A little advice...

Myrtle had two plumbers over to the house on Thursday to install a new sink in our bathroom.  Now, first I shall say that I preferred the old sink!  As you can clearly see, it is low enough that even a puppy dog can use it.  However, that's the very reason Myrtle replaced the sink.

My puppy momma has something called arthritis.  I think it is a disease that makes you cranky.  But Myrtle tells me that it is a disease that causes stiffness, swelling, and pain in joints.  For my puppy momma, using such a low sink was hard on her.  She would grunt and groan while doing so.  And she would be very, very grumpy afterwards.

Well, the plumbers were nice fellows.  They played with me a bit...at least until they grew weary of retrieving the fascinating bits and pieces I plucked out of their work bags. That was okay with me, however, because one of the plumbers very kindly took the toilet paper off the holder and set it within my reach.  Myrtle only ever lets me play with the empty core.  That kind man gave me an entire roll!

I had a grand old time with the toilet paper.  Myrtle had been complaining about how there was no mid-West winter, so I provided snow all over the living room floor for her.  Because the snow outside is rather tasty, I helped myself to some of the snow I made.  Okay, a lot of it.

Myrtle didn't really know that I had eaten the toilet paper.  She just scolded me over the mess.  As the evening wore on, though, I started to feel a bit peaked.  Myrtle didn't really understand why all I wanted to do was curl up in her lap. Once we went up to bed, I did not fool around in the bathroom or play with my Babies or anything.  All I wanted was the growing agony in my belly to cease.

It did.  After many, many, many times of throwing up foul bits of toilet paper.

Myrtle was not happy with me when she first figured out what was causing my belly ache.  But soon she ceased scolding me.  For a while, she ceased everything, having fallen down in a pile of former toilet paper.  When she awoke, her stomach emptied, too.  And there was lots and lots and lots of the kind of silence that you don't want to hear.

As she worked to get us both cleaned up and then tend to bedroom floor, Myrtle's face got very wet.  I dried it off for her once we were back in bed. It was a long, miserable night for us both.

So, well, I would like to proffer that eating a roll of toilet paper just might not be the best course of action.

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

Finally...

Myrtle has been rather ill and oft discouraged, so she has resisted every attempt I have made of her to start typing for me again.  I finally convinced her that my many admirers were probably going through Amos withdrawal.  Hence, I'm back!

Did you miss me?

There are a gizillion new photos of me to post, but Myrtle says that to stick them all up here would make for too much work for her.  I begged for at least one to start things off.  She agreed.  So, I chose this one. Am I not still utterly adorable?

I am a bit reluctant to admit that Myrtle and I are going through a growing period, so to speak.  Sometimes, she finds me rather trying.  Mostly, she plain flummoxes me.  Frankly, I think I have far, far more to tolerate in her than she does in me.  But I am, after all, a very accommodating fellow.

Right now, we are in the midst of the Grand Experiment Take Two.  Therefore, I am quite pleased to announce that all baby gates in the house have been taken down.  Myrtle talked for hours...or so it seemed...about the fact that she wanted to see just how much I have grown up.  [After all, I am now 15 months old!]  She wanted to start trying to trust me in the house, to see if I could make wise decisions.  One way she did this is by not forcing me to do my major business immediately after supper.  Myrtle allows me the freedom to let her know when I have a need to do so, rather than following her need for me to take care of things.

Another way is the removal of the baby gates. With the last of the baby gates down, that means I now have total access to the two main floors of the house.  [My continued major business indiscretions on concrete preclude me from having the run of the basement, too.]  In other words, I can run up and down either staircase as much as my heart desires!

Yes, for the first few days, I did avail myself of this privilege many a time.  So much so that I suspect Myrtle was ready to fetch the baby gates again.  Now, racing up and down the servant stairs, the ones covered with thick brown grass, is a delight.  I can even skip a step here and there if I put my mind to it.  But there has been no such racing upon the main staircase.  The first time I ever stepped paw there, down I went its entire length on my belly to land in a pile at the bottom landing!  I am a tad ashamed to admit that I was frightened and rather sore afterward.  However, I am very proud to announce that I can now go up or down those ginormous wooden steps without falling or slipping or anything other than proper staircase navigation.

In fact, I used this new found ability to trick Myrtle when she was angry with me and tried to give me a timeout for something she had never forbidden.  When she closed the door to the parlor and to the dining room, she forgot that I still had access to the servant's stairs.  Once she was safely ensconced in the GREEN chair, I snuck up the servant's stairs and down the main staircase so that I could launch myself up beside her.  My puppy momma was so surprised that she relented on the time-out and allowed me to remain with her.

[Myrtle might very well have been afraid that I could have been hurt on the main staircase.  However, now I am quite confident on them myself and do not slip even a single time whilst traversing the smooth wooden steps.]

Why was I being disciplined?

Well, Myrtle had gone grocery shopping and she bought herself a treat: a fresh, sugar coated, yeast doughnut.  It was in a box at the top of one of the grocery bags.  While she was busy unloading the groceries, I helped her by unloading the doughnut.  Really, it took me mere seconds to nose open the box, remove the doughnut, carry it to the living room rug, and polish it off for her.  She didn't even notice I was gone.  She did notice, however, that the doughnut was gone.  A very, very loud and angry sort of notice.

But Myrtle never told me that doughnuts were not puppy-appropriate food. Never!  Tell me, then, how in the world was I supposed to know that the food so easily accessed was Myrtle-only food?  It was wrong--very, very wrong--for her to punish me for something I was not aware was improper behavior.

SIGH.

I will say that I have surprised my puppy momma with the fact that there have been absolutely no accidents on the brown grass upstairs.  I have been very, very good at following proper protocol in the disposition of my bodily excesses, with the tiny exception of the basement concrete floor.  [To me, it is identical to the garage floor, a space where Myrtle has not objected to my personal actions.  So, I do not see the problem with using it for purposes other than walking.]

I could have told Myrtle that I can be responsible when properly motivated.  And having the freedom of the house is motivation enough.  After all, that means that I can visit Flower Baby, who, if you remember, stays up in our bed all day long, whenever my heart desires.

But, really, Myrtle need not have worried.  The truth is that I prefer to be at her side, no matter where she is.  Even if I am napping, should she go to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a drink, I will gather myself up and follow her.  I even poke my nose up over the side of the antique tub each time Myrtle takes a shower just to be sure she is all right.   So, while I like the freedom to go where I please about my own home, where I always long to be most is with my puppy momma.

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

Lost arts...

My nemesis is getting skinnier and skinnier...but he just won't go away. In the top left photo, you can see him fleeing my wrath after having squeezed his loathsome body between the side gate and the fence.  Chicken.  In the top right, you can see him sitting at the edge of my neighbor's house, taunting me.  There he will stay until I go back to Inside.  No matter how long I glare at him from my side of the house, he will remain.  The rat.

My puppy momma has told me, again and again, that I should learn the art of compromise or sharing or both.  Myrtle says they are lost arts.  I don't know about that.  I find nothing artful about having Fearsome Beast living in MY backyard and taunting me in the process.  Myrtle says I should feel sorry for him, because while I have gotten a tad...plump...he has shrunk in size over the winter.  She has worried that he will die.  Me?  Well, honestly, I would say, "Good riddance!" were that to happen.

But despite her confusing and somewhat treasonous stance on my nemesis, Myrtle does love me.  Truly she does.

Today, she bought me my own Baby Bunny, complete with a squeaker!

Now, this bunny is down right ugly.  And already I do not have the same love and affection I have for all my Babies.  Instead, I have found it a perfect object of all my ire and wrath and frustration over Fearsome Beast.

Already, I have ripped his whiskers off and damaged his tail.  I eaten one of his eyes.  And I am thinking that his ears might make a good snack, too.

I shall not tuck him into bed with all my other babies.
I shall not snuggle with him.
I shall not carry him about to keep him company.
I shall not love him.

This bunny shall be no Baby of mine.  I shall be making short work of him.

Too bad Myrtle won't let me get my paws on the real thing.  Maybe...just maybe...after seeing me pour my righteous wrath out upon this bunny, she will relent about continuing to allow the miscreant interloper to live in our back yard.  Maybe she will cover up the hole to his home beneath the back porch and dig up every single speck of greenery, so that, if Fearsome Beast chooses to continue to live in stubborn defiance of my rightful reign, he will die a horrible death of starvation.

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

The grand experiment...

Myrtle has announced that we are beginning The Grand Experiment.  The dining room is now open for business...just still not my business!

You see, when I was but a little pup, my favorite indoor place to do outdoor activities was the dining room.  After umpteen thousand accidents, in a fit of pique, Myrtle closed the pocket French doors and set up a baby gate between the dining room and kitchen.  I was shut out.  Completely. I believe this move was rash and rather unfair.  I also believe that Myrtle should long have been practicing far more forgiveness than she has in this matter.

Well, I have kept up an unrelenting campaign ever since our canine visitor departed for Myrtle to allow me entrance to this most wondrous of rooms.

While she was here, Seri got to spend practically all her time in the dining room.  AND her free reign was allowed to continue despite the fact that she had several accidents since, as a baby puppy, she's still learning about the proper disposition of her bodily functions.  Now, does that sound fair to you? Seri had free run of the room while I was left to make do with peering over the gate or through the lowest panes of the French doors.

I am nearly 15-months old now.  I have lived with Myrtle for over a year, absorbing all those millions upon millions of house rules.  Fairly consistently, I have proven that, unless my puppy momma is being negligent on noticing my communicative efforts regarding my bodily needs, I understand all said activity needs to take place out of doors. Therefore, I believe it is high time that I be given access to the dining room.  After all, there is this fantastic table around which I can run laps, there are wooden grates in the floor that allow me to peer down into the basement, and I can get from the GREEN chair to my water bowl in a fraction of the time it takes to go across the living room to the foyer, through the parlor, and then across the kitchen to where my water bowl resides.

Today, victory was achieved!  After much lecturing about trust and responsibility and how second chances do not come around all that frequently, Myrtle opened the French doors without quickly shutting them again in my face.  Yes, I, Amos Adams, am now free to spend as much time as I wish sniffing about, exercising, and taking short-cuts.

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

How to pick a puppy momma...

Will Power.  Well, a lack thereof.  That is the key to picking a good puppy mom if you have a choice about the matter.  Will Power.  Remember that!

Myrtle has none of it!  Well, very, very, very little, which is almost always to my benefit.  Truly, about the only will power she's managed to muster on my behalf is refusing to share her bacon.  In all else, she caves.

Do you see my new baby?  That's Gorilla Baby!  Myrtle has no will power when it comes to walking by the $3 Baby bin at Petsmart when fetching more food for me.  He's GREEN!  Myrtle and I share an affinity for that great color.  Turtle Baby and Gorilla Baby will be the best of friends.  I just know it!  In any case, each time Myrtle comes home with a Petsmart bag, I know that food will not be the only thing found inside.

Myrtle has told me about how puppies come to mommas, about how there are places where puppies wait for mommas and poppas to find them, places where puppies are viewed first, are chosen, rather than just given to their mommas like I was. So, I thought I would proffer some advice about how to look for signs of a lack of will power in prospective puppy mommas and poppas in case you are a puppy looking for a home:

• visitors who stick their fingers through cages
• visitors who throw toys
• visitors who make strange noises
• visitors who sit on the ground

Now, you might think those have little to do with will power, but the key is repetition.  Take the repetition in the list itself: visitors.  People who show up repeatedly probably have little will power, especially if they come during day.  By this, I mean if they come during their work time.  Work means what a puppy momma or poppa does to earn money.  Missing work for visits to puppies means they might have have little will power when it comes to being firm with puppies because having a puppy will be really, really, really important to them. So, you want to position yourself with those mommas and poppas.

If they stick their fingers through the cages, shower them with kisses.  Shower them with kisses every possible chance that you get if the momma or the poppa reaches out to you or gets down on the floor to play with you.  Giving copious amounts of affection is always a good move for those who are a bit weak in the will power department.

If they want to play with you, tossing toys and such, play until they stop.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Wag your tail.  Play until they are exhausted.  Then, curl up next to the prospective puppy parent and put your head in his or her lap.

If visitors make strange noises, that usually means they are talking to you.  You should talk back...but not too loud or too much.  A good time to talk, though, is when the visitor is coming and especially when he or she is leaving.  A well-timed ruff will expose weakness in will power for those who snuck away on a lunch hour looking for a puppy to bring home.  If a visitor walking out the door turns back for a minute or two more, then you have a good bet of picking a momma or a poppa whose will power may be lacking.

So, why someone with weak will power?  Well, weak will power means that you get lots of snuggling, lots of bites of meals, lots of fetch, lots of kisses, and, most importantly, lots of babies with those most marvelous squeakers in them!

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

This means war...

Myrtle forgot our first anniversary!  How could she do that??  After all, she's hated Valentine's Day for years and now she has a reason to love it, to celebrate it.  After all, her bestest love in the world joined her life that day.  Alas, Myrtle forgot our first anniversary.

I suppose I can forgive her.  I mean, given how much she forgets things now, if I do not forgive her for forgetting, we will never be reconciled.  Mostly, what I need to be forgiving her for is laughing at me.  Boy, does my puppy momma laugh at me ever so much!

Anyway, the past couple of weeks she has not been well.  So, Myrtle has not been seeing to her particular duties in the out of doors.  For all her being hot and bothered about my being ever attentive, she is not always so.  Do you not think that puppy mommas should be consistent role models rather than merely consistent nags?

Anyway, Myrtle was out in the back yard picking up my deposits and she started laughing.  I suppose that I should just get used to her laughter...but I should admit that I also laughed.  Wickedly so!

You see, Myrtle finally noticed that I declared war against Fearsome Beast.  That wretch has been leaving his deposits all over my back yard.  Mine!  So, I have been letting him know exactly what I think of that.  I smother each piddly pile that he leaves with a great big one of my own.  That deluded interloper might think that he hold dominion over Outdoors, but he is wrong.  He is only there on my suffrage.  Fearsome Beast might think that he is able to out-run me and escape through the fence, but the real truth is that I let him escape.  Bloody rabbit spread about the yard would mightily distress Myrtle.  My beloved puppy momma certainly needs absolutely no more distress in her life.  Thus, in order for Fearsome Beast to fully understand his place in this world, I leave little reminders for him each morning and each evening.  Actually, they are reminders that the war is already over.

Now that Myrtle knows what I am doing when I sniff about the yard, searching for the right spot to make my deposits, do you think that she will be a bit more patient with me?

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

A little slow on the uptake...

Sometimes, Myrtle needs to get a clue.  Sometimes, my beloved puppy momma is a tad oblivious.  This day, I had remind her many a time that her chief and primary duty is to love on me!

Myrtle got a bee in her bonnet and spent ages and ages and ages in the basement.  She was doing more of that work whereby she removes stuff, carries stuff out to the special trash bin, moves around stuff, and generally makes things look totally and utterly different.  Honestly, I don't see why she wastes her time.

Here I am, a lonely little fellow, woefully neglected. On and on and on she worked.  She pulled books off the shelf.  She moved other books around.  Baskets of office supplies went from one set of shelves to another. The smaller shelf was cleaned and filled with empty baskets.  Frankly, just watching her was exhausting.  More so was that the entire time Myrtle refused to hold me.  I tried and tried and tried to land in her arms, but they were always full of things.  At one point, I launched myself up on her shoulders, but I miscalculated and merely landed on the floor on the other side of her.  Yes, you guessed it: Myrtle laughed. No matter how hard I tried to communicate with her that I was in dire need of snuggling, she just didn't seem to understand.

I confessed that I tried twice to garner her attention by less-than-appropriate behavior involving bodily fluids.  How in the world could I have thought that would be a good idea?  My puppy momma...well...she has a temper when it comes to blatant disobedience.  There was no real way that I could pretend my watering the tub upstairs while she was fetching something as an accident. I was not quite napping on the rug in the photo above.  I was in exile.  Myrtle did not want such a BAD DOG near her.  Over time, I managed to scoot my way unobtrusively, inch by painful inch, over the course of an hour until I was at least allowed to lie near her.

So, this evening, I resorted to simple repetition.  You see, Myrtle was sitting on the couch when I wanted her to lay in the GREEN chair.  That way I could get in some serious snuggling with her to make up for all the time that was stolen from me this day.  Because Myrtle is so slow on the uptake, I had to systematically drag the pillows off the couch and hold them in my mouth as I jumped up on the GREEN chair.  Myrtle just chuckled.  Then I moved the blanket.  Still, she had not a clue that I was wanting her to move.  Finally, I jumped up on her lap and then jumped down before jumping up on the chair.  I lay down for a second, whimpered, then jumped down to leap back up on her lap to swipe a few kisses.  My goodness, I must have rotated between the couch and chair a thousand times before Myrtle understood what I wanted.

I am plumb exhausted. However, we are lying together in the GREEN chair, my body curled around her shoulders, her head resting on my belly, my breath keeping her right ear warm.  [Myrtle is now cold much of the time, so a fellow has to help out any way he can.] If you ask me, together is how we should always be!


This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!