which was okay, cuz really, i was all about finding scraps on the floor. after i made sure that the four big dogs at the table across the way knew that i was on to them. but can u believe they all barked back at me??

all in all it was a fine time, though let's not talk about the time out that i had to spend in mom's lap for stirring up that barkfest. how embarrassing. duk duk says i really should rethink my whole bark philosophy, on account of the fact that i'm so small, if i stayed quiet, those big dogs might never have noticed me and nobody would have got in trouble. but i say i'm gonna bring him and his feathery tushie next time we go to the dog park and then we'll see who barks or quacks first at the sight of all those big scary dogs.

anyways, with it feeling so nice out now, i thought i would share a picture of the daffodils that i helped mom bring in from the yard. they're really swell, though i wish they were edible. u can't eat them, right? just thought i should check.

toodley-doo!
b.

i chased a squirrel

i chased a squirrel

on my way home from the park.

barkety bark bark!

- baxter, 4.2 years old, on his 

Saturday walkies from the park

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. :))

i know what doxies want

i know what dogs like

i know what dogs want

dogs like, dogs want snackies!

(yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, find new cards on etsy!)

tail talkin

Sometimes I wonder why the little kielbasa feels the need to bark at all, considering his tail already has so much to say.  Especially when I leave the front door open so Baxter can surveil the innocent and not so innocent passers by in our neighborhood.

hey, you.  yeah u. i see u walkin by like u don't see me but i see u,  hey, don't pee on my mail box. that's my mailbox.  what?  i am so barkin at you for that.  yeah, that's right, put your leg down and keep walkin. oh who da man now? me.  dats right. me. oh yeah....anybody else wanna piece of my tail?



Watch out world, this little boy and his tail are talkin to you.

867-5309

Okay, let's be clear. Big Boyfriend and I are not early adopters of technology. Cell phones? We bought our first ones ever in 2002, after a car headed in the opposite direction crossed the center line and introduced me to a world in which immediate access to 911 might indeed be a good thing. Emergencies only, that's all we need these things for when we got our first pair of phones. Except maybe for also dialing long distance family and friends, since we were paying for the minutes anyway.

We soldiered on with our little black and white screened flip phones for the next seven years, ignoring the lure of colored screens, and texting, and taking tiny pictures, and playing music on our phones, and watching tiny television shows.  Cuz geez, a phone's a phone. Where exactly other than home am I going to be that I need to listen to music? And who wants to spend their time squinting at video on a tiny Barbie sized screen anyway?

We probably would have held on to our first phones even longer, but the promise of better quality calls and the practical application of hands free bluetooth technology finally won us over in 2009. Yeah baby, we were gonna be set for maybe a decade this time, what with our voice + 300 texts a month plan and me with my cool querty keypad flip phone that would let me text to the only three people I knew who actually knew how to text back.  Poo on you, Apple and all you smartphone makers out there. I don't need a drink from your hipster doogan kool-aid. App schmapp.

And yeah, as you might imagine, I should have known better, and I blame it all on the little kielbasa. Because now here I sit, enthralled with the thought of being able to peek in on tiny chumley when I am away from the house, just like Kona's mom does to her little one. I am excited about the thought of unchaining Big Boyfriend from his laptop so that he can enjoy some time out in the fresh air as part of our pack, yet still be the responsible bacon bringer that he is whenever he is called upon to be so. And I like that I can stay connected with Baxter's little world and even update it if necessary, all from the palm of my 4G fueled hand, wherever I am, without worry of lugging around a laptop in places I'd rather not take it.  Today, I am proud to say that I am willing to be dragged into the 21st century, and I blame it all on my tiny furry beast, my four year old dachshund who spends most of his days sleeping and digging and playing with duks. My little boy Baxter, the light of our lives, and now, bringer of technology.

Home alone? Never fear, baby dog. Mom & Dad will always be watching over you. :)

these paws were made for digging

Tiny bob barker's fantastic adventures for Sunday started in delicious Indiana Jones floor corn treasure seeking fashion, but ended on a relatively quiet note, busy and happy as he was by himself in his backyard, moving mounds of earth with his short little paws and nose pushed deep into the freshly disturbed soil.  Digging furiously, til I finished my chores and called him to come up for a paw wash.



 Tiny chumley trotted up the stairs, and looked longingly back at the hole he had started to dig.

hey mom, thanks for taking me on delicious walkies n all but may i please stay out here a little longer? cuz i totally want to finish this!

This little dachshund's paws? Most definitely made for digging. And that's just what they did. :)

bark at the park

dear diary,
yippee! so mom n dad took me to the dog park yesterday and mom says i am lucky to have a head at all, considering how much i barked at the other big dogs that invaded our play space yesterday.  but i say, those big dogs were lucky i didn't do anythin more.  u know, like get all wolfy on them or somethin.  which i would have, if mom didn't keep embarrassin me by coming over and telling me how naughty i was being.  like how productive is that really?  i had a job to do and it wasn't helping at all that those big dogs weren't listening to me. so i had to bark harder and u know what that got me? nuttin.  they just looked down at me like i was a noisy brown barking wind up toy. some doxies like me get no respect, i tell ya, no respect at all.

anyhoo, mom says she was spending so much time making sure i wasn't a naughty boy that she didn't get very many pictures, but here are a few. me, with  my new buddies rocky and wiener, and the always lovely schatze! and i got to meet trotter and sookie and ziggy and i'd show u pictures but um, u know already about the whole picture taking thing or lack thereof. and let's not even talk about the bath i had to suffer afterward.

so anyways, that was my saturday.  how was yours?


toodley-doo,
b. 


 

doggie in the window

The temperature difference between the inside and outside of our house can be so different at times that we really don't know how cold or warm it is outside til we're actually outside.  Or, in tiny chumley's case, when he's stuck his little head out from the nearest open window.


yes,  it is warm enough for me to play outside today, don't u think?

etsy fresh: new paper goodies

Yippee! More little kielbasa paper goodies came in the mail this week, and so tiny chumley and I took a little time yesterday to prepare our cards and take pictures for Etsy. 

oooo, the little kielbasa did declare upon seeing one of the goodies.  who knew leprechauns look just like me! so.... what's a leprechaun and do they get snackies?


why yes, baby dog, they most certainly do. so hand me your paw, and you'll get yours, too! :)