The Beagle's blog

Love Your Pet Day

This morning my Butler said, "Happy Love Your Pet Day!  What would you like for breakfast?"  Which is how I found out it's Love Your Pet Day today.  Which means my Butler is to pamper and cater to me.  Okay, yes, and Beagle Pal too.  But mostly me.  Here's what I want;

1.  Breakfast:  eggs with sardines all mixed up, topped with yogurt and sprinkled with my special vitamin mix and medicine on top.  2.  A Nap:  on the knitted blanket on the sofa under the window and with my Butler sitting there next to me.  3.  Snacks, but put them in a game:  after my morning nap I want to play a shake-the-prey game which goes like this - tie up a dozen bacon biscuits in a cloth so I can rip it apart and then eat the biscuits.  4.  Lunch:  peanut butter sandwich, please.  5.  A Nap:  just like before.  6.  A walk:  leave Beagle Pal at home and just me and my Butler go for a walk where we go the direction I want, we go slow so I can sniff, and I get to either roll in or eat all the things I find.  7.  Dinner:  I'd like chicken and rice with frozen broccoli, and plop some cottage cheese on top along with more special vitamin mix and some medicine.  8.  Dessert:  ice cream, please.  9.  Evening snack:  another shake-the-prey game, please.

Here's what Beagle Pal wants for today:

Let'sgooutalldaylongforawalk
Let'schaserabbits
Let'schasebirds
Let'scatchlizards
Let'sbarkatsquirrels
Let'sgoseeacatohIlovecatslet'sgoseeoneandwatchit

I wish all you pets out there a rich and joyful Love Your Pet Day, whatever you want!

Things I Really Like

Here is a list of things I really like.  If you live with a dog, or if you are a dog, you'll know why I like these things.  So here is my list of things:

I like food.  All foods, edible or not.  I like breakfast food, and dinner food, and food I find in shrubs on walks, and food at the park, and food my Butler drops in the kitchen, and Beagle Pal's food, and my friends' food (what is kibble?), and food my vet gives me.  My favorite foods are: Toast, peanut butter, meat, apples, pasta, cheese, lip balm, hot dogs, eggs, cookies,rabbit poo, yogurt, salad, carrots, popcorn, frozen broccoli, potatoes, medicine (I've been told medicine isn't food, but I think it tastes like cheese), pencils, cabbage, rose hips on the vine, pizza, french fries, ice cream, watermelon.  And everything else.

I like sleeping.  After I get up in the morning, I go and take a nap.  By then breakfast is ready, I eat it, and after breakfast I take a nap.  Throughout the day I try to get in a dozen or so good quality naps.  Sometimes I make my Butler SIT and STAY while I nap, although she's not so good at this.  I have learned to keep one ear awake while the rest of me naps so I can run in the kitchen soon as I hear food getting ready.  Pretty cool trick.

I like being outside without a leash.  That way I can run to Favorite Person's house to see if she has any food for me.  I like to tease my Butler, pretend I'll not go back to the house.  You know, you step off the sidewalk, nonchalently walk towards the middle of the street, stand around a bit.  My Butler's going mad all the while.  Then you run like crazy to the front door.  Ha!  And they say dog's can't tell jokes!

I like going on walks with my Butler when Beagle Pal stays home.  We don't have to go as fast, I get time to sniff, and it's like the old days when it was just me and my Butler.

I like visiting people.  Sometimes we go in the car to visit people, sometimes we meet people on walks, sometimes people come to the house.  If you wag your tail and look cute, you might get a cookie from people.

There are other things I like, although not as much.  Like going on a walk when Beagle Pal comes along, or going to the dog park, or having a bath, or driving around to find rabbits to bark at.

That's about it.  As you can see, I'm a simple dog, really, not too demanding.  Don't you wish you had a dog just like me?

I'm An Itchy Dog

Hey, all you itchy dogs out there, got some good ideas to share with you.  My Butler says I have atopic dermatitis because I'm allergic to something I breathe in.  I scratch my belly and chew my feet, and have little red, flaky itchy spots all over.  If you do too, SIT, because I'm going to tell you what my Butler does to make me feel better.  Finding itch relief things, that's one thing my Butler really excels at.  That and making dinner.

Here are our top 10 things that releive itching:
1.  Neem.  Wow, I love neem, it smells just terrible!  I'd love to roll in it, but my Butler puts it in shampoo and washes me with it.  Makes taking baths tolerable because the shampoo stinks so much better.  Here's what you do, you get plain ol' liquid castille soap, dump in some neem oil, some neem powder, and dilute it with water.  Shake it up.  We call it "shampew" because of the smell - like garlic and poo.  Yum!

2.  Neem.  We just started this.  I get a tiny treat once a day.  A little neem gummy bean.  We figure, neem works so well on the outside, maybe it will work from the inside too.  I always appreciate additional things to eat.

3.  Neem.  Get your Butler to mix some neem oil with some organic aloe gel and some organic glycerin.  Shake it up.  The glycerin acts as an emuslifier to hold the aloe and oil together.  Cooling, not greasy like a lotion, deliciously stinky, healing.

4.  Here's what we use to keep my ears clean.  Mix a solution of 2% boric acid and 2% acetic acid.  It's a good ear cleaner and after-shampoo rinse.  My Butler also uses this to wash my feet and belly after a walk to prevent me from digesting in the dirt when I chew my feet.

5.  Real food.  The one thing that I can't tolerate is processed food.  Don't get me wrong, I love processed food, any kind of food, really.  But it makes me really miserable-itchy.  So, no kibble, no 'Greenies' (which made me barf anyway), no store-bought cookies, no rawhide chews, no doggy toothpaste, no In 'n' Out.  You itchy dogs got to get your owner/mom/care-taker/guardian/master to make your meals from grocery store things.  Stew, omelet, peanut butter sandwich, frozen berries and yogurt, ice cream, watermelon, salmon and rice.  Clean, quality, chemical-free food.

6.  Tea tree oil.  Wow I hate this stuff!  My Butler puts it on or in something, I can smell it a mile away, and I run for the dog door.  But, it makes the red itchy spots go away.  Wish she'd just use neem oil, it tastes so much better when I lick it off.

7.  Exercise and activity.  This keeps me busy and happy and I love to go to school.  I love to go on walks, without Beagle Pal, just me and my Butler.  Even though I'm allergic to stuff in the air, and even though I sniff everything, being outside makes me feel better.  And visiting people, seeing my dog trainer Favorite Person, relieves my itchiness because people love me.

8.  A clean environment.  My Butler got a HEPA vacuum and uses HEPA air filters for the house.  This helps a lot.  If she keeps the bedding washed and my sofa vacummed, I feel better.  Why doesn't she do this everyday?

9.  Cool, damp weather.  Now, since I live in southern California we only get 5 or 6 days a year that are  cool and damp.  And I love those days.  No allergies to breath in, no itchiness to scratch.  We go on long walks and my Butler gets lost and we back track and I run in the grass and it's the best weather.

10.  A Butler.  This is the number one thing you itchy dogs need.  You need someone willing to try all sorts of things to see what works.  Someone who knows no limits to doing that which is necessary for your health and comfort.  Someone you can train to do what you need to feel better.  I am so thankful I got a Butler.

I know I'll never get rid of the allergies, I'll always be an itchy dog.  It's part of what makes me The Beagle.  I wonder if my Butler could make neem cookies . . .

Ode to Chicken Stew

I was inspired the other day to write a song.  This is my song of Thanks and Insufficiency.  I borrowed the tune of Home On The Range, maybe you know it?  If so, you can sing this song.

Oh, fill me a bowl
With the best food I know
Chicken, livers, green veggies and rice.
Freshly made specially
By my Butler for me
Its aroma it does you entice.

Aaaarrrrooooo Chicken Stew!
Chicken, livers, green veggies and rice.
Only two meals a day?
Wait, don't put it away
Nine or ten meals would better suffice.

 

I'm Back

It's been a long time since I've been here, have you missed me?  My Butler says she's been too busy looking for a job to let me use the computer, and I don't complain about that because if there's no job, and if my Butler runs out of money, then I don't get dinner.  So, being the patient hound I am, I just waited.

I've been learning to find things around the house.  My Butler is teaching me.  Not that she looses things, but she knows I like to sniff so she invented this find it game.  It goes like this.  She shows me a stinky stick thing (Butler's note:  a Q-Tip holding essential oils drops), I sniff it, she tells me to stay in the kitchen, I stay in the kitchen and my Butler hides the stinky stick thing, then she says "find it", and that's when the fun starts.  It's so easy to find the stinky stick thing, I could run to it right away.  Instead, I go into every room in the house and I sniff and snort and scent the air and make a good show of being perhaps puzzled by its location, when all the time I know exactly where the scent is coming from.  Eventually I mosey over to where it is, put my nose close, turn and look at my Butler and sit.  That's when I get the cookie!  We used to do this without the stinky stick thing, my Butler would hide the cookie itself, but doing it this way it's a little harder and a lot funner.

Beagle Pal doesn't play the find it game, but he does follow us around.  Since he doesn't know how to stay in the kitchen, he follows the Butler and watches where the stinky stick thing gets hidden.  He usually gets a cookie while I'm sniffing around, and that's okay, it's his way of participating.

Can't you see it now?  Someday I'll be a drug-sniffing dog, or a cadaver dog, or part of The Beagle Brigade at airports.  The Beagle will be famous.

I'm a little beagle

This is a song my Butler wrote for me.  It's SO embarrassing.  And even though it is about Me, and pays homage to Me, and does feature me in a commanding roll, it is a trivial song.  Common, really.  However, I will bear it if it gladdens my Butler; she's the bringer of cookies so it's wise to stay on her good side.

There's no music, you have to sing it for yourself, but it's a familiar tune it's the Teapot Song's tune.  SO embarrassing.

 

"I'm a little beagle short and stout . . . " 

"Here is my handle . . . "

"Here is my snout."

"When I get real hungry . . . "

"I will pout . . . "

"So fix me dinner . . . "

"Then let's go out."

 

And anyway, who's she calling stout?  I'm just big boned.