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Naughty or Nice…

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It’s that time of year again friends! Santa Paws will be harnessing his reindeer soon and flying around the world to deliver treats and toys and other fun things to all of my four-legged buddies and me! The following is a list of ten things to remember during this holiday season if you would like to maximize what Santa Paws leaves for you on Christmas morning!

1)     During the month of December especially, eliminate or at the very least, limit your counter surfing. Remember, Santa Paws can see you at all times and as much as that Christmas ham looks like it was prepared just for you, it was most likely not. I’m really not sure how the Santa Paws can see you, but Mom says he can and I trust this information to be true, I do not want to end up with just brown crunchies in my stocking.

2)     Under no circumstances should you chase deer. Any kind of deer, while they are fun to chase, you never know, you could be chasing Santa Paws’ reindeer. This of course will result in only brown crunchies in your stocking. (Yes, Fenton, this means you too!)

3)     Take it easy when alerting mom or dad that there is a stranger in the house. Make double sure that the person is indeed a stranger and not Santa Paws. Santa Paws will not deliver special treats and toys if you are awake. It is therefore advisable that you at least pretend you are in a deep sleep while Santa Paws fills your stocking.

4)     Wrapping paper was not meant to be torn into little pieces. While this may seem like a fabulous Christmas Day activity, mom and dad don’t like this and Santa Paws will remember this for next year.

5)     The Christmas tree is not meant for you. This Christmas accessory looks and smells as if it were purchased with you in mind as it is essentially bringing all of your outdoor needs inside. Mom and dad will not appreciate chewing of branches and drinking from the water bowl underneath and most certainly will not be pleased if it is used as an indoor bathroom. My best advise is to look at the pretty lights and sniff its awesome smells but do not touch it!

6)     Most likely your family will have guests that stay during the holidays. With these guests it is a distinct possibility that you may have four-legged guests as well. If these guests are feline in nature, you should avoid chasing them. As much as they tease you, chasing them will result in, at best, a very light stocking from Santa Paws and at worst, a very sore nose.

7)     Lots of times little people receive gifts from Santa Paws that look very much like your toys. Make especially sure to treat these stuffed toys with care, or better yet steer clear of any toy that a little person has been seen playing with. I know from experience that these little people do not share well. They do not like to play with the stuffed toys after they are all wet and they make the most HORRIBLE, ear piercing, screeching noises when you pull all of the stuffing out. Trust me, as much as you will not like the deafening screams, the big people like these less, and you guessed it! – Neither does Santa Paws.

8)     The dishwasher, an amazing yet perilous way to sample lots of different people foods, should be avoided all the time but especially during the holiday season. Just ask my Uncle Owen, sometimes when sampling these tasty treats your collar can become stuck on the pokey things that prop the dishes up for optimal sampling, then when you back away from the dishwasher the tray and all of the dishes follow you. Normally, one would think that this would be a great way to save the dishes for later but it’s SCARY! The dishes come flying out and crash on the floor and the faster you run away the scarier it is! When you finally are able to shake free of the scary crashing tray, mom and dad are not happy at all. It is a huge mess and you can’t even help clean up because of all the broken pieces that could cut your tongue. It’s bad… stay out of the dishwasher.

9)     This time of year, with all the snow on the ground, guests will arrive with nice shoes but will lots of times take them off because generally humans don’t like to have wet feet. I don’t understand this at all since I love being wet and snowy but they don’t. And while these shoes smell wonderful since the leather is softened from the melting snow, under no circumstances should you try tasting these delicacies, the resulting scolding and only brown crunchies in the stocking just isn’t worth it.

10)   More on little people. Little people are the best. They love to play toys and rarely get bored with games that big people tire of quickly. But you should be mindful of how rough you play with them. I generally prefer to drop the toy at their feet and keep looking at them expectantly until the pick it up and throw it. Little people are quick to pick this game up, big people are not so smart and take training, but I digress. Although little people are very smart and love to play, they need to be handled with care, you should avoid jumping on them, knocking them over or licking their faces. This does two things, it makes the little person like you more therefore wanting to play toys longer and it prevents the little person from making the horrible screeching noises we covered earlier.

Make sure to enjoy your Holiday and I hope Santa Paws brings you everything you wrote on your list. If you have further questions on Holiday etiquette, please feel free to write in – I’ll be happy to try to advise you how to maximize what Santa Paws will leave on Christmas Day!

Food For the Refined Palate

Owen and I Cuddle After One of Grammy's Fabulous Dinners!

So, I’m a picky eater. I don’t love to eat, unless of course, I’m stealing from Uncle Owen or one of my other dog friends. When breakfast or dinner is served in the morning I usually go sniff at it for a minute just to make sure Mom actually remembered to put it in my bowl and then wander back to my spot under the coffee table. Unless, of course, she puts chicken or cheese or some other yummy thing on top then I scarf that down and leave most of the uninteresting brown crunchy pieces for later, if and only if I’m starving to death. Which most times I’m not, so Mom comes home from work and throws the now bloated smushy brown things (those are even more disgusting) in the garbage and we start the process over again. This all gets even worse when I go to Grammy’s house when Mom goes away. You see Grammy actually MAKES Owen his food. From Scratch! When I go to Grammy’s I get to eat just a little of the brown crunchy things mixed in with whatever Grammy has cooked that day. Sometimes its broccoli and carrots and fish, sometimes its buffalo and asparagus and brown rice, sometimes turkey and green beans and potatoes – I LOVE it! Grammy told Mom she had to start doing this for me so I would eat my food. But Mom has resisted, mostly because she is very busy and doesn’t have time to make me a separate dinner from hers every night. I tried to get her to just eat the same thing as me but sadly she didn’t like the idea.

Well, the other day while I was in visiting the girls at my favorite store, Four Your Paws Only, Mom finally came around! That night for dinner when I got home she opened a can, it had the most amazing smell, I immediately stood on my hind legs to see what she was cooking. To my surprise, she wasn’t cooking at all!  It was a new type of yummy food she found called Merrick Working Dog Stew she was going to mix in with my brown crunchies. It was so yummy she hardly had it on the floor before I had scarfed it all up! Since then we have had Grammy’s Pot Pie (which surprisingly isn’t MY Grammy’s) and Honolulu Luau I am proud to report both are equally as yummy as the Working Dog Stew! So if your pup is a picky eater I highly recommend picking some up at your favorite local dog store to spice up their meals. Thank you Merrick for making my dining experience much more enjoyable – after all we are ‘foodies’ too!

Henry and the Heat Wave

Henry cooling off unconventionally.

Here where we live in New Hampshire it has been really hot! There are warnings about not leaving us in the car, not playing too hard and making sure we are all drinking lots of water – mom always brings water wherever we go but it always tastes best from the river, better flavor I think. I’m very happy that our routine in this weather has been stay in the air conditioned house until 5 when mom gets out of work and then go to the river to play for a couple of hours.

We always meet new friends when we go to the river but yesterday was a little different. We met Henry. Henry is an 11 week old Plott Hound who doesn’t know how to swim yet. His daddy was keeping a close eye on him when he was near the edge so he wouldn’t jump in after me when I was getting my Frisbee. After I had cooled off enough we played Frisbee together in the field for a bit. (Well, I played Frisbee and Henry chased me and did his funny baby-hound bay at me.)

In between throws I would go for a dip in the river and then lie down and rest. Henry would run right over and jump on me and lick the water off my head or chew on my ears. At first, it was a little weird I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. But then I realized he was just trying to cool off too and since he couldn’t swim, I was his own personal cooling device. Silly fellow but I decided he was a nice little guy and I was happy to let him share some of the water that was in my hair. I do hope he learns how to swim soon or his daddy gets him a life jacket so we can play in the river together – and I don’t have to look like I grew a Hound appendage!

What are you and your pups doing this summer to beat the heat?

The Dat!

Gracie, the Dat Plays in the Wildcat River

A couple of weeks ago mom and I headed up to Jackson, NH to attend the annual Wildquack Duck River Festival. Lots of people go to this festival in the park to watch little toy rubber duckies swim down the Wildcat River. The duckies are numbered and the owners of the duckies get prizes depending on how they finish. I was not allowed to help them although it seemed silly since all the 2-legged kids were helping them down the stream, mom thought I might steal one and take it home and that wouldn’t be fair to the duck’s owner.

Aside from this little detail, it was really a great day. There were tons of kids to play with, kids love to play Frisbee and so do I, we get along quite well and the river was close by -a perfect park always has a body of water right next to it so you can cool off when ever you need to. We played all day long and at the end when mom was ready to go, we walked down to a quiet bend in the river where I could really swim before we went home.

As we got closer there were what appeared to be 2 dogs, a larger one swimming and a small one on a leash splashing around near the rivers edge. The big dog came and greeted me and we went running up to the small dog… but wait… this was no dog. This was a CAT! A cat on a leash splashing in the river! Now you can imagine my surprise, and skid to a stop when I realized what it was. I have much respect for cats, you never can tell when they have decided they don’t want you to sniff them anymore and they have very sharp claws and make scary hissing noises when they don’t like you. So, as usual, I backed away slowly and watched this cat play in the water.

Her mom and dad told me that her name was Gracie and that she had liked to play in the water ever since they could remember and she liked dogs. I found that hard to believe since any cat that has come to daycare and had to take a bath most certainly had never liked the water and most certainly didn’t like me. But Gracie did really like me she sniffed me nicely and then went back to splashing. Gracie was my favorite type of cat, the ones that could be described as Dats. Dats are the name my Grammy has given cats that do dog-like things, they play fetch and follow you on your daily walks. They can be found curled up with your dog, sharing a water bowl with said dog or learning how to sit, stay and lay down just like us. They’re almost perfect – like me!

Do you have a special Dat in your life?

Toy Tester Extraordinaire!

Lovin' My Zisc!

A stop at Four Your Paws Only is one of my favorite things to do on a rainy day… Well, sunny days too but I try not to waste those on inside activities. Product testing is best done when it’s yucky out!

Four Your Paws Only is my hometown dog store. Apparently, they have other things for cats and birds and other little creatures, but I don’t look at those things very often – especially after mom told me I couldn’t have the gerbil wheel because they only make them for little animals, not Border Collies. It’s pretty much the only store we go to that I can go in and they love me there! All of the people have treats in their aprons and best of all I usually get to buy a new toy. I always pick my own (unless it’s a gerbil wheel), which is best because I get to test the quality of the squeakers, see how well the balls bounce and most importantly test which Frisbee feels the best in my mouth.

Frisbees are my favorite toys by far. My mom can throw them really far (she kind of stinks at throwing a ball) and I like to jump as high as I can to catch them. People cheer for me when I catch them, the higher I jump and more flips I do the louder they cheer. My favorite Frisbee on the market today is the Zisc by West Paw Designs.

The Zisc is perfect! I have 3 of them; one that stays in the car, one that stays at Grammy’s house and one that stays at daycare. It’s nice and soft on my mouth when I catch it, it floats so I won’t lose it when I go in the water to cool off, and best of all, just like Lupine, it’s guaranteed forever! Unless of course it floats down the river, then mom has to buy a new one, but hey, we have to keep them in business somehow – they’re the best Frisbees ever!

Skunked!

Zoey and Tucker on a Less Smelly Day

Last night I had a play-date with my friend Zoey. Zoey and I do lots of things together. We go hiking, we go swimming, skijoring, play Frisbee, go to the dog park… You get the idea, we’re good buds. Zoey is a hound and does most of her thinking with her nose so sometimes she goes for walks by herself for a little while (sometimes a long while). Zoey’s mom, Laura, usually tells me to go find her but I pretend not to understand and cock my head at her instead – Zoey will come back, she always does, she’s just busy with a smell – Plus, it gives me extra time to play while we wait for her, it’s a win-win.

Well, last night we went for a long walk and played Frisbee by the river then we went back to my house for some dinner and a frozen marrow bone treat (those are our favorite). After dinner Zoey’s mom said it was time for them to go and just like any night Zoey and her mom trotted down the stairs to go to their car. About 5 minutes later, her mom reappeared. Zoey had taken herself for a walk by herself again and Laura had decided to come back up and talk to mom while she waited…

And then, we could smell it. It was TERRIBLE! It was the worst smell I had ever smelled IN MY LIFE! There are smells that humans think are bad that we canines like. You know the kind- rotting fish at the ocean, the unidentified decaying carcass we found in the woods, the list goes on but you get the idea. We like to use these smells as perfume. They smell way better than any of those sweet smelling shampoos you use on us and make us smell like the wild animal we were always meant to be. But, this smell was different, and vile, and awful all at the same time. Zoey came running back and told me she had seen a black and white cat but when she went to say ‘hi’ it didn’t hiss at her like most cats do it turned around and the most god-awful smelling spray came out. Nope, this was not a cat- it was a Skunk!

Zoey’s mom was not happy, that is not a smell you want to ride home in a car with. But off they went to give Zoey a bath in tomato juice and vinegar with plans of a peroxide and baking soda follow up today. Poor Zoey!

Anyone else out there have a recipe for de-skunking us? Tis the season here in the northeast!

Finally Employed!

Mom Likes Me Clean, I Like Me Dirty

My name is Tucker Jetty Brooks – my grammy gave me my middle name, she says it’s because I’m fast like a dog she had when she was a puppy but I’m pretty sure it’s because it’s more effective when she yells at me.

I get yelled at a lot – Stealing the cheese bone from Owen, my Newfoundland uncle, dumping out my water and playing dish hockey with my bowl, running back and forth in the back seat of my mom’s car on the way to the river, rolling in the mud when hiking, but mostly for jumping. It’s something I have a really hard time controlling. You see I’m short – barely 18” tall when I have all 4 feet on the floor, but I instantly become almost 4ft tall when I stand on my hind legs. Being 4ft tall is way more fun! You can kiss people’s faces, you can see what people are making for dinner and most importantly it makes you LOOK more like a human.

Humans have jobs, and I have wanted a job ever since I can remember! In an effort to keep my feet on the floor, my mom got me a job at Lupine as a freelance writer. You’ll be hearing from me weekly on lots of things ranging from product reviews, to training tips, to my adventures with my friends!

I am so excited to be well on my way to officially becoming an honorary human!