Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Auntie Sadie continued...

Last time, I started telling you about my Auntie Sadie, and today I’m going to finish filling you in. Mama OC doesn’t like that I’m doing this, but it IS MY turn, and she just went off grumbling something about young dogs never listening. She didn’t actually TELL me that I COULDN’T…not is so many words… and Auntie’s taught me that sometimes you can get away with things if you weren’t actually TOLD you couldn’t do it before…

Anyway, the man that had found her, loved her, but he had to move when she was about a year old. He advertised in a free group Grammy belongs to, and that is when Grammy found out about her. She had just lost her old Shadow after 17 years, which Mama OC tells me was HER hero from when SHE was a pup. When Grammy heard about Sadie, she decided to go meet her. Grammy’d had a Sadie before, that had died from snake bite.

Grammy fell in love with her right away. She reminded her of a mixture of Shadow, old Sadie, and a black Border Collie that Grammy had trained when she was younger. She could see that Sadie was very smart. They brought her home to give her a week’s tryout and she’s been here ever since.

Sometime around when Sadie first came, is when Mama got hurt by that mean goat. She had to stay in for a year or so to heal so that she didn’t re-hurt herself, so Sadie started going out with Grandpa Bud and Grandma Mist, who were getting pretty old, to work the goats. She learned fast, but it upset Mama OC to see her out there doing “HER” job. Grammy felt bad, but she had no choice, and tried to give Mama plenty of attention, but she was still mad at Sadie. That’s when Mama OC started calling her “That young Whipper Snapper…”

About a year later, Grandma Mist passed away, and Mama OC was very depressed for awhile. Everything poor Auntie did seemed to make her angry, even though Auntie always showed her lots of respect at that time. I learned all this stuff from talking to Grandpa Bud… he liked to talk… a LOT!

About a year after that, Mama ended up having us, and then she REALLY started getting upset with Auntie, and she just has never gotten over it. Auntie still “ACTS” like she respects Mama cause she knows that Grammy considers Mama the “Alpha dog” (after Grammy, of course), but sometimes she forgets when emotions are high for some reason, like when we are heated up.

Grammy is very careful to follow the Alpha Dog Rules and let everyone know (even me sometimes) that Mama OC is the queen dog around here. If Mama is outside or something, though, Grammy gives Auntie Sadie hugs, and loves, and treats. Because she is so much bigger than us, she can pick up heavier things for Grammy, too, so sometimes she gets treats for that even when Mama is around. Grammy always asks Mama to do something so she can get a treat too. (Actually, we all do… Grammy’s pretty fair.)

Well, that should give you an idea of Auntie Sadie’s life. I’ll try to fill you in, sometime, about all the things she’s taught me… some of them aren’t always appreciated by Grammy and my Master… like my passion for new perfume fragrances…

Sunday, April 26, 2009

My Auntie Sadie...

It’s my turn to write, so I’m going to tell you about my Auntie Sadie. She is my hero! She is so big and smart. She gets to go out and help Grammy with the horses, and used to help with the goats. She even gets to go out of the pastures sometimes, though I don’t think that is with permission. She catches all sorts of different fuzzies, and even birds!

I’ve followed her around and watching her since I was a little pup. She’s always gentle with us and takes care of us as if we were her own. I don’t know why Mama hates her so much. She is always in her face and gets upset whenever we play with her, but both BG and I totally adore her. She’s taught us a lot of things.

She’s really smart, too! I heard Grammy telling someone that Auntie Sadie had learned to do the herding and all the helper dog stuff just by watching Mama and Grandma Mist do it. I guess she had to be pretty smart just to live the first several months of her life.

Auntie Sadie told me that she was found out in the fields when she was about 4 months old. She doesn’t remember to much before then. She had already been spayed, but she had been dropped, or gotten lost, and was all matted and scrawny and starved. The people that found her, advertised but didn’t get an answer, so they took her to a vet, got her shots, and got her all taken care of.

I’ve got to go for now, but I get two turns to blog this time, so I’ll finish filling you in on my special Auntie Sadie the next time, ok?

Friday, April 24, 2009

I’m a HUNTER!!!

Guess what! I am now a really, truly hunter!!! I caught and ATE my first kill before Sadie or Dott could take it away from me. I caught it in the dark under the tack room, and brought it out and showed Mom. She looked at it and saw that it was dead, and then she let me keep it,

Sure, it was only a young mousey critter, but it was my first, and Mom said I did a good job! Sadie catches one or two every day, but I finally did it myself! Hurray for me! I pranced around like a king for several minutes after I chomped it down. Mom laughed at me, but I felt SO GOOD!!!






Dott was so mad! Like I said, it was after dark and so she wasn’t allowed out of the yard. She came in and pouted.



It really wasn’t a good day for her today anyway because she had found some new perfume earlier to try on, and had to get cleaned up again.





It was sort of fishy smelling and black and they couldn’t figure out where it had come from. She hates it when she is all “fluffy” looking after getting cleaned up!



Wednesday, April 22, 2009

We are Lucky Dogs…

Hi… I finally got to get back on here! Mom did several loads of laundry Sunday when we were in town, and that made Dotty really happy because she is in seventh heaven when she can lay in the middle of a bunch of clean laundry.
She really loves the smell of the dryer sheets Mom uses. At least THAT is one perfume that Mom doesn’t seem to mind much… at least not if Dott’s feet are clean when she gets up there.

Mom piles several loads up on the couch so she can sort and fold it, and Dott loves to play “King of the Hill” on it. I don’t know why SHE gets to play on it and I don’t! They all think she is so “cute” because she is so little. Robert says she is his “forever puppy,” and that he had always wanted a “toy Corgi.”

Mom tells me we each were made by God to have a special purpose for our lives and mine is to be her helper, so I shouldn’t get jealous because if I was really little, like Dott, I wouldn’t be big and strong enough to do the work that needs to be done for her. Dad tells me I’m just right for him, too, though he gets a bit grumpy when I give him CPR in the morning to get him up and going.

After hearing some of the stories Auntie Sadie tells of her life before she came here, and the stories some of the foster dogs we’ve had here waiting for their forever homes, I’m just so glad that our family loves us so much. We don’t have to worry about food, shelter, water, and we get plenty of love! I hear Mom thanking God for us all the time, and I sure am glad that she feels that way, cause we feel the same way about our people!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

It’s NASTY HOT!!!!




It's has been so beautiful outside lately… we actually had a spring this year. We’ve gotten to run and play outside… it’s been a blast! Usually, we go straight from winter to summer… at least the past couple of years that Dott and I remember. Mama says that’s the way it usually is as far as she remembers, too.

One of Mom’s horses is turning a different color. Remember the “snow” picture of Tuffy, that big old palid- mino horse that Mom is watching for her son? He was a light cream color when he came and all winter long, and now, he is turning dark gold! It’s weird to watch! When we shed, we all stay the same color, but the horses seem to get darker. The red ones are just sort of darker red. Mom calls it chestnut, but that sound more like food than a color.

It was starting to get a bit cold with so much of our winter coats gone, but as of today, I don’t think we will have THAT problem for awhile. At least Mama is moving a lot better today. Last Sunday (not this Sunday, but the one before) there was snow on the mountains about an hour from us, and today, the temperature got up to the 90’s!!!

We were WIPED by the time we got back from our morning run to the mailbox! We drank a ton of water and then plopped and stretched out all over the living room and panted for half an hour. Mom said it was like running an obstacle course to walk from one end of the room to the other.



Since our water is still not running, we can’t use our cooler, so we just had fans going all day. My grandpa, Bud, used to love to lay out in front of them when it was hot. They didn’t put one down low today, so I didn’t get a chance to try it.

Robert had to make extra water runs with the big barrels in the truck to fill the horses’ water barrels because they are hot and drinking like “cam melts.” I didn’t know horses melted! They still look as big as usual to me.

When our people got back from their Bible Study, they said that there had been more snakes out on the road. They had that strange dog smell on them… again!) This is getting a bit old! They go every week and always come back smelling of a strange dog... sometimes, two! They call the usual one Daisy, but I know a dog when I smell one and that DEFINITELY is NOT a flower!




Dott followed Dad all over pushing on his leg with her nose, and sniffing very pointedly to let him know that she was not happy with him. She refused to get into his lap for a while too. Oops, Mom says I have to stop now, so I will finish this blog tomorrow… its supposed to still be hot so we should be here most all day anyway.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Wow... What a Day!

Today was a really stimulating day. This morning, we got a chance to go out for our morning run while Robert got the mail. That is always a blast because we have so much energy stored up from a good night’s sleep.


Dott and I gang up on Auntie Sadie and she is just so happy to be out running free that she will do what Mom calls “Monkey Tailing”… if you are a Corgi, it is called frapping.


This tends to tick off mama so she yells and screams at everyone to quit it, which tends to make Robert yell back at her to “hush up!!!” Mama talks a lot now-a-days… LOUDLY!!! Grandpa Buddy used to do that, too, the last year or so he was around. Mom wonders if that is an “older” corgi trait… something about seein’ a nillity? I think she is just frustrated cause she can’t play much anymore, herself.

Anyway, after breakfast, Mom started getting ready to go somewhere, again. She apparently had more re-tire mints papers to do. We all did our best to be totally pitiful and begged with our eyes and guess what! She let us go this time!

We were so excited when we got our collar IDs. We drove a long time and the weather was fairly nice so they left the windows down pretty far and there were all sorts of good sniffs that we passed by… cows in the fields, and especially the diarrheas with all the cows. Mom says that’s where milk comes from.
She and Robert didn’t think THOSE sniffs were very good, but that is one of Dott’s favorite perfumes. She loves it when she finds a good patty out the back of the side pasture where there have been a lot of cows on the BLM land there lately.

We went to Mom’s old office and found out that Dad had come over in his truck. They went into the building while Robert stayed in the car with us. After that, we went and got a late lunch (Mom got us a whole hamburger to share) and went to a park to eat. THAT was AWESOME!!! … except for the leashes.

There were bunches of “smack talking” fuzzies out there… fat, sassy fuzzies that had no sense at all. Just sat there in plain sight “twittering” at us… STUPID squirrels… had us all quivering and ready to attack. We know just how tasty those rascals are… NASTY thieving fuzzies! They are few and far between at home now-a-days, and I could just “taste” them… made me DROOL!!!

After eating, we all went on a walk. We saw the strangest thing out there! There were some people out there that were really stiff. They were MAJORLY WEIRD!!! Some looked scared and some looked determined. One little girl had started to go through a puzzle, and somehow got frozen in mid-step. There was a happy family at the end, but they were still frozen.

None of us trusted those weird people. Mom and Robert walked over to them and looked at them closely and read some metal papers with words about them. I guess the papers got hit with whatever froze those people. We couldn’t go to far away, since we were on leashes, or we would have “beat feet” out of there!

Dott had been there with Robert a little while before Mom came over with mama and me. She told us that she still didn’t trust them, but that they hadn’t moved the whole time she’d been there, and that her Master had even touched them.

The three of us carefully snuck up on them, ready to run at the slightest movement. We had our “Mohawk’s”, as Mom calls them, up for a while. None of them moved, and after several minutes, mama got close enough to sniff them. There were a few pee mails on them, so I guess those poor people had been frozen quite a while ago. Nothing happened, but Dott and I had to check out each one separately just to be sure they were all frozen!

I tell you, THAT was one of the most peculiar things I’ve ever seen… I’ll bet even the mighty Mango would have been “weirded out” over those frozen people, and he is the BIGGEST, mightiest dog we know of! I heard Mom and Robert talking about that strange place. Robert told Mom that it was a Cancer Memorial, and he took a lot of pictures. Mom LOVES art things… especially what she called, “statue hairy.” This also meant a lot to her because her mother lost her fight with cancer as did my grandma, Mist and grandpa, Buddy.

Dad met us at the park… he’d still had some work to take care of for a bit before coming there. He picked us up and brought us home. He took us through a car bath place, which is kind of scary, but I’m starting to get used to. It really freaked out poor Dotty, and she crouched down in the seat and shook even though Dad and I tried to tell her it was ok.

Mom and Robert had to go and meet Mom’s niece and when they came home, they were all excited about seeing the new baby move and make faces and stuff. It is some kind of new techno stuff that takes 3-D pictures of a baby when it is still inside of its mom. I guess they thought it was pretty neat.

As I said when I started, this was really an exciting day, with all kind of new things in it for all of us. I wish we could go with Mom all the time if she’s going to do such different things when she is out. Hope you had as great a day as we did!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Preview of "Little Dott Finds a Home"

Hi everyone! Master told me that I could post a preview of my book today as he finally scanned some of the first pages. We also posted them for our friends on MyCorgi.com to see yesterday. The scans picked up some of the shadows of the pages behind them and when he lowered the resolutions, it made them look a little grainy and there are things sort of like “watermarks” on some of the pics that don’t show in the actual book. In other words, the words and pics are much sharper in the book. Hope you enjoy this preview.

















The full story is 29 pages long and part of the profits go to a local No-kill Animal Shelter, and a Battered Women's Shelter. To learn more about these non-profit agencies, see Robert's storefront at http://stores.lulu.com/LittleDottBooks .