Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Some Sad News

Hello everyone. This is The Daily Bone and I’m your devastated doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel along with my deeply saddened colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel. Today our beautiful and dear friend The Lady Galadriel (Lady) passed away after having been very sick for the past few months. Our hearts go out to her wonderful humans who took such good care of her. We were glad to hear she got to do a couple of her favorite things earlier today: eat a bowl of ice cream and smell the jasmine in her yard, just before she went to doggie heaven.


We will miss you a lot! 

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Everyone's a Celebrity

Hello.  This is The Daily Bone and I’m your popular doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.




 I can never understand why the humans pick out certain people to become celebrities. I mean how do they suddenly decide, oh that guy is somehow worthy of our complete adoration? Mostly celebrities have some kind of talent, like singing, acting, being funny, or being good at a sport. Being rich or some kind of royalty helps. With all TV channels these days, you can become famous just by being able to cook, run a pawn shop, fix things, find antiques, or eat weird foods. Sometimes someone becomes a celebrity for having a scandalous lifestyle, or doing something outrageous. There are even celebrities who do nothing but talk about other celebrities!

You might think being a celebrity is a great thing. Everybody loves you. You get invited to fancy parties and make lots of money. The paparazzi follow you all around, take pictures, and hang on your every word. However, as soon as you say or do something wrong, you become the butt of every joke. Heaven help you if you gain a few pounds, have a bad hair day, or wear an ugly outfit! Your face will suddenly be on the cover of all the gossip rags at the supermarket check-out lane. That’s the problem with being a celebrity: one day you’re in, the next day you’re out! Everyone has a good laugh before moving on to the next celebrity blunder.

The media have made politicians into celebrities now too. But the purpose of a celebrity is to provide entertainment. As far as I know, running a country isn’t entertaining. Our leaders are supposed to balance the budget, keep us safe from criminals and foreign enemies, build things like roads and bridges, make important decisions, and uphold the Constitution. I think politicians should pay more attention to doing their jobs rather than hamming it up for television. Leave the entertainment to the celebrities. 

Maybe I should run for president again. 

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Great News!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you a TDB special news bulletin. I'm your happy doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel along with my elated colleague 
Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel. 


After a sad period of dog-lessness due to the loss of our good friend Professor Braydie, humans Dan and Jessy have just adopted a new doggie named Charlee. Here is a photo:


We heard that she is interested in squeaky toys and yum yums. Hooray! We'll be bringing you more reports as this story unfolds.


Update 10:07pm:

Sleeping and squeaky toys! Our favorite things! 

Grumpy as a Lifestyle

Greetings readers. I am Chester L. W. Spaniel. This is The Daily Bone, and I have a bone to pick.

How's this for a grumpy face?
It has come to my attention that there is a certain cat called Grumpy Cat who is getting a lot of internet coverage lately. 


Just put “Grumpy Cat” (don’t do it yet!) in your search engine and tons of stuff will come up. Wow, that cat is sure famous! She even stars in cat food commercials. All this just for looking like she’s grumpy. I can do that!

Grumpy? 

I’ve got the down-turned mouth and big eyes. Is this not grumpy? But you know what? Being famous and starring in ads means I would have to travel. I don’t like cars. I’m a home-body. And I’m not a grump. I could make a snarly face, but humans usually don’t care much for snarling doggies. I guess I’ll have to think of some other way to become rich and famous.


Oh but wait a minute! My serious and stodgy associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel would like to challenge Grumpy Cat. 

Go Joey dog!
Grumpy


















Grumpier
Grumpiest






















But seriously? There is too much grumpy-ism in this world already. There’s hardly anything in this country that hasn’t been labeled by the media as either one political extreme or other; and if you’re not for them, you’re against them. Grump grump grump! You can hardly say anything without arousing the PC police. Grump grump grump. The news is almost always bad news. Grump grump grump. Plane crash, ship sinking, Russians invading, wasteful spending, shrinking middle class, too many taxes, government over-regulation, terrorists, the oceans are rising and the earth is doomed. Doomed I say! Nuclear proliferation! Middle East crisis! The Pipeline! National debt and student loans! The apocalypse is coming! Be grumpy! Bwahahahaha! Grumpy is the new black. Grumpy to the max! 


OK. Enough with the grumpy for now! Life is better if you’re optimistic. The world is not such a bad place unless bad is the only thing you look for. Go chase a squirrel! Play with a squeaky toy. Take a walk. It’s finally Spring! It’s grilled cheese appreciation month! Even Grumpy Cat says that grumpy is just how she looks. Don’t worry, be happy! Have a nice nap. 

No grumps here! Cocker spaniels are a merry breed!
Oh yippy-skippy!

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Work-out Video

Hi there! This is The Daily Bone and I’m your energetic doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.


Well, Spring is in progress here in Western NY. Finally! It’s still cool out, but the grass is growing and the trees are budding. My esteemed colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I have noticed a trend among the humans at this time of year. Having failed to keep their New Year resolutions, they start to panic when they discover that all their summer clothes are now too tight. But it’s still too cold to do much work in the garden, which would burn off calories. The ground is too cold and soggy, and parts of the lawn are mushy. (Although we doggies think it might be funny to see the lawn mower shooting out mud!) All the doggie poop, sticks, and litter have been picked up and this took all of one day. We doggies suggest going for walkies around the neighborhood for exercise. But it seems our one human hasn’t yet recovered from his back ache from shoveling snow, and the other one says she’s on her feet all day at work and just wants to rest when she gets home. Joey dog suggested that all of their cookies, ice cream, crackers, tortilla chips, and cheese be immediately remanded to him for safe keeping. We all know how that will go! Nice try Joey dog!

So Joey dog and I did a search on youtube to find some sort of exercise routine for our humans that is both fun and easy on the back and feet. 


This just in: It's Grilled Cheese Appreciation Month! Wow! We pointed this out to our humans and they decided to make some grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, and gave us some of it. Yum yum! I wish we had found about about this sooner. April is almost over. There are still six more days, though, and we hope our humans make the best of them. We love anything with cheese on it. Hint hint …


Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Earth Day

Hi! This is The Daily Bone and I’m your humble doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.

Today is Earth Day. So I went outside to take a look at, and appreciate, all of the wonderful earth in my  back yard. I found a lot of it! Here are a few pictures.


This earth has a lot of water soaked into it. It's otherwise known as mud.


Here's some earth from last year's mulch, and lots of debris from the arbor vitae bushes on it. It also has moss growing in some spots and a lilac bush too. Lots of good stuff grows in earth.



This earthy area is where the mousies like to travel to get to the birdie seeds under the window feeder. There's a lavender shrub growing here that I've peed on a lot. By next month it will sprout lots of leaves and purple flowers.

Here’s some lovely earth with plants starting to grow in it.


This is the side of the compost pile. See all the decomposing fruit and vegetable scraps? 


All these sticks will be put through the chipper next summer and made into mulch.


Finally, here is some earth that has been churned up by earthworms.

That concludes my Earth Day presentation. Any questions? 

Monday, April 21, 2014

Singing Doggies

Hello everybody and everydoggie! This is The Daily Bone and I’m your vocal doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel.

This evening I want to talk about musical communication. For humans, this means singing. Looking around on Youtube, I’ve found that there are plenty of animals (besides birds) that can sing. But I also noticed that humans especially like to share videos of singing doggies, cats, and goats. My dear friend Miss Ginger, who passed away four years ago, had a fine singing voice. Too bad our humans don’t have many pictures of her. This photo was taken when we were all gathering around the table to commence our favorite daily doggie activity, food watching. Miss Ginger used to provide musical entertainment at every meal.

No I am not sniffing her butt! It's just the camera angle. Sheesh!

I listened to several videos of doggies singing in order to choose which one to feature on TDB. I decided that I liked the one with the doggie who is singing with a squeaky toy in his mouth (video below.) What a wonderful talent!

Woooooo wooooo bark bark bark wooooo!

I think I have an excellent singing voice, even if I do say so myself. Perhaps it’s time for my humans to buy a video camera so that they can put me on Youtube along with the all those other great singing doggie. This photo of me singing along with the video hardly captures my excellent performance. 

Canine singing has been a long tradition in this house. In fact our patron saint Miss Charisma could sing and say yum yum even though she was almost completely deaf. The only exception to this tradition is Joey dog. He says it’s because of his more reserved nature. He can, however, howl quite well when our humans have to leave us alone in the house, and does not hesitate to bark loudly at squirrels and other invaders. Well, we can’t all be singing celebrities.  

Old Miss Charisma


Oh, and here's that singing goat video in case you're interested:



Hero Doggies and Compost Piles

Good morning. This is The Daily Bone and I’m your humble doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel along with my erudite colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel.

Today is the Boston Marathon. Thousands of humans are gathered in one place to either run for a long time, or stand around and watch the humans who are running. From what I see in the news today, security is very tight, with extra cameras, police, and check points. The best part about it was a report about bomb sniffing doggies. It seems despite all their technology, the humans have never invented anything that’s better than a doggie’s nose for sniffing out dangerous things. There are lots of bomb sniffing doggies on duty in Boston today. Hooray for all you smart doggies!


I have been extra busy sniffing out mousies in the compost pile. I wonder what will happen when our humans finally get around to digging that thing over. I’d better be there to supervise, because who knows what might scurry out of there? (The Daily Bone will definitely be recording this event.) It seems the birds have been taking care of any worms in there, though. We see the robins and grackles digging up worms all day long.

Everyone should build a compost pile in their yard. All you have to do is, instead of putting the vegetable peels, grapefruit and melon rinds, moldy peppers, rotten potatoes, apple cores, wilted salad, damaged cabbage leaves, pineapple tops, Halloween pumpkins, broccoli stems, cauliflower leaves, weeds, grass clippings, leaves, and other yard waste in the garbage that goes to a landfill, you put all that stuff in a pile in your yard. Eventually this all gets turned into soil that you can use for your flower beds and vegie gardens.


Of course Joey dog has an important safety reminder about compost piles: May I have your attention please. According to the Yum Yum Coalition Safe Food Directory, humans should never put corn cobs into a compost pile if you have doggies. If they eat these, it might cause an intestinal blockage. To you doggies out there: it’s not a good idea to try to eat a moldy jalapeno pepper from the compost pile. Trust me, just don’t do it. And that’s a memo.

Oh, and here's a great doggie video that is endorsed by the Squeaky Party and the Yum Yum Coalition:


This just in: Joey dog found a whole cauliflower heart in the compost and proceeded to eat it all. He's going to be pretty gassy tomorrow!

Chomp chomp chomp. 

Friday, April 18, 2014

Planet Ryan

Hello friends and doggies! This is The Daily Bone and I’m your totally stunned and amazed doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.


Wow! Today our humans made another treacherous interstellar trip in the car to our favorite miniature human’s home planet. They returned with lots of intriguing pictures of Ryan’s ever growing collection of high tech futuristic squeaky toys.


Here is his brand new squeaky toy storage device. I would love to stick my nose in there! 


Here he is with his dad sitting in the middle of his play room. As you can see, there are additional storage devices visible all around the room. I can only postulate that they are filled with even more fantastic squeaky toys!


This gigantic squeaky ball looks like it must have some anti-gravity properties. Perhaps it's a model of the expanding universe inside a bubble. Next to it is yet another control monitor for keeping track of his vast squeaky toy inventory. Upon closer inspection of this photo, I discovered that this was also a learning device.


Now this completely blew me away: irrefutable evidence that Ryan is actually learning the doggie language (doggish.) My astute colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel agrees that this is amazing!

Amazing indeed! 


I was wondering what Ryan’s current favorite squeaky toy was. The answer was totally mind-boggling: Peeps! Joey dog consulted the Yum Yum Coalition doggie dictionary and found out that Peeps are a type of highly refined space food made out of a foam matrix covered with artificially colored finely ground sucrose crystals. 

Well that does it. I am going to have to get over my fear of riding in a car, and make a trip to Ryan’s home planet so I can personally experience all of his squeaky toy collection. Joey dog suggested he come along to gain some first hand knowledge of these edible Peeps things in order to update the Yum Yum Coalition doggie comestibles data base. 


Yup. There’s a grand and immense universe out there. We doggies have got to get out there and explore it. 

Spring Peepers and Spring Screechers

Hello friends and doggies. This is The Daily Bone and I’m your humble doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel, chairman of the Squeaky Party.

We had some warm weather last weekend. It was almost 80 degrees! At night we heard spring peepers for the first time this year. These are tiny frogs that have spent the winter buried in mud. As soon as it warms up, they come out and start singing. (If you have never heard them before, below is a link to a video that features them.) I am well acquainted with mud. I run around in it every day and then jump into the bathtub to wash it off. And I’m talking about good honest mud that you find in your yard and around ponds where the spring peepers live, not the kind politicians throw at each other.  Frankly, we are all tired of that kind of mud.




Oh, and our favorite miniature human came to visit too. He can walk now! He sits in a high chair during meals and feeds himself. Even better, he drops food down for us doggies to eat. My associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. We can’t wait until he can come out in the back yard and play with us. The first thing we’ll show him is the compost pile that’s chock full of full of big fat wiggly worms! I’m pretty sure I smelled a mousie in there today too! But I digress. 


During the day, there’s a constant cacophony of screeching grackles. I’m sure they’re busy contemplating building nests in the bushes by our house. I’ve spotted them picking up pieces of grass, sticks, weeds, and mud for their projects. Last year it was my job to prevent any grackles from nesting in the bushes in front of the windows. Why? For one thing, they’re noisy! I was successful with this task last year. I barked out the window every time a grackle flew near, and they all reconsidered their real estate choices. The year before, though, we didn’t know the consequences of living near a family of grackles, besides the noise. We soon discovered that grackles keep their nests clean by picking up their baby birdie poop and dropping it about ten yards away. Our cars got showered with grackle doody-bombs every day until the babies left the nest. Here is a picture of little Crappy Poopenflinger right after he left the nest. Hooray and good riddance! And may you never come again! 



Unfortunately, after the weekend, it got cold and snowed again. The peepers went back into their muddy hiding places for now. The screechers were unaffected by the cold weather, so I had to maintain my vigilance. I’ve had some busy days! There was a big full moon out the past few nights and it was perfect for sleeping. Good night. 





Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Easter Bunny

Hello! This is The Daily Bone and I’m your humble doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.

Wow. I just caught a glimpse of the Easter Bunny on TV. He’s over six feet tall, with big long upright ears and huge eyes! He was all fuzzy and white, like a gigantic squeaky toy, and wearing brightly colored clothes. If I ever ran into him face to face, I would be terrified! I’ve obviously underestimated the size and might of this enemy. He’s certainly not what I previously envisioned: a regular little furry brown rabbit. I noticed that this TV Easter Bunny is not secretive at all, and always appears to be surrounded by laughing little children—these must be his minions—and he seems to be encouraging them to roll eggs around on the ground. (This took place at the White House of all places!) I have yet to figure out what kind of treachery this might be. This is turning out to be even more confusing than Halloween! My humans have assured me that this Easter Bunny is just a person dressed in a costume. I’m sorry, but now I’m just lost. I think I’ll go hide under the bed until it’s all over.


The other part of Easter seems to be a bunch of old guys, dressed in table cloths and funny hats, marching around saying prayers to throngs of people who are very joyful about it. This is the religious side of the holiday. I have said before that human religions are something my doggie mind doesn’t quite comprehend. What I think it represents is the idea that someone smarter than everyone else is in charge of things. Usually this higher power encourages people to be kind and loving and generous towards other people, and this is a common thread in most religions. OK, now for the big question: why does it seem that religions are always fighting with each other? You can go back in history and find that religion has been the root of many wars and conflicts through the ages, from the Crusades, to the Holocaust, and then to the unrest in the Middle East that is still going on today. I guess this is a paradox I will never understand. But I can say this: come on, humans. You all believe the same thing. Your higher power, whomever he may be, wants you to have a good life and to be nice to others. Get busy with that! As I’ve suggested many times already, fill those missiles and bombs with squeaky toys, and see what happens. I’m sure even your higher power will be rolling on the floor laughing and having fun. And that’s a memo. 

In other news, my esteemed associate, Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I tried to see what would happen if we rolled an egg around.

OK, now what?
What the … ?
This isn't too bad. 
The results were messy and somewhat tasty, but, alas, inconclusive.
We’re going to need another one in order to complete our investigation. 

Oh and one more thing: As our resident toxicology expert and founder of the Yum Yum Coalition, Joey dog would like to remind us again of the dangers of eating chocolate. 


May I have your attention please. Although delicious, chocolate is a deadly poison to doggies. Do not give chocolate to doggies or leave it where they might find it. If your doggie does happen to eat some chocolate, quickly give him a big spoonful of hydrogen peroxide. This will make him vomit up the chocolate. Then take him to the emergency vet right away for further treatment. I would also like to point out that Easter is not just scary costumes, dangerous chocolate, and unfathomable human traditions. It also means there will be food, like baked ham or lamb, potatoes, broccoli, asparagus, bread and butter, cheese, eggs, salad, cake, and lots of other good stuff! According to the Yum Yum Coalition Safe Food Directory, all those things are OK for doggies to eat. Just remember, no chocolate for doggies! Have a nice day.

Yum!