Wimsey's Blog: Diary of a Manhattan Bloodhound #175

Entry #175
July 9, 2010

Hello Everyone, Wimsey here coming to you from the Upper West Side of Manhattan where we have had record breaking 100 degree heat and although we Hounds don’t melt, we do tend to wilt a bit.

Sadly, owing to the extreme heat I have spent most of the week quarantined indoors in the air conditioning rather than out and about having adventures. Although I was out on July 4th with my human Maria and her friend Elizabeth and I managed to invade yet another picnic. No food this time but lots of admiration and a plastic bottle.

The heat can work in my favor, however, as whenever we turn homewards I suddenly do an excellent imitation of a Hound suffering from incipient heat stroke—lying down, panting, refusing to move, etc., all of which stops the journey in its tracks. Now remarks I have made in this blog to the contrary, my humans, although challenged in multiple ways, are not actually dumb and they do realize that with a high probability my antics are driven by a certain reluctance to leave the park (see my revision of Newton’s First Law: A Hound in the park will tend to remain in the park unless dragged out by screaming humans). But do they really want to risk it? The answer is always no, so down they sit, fanning the Wimsey brow wrinkle and offering yet another bowl of cool water. The heat does have its compensations.

Well the lack of adventures this week notwithstanding, plans for my July 19th summer frolic in upstate New York and the Michigan Lakes are proceeding apace. We have now booked a couple of “suites” (a suite apparently being a room with a couch) in Grand Rapids and Elizabeth has been visiting all the car rental companies in the neighborhood inspecting the size of their vehicles to see if they are vast enough for me and my possessions and won’t cost the GNP of a small nation to rent. At Maria’s suggestion she tells the rental people that she is going camping with two friends so she needs lots of storage—camping gear being the closest approximation to the nature of all my assorted traveling chattels. Maria herself refuses to even utter the word “camping” let alone do it, so the task of Hound Mobile inspection falls to Elizabeth who has no compunctions at all about saying the word as she actually claims to have done it once and survived.

And the hair brained schemes just continue to abound around here—probably due to the summer heat affecting the balance of the mind. Elizabeth has decided to explore the possibility of the two of us going to the Hamptons for August and giving Maria more time to shop for a new apartment. Now completely leaving aside the expense and the logistics, not to mention having me around full time (she had better bring plenty of gin), no one seems to have considered who is going to rent their house to a domestically challenged woman with a large, smelly, mud tracking and drool flinging Hound.

Of course a Hampton’s sojourn would give the people who admire me the rest of the year in New York City the chance to admire me in a whole new setting. And at least when I fling drool on people in swimsuits it won’t require a trip to the dry cleaners (I wonder what the SPF of my drool is?). And I can pretty much guarantee that once I have been to a beach you will never get all the sand off of me—the ladies will still be finding it at Christmas.

But in addition to summer bringing road trips and potential escapes to tony beach towns, it also brings up summer reading fun. Accordingly I have compiled:

Wimsey’s Summer Reading List

Invasion of the Picnic Snatchers

10 Days to More Beautifully Wrinkled Skin

Central Park’s Top Romantic Spots to Poop

101 Things That Smell Like Hound That are Not Hound

Top Ten Ways to Cope With a Bored Hound (cocktail shaker not included)

Help! The Hound Ate the Picnic! And other lively tales of summer entertaining

Skinny Bitch: How to Cook for That Finicky Hound

The 7 Disgusting Habits of Highly Effective Hounds

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man but Behave Like a Hound

Make Every Man Want You (Hound not included)

Think and Grow Rich; Acquire a Hound and Grow Poor

A Purpose Driven Life: Wimsey’s Quest to Annoy, Disrupt and Monopolize the Lives of His Humans

What to Expect When You are Expecting a Hound and Other Tales of Mayhem

Eat, Pray, Love But Don’t Get a Hound

Wake Up and Smell the Hound

Brown Paws: A Hound’s Guide to Creative Gardening


Who Moved My Cheese and Ate My Panties


I am all about promoting book reading, the chewier the better. Electronic readers may be more efficient but they don’t taste nearly as good or make nearly as much mess as a properly torn apart tome.

But this week was not only boring because of the heat—Elizabeth took care of Heidi the little pit bull for a couple of days which meant that after our afternoon walks I was returned to my home. The feeling was that I would annoy Heidi too much were I allowed to spend the afternoon with Elizabeth as usual (but there is still a project afoot to try it sometime, preferably when Elizabeth does not have conference calls for us to disrupt).

And for those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter, yesterday Elizabeth was walking little Heidi in the field across from her building in Riverside Park when a guy (who Elizabeth cannot recall ever meeting) came running, jumped the stone wall into the field, ran up to Elizabeth and demanded to know where I was and if I was OK!. Apparently he was worried that I was sick or worse and that Elizabeth had replaced me with Heidi! Although if she had, Heidi wouldn’t be a bad replacement—she apparently marched into Elizabeth’s apartment, shredded a tissue, hunted down my rawhides and bits thereof that she is not allowed to have and then screamed at Elizabeth for having the temerity to leave without her. Like me she is not shy about expressing her opinions and is a supremely entitled canine. Also like me, she is not fond of taking pills and after unsuccessfully trying turkey and chicken Elizabeth got her to open her mouth fractionally so that a pill wrapped in Swiss cheese and dipped in Alfredo sauce could be shoved in and her muzzle elevated until she swallowed. The good news is that Elizabeth still has left over Alfredo sauce meaning that tonight I will be served Kibble and Chicken Breast Alfredo.

Well before I wrap up this heat abbreviated post, I just read an article about a psychic octopus (I am not making this up) that has successfully predicted the outcome of the world cup games (for those betting sports fans he has predicted that Spain will win the final). But the octopus is not the only psychic animal—I make accurate predictions all the time:

Predictions by Wimsey the Psychic Bloodhound

You will shortly need to change those pants

You will never find that brassiere that you “lost”

I see danger in your future relating to steep flights of stairs and an annoyed Hound made wet by cooling coats

Failure to fork over plastic water bottles will result in hearing loss

There is an expensive vet bill in your future

You will need help finishing that pizza

You will have no time and less money

You will never find a car big enough for me


Maybe the ladies should consult the psychic octopus about their careers and (sadly non-existent) love lives. I wonder how much he charges.

Well here’s hoping that next week is a bit cooler and I get out once again to entertain my fellow citizens and wreak havoc on their clothes. And of course I will be attending the upcoming Trip Management meetings wherein the items on my travel list are gone over and assembled and missing items purchased. The ladies themselves are restricted to one small bag apiece.

Until next time.

Wimsey, Summer Hound