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?

Politics Is Boring

Hi everybody. This is your loveable doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel, and this is The Daily Bone.

Hi.

In the past few weeks, I have presented not one, not two, but three articles on the subject of hate. It seems there are tons of web sites and social media pages that are practically bursting with horrible hateful things, especially when it comes to politics. My kind-hearted colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I tried to analyze this using doggie logic, but have failed so far to understand what is so great about hating something. So then we decided to look at the problem from a different point of view. What kind of things do humans love? The first thing to come to mind is entertainment. Humans love to watch exciting movies about good vs bad, especially if it involves the good guys blasting the bad guys to pieces. They also love watching sports, like football. Politics, on the other hand is essentially boring: a bunch of humans in a big semi-circular room, arguing about all the legal minutiae of making complicated laws to regulate every move and penny we make, and then wrapping it all up in barrels of pork. Who wants to watch that when the new Ironing Board Man movie or a major football game is playing on TV?

So, the media figured out how to make politics more exciting, and in the process, choose sides, promote their agenda, and make a ton of money: make politics into a sport! Yeah, that’s right. There are two big teams—Democrats and Republicans—and they can be labeled by a narrow  list of extreme and unrealistic things they sort of stand for. Now people will take politics personally, so let the hating begin! As I have pointed out in many TDBs, from what you see on TV, you might think there is bloodshed, mayhem, and downright havoc going on in Washington, as the two teams slug it out on Capitol Hill. It’s a death match, and there’s a panoply of reporters and analysts lined up to explain each and every move, try to figure out who will win, and why, and how, and what it will cost, and how it will affect our lives, all whilst spinning the whole thing right or left. Then the hate-fest continues on line.

Nobody seems to stop and think, hey, I know a lot of nice, friendly, logical, fair-minded people who are affiliated with either one party or another, and they’re not anything like the exaggerated stereotypes they’re labeled with. So our doggie advice to all you humans is, don’t judge each other by the lunatic fringe presented on the media. Be kind to each other. Listen to both sides, and make your own judgement according to the goodness in your heart. Maybe you don’t agree with some issues, but that doesn’t mean you should express your disagreement with hatred. Hate just creates more hate. And that’s a memo.

Seriously … just stop hating.

Holiday Recap

Hello. I’m Chester L. W. Spaniel, chairman of the Squeaky Party, and this is The Daily Bone.

I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up with my writing in the past couple weeks. It has been extremely busy at our house. We got to see many of our favorite people, like Jessy who flew here in an airplane all the way from Planet Florida, and stayed here for a week! Hooray!

On Christmas Day, our favorite mini-human, Ryan, came to visit, and we got to open presents. Much fun and silliness ensued. I was running around so fast that there were hardly any good pictures of me. I must have been going at warp speed. Of course, Ryan and I thought the wrapping paper, boxes, and bows were the most fun!

Now that Christmas is done, I would think the humans are having fun with their new squeaky toys, but no. Instead, they’re all busy taking things back to the stores. It’s like Black Friday in reverse! I’m totally confused. If memory serves, wasn’t there a big jolly fat guy dressed in fuzzy clothes who was laughing, ho, ho, ho, at everybody during the entire shopping frenzy? He was making a list, and checking it twice. He was going to find out who’s naughty and nice. Maybe he knows something all those crazy shopping people don’t, and he’s laughing at their foolishness. Wait a minute. I get it now! Those silly people spent all their time and energy running around, thinking that they had to buy the presents, when all the time Mr. fat and fuzzy had it covered. Ho ho ho ho! Next year I'll have it all figured out. And that’s a memo.

Natural Habitat

Good morning squeaky toy fans! This is The Daily Bone and I'm your well adapted doggie host Chester L. W. Spaniel.

We wanted to give you a quick look at our  morning adventures before we sit down and ponder more serious issues to discuss here on TDB. If you've been checking the weather reports in the north east part of the USA, you'd know there has been a lot of snow falling. Our back yard was piled high with the fluffy white stuff. My esteemed associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I are well adapted to such conditions. Instead of our usual neat and tidy buzz cut, we have our shaggy winter coats on. We have fur growing between our toes so that our feet stay warm. Our humans don't seem to like this condition so much because we tend to track more dirt and debris, not to mention clumps of snow, into the house, but they're willing to put up with it because they know we're warm outside when it's below 20 degrees. Well, any way, here we are rushing off to flush a flock of sparrows out of this bush. This is what our breed is supposed to do.

(Don't worry. The birdies soon returned to the bush once we went inside.)

I went into the bush to make sure there were no mousies hiding there too.
Can you see me? I'm in camouflage.

How about here?

Oh yeah. This is our other natural habitat: waiting for our
yum yum reward for doing a good job. 

Super Fun Snowday

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

Wow! In spite of it being Friday the thirteenth, today has been one of those really great super fun days for us doggies. For one thing, it’s been snowing all day.

My hardy associate Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel and I have been running around the back yard, exploring, trying to count the birds, and hunting for mousies. I think there must be three dozen sparrows, several chickadees, an assortment of finches, and a big bunch of juncos, plus Crazy bird and his wife (the cardinals) hiding in the bushes, eating bird seeds at the feeders, and hopping around in the snow.

The Evil Squirrel Cartel has also been out in force, mostly trying to steal hawthorn berries. We doggies have been working like crazy keeping them away.

Later on, to my surprise, we got a package in the mail. Inside were the most wonderful squeaky toys ever! They were from one of our favorite long time fans, Auntie Pat in Pennsylvania and her cat Tricky. Thank you so much.

To top things off, we got to see the snow plow go trundling by.

After all that fun …

Snoooooorrrrrrrrk.

Prefabricated Generalization

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

Getting back to the subject of hate on the internet, I have come up with a word to describe it:  prefabricated generalization. This means somebody has decided that a certain other person or group has specific characteristics which classify them as bad, evil, hateful, selfish, crazy, extremist, radical, criminal, lazy, stupid, deplorable, despicable … well, you get the idea. Through the internet and the media, they spread the word that this or that group or person has these characteristics, and a large number of people hear and read it, and consequently believe it, whether it is true or not. They tell their friends and contacts, and the number of haters explodes exponentially. It isn’t long before an entire, say, political party, religion, nationality, class, has been totally demonized. Everybody has lots of fun sharing the hate and vilification online.

You might say, oh I was just fooling around and blowing off some steam by participating in hate talk and nobody will be hurt by it. But what if, after you made hateful statements online, you find out that your next door neighbor, or your coworker, or your best friend’s mother, or your child’s classmate, or a facebook friend is of the belief you said you hated so bitterly and made cruel jokes about, and now you have hurt his feelings and made an enemy of him. You see? Hate only creates more hate.

My erudite colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel pointed out something very important about my term prefabricated generalization. He says, isn’t that same thing as racism? Think about it. And that’s a memo.