Better Than Shopping

Welcome to The Daily Bone! I’m your snowy doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel reporting. Instead of going shopping, standing around in long lines, and battling it out over the last pumpkin pie scented candle on the store rack on Black Friday like everybody else, we spent the day out in the back yard enjoying the snow.

Here's my adventurous associate Joseph (Joey dog)
Spaniel trotting through the snow. 

I'm looking for mousies under the snow-covered bush. 

Hooray!

This is way more fun than shopping!

Look. The trees decorated themselves!

Now do I still want to go shopping? No way! And that's a memo.

Black Friday

Welcome to another edition of The Daily Bone. I’m your host Chester L. W. Spaniel, chairman of the Squeaky Party. I have a very serious subject to talk about today. In fact, I’m so worried about it that I think I’m going to stay inside all day.

Today is Black Friday. It doesn’t look too dark out to me … yet. But I’m sure anything with such an ominous name must be really, really bad. What could it be? Maybe a big, scary thunderstorm is coming. Could it be approaching nuclear war? Or the end of the world? My associate, Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel, who is adept at spotting the signs of impending doom, such as a visit to the vet, or ear cleaning time, says it’s surely going to be an invasion of aliens from the planet Gobbledigook coming to exact revenge on us for eating so many turkeys yesterday! Hey, wait a minute. I see you snickering there behind the couch, Joey dog. This is no laughing matter! It’s got to be plague, like the black death, and a zombie apocalypse! Oh no!

I’ve been noticing that my humans have been getting alarmed at the increasing number of ads in the newspaper. The mailbox is always crammed with junk mail too. Furthermore, all the TV commercials are vigorously warning people to get ready for Black Friday. What other reason is there for stores to tell people to shop like crazy, except to prepare for a disaster? This morning there were bone-chilling TV reports about people lining up at three in the morning, and waiting for hours in the freezing cold just to get into stores. Traffic is lining up for miles at the freeway exits to the malls. Once the humans get into the stores, they become an angry mob fighting over the things they want to buy. If that’s not enough to scare the crap out of you, I don’t know what is! Joey dog pointed out to me that our humans have been buying and storing huge amounts of food lately, like that fifty pound bag of doggie food. This cannot be a good sign.

Therefore, my advice to you is to gather all your squeaky toys, and your yum yums, hide them under the bed, and then get under there with them. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Obviously a terrible catastrophe is coming. It’s Black Friday!

Thanksgiving Time

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

The last couple days have been very eventful. First, there was a big monster snow storm. All the TV stations broadcasted the severe weather warnings, and travel advisories. They tracked it every agonizing inch of the way to be sure we all knew exactly where it was at all times. You would have thought it was the end of the world (again!)

Here I am on Tuesday night checking the accumulation and trying to
figure out what's so dangerous about it. 

The next morning, it looked like this. I still don't know what the big deal was.

Today, after making sure all the snow was done falling and the roads were cleared, our humans made a perilous trip to the planet where our favorite miniature human Ryan lives. Since we hate riding in the car, my esteemed colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I waited at home. We were rewarded with leftover yum yums, and photos of Ryan’s technologically advanced squeaky toys. Wow!

This control panel is still his base of operations. He has gotten very adept at working with it. Apparently it plays musical tones, gives voice commands and reports, makes blinking lights, and updates him on his squeaky toy inventory, depending which button he pushes. Maybe he will bring it along with him the next time he visits us.

Next he demonstrated his new squeaky toy washer machine. Will wonders never cease?

Oh, I almost forgot. Today is Thanksgiving Day. That means we should all stop and think about all the good things we have, like squeaky toys, yum yums, our jobs as home security experts, squeaky toys, our nice yard to run around in, our humans, our house, um, and squeaky toys too. Wonderful wonderful squeaky toys. And that's a memo.

Sunday Afternoon Football and Important Local News

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and doggies. This is The Daily Bone and I’m your doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel. With me tonight is my esteemed colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel.

Hello sports fans. Cocker Spaniels are a sporting breed, you know.

Today we found out one of our humans was going to a football game. We never gave much thought to football before, but we decided to watch it for a while and see if we could spot our human in the crowds of spectators. We couldn’t find her, but we did get a chance to make some other observations. Obviously the game involves a squeaky ball, so that's good. It seems the humans who are actually playing with the squeaky ball are divided into two groups. One group has shiny tight pants on, and the other has tight white pants. They all run around, bump into each other, and fall down as they try to either keep the ball or throw it away. It's quite confusing actually. The players come in all shapes and sizes which we thought was puzzling. Joey and I agreed it wouldn’t seem fair if we Cocker Spaniels had to tackle a Saint Bernard, or a Miniature Dachshund had to try to knock us down. There were also some guys in striped outfits who made funny arm signals, and a bunch of serious looking guys pacing around the edges of the playing field wearing microphone head sets who appeared to be having no fun at all! We never did figure out what the rules were, when suddenly it was over. We don’t know who won.

So much for that!

In other news, it’s been snowing out. For some reason, our humans don’t care much for snow, and go outside regularly to scrape it off the driveway. This morning one of my humans kicked the other out of bed at 6:23AM and made him go out and brush the snow off her car before she went to work. We doggies don’t know why this was such a problem, so we just rolled over and went back to sleep.

It started Saturday morning.

Now everything is all white.

I also got a wonderful new squeaky toy this week that emitted a strange blinking glow and made funny noises.

boing boing boing

I immediately tried to chew it apart to discover what kind of creature was inside it making that noise, but my humans told me to stop. They wondered again, with exasperation, why I always have to modify my new squeaky toys. Well, it’s easier to hide them from the government if they don’t make a lot of noise, and they take up less storage space if I take the stuffing out. That’s just logical. How could I sleep if my squeaky toys were rolling around making funny noises all day and night? As it is, I have to keep an eye out for them constantly. 

Resistance is futile, squeaky toys. You will be assimilated. Don't even think about escaping! Grrrrr.

Tornado Warnings and UFOs Too!

We interrupt The Daily Bone for a fast breaking news alert. This is your windblown doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel reporting from the back yard.

 

There were severe weather warnings in our area. Some parts of the country have already had tornadoes, and now the storms are moving our way! I’ve never seen or experienced a tornado, but from what I’ve seen in the news, I would never, ever want to! Wow! Cars flying around, houses blown apart into splinters and rubble, and people getting killed. Scary stuff. Last night one of our humans arrived home from work at 11:45PM and said it was like driving through a car wash in the dark, and some parts of the road were completely covered with fallen leaves. Yikes! We doggies spent the entire night anxiously listening to the roaring wind, worrying about tornadoes.

It’s still extremely windy outside today. Leaves and sticks are blowing everywhere. Not only that, I saw a UFO go skittering across the neighbor’s yard and crash land next to our fence. 

Um, hey guys. There's a UFO here. Isn't anyone going to pick it up or something?

I went inside and called up Professor Braydie Spiker to ask her what I should do. As you know Professor Braydie is one of the foremost experts on paranormal events and UFOs. But she was taking a nap.

Well, maybe it’s safer for me to just stay inside and watch from the window. Hopefully we won’t get hit by any tornadoes, the wind will die down, and no more UFOs will be flying around. And that’s a memo.

Oh, and this just in: mysterious conjoined potato discovered in bag of normal potatoes. It's a weird, weird world!

Spinning

 

Hi everyone! This is The Daily Bone, and I’m your dizzy doggie host, Chester L. W. Spaniel. Hang onto your squeaky toys because your head will soon be spinning! (I originally wrote this TDB a year ago and posted it on this blog last May. But I think it's appropriate to repeat considering what's going on in the news right now.)

Today’s vocabulary word is “spin.” It used to mean to turn around and around, like a wheel. But these days, it takes on a whole new meaning. Now it means to take some bad news and make it look good, or to take some good news and make it look bad, or to take bad news and make it look worse, or to take good news and make it look better, or to skip it altogether and just talk about cute, fuzzy things like puppies and birdies and the latest diet craze. It can also be used to take credit for something good that you actually had nothing to do with, or to make it look like you had nothing to do with something bad, or blame someone else for it. Dizzy yet?

Politicians and the media have turned spinning into a fine art. So how can we tell if something is true or if it’s being given a spin? For one thing, consider the source. If every television channel reports that there is a volcano erupting in Italy, then it’s probably true. But if you see a celebrity say the volcano is erupting because of global warming, fracking or Republicans, then it’s probably a spin. If a politician says something is a good idea, then turns around a month later and says it isn’t, then he’s spinning. It’s kind of like chasing your tail. It’s funny for a while, but then you just look like a weirdo and get your picture put on http://www.shameddog.com/

OK, so I’m going to give spinning a try. Do you see that pee pee on the floor in the corner? I have no idea how it got there. Perhaps my elderly associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel might be having a little problem because of his age. We’ll have to give it a good sniff and take some time to analyze it properly. Maybe we should send it to a lab for DNA testing and then set up a Congressional subcommittee to investigate further. Or, try this: I saw an ant there and so I had to do something quick about it before the whole colony came charging up through that little crack in the corner over there. Oh, and it’s not so bad. It will dry up soon and then no one will even know it’s there. Except for us doggies and our sensitive sense of smell. It’s good practice for us to have old pee spots to keep sniffing skills sharp. Hey, with all this global warming and fracking to worry about—and what about those darn Republicans?—a doggie can’t help but be nervous.

But you know what? That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Bleah!

I think I’m better off saying, yes, it was I who made that pee pee in the corner. I’m sorry about that and I’ll try my best not to do it again. Now that’s called taking personal responsibility. If everybody would be honest about things, the world would be a better place. And that’s a memo.

I am not elderly!

Fun Time

This is The Daily Bone! I'm your comical doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel, along with my hilarious colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel.

We doggies are tired of all the dire news on TV! So today we're not talking about important issues at all! We're doing fun stuff. We went back into our archives and found some photos of us running through the Autumn leaves in the back yard.

The Evil Squirrel Cartel has been annoying us to no end this week. Every time we turn around one of them is sneaking up to the bird feeders, and we have to run out and chase them away. Grrr! But we didn't let that get us down. We went to youtube and found a new sport: squirrel launching! Hope you laugh as much as we did at these videos!

Then there's my old favorite, the Twirl-a-Squirrel! Hooray! (I want one of those for Christmas.)

What the Heck is a Deductible?

Good evening everybody. This is The Daily Bone, and I’m your humble doggie host, Chester L. W. Spaniel. Save up your squeaky toys! You’ll need them to pay the deductible!

My erudite colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I are getting tired of hearing the same old thing on the news over and over again. I’m sure you know what I mean! We doggies tried to figure out O-care using squeaky toys and the cost of vet visits. But we kept coming up with negative numbers, especially when it came to deductibles. But you know we doggies are not very good at math. We also had a heated disagreement about the monetary value of squeaky toys. Joey dog doesn’t think the government will accept my ragged old squeaky toys as payment for my insurance premium. Yum yums, on the other hand, might work. So why don’t we just pay the vet directly with yum yums (or squeaky toys) instead of involving the government in the middle of the transaction? We decided it didn’t make sense in terms of doggie logic, and the humans must be crazy. Anyway, here we are in the newsroom trying to figure out what else to talk about today.

Fortunately, we heard from our good friend The Lady Galadriel (Lady) today. She called to tell us about the strange things her humans have been doing out in the yard. For some reason they’re digging up the grass, and making long, straight rows of plants all cataloged and identified with special little tags. She is totally mystified! I asked Lady if she tried giving the plants a good sniff to figure out what they are. She said she doesn’t spend much time outside because in her part of Planet Florida there are lots of nasty ticks that bite and make her delicate, sensitive skin all itchy and inflamed. I happened to get a tick stuck to me once this summer, and it was not a good experience! Bleah!

So then Joey dog and I thought about other instances where humans plant things in straight rows. Our yard has a few rows of flowers which I routinely dig up whenever I suspect a mousie might be hiding under them. (I’ve gotten into big trouble for doing that!) Then we remembered one of our humans talking about driving past big fields of corn on her way to work. These fields were all planted in perfect rows. Joey dog pointed out that the Yum Yum Coalition has corn listed as a delicious summer time treat along with tomatoes and pears. We suggested to Lady that perhaps her humans are doing some type of farming, and that yum yums might ensue from their efforts.

Yum yums?

The mysterious rows.

Lady perked up about that. Yum yums are the most important part of her day. Joey dog and I can agree with that. But then Joey dog took doggie logic a bit farther. Maybe the rows of plants Lady’s humans were planting are like a savings account they could use later if they had to pay a big deductible. But why give the government the yum yums when you can eat them yourself, Lady argued. I was still puzzled about what, exactly, a deductible is. It kind of sounds to me more like a defense against the duck dynasty. You know, a de-duck-tible? Joey and Lady told me to shut up and go sit in the corner.

So, after all that discussion we doggies still haven't figured out what a deductible is. And that's a memo.

Sheesh!

In The Dark

Good afternoon. This is The Daily Bone and I’m your interested doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel, chairman of the Squeaky Party. With me is my curious colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel founder of the Yum Yum Coalition.

First off, we’d like to give an invitation to all our human readers to send us photos of their pets and other animals that affect your lives. As you know, The Daily Bone never discriminates between animals. He have featured doggies, cats, turkeys, geckos, birds, shrews, and even wasps from the American Pollen Worker’s Union. Along with photos, tell us a little bit about your animal friends. Do they have special jobs? Have they done anything remarkable or funny? Do they have an interesting personal history? Do they like squeaky toys and yum yums? Do they have opinions on current events? Our human writer can take almost any picture and bit of information, and make it into a wonderful, funny, meaningful story about how animals make your lives better. So please, don’t keep us in the dark!

Speaking of keeping us in the dark, we’d like to comment on the Affordable Care Act controversy that has taken over the news lately. We are not going to bash it or praise it. However, we wish the public was made aware of exactly how this thing would work before it went into effect, rather than finding it all out afterwards. Instead of all that fighting between Democrats and Republicans for the last few years, they could have spent the time examining it in an open and honest way, and then worked together to make it function to everyone’s benefit. Shame on all of you politicians! You need to go sit in the corner with your tails down and think about all the time and money you wasted on your demagoguery, obfuscation, and prevarication. 

Post Halloween Report

This is The Daily Bone, and I'm your doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.

After the Halloween debacle (I'm sorry, but to me lots of people dressed in weirdo costumes, ringing our doorbell, and shouting "trick or treat," and me having to bark and snarl at them all is most definitely a certified debacle!) my esteemed colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I realized we hadn't checked in with Professor Braydie Spiker that day. As you probably know, lots of weird things happen at Professor Braydie's secret laboratory, like UFOs and paranormal balloon activity. However, she reported nothing out of the ordinary at her house on Planet Florida. Maybe I'm just blowing the whole thing out of proportion.