(P)Up All Night

I'm a dog.

Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night and wasn't feeling well.  Here's what happened:

4:00am: Wake up with a tummy ache and begin crying.
4:10am: My cries finally reach Matthew and Alicia, who are upstairs sleeping.
4:14am: Since I won't stop crying, Matthew comes downstairs to see what's the matter.
4:16am: After hopping out of my crate and bouncing around the room for about a minute, Matthew can't figure out what's wrong.  I'm trying to ask him to take me outside, but he thinks I want to play.  He tells me it's bedtime, and puts me back in my crate.
4:17am: I begin crying again.
4:17am: Matthew and Alicia begin telling me, "No" from upstairs.
4:20am: I can no longer bear my tummy ache, and explosively poop all over my bed, crate and puppy self.
4:21am: Matthew starts down the stairs and is overwhelmed by the smell of poop.  He rushes to my crate and gets me out to the kitchen, calling for Alicia.
4:22am: Alicia comes downstairs and sees me covered in poop.  She helps Matthew wipe me down.  They keep apologizing profusely for not understanding that I was begging them to take me out so that I wouldn't mess myself and my bed.
4:25am: Matthew takes me outside, where I get the last bit of diarrhea out of my bum and eat a lot of grass.
4:25am: Alicia begins the terrifyingly stinky task of cleaning everything up.  She picks up poop bits off the carpet with her fingers (as paper towels weren't delicate enough and would've smeared it in).  She wipes down the crate with paper towels.  She pulls the bed out and unzips the cover.  She wipes the poop juice off the inner bed.  She brings the poopy cover up to the bathtub and rinses all the poop down the drain.
4:40am: Matthew and I return from outside.  We go right upstairs and into the bathtub to get me fully bathed. The whole time, he tells me what a good girl I am.  I still don't want to take a bath.
4:55am: Alicia gets a bucket of hot soapy water and wipes down the entire crate.
5:00am: Matthew and Alicia towel me off, telling me over and over again how sorry they are and how much they love me.
5:10am: I'm dry and sleepy and I still feel sick.  I curl up on my chair to go to sleep.
5:13am: Alicia offers to sleep downstairs with me, since she has to get up at 6:30 anyway.
5:15am: Matthew snuggles onto the couch to sleep in the living room with me and make sure I'm okay.
5:15am: Alicia snuggles back into bed, hoping to get some sleep.
6:30am: Matthew comes upstairs, Alicia wakes up and starts getting ready for work.
7:00am: Alicia wakes me up and takes me on a walk.  I'm sleepy, but happy.  I feel better.
7:15am: Back from the walk, I hop right back on my chair and go to sleep.
11:00am: I rouse myself from sleep to get a drink of water and snack on a little peanut butter.  I'm planning to sleep the rest of the day.

And I did.

I'm feeling much better now.  I've had a scoop of kibble, some hot dog, some cheese and some green beans. If I'm not eating or out on a walk, I'm asleep.

Happy Howl-a-ween!

I'm a dog.  Today is my first Halloween. I woke up this morning ready to put on my costume and go out trick-or-treating.  Then Alicia informed me that trick-or-treating doesn't happen until later in the day.  And that dogs are not allowed to eat candy.  And that kind of spooked the holiday spirit right out of me.

She did inform me, however, that we could go on some nice long walks in costume!  My best dog friend Chili loaned me his squirrel costume, which no longer fits him.  Since I love squirrels (or rather, I love to chase them), Alicia thought this would be a perfect fit.

Unfortunately, the costume was a bit too big.

And I wanted to eat it.

So we switched to Costume Plan B: Molly Moo!

I already came equipped with the white fur and large brown spots, so this costume was a natural fit.

Just add a cow bell and some horns, and voila!

Instant cow.

Moo!

Crazy-eyed cow.

Me and Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games!

Happy Halloween!

I. Love. Chair

I'm a dog.  After months of convincing (read: me hopping up when Matt or Alicia would go upstairs and positioning myself to look really cute when they came back downstairs), I was finally given permission to be up on the furniture.  Or at least the armchair in the living room, which Alicia got for $5 back in college.  It has a fairly hideous large floral print which was only recently covered over with a bland also fairly hideous slipcover.

Permission was granted last week after I slept there soundly while Matt and Alicia were out at a cocktail party and Auntie Sarah "puppysat" me while snoozing on the couch.  They thought it was just too cute to continue denying me this simple pleasure.

My first "legal" chair sit. Still not sure if I'm about to be told "No!"

Since then, I've become quite comfortable on my chair, choosing to sleep on it most of the day.  At first, I didn't even want to play or eat.  I just wanted to lay on my chair.  Now that I'm sure they won't take it away, I've gotten back to playing, and also to really making it my own.  They took away the pillow and covered the chair with a free fleece blanket Matt got at a baseball game.  I've covered that blanket with fur.

This was taken yesterday afternoon.  See how comfortable
I've become in such a short time?

I can tell you were laughing at me in that last picture.

As you can see, I was getting quite comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that I decided I would make a few of my own changes to the chair last night while Alicia and Matt went out to dinner.

That cushion was just too cushiony. 

So I unzipped the slipcover and chewed off some stuffing.

Matt and Alicia seem disappointed in my changes.  They came in, gasped, and just started cleaning up.  I was laying on the floor, showing them my belly, but they were too focused on the cushion to notice.  I went over to lick their faces while they cleaned up, but they didn't seem to like that either.  Oh well.  I was just trying to make some positive change and embrace my new-found freedom of chair and no crate when they leave for short stretches.

They managed to put everything back together, so to the outside observer, everything looks the same, but I heard them mention something about me needing to be in the crate when they go out from now on.  Oops!  At least I'm still allowed on the chair.

The Salty Dog

I'm a dog.  It seems I started to write this post a while ago and never got around to hitting "Publish."  Oops.  The good news is that the delay has enabled my head to heal and thus enabled Alicia to take some salty photos of yours truly, which are included at the end...

At the end of August, Matt and Alicia went on vacation to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.  They didn't invite me to join them.  That wasn't very nice.  I love car rides, and they were in the car for 9 hours! Unfair.  In the end though, it was a good thing they didn't bring me.  It seems they don't welcome my kind in South Beach (the neighborhood of the Sea Pines Plantation where they stayed).

That second to last rule just would not work for me.

Oh, but look, a dog cafe!

What's this? No dogs? At the dog cafe?

Hmm...maybe I could bill myself as providing the service of cuteness?

While they were away, I went on my own playcation to Gerri's house.  While I can only imagine they spent the entire time missing me and wishing they'd brought me with them, I just played and played and played all day.  And I play rough.

When I got home after 10 straight days of playing I was a happy dog, but it looked like I'd been through a war.  You see, I like to chew and jump on other dogs, and I like it when they do that to me.  And I let them bite as hard as they want, because I want them to like me.  Gerri didn't know this and after the first day, the damage was done.  Thus, my head and neck were a bit chewed up.

Before you look at these pictures and feel bad for me, just know I wasn't hurt and that I had so much fun and was so happy with my chewed head.  I've gone back to Gerri's for play group and now that Gerri knows how hard I play, she makes me take breaks so that this doesn't happen anymore.

On a related note, Matt and Alicia were kind enough to bring me back a souvenir from their trip.  They didn't take any photos of me wearing it when I first got back though, because my head looked a bit, well, chewed.  But now I'm all fixed up (and have been for a while), so it's time to get salty...

Look at me! I'm a Salty Dog!

Still cute.

Getting bored of this photo shoot.

I'm done.  I'm going to sleep.

Good Dog: It's a Miracle!

I'm a dog.  I'm a lucky dog.  I was transferred from the animal shelter in Prince George's County, MD (pit bulls are illegal and are scheduled for euthanization upon arrival) to a shelter in Alexandria, VA.  I was going to be killed just because of my breed, but I got lucky.

This beagle was also going to be euthanized, because no one had adopted him from a shelter in Alabama.  They put him in the gas chamber with a bunch of other dogs, but miraculously, he survived!

Can you believe it?  What a lucky dog.  And a cutie too.  Thanks to 11th Hour Rescue, he's now safe in NJ with a foster family, and I sure hope he finds a good home.

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

I'm a dog.  Until last weekend I wasn't too sure about exactly what kind of a dog.  But now I'm feeling fairly confident.  The folks at the AWLA knew I was a pit bull terrier mix.  They weren't sure what was in the "mix."  Luckily, whilst walking in DC last weekend on our way to congratulate Ben and Amanda as they finished their metric century bike ride, we came across two puppies who were my spitting image!

They were two-month-old pups out on a walk with their owner.  When Matt and Alicia saw her and her dogs and she saw Matt and Alicia with me, everyone stopped in their tracks.  I was taken back to my earliest days.  The other owner saw a vision of what she could expect in a couple of months.  Everyone was in shock.

Then the humans got to talking.  It turns out those precious pups have a mom who is a Pit Bull Terrier and a dad who is an American Bulldog.  That makes them American Pit Bulldog Terriers.  And I'm probably one as well!  It just makes so much sense.  So much of me is Pit Bull-ish.  The thickness of my coat, my almond-shaped eyes, size and stature, how muscly I am, not to mention my triangular Pit Bull smile all point to Pit Bull.  But I'm also mostly white, which isn't so common with Pit Bulls.  And my snout is kind of rounded, which is also wrong.  And what about my big brown markings? A simple Google Image search for "American Bulldog" reveals image upon image of white dogs with beautiful markings.

So, what happens when you mix this:

[via here]

With this?:

[via here]

It seems to me you would get this: 

Am I right?

Bark! Who Goes There?

I'm a dog.  A guard dog.

When the weather's nice and Matt and Alicia leave the front door open wide with just the screen between me and the great outdoors, I like nothing more that to sit there and take in all the happenings.  You wouldn't believe how much action there is outside our front door!

Sometimes, squirrels run by and jump from limb to limb in the trees.  I do put on my best sit and watch them. I also occasionally bark at them if it looks like they're having too much fun and not including me.

I see you, squirrel!

I also like to watch the leaves fall from the trees.

But my most favorite of all is when people (and dogs!) come walking right in front of our house! I get up from my sit and wag my tail, hoping they're coming to pet me.  Sometimes they do.  Other times they just walk on by.

Oh, hello there!

Come over here and love me!

I think I've found a new favorite hobby.  Watch out rides in the car, you're in danger of being replaced.