Winter Sports

Good day everybody. This is The Daily Bone and I’m your athletic doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.

The Winter Olympics is coming soon. Since we doggies are not going to be traveling to Russia to participate, my energetic associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I have decided to have our own Doggie Olympics. The first event is racing through the snow. We’re going to be timed as we run around the yard.

We're off!

Hey, no fair! Joey dog is taking a short cut!

We pause to bark at the doggie across the street. But I remembered the timer
was still ticking, so I was off again.

Here's Joey dog racing down the home stretch.

I got a bit side-tracked as I went to sniff the base of the pear tree for
squirrel tracks. But I soon got back in the race.

Now we'll anxiously await the results.

What's that? You forgot to start the timer?

Oh well. I'll just run another lap. Woooohoooo!

The Doggie Diet and Fitness Plan

Hello. Chester L. W. Spaniel here, chairman of the Squeaky Party. Welcome to The Daily Bone.

I always have to laugh at the humans this time of year. Immediately following the holiday season of feasting and overindulgence, after the sentimental reminiscing about the past year along with the sharing of comfort food, after the imbibing of alcoholic beverages to celebrate the new year, all the humans become obsessed with losing weight. Every other television commercial is about some kind of magical diet or other. Wow! Eat this food and lose five pounds in a week! Join this health club and get fit within a month. Take these vitamins or diet pills, and have the body you’ve always dreamed of. The talk shows all feature interviews with diet gurus who say carbohydrates don’t count, or carbohydrates do count, or protein is the answer, or eat like a caveman. (What do cavemen eat at this time of year? Hawthorn berries, pine cones, and squirrels? Yeah, you'd get pretty skinny living on that!) The extent humans are willing to go to reduce their weight astounds me: get your colon cleansed out with an enema, put leaves and sticks in the juicer and just drink that for a week, eat nothing but eggs, grapefruit, and brown rice. But, you know, the humans who promote that diet stuff all make a lot of money from it, especially after the holidays.

So my slim, trim associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I decided to make a exercise and weight loss regimen and see how much business we get. This might be an on-going project, but here are a few of the first rules we thought up.

Rule #1. Drop several mouthfuls of your yum yum crunchy meatball healthy weight maintenance doggie food on the floor. That should reduce your caloric intake significantly.

Rule #2. Drink lots of water. That's right: plain water. You don't need artificial sweeteners, colors, and flavors, extra vitamins, caffeine, weird protein stuff that you can't even pronounce, and herbal extracts in your water. Don't spend your hard-earned money on  special exotic bottled mineral water either. Regular tap water at room temperature is excellent. 

Rule #3. Always stretch before exercising.

Rule #4. You don't need to drive to the gym. There's one in your own backyard. Go outside and run laps around the yard several times a day. Chase those squirrels, chipmunks, and bunnies whenever possible. Look at me go! 

Rule #5. Don't expect a doggie treat every time you come back into the house.

Rule #6. Stay alert at all times for the Evil Squirrel Cartel and other trespassers. This will maintain good muscle tone and a clear mind. 

Rule #7. Be sure to get plenty of rest. 

And That's a memo.

Imminent Death and Destruction

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

Humans never cease to confound and bewilder me. Last night on TV at 11:45PM almost every channel featured scenes of a massive, teeming crowd of humans (I’m talking tens of thousands!) standing outside in the freezing cold at the confluence of a couple major motor ways in New York City, waiting for a giant sparkling squeaky ball to drop on them. Someone said that the gargantuan blinky orb was made out of special crystals and weighed several tons. It kept twinkling and changing colors as if it was relaying some alien coded message pronouncing an imminent hostile invasion and consequent annihilation, reminiscent of a scene from the movie “Independence Day.” Most of the humans there were wearing funny hats, and had what looked like long balloons with tassels on one end. (Yikes! I’m terrified of balloons!) They were yelling, screaming, jumping up and down, dancing, and shaking those balloon things. Maybe they were trying to scare it away. I would certainly be running as fast as I could to get away from all that! They became more frenzied as the behemoth ball of glittering doom descended to crush them all. This was all so frightening I could hardly stand to watch. Visions of total destruction blasted into my doggie imagination! Surely this would turn into one of those massive media rolling disaster news alerts, like the Boston bombing, and we’d be reminded of the terrifying event every five minutes on every channel for weeks. I hid my eyes as the countdown commenced. My fear was short-lived, though, as I discovered the squeaky ball didn’t actually fall on anyone. The next thing that happened was the release of confetti over the crowd, and the humans started hugging and kissing each other as fireworks exploded overhead.

As you know, we doggies don’t know how to read a calendar, and don’t keep track of the date. We fail to understand what is so important about the end of one year and the start of another. But apparently the humans think this is a reason for a wonderful celebration. My humans promptly went to bed after the dropping of the squeaky ball. This morning, things seemed the same as always. So Happy New Year.

Snoooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk.

Our Resolutions

I have limited time right now—my ghost writer has to go to work at the nursing home this evening—so I will dispense with the formalities. My esteemed colleague Joey dog and I are thinking about New Year's Resolutions. We wonder why the humans insist on going through this ordeal every year, and never stick with the resolutions they make. In fact, by the second week of January, all resolutions have been completely forgotten! We suggest that they not make resolutions that are so difficult to keep, like losing one hundred pounds. But we can come up with a few doggie resolutions that we're sure we can keep, and hope our human friends and family will take our advice.

I resolve to loose one pound.

I resolve to gain one pound.

I resolve not to steal any designer cupcakes without permission.

I resolve to continue guarding our territory from the Evil Squirrel Cartel.

I resolve to guard our territory, even in a snow storm.

We resolve to take more naps, and sleep through New Year's Eve again.

Old Year's Day

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

Yet again, a human Holiday has me confused. I mean today is last day of 2013. So why are the humans watching long boring programs about stuff that already happened? First there’s a review of all the big disasters: tornadoes, typhoons, floods, plane crashes, train wrecks, bombings, and shootings. Wasn’t it hard enough to go through all that once already? Then there are lists of all the political and international events. If you ask me, I’d rather not relive the following things: the government shut-down crisis (which wasn’t really a crisis) the violent events in the Middle East, all the government scandals and hearings, and the televised murder trials—those rate a double doggie snort. Some famous people died, and some celebrities did outrageous things, one of which we’d rather barf all day than have to see yet again.

My astute associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel has told me that we should remind our readers that doggies live in the present, and don’t keep track of all the human tom-foolery that happens every day in the world. Nor do we bear grudges. We are forgiving creatures, and will always give you a second chance to redeem yourself in our eyes. Joey dog also says maybe we should just play along with our humans and show you some pictures you might not have seen of our past year. And here they are:

Patience

Patience. Yeah. We can do that. Keep your eye on the yum yum.

This is The Daily Bone and I'm your humble … oh, what the heck! You know who I am already! We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you this commercial advertisement. It is approved by both the Squeaky Party and the Yum Yum Coalition! Here is a video below, so hurry up and watch it!

Hunting Expedition

Hello. This is The Daily Bone and I’m your adventurous doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel, along with my stout-hearted associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel.

T-minus ten seconds to take off. Yipes! 

Last week, Joey dog and I had to go on a very perilous car ride. We cowered in the back seat for a while, awaiting our impending doom at the vet’s office for a shot or a horrifying ear cleaning. (Where else do we ever go in a car?) It was a good thing Jessy was sitting next to us or else we would have panicked, as the ten minute ride stretched out to an hour and a half. The farther we went, the worse the snowy weather became, until we could hardly see out the windows. We could feel the tires slip and slide on the road at times!

Five minutes out. Refueling. Are we there yet?

When we finally stopped, we discovered we had reached another planet, and this was the home of our most revered human: Oma. What a relief! Oma always gives us lots of yum yums. But then we found out that our doggie expertise was needed for an important mission there. Oma thought there might be a mousie in the basement of her house, and we doggies were supposed to hunt for it. After a thorough inspection of the entire basement, we concluded there were no mousies at all in there. In addition, we could not find any way a mousie could possibly get in there in the first place. We were proud to have been able to give her that positive report.

Here come the yum yums. Hooray!

You mean we have to go back too?