25 things about me ...

While I try hard to think about things that start with F, I want to try another game that is going around on facebook. My Mom is on facebook and she wishes she could play the game there but no one has asked her to play. How sad is my boring mother ... she has friends but no one will play with her.

Ok, here goes.

1. I am a dachshund. That is the most important thing about me.
2. I am a long haired dachsund, something a little different.
3. I pee on blankets or towels when I am left alone in the house. I will not tell you why I do this and nothing my mother does can make me stop. I just do it. That is why I have to stay in the kitchen when I am left alone.
4. I sleep between my parents in the big bed.
5. I do not eat people food unless it drops on the floor accidentally.
6. I do get to lick ice cream bowls. This is the only exception to #5.
7. Ok, sometimes Mom gives me bits of her apple. But that's it.
8. Ok, cheese. I know the sound of the cheese drawer and take my medicine in cheese, when I take medicine, so I do get cheese occasionally. But that's it.
9. I have a best friend names Hershey. He lives far away in Richmond, Virginia. Fortunately he comes to visit me pretty often. I let Hershey win when we are together. It's just not worth it to me to try to win. That makes him alpha dog. I don't care if he is alpha dog.

10. I tinkle like a girl. Hershey tinkles like a boy. We're both fixed. Go figure.
11. My Mom thinks I need a little sister. See #3.
12. I am allergic to fleas.
13. I like to take sunbaths but my house faces the wrong way and is surrounded my big trees so I have to go to my Granddaddy's house to take sunbaths.
14. I like to stick by my Mom all of the time. Dad will do. See #3.
15. My granddaddy is here visiting me. I wish he lived here all of the time because he likes to walk and he would take me for walks. He is 80 years old and walked 410 miles in 2008. My mother wishes she could say she walked 410 miles last year.
16. Come to think of it, if my granddaddy walked me, he would never walk very far. I am a slow walker. I sniff a lot. This frustrates my Mom.
17. I do not bark or scratch at the door when I need to go out. I just sit there. This makes it hard on my folks because they cannot see me when I go to the door unless they are sitting on the stairs. They just wonder where I am and go look and I am patiently waiting at the door.
18. I will not bark on command. See #17
19. My favorite trick is 'roll over'. If my folks had a video camera, I would show you.
20. I can jump on beds, even tall beds.
21. My tail has a curl in it which is wierd for dachshunds.
22. I tolerate my nails being trimmed, but I don't love it. I hate baths.
23. I love riding in the car. I especially love making nose prints on the windows.
24. I am very itchy. I have dry skin and allergies. See #12.
25. I love my Mom very much, except when she scolds me for #3.


There, that wasn't so hard.

S is for .....

Hi dogfriends. It's me Copper.... the dog that almost never has anything interesting to blog about. Well, today I have something to blog about.

Roxie, Sammy and Andy, my doxie friends from Houston, have recently redone their blog and they just blogged about the letter S. I wrote to them and asked for a letter to blog about and they gave me 'F'. I am still trying to come up with some things that begin with the letter 'F' but before I do, I would like to share with you and them, something that is on my mind regarding the letter 'S.' Right now, in fact, my mother and I can only think of this one S thing. Indeed, my mother would love to stop thinking about this S thing. But before I show you the thing that is on my mind and my mother's mind, I want to show you some pictures of my house.

This is my lovely front dog yard with my white picket fence and my stone border around my flowerbed.

This is my front porch and my rose bush that is so pretty in the spring. This is where I guard my house and bark at squirrels and people that walk past my house. In fact you can see me guarding my house in the picture.

This is Mom's new dining room furniture. She had set the table for Christmas dinner.

This is my new bed .... oh, I mean my Mom's new bed. (Oh, and Dad's too.)

I show you all these pictures so that you know my Mom and Dad and I do not get the wrong idea about my Mom or Dad or my house when you see the S pictures.

My Mom is reluctantly letting me show you the S pictures. Mom and Dad found the S pictures this weekend when they went down under the house to close so vents in the crawl space under the house so that the house would stay warmer when the weather dipped into the teens, as it did this weekend. My mother who likes a clean house, beds that are made, things in their place, and decorating magazines found this thing that begins with the letter S.

Snakes skins! S is for ..... snakes and snake skins.

Mom and Dad found lots of creepy snake skins under house. They found them on the ground and on the walls of the crawl space. They did not know the creepy snakes or creepy snake skins were under the house because they don't go down there very much. And now my Mother will probably never go down there ever again.

Mom called their exterminator (yes we have one) and the exterminator recommended a trapping service that specializes in snakes. The snake man is going to come out soon and see if he can find the snakes, wake them up and send them away on a long vacation. He says he should be able to find out why they are under there and how they are getting in and make sure they don't come back. He was going to come today until it snowed.

Yes, S is also for Snow. Meeshka, I told you I had never seen snow. Well, today it snowed. None of it stuck ... but it snowed.

S ... snakes, skin, snow, stuck. That all start with S. So does sleep, which is something my Mother is not able to do very well lately because of these letter S things.

But at least now I have something to blog about.

More on squirrels....

This is from Bill Kirby of the Augusta Chronicle in Augusta, Ga

Quote: A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit. -- actress Sarah Jessica Parker

"Your squirrel tales continue.
I know. I know. They chew through electric power lines. They slip into our attics and leave nut collections. They bully the birds from our backyard feeders.

The latter seems to particularly provoke many of you, but that problem has also inspired solutions, which I am happy to share.

Walter Kendrick writes: "To keep squirrels out of bird feeders, I put a piece of ductlike tin material around the object. You can buy it at home improvement stores. It comes in a small roll and can be cut with tin snips. They cannot climb it."

Paul Shivers , of Waynesboro, says: "Purchase three 'joints' of stove pipe, snap it in place around the pole supporting your bird feeder, resting on the ground, and you will be rid of your squirrel problem. Be sure the feeder is located so the animals cannot jump to it from a structure or tree."

Judy Davidson writes: "We were feeding all the neighborhood squirrels from our bird feeder until my husband Jim found the 'baffle' at Wild Birds Unlimited. "The apparatus is a cylinder with one closed end that fits on the pole. The squirrels go up, reach a dead end short of the feeder, and come back down. "Most of the squirrels don't even try anymore, but occasionally we see a rookie go up and make the U-turn. I suspect the other squirrels are on nearby limbs pointing and chattering."

Joyce Quinn , of Aiken, puts it simply: "I bought a squirrel-proof bird feeder at Birds and Butterflies in Aiken."

Howard Battle apparently thinks outside the box. He suggests: "Place an old-time Slinky around the pole that holds your bird feeder and have a lot of fun watching the squirrels trying to climb the pole."

Lynn and Jim Herrmann , of Evans, say: "Take a 41/2-inch (I measured from one side of the circle to the other, which hopefully is correct as my beloved husband was out golfing when I did this) white PVC pipe and put over the bird feeder pole. "My husband lathered the bird feeder pole with Vaseline, which worked for a while and ... well, you get the picture."


Thank you all for your squirrel suggestions, but I'll leave you with another squirrel tale, as reported last week in The New York Times.

The British, The Times reports, are getting rid of squirrels by eating them.

"These days ... in farmers' markets, butcher shops, village pubs and elegant restaurants, squirrel is selling as fast as gamekeepers and hunters can bring it in," the newspaper said.
There are several reasons, most importantly because there are millions of squirrels "rampaging throughout England, Scotland and Wales."

Added to the problem is that the gray squirrels introduced from North America over the past century are crowding out Britain's beloved red squirrels. In 2006, an SOS group (Save Our Squirrels) began its campaign to devour the competition with its motto: "Save a red, eat a gray!"
The next thing you know, everybody's eating squirrels. Among them is Nichola Fletcher , a food writer, who held a squirrel tasting for Britain's Guild of Food Writers. She found "their lovely flavor tasted of the nuts they nibbled."

(Ms. Fletcher, I say: Keep nibbling!)"

A red letter day ....

You wouldn't believe what happened to me today! What a bonanza!

Mom decided I still look very thin and so she decided to weigh me this morning. This is how she weighs me .... she picks me up and steps on her scale and then puts me down and weighs herself and then she does math. She told me I still weight 12.5 pounds and that is why I seems so skinny. So she went for a car ride (alas .. without me) and came home with a 20 pound bag of dog food ... the kind with no holes.

While she was at the pet food store she saw a full blooded male red long haired dachshund, up for adoption. Mom just happened to see him as the man brought him into the store in a kennel. He was red with black on his ears and he was a little bigger than me. Mom has been praying about a companion for me for a while so she began to wonder if maybe her unscheduled trip to the pet food store was , in fact, a divine appointment. Mom was the first person to get the ladies attention as she came into the store and she asked about him. Mom wanted to have the first opportunity to be considered to adopt the dog. The lady told Mom right away that he needed to be an only dog and that he was very dominant and would bite young children. Mom was very dissapointed because this meant she could not adopt this dog. She was startled with how forthcoming this lady was with this information and wonders who will ever adopt him? (Personally Mom feels that dog adoption people would prefer to adopt out dogs to petless married adult couples who do not work, have 20 foot tell fences, never travel or leave home for short periods of time. But that is another story.) So poor Docker, the aggressive dachshund who bites children did not get adopted to be my brother today. I hope he got another forever home.


When Mom got home, my Dad went out to the car and got it and put in in my dogfood can. In order to mix it up with the other dogfood in the can, he picked up the can and shook it and this happened.

This is not a picture of my dog food or my house. It is a picture of some other lucky dog's kitchen. My Mom did not take a picture of my food all over the floor, because she and Dad were too buy trying to CLEAN IT UP before I could eat it all!!! I was helping and was eating it as fast as I possibly could, trying to gain some of my weight back, but would they let me help? Nooooooo! I had to go in the living room while they finished. Dad said I had eaten a full dinner's worth alredyand that I'd still expect dinner tonight.

Well, of course I will!

Taking care of my house ...

I guarded my house today again. Mom and Dad were at work. I chewed on a rawhide and pulled my bed out of my doghouse. I barked at a squirrel and chased him away. I napped on the loveseat. I'm glad it's bedtime. I'm tired.

I have to help alot ...

My Mom is redecorating the bedroom. Yesterday she took these pictures to show Hershey's Mom and I had to help her take the pictures. I helped by getting on the bed and being in the picture. You know the pictures are more interesting because I am in them.


This is the bed. Hershey's Mom painted these pictures (over the bed) to match the pillow.

This is my 'side leg kicked out' pose.


This is my 'no rear legs at all' pose.

This is my 'What?! You called my name?' pose.