Wimsey's Blog: Diary of a Manhattan Bloodhound #258

Entry #258

April 28, 2012

Hello Everyone, it’s me, Wimsey New York City and the Upper West Side’s favorite Hound (or not) and I am back from my brief literary hiatus.  I am hoping that absence made the heart grow fonder, although where I am concerned there is a surfeit of fondness that is lavished on me by my human Maria and her friend Elizabeth.  Except of course when I annoy them past the breaking point and then they hate me. As a conscientious Hound I have a quota of “I hate you’s” that I must elicit from them each day in order to feel completely fulfilled. But there are some days when I permit myself to substitute a quantity of pedestrian terrorizing events engendered by my large size and loud voice but that takes so little effort that, were I not a Hound, I would feel guilty.  I never feel guilty and I never apologize for my behavior both of which paradoxically mean that I seldom have to—there is lesson in that for humanity were humans not wedded to the idea that it is their job to teach and ours to learn (or not).

Anyway, clearly my absence has caused me to wax philosophical which is not all that unusual as we Hounds are natural philosophers; and unlike out human counterparts we don’t waste our time posing questions to which we don’t have the answers.

The Great Questions of Life Answered By Wimsey

Who am I? (I am a large, stinky, smelly, mud caked, loud, sheddy, drooly, gassy, cadging, thieving, destructive, obstructive and entitled Hound).

Where did I come from? (Your bed or the couch, whichever one you prefer me not to be on).

Where am I going? (Out.)

What is my purpose? (My purpose is to get exactly what I want when I want it; and if I can make sure no one else gets what they want when they want it then I am even happier).

Why do bad things happen to good people? (They have Hounds).

What is good and evil? (Good are all things that benefit me and evil are all things that prevent me from obtaining the things that benefit me).

Who created the universe? (Clearly someone who loves Hounds since they stacked the deck so much in our favor and created squirrels, flower beds and dirty laundry).

What is knowledge? (Knowledge is knowing that there is a large pot roast cooling on the kitchen counter).

What is Wisdom (Wisdom is waiting until the human has left the kitchen to steal the large pot roast).

What is Justice? (Justice is being told off for eating the large pot roast and as a consequence throwing it all up on the expensive, hard to clean Oriental carpet).

What is Truth? (Truth is whatever I want it to be; I find it’s more convenient that way).

What is Freedom? (Freedom is the ability to act on one’s impulses and to never suffer the consequences because one is so cute).

Is there life after death? (No one knows except that if there are Hounds involved it’s not going to be all that it’s cracked up to be).

What is beauty? (Beauty is what humans see when they look at me).

Well anyway, it’s been a lively two weeks around here, although I don’t remember everything that’s happened because we Hounds have limited short term memory-- except of course when it comes to important things like the location of every pet store, snack shop, gelato stand, horse poop pile and discarded crust of bread on the entire Upper West Side.  

But first, I have to announce that it was decided that we won’t be visiting my brewery, Baying Hound Aleworks owing to my ongoing tush issues-I am the dog with the golden tush - (which among other things requires Maria to anoint the royal behind with medication twice a day which she really enjoys) but if you are in the Washington DC area stop by their new beer launch party today April 28th (details at www.baying-hound.com).  I will be making a site visit at the earliest opportunity—nothing goes with beer like Hound drool. And speaking of which, Elizabeth discovered the first evidence of my handiwork on her new flat screen and she seemed quite excited by it.

Anyway, weather wise we seem to be going backwards into March instead of forwards into May so there have been only a few days where I got to hang out in my little shared garden (NB: garden decorations courtesy of the occupant of the other apartment) although I did manage to put my head through the cat flap at least once, which Maria thought was exceptionally obtuse of me since the cat was actually in the garden at the time.  And in another attempt to try to get to know small animals better I tried to climb into Bethesda Fountain to make the acquaintance of a very attractive duck (not visible in the photo alas) that was taking a dip there.

Other highlights of the week included tractoring Elizabeth at a high rate of speed into Unleashed, one of my favorite pet shops (right past the large sign advertising dog training), where in addition to putting my nose on everything I attempted to swipe a deer antler which incensed Elizabeth as she recently spent a lot of money buying me a large deluxe one that I have declined to chew.  But things that I am allowed to have just somehow don’t appeal.  Anyway, as usual, Elizabeth tried to purchase something to make up for me being me, but having run out of things to buy decided to get a bag of cookies from the store’s bakery. But the shop refused to charge her for them.  It’s nice to be appreciated. It takes a large metropolis to make a demanding, entitled and spoiled Hound even more demanding, entitled and spoiled.  But we haven’t been to Furry Paws in a while. I put it on my tow to list.

And also this week some Italian tourists thought I looked thirsty and tried to offer me a container of water but as they discovered I had other plans for the vessel—I was hoping for a cup of gelato.

In other exciting news Elizabeth saw the space shuttle fly past her window as it made its way up the Hudson on the back of a 747.  This is nothing short of miraculous, as she seems to have missed a Boeing 737 getting ready to ditch in the Hudson a few years ago.  For some reason she seems not to notice things that have nothing to do with dogs.

Also my humans notice nothing that has to do with football and so are oblivious to the fact that draft picks are occurring which a lot of folks find pretty exciting.  True, most of them have a Y chromosome but gender is no excuse for ignorance.  I think my humans would be more interested if there were a team called the New York Giant Bloodhounds.  It would be the only team in the NFL where members of the same team fight for possession of the ball. But football terminology seems to have a lot to do with Hounds anyway:

Wimsey’s Football Glossary

 

Astroturf: That stuff in an enclosed area of Riverside Park that I am not supposed to be on that I always want to be on.

Backs: The part of a human destroyed by walking energetic Hounds.

Ball carrier: The person with the ball who must be chased and relieved of it (it’s more fun if the ball carrier is a guy trying to play catch with his son).

Beat: What humans frequently want to do to me but can’t because it’s illegal.

Blackout: When I knock over the floor lamp. Again.

Blitz: A play where a Hound seems to come out of nowhere and steal whatever it is you’ve got.

Blocking: An ineffectual maneuver humans use to prevent Hounds from getting at something that they are determined to get at.  Blocking makes them feel better because at least they tried.

Bomb: The smell that Hounds produce after a gastronomic tour of the park.

Bowl Game: The game where humans put stuff into the bowl and Hounds take it out of the bowl.

Bump and run: A common Hound play wherein whatever is in your hand comes out of your hand because you’ve been bumped by a 130lb Hound who then takes off so that you can’t catch him.

Call a play: This happens when humans are trying to work, read, watch TV or talk on the phone and the Hound decides to launch a vigorous attack on his noisiest squeaky toy.

Clipping: A heinous human offense involving attempts to trim Hound talons.

Conferences: Hushed and often tearful conversations between humans discussing the latest triumphs of their Hounds.

Coverage: Preventing the reading of newspapers books, magazines or iPads by the simple expedient of lying across them.

Cut back: What humans have to do in order to be able to afford the latest bills run up by their Hounds.

Dead ball: A formerly intact ball that has been in extensive contact with a Hound.

Down: A meaningless word humans frequently yell at their Hounds.

Down the Field: The way in which a Hound is towing unless his human wants to go up the field.

Draft choice: A pint of anything made by Baying Hound Aleworks.

Drive: What a Hound persistently attempts to do when being chauffeured in an automobile.

Eligible Receiver: An aberrant Hound who is actually entitled to those treats by dint of his following obedience commands.  Most Hounds prefer to be ineligible receivers.

Encroachment: Describes the relationship between Hounds and any piece of furniture upon which a human is attempting to sit.

Field goal:  Squirrels, rabbits, rats, or raccoons.

First down: The first time a Hound lies down on command. Enjoy it—it will probably also be the last down.

Foul: The smell of a Hound.  Especially one who has been rolling in the remains of a deceased rodent.

Fumble: This occurs when the Thanksgiving turkey momentarily drops out of a Hound’s mouth owing to its enormous size.

Goal post: A Hound urinal. Best used when a football game is actually in progress.

Going for it: What Hounds do when they are awake.

Hang time: The amount of time a leaping Hound must be in the air to obtain possession of your sandwich before it enters your mouth.

Holding: What humans struggle to do with the leash of a lively Hound.

Home Game: Chewing the legs off the furniture.

Intentional grounding: What a Hound does in a mud puddle or a compost heap.

Interception: A favorite Hound maneuver that prevents something you’ve got from going where you wanted it to go.

Line of scrimmage: An imaginary line between your Hound and the place you don’t want him to be.  Fortunately Hounds don’t believe in imaginary lines.

Live ball: The condition of a ball before it has had extensive contact with a Hound’s mouth.

Man-in motion:  A guy whose Hound has a taste for leather wallets.

Out of bounds:  A hopeful but ultimately futile human strategy for protecting their possessions.

Pass rush: What happens when a human tries to prevent a Hound from entering the kitchen.

Personal foul: When a Hound decides to rub himself on your clothing.

Play: Something a Hound likes to do on the bed when you are trying to sleep.

Pocket: An area routinely inspected and emptied by Hounds.

Possession: Something that humans who have Hounds can only experience on a temporary basis.

Recovery:  The amount of time it takes a Hound who has eaten the remote control to rest until he eats the iPhone.

Sack: (see pocket)

Scrambling: What humans do after their Hound has flung drool on that lady in the ivory colored Chanel suit.

Snap: What happens to the mind of a human who has spent too much time with a Hound.

Single elimination: What a Hound does in inclement weather when his human clearly desires a double elimination.

Spot: The ideal location for elimination. The spot may take a considerable time to locate as many potential spots must be investigated and evaluated before the actual spot is found.  NB:  Spots change on a daily basis.

Stiff arm: A consequence of walking a Bloodhound.

Super Bowl: The bowl in which meatloaf is being prepared. Other Super Bowls include those in which chicken is marinating and cookie dough is resting.

Winning a Super Bowl can be a long and arduous process but most Hounds feel it is well worth the effort.

Tackling: The process by which humans coming through a door are knocked to the ground in order to smell where they’ve been and to relieve them of any desirable objects or food items.

Territory: Places where a Hound has peed. Territories include such places as homes, neighbor’s homes, the park, the streets, the car, the neighbor’s dog, etc.

Touchback: This occurs when a human has ceased petting.  Also known as thwacking.

Touchdown: A more vigorous response to a cessation of petting than the touchback.

Turnover: The method in which a Hound indicates that he desires a belly rub.

Wild Card: The chase that ensues when a Hound has disrupted a peaceful game of solitaire.

Winning percentage: The life of a Hound.

Well you get the idea.  Anyway I think I will leave it there for this week.  But before I forget, I did get to take a walk with my puppy Pluto this week--although the little fellow turned 11 months on Thursday so I guess I can’t really call him a puppy for very much longer. As usual we had quite a good time, especially when he found a plastic water bottle and I had to chase him to take it away. The hydrocarbons in plastic are very unhealthy for him.

Until next time,

Wimsey, A star tailback

Wimsey"s Blog: Dairy of a Manhattan Bloodhound #257

Entry #257

April 13, 2012

Hello Everyone, it’s me, Wimsey, coming to you from the always fabulous Upper West Side of Manhattan where men are handsome, women are beautiful (at least those not wearing Hound clothes) and Hounds are exceptionally annoying. Especially one giant Hound in particular. But before we go any further, I am sorry to announce that there will be no blog post next Friday owing to a schedule conflict. But I should be back and in form the following week.

Anyway, things got off to a typical start around here on my Sunday walk with my human Maria and her friend Elizabeth wanting to visit the northern part of the park and me wanting to visit the southern part (more benches with abandoned food items and more bottle-toting tourists). I won’t say who won except that it wasn’t them. It never is. And it’s been a typical week in other ways—one in which I’ve done everything from shoving my nether regions over the rail of a tree pit to poop on a bunch of daffodils that had been growing there (NB: cleaning poop off flowers is not easy) to yelling at the FIOS guy who I suspected had designs on my squeaky shark. Sadly this altercation earned me 6 hours of FIOS installation penalty time tethered to Elizabeth which turned into 6 hours of FIOS installation penalty time for Elizabeth as she was tethered to me and was unable to escape my need to be scratched, my need to wipe my drool on her pants and my need to use various bits of her as a pillow.

And speaking of drool (and when are we not?), the weather has still been too cool for Elizabeth to model the bargain, too tight cargo pants that she only got to wear once—both of us are eager to show off my cargo pant drool, hair and mud collage to Maria who very wisely is sticking to more drool-forgiving jeans. The state of my humans’ usual appearance is such that when they actually get dressed up and go out without me (a very rare occurrence I might add) no one recognizes them. Elizabeth escorted a shelter dog to the ASPCA’s Bergh Ball fundraiser last night and the elevator guys and doormen in her building just stared at her like “who are you?” When they realized who she was I am sure they were puzzled as to why, if she could look like that, she looks like she usually does. The answer of course is that if she looked like that, she wouldn’t look like that for very long in my presence. All part of the joys of taking care of me. But everyone always recognizes me even when I am sporting one of my coats or my fancy collar for Easter and that is really the only thing that matters.

And speaking of recognizing people, I was perambulating in the park on Tuesday when I heard shouts of ‘Wimsey! Wimsey!” (Notice that there are never shouts of Maria! Maria! Or Elizabeth! Elizabeth!) and who should come trotting into view but our friend Sandy who we met at Westminster when I was benched next to the very beautiful Houndess, Phoebe. (I earned my reputation as a ladies man at a subsequent show when I finished up my once around by shoving my nose up Phoebe’s butt). But it was quite exciting to see Sandy again—she works near Central Park and had decided to take a walk in the park and was wondering if she would run into me.

And suddenly there I was! So I drooled on her face and demanded a cookie. But Sandy is very familiar with such Houndly behavior –she and her husband live with three bassets and a young bloodhound who is just starting his show career. I am sure he will do very well, since unlike me he apparently doesn’t concertize in the ring and try to date the female Hounds.

Anyway, I also paid a visit to one of my favorite statues—if I can’t get close to actual poultry in the park at least I am permitted to interact with the inanimate variety. But unlike the Alice in Wonderland statue nearby, that of Hans Christian Andersen is not swarming with excited youngsters. I am sure his stories would be more popular today if he had followed the advice of one of my Danish ancestors, Torvald Wimsey, and changed the content slightly:

The Wimsey Book of Danish Fairy Tales

The Emperor’s New Clothes: An emperor with a lively Hound commissions a new set of clothes because his old ones have holes in them and are covered in what he hopes is just drool. However, the weavers he commissions can’t bear the thought of what will happen to their magnificent garments once the Imperial Hound gets a hold of them. So they tell the emperor that the suit they made him is magical and only visible to individuals who are not stupid or incompetent. The emperor has a bad moment when he realizes that he himself can’t see the new clothes, but the suit is so comfortable that he buys it anyway. As he is parading around a little boy too young to know what happens to those who thwart delusional emperors cries out that the emperor has no clothes. The boy is admonished by his elders that of course the emperor has no clothes; he has a Hound.

The Little Mermaid: A young mermaid saves the life of a handsome prince (why are there never any so so looking princes, I wonder) and wants to become human so she can marry him. Everyone, including the wise Sea Witch advises her against this since she will have a short life span, won’t be able to talk, will have painful feet and will turn to sea foam if the prince doesn’t marry her. None of this dissuades her. But then she finds out that she will have to live with the prince’s large, stinky Hound who steals food, raids underwear drawers and sleeps in the bed while snoring and making bad smells. She then decides that perhaps being a mermaid isn’t such a bad gig after all.

Thumbelina: A peasant woman gives a farmer’s wife a magic barleycorn seed in exchange for food. A flower grows out of the seed and out of the flower emerges a tiny Hound. Unfortunately the tiny Hound acts a lot like a big Hound and pees on the bushes, rips up all the flowerbeds, digs holes and messes with the garbage. But the Hound is very cute so no one minds.

The Ugly Duckling: A beautiful Golden Retriever gives birth to a litter of puppies but one of the puppies is not golden and fluffy, it is brown and wrinkly. All the fluffy puppies despise this little intruder and think he is ugly. Then the puppies grow up and the fluffy puppies are not fluffy anymore. Nevertheless they learn their commands and do all kinds of useful things like jump into freezing water to retrieve ducks while the wrinkly puppy, who is now even more wrinkled, learns how to ignore all its commands and do all kinds of non-useful things like jumping into the heated swimming pool to chew up the floating rafts. Then the retrievers realize that the wrinkly puppy has grown up into a Magnificent Hound who steals pot roasts from the refrigerator instead of waiting to be fed a few cups of kibble by his humans and who does exactly what he pleases and very little that pleases anyone else. But everyone likes him better because he is so cute.

The Princess and the Pea: A toxic bachelor prince says he wants to marry but somehow manages to find fault with all the nice women he meets. He also says that he has no way to verify that the women really are princesses oblivious to the fact that most men don’t want to marry princesses for a host of very good reasons. To make matters worse, his mother nags him incessantly and says she despairs of ever having grandchildren. Then one stormy night a very wet woman appears at the castle and the mother decides to test how much of a princess she really is by putting a pea under 20 mattresses and featherbeds. A real princess, she reasons, would not be satisfied with anything that is less than perfect and would complain about it the next morning. Sure enough the princess candidate bitches about something hard in her bed that has bruised her. While this could have had something to do with that pesky pea or the wild sex she had with the prince that night—toxic bachelors being quite partial to wild sex before rejection—the real reason was the fact that the prince’s Hound is also quite partial to sleeping on mounds of cushy mattresses and featherbeds and kept thwacking her with his giant paws so she would scratch him all night. The prince chooses to believe it was really the pea and marries the woman because the woman is hot in the sack and never married princes pushing 40 are suspect and he wonders where else would he find a woman who would let his Hound sleep in the bed with him. Also he wanted to get his mother off his back.

Well you get the idea. Anyway, this week I got to do a spot of shopping at Unleashed, always a favorite stomping ground of mine.

The thing about shopping in a pet store is that you can do all kinds of obnoxious things and the staff have to be nice to you and feed you cookies and pretend that you don’t smell. It’s no wonder that I am always dragging my humans thither. And speaking of other venues where I get to be obnoxious, my brewery, Baying Hound Aleworks, (www. baying-hound.com), is having a party on the 27^th and 28^th of this month at their facility in Rockville, MD to celebrate the launch of their golden summer Kolsch style ale. There will be food and fun and possibly me. If scheduling permits I may make a personal appearance on Saturday. Of course this has set off the usual frenzy of searching for suitable rental cars and hotel rooms and the recurring dilemma of whether or not to tell “pet friendly” but sizist hotels that the canine in question is of a rather robust size or to just show up with me and hope we don’t get booted into the street.

Stay tuned.

Well I think that is all for this week. Tomorrow is another Anal Gland Inspection Day where fingers get stuck up one end and compensatory turkey down the other but I do get to see all my friends at the vet office, which I always enjoy. And it’s supposed to be something like 80 degrees on Sunday and I am trying to convince my humans to carry a shade umbrella for me but so far they have been resistant to the notion. I can’t imagine why.

Until next time,

Wimsey, a shady character

Wimsey's Blog: Dairy of a Manhattan Bloodhound #256

Entry #256

April 6, 2012

Hello Everyone, Wimsey here, coming to you from the Upper West Side of Manhattan where the beautiful weather and approaching holiday weekend are having a salubrious effect on the natives, visitors and Hounds alike. Sadly neither my human Maria nor her friend Elizabeth allow me to sample chocolate bunnies and the more delicious kind don’t exist in Central Park—very surprising considering the wide variety of animal life harbored therein and one of the park’s only real failings from a Hound perspective. In fact the, first time I saw an actual bunny it was during one of our road trips upstate and I was frankly flummoxed by it. It didn’t smell at all familiar and it moved in such a strange way that I was not sure if it was friend, foe or dinner.

Well it’s been rather a quiet week around here. I ran into my puppy Pluto on the street on Monday and created the usual ruckus which created the usual amount of pedestrian interest (or horror) depending on one’s reaction to large loud dogs making noises more associated with a prison break than with a puppy on a Manhattan street corner. One woman asked what the noise I was making was called, and although Elizabeth had several choice names in mind, she decided to go with the accurate one. I always find it surprising that so few people know that while regular dogs bark, Hounds bay. Most often people refer to my noise as howling-- an inaccuracy which causes my hackles to rise and my humans to become irritated as my deep, mellifluous baying could not be a more different sound. But of course I prevent my humans from providing the necessary pedantry on the subject by the volume of the activity itself.

But the weather has been so nice that I can hardly bear to be out of Central Park and I have been visiting some of my favorite spots, one of which is the Obelisk. My cynical humans suspect that my seeming avid interest in Egyptology (I always insist on checking out the plaza around the monument) has less to do with history than with the fact that people like to eat lunch on the surrounding benches.

The Obelisk came to New York in 1881 from Egypt principally because London and Paris had one and New York’s city fathers felt slighted in the Imperialist booty department. For those of you not up on your 18^th Dynasty Pharaohs, the Obelisk was erected during the time of Thutmose III in 1450 BC. Thutmose inherited the throne while still a wee sprat so for the first 22 years of his reign his stepmother Hatshepsut was named Pharaoh, replete with masculine clothes and a false beard. This puts me in mind of one of my ancestors, Wimsis I who was also a pharaoh:

Scenes from the reign of Wimsis I

Grand Vizier: All hail our new Pharaoh Wimsis!

Less Grand Vizier: Are you sure he is the new pharaoh? Wasn’t he digging holes in the garden last week?

Grand Vizier: Well he was the last Pharaoh’s Chief Hound but he’s now been promoted to be the actual pharaoh. Apparently all those years of pharaohs marrying their sisters hasn’t been too healthy for the royal family; he’s the smartest one left.

Less Grand Vizier: Well he is certainly an imposing fellow. And that beard becomes him.

Grand Vizier: We had to spray it with Bitter Myrrh to keep him from chewing on it, but it does add to his majesty. And we did have to cut holes in the headdress to accommodate his extravagant ears.

Less Grand Vizier: But isn’t he still a dog?

Grand Vizier: Plenty of successful rulers have been dogs, just not the canine kind. But with the addition of the beard and crown and what’s left of the old pharaoh’s ceremonial clothes, he is now human. Or rather a human who thinks he is a god.

Less Grand Vizier: But won’t that be a big adjustment for him?

Grand Vizier: No. Obviously you haven’t spent much time with him.

Less Grand Vizier: Well I tried to but the wife kept complaining about the smell I was bringing home.

Grand Vizier: Well she had better get used to it; it’s now the fragrance being used in all the sacred incense. But at least it’s not that other smell he produces. I keep telling Cook to go light on the hummus.

Less Grand Vizier: But still, don’t you think he will have to adjust? How about the royal chariot?

Grand Vizier: He liked to sit up front with the Pharaoh. Apparently he likes to drive also.

Less Grand Vizier: And where will he sleep?

Grand Vizier: Where he always sleeps—in the Pharaoh’s bed.

Less Grand Vizier: And where will he eat?

Grand Vizier: Where he always eats—at the Pharaoh’s table. Although apparently the food taster has to taste the food behind a curtain—Wimsis finds the sight of anyone eating his food deeply offensive.

Less Grand Vizier: But how about military affairs?

Grand Vizier: Like most natural rulers he’s acquisitive, possessive and territorial. A good start. But I don’t think we’ll be seeing a lot of war in his reign. He has magical powers that cause people to voluntarily give him what he wants. And they seem to enjoy doing it.

Less Grand Vizier: Well he is very cute.

Grand Vizier: And the priests have been collecting the sacred substance that flows from his mouth. It apparently has magical properties.

Less Grand Vizier: What kind of magical properties?

Grand Vizier: it makes things stick together. They’re calling it The Gift of the Flews.

Less Grand Vizier: But we already have the Gift of the Nile—how come we always get water as gifts? I thought we were supposed to be popular with the gods. Why don’t they give us the Gift of the Gold Mine or something valuable like that—and I don’t mean yellow liquid either. We’re already spending a fortune keeping the palace columns white. But what about the throne?

Grand Vizier: Ah, yes. There we had to make a few adjustments. We had to add a few cubits of depth to it to accommodate the generous pharaohnic posterior. Also his majesty finds sitting on an empty throne unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

Less Grand Vizier: So are you commissioning cushions for him?

Grand Vizier: Not exactly. I’m pleased to tell you that you have been promoted to Keeper of the Sacred Tush. His Majesty will be sitting on you.

Lesser Grand Vizier: The weight of the honor is overwhelming.

Grand Vizier: I know you will be privy to all the Pharaoh’s most important conversations!

Lesser Grand Vizier: No, I mean the weight really is overwhelming—he’s bigger than I am!

Grand Vizier: He’s bigger than most of us. But we must accept the will of the Pharaoh. Everyone else does.

Well you get the idea. Anyway, things proceed apace for Elizabeth’s FIOS installation on Wednesday. In the process of cleaning out closets for the new wiring she managed to find two stuffed toys that were probably part of charity goody bags that I had never seen. I wasn’t around so she placed on them on the Mt. Everest of stuffed toys that lives in front of her TV and forgot about them. That was until I walked in the door the next day, instantly smelled them and nearly knocked her over to pounce on my enhanced toy pile. This made her realize that she might want to do something about that pile before her new TV is delivered on Monday. But no matter where she puts the toys, I intend to supervise the TV delivery and set up just as I am prepared to supervise the FIOS wiring—all six hours of it!

The FIOS guys were in her lobby yesterday signing up more customers and they very considerately had dog snacks at the tables that they seemed to enjoy feeding me. Let’s hope the installation guy comes similarly provisioned. I’m afraid Elizabeth has visions of me baying at the guy, goosing him or stealing his toys and him fleeing out the door screaming. But I can’t imagine where she got that idea. People are always telling her how well behaved I am.

But it is Easter and I would be remiss if I did not do something to mark the holiday (my humans generally disapprove of me marking holidays owing to the fluidity of my marking style). So in the spirit of entertaining the children during this festive time I present:

Easter Fun With Dick and Jane

See Dick in his new blue suit. See Jane in her new white dress. It is Easter. See the Easter Hound. He has come to say hello. He is very friendly. He is very loud. See him shake his head. See Dick’s suit. See Dicks suit with big white spots. It makes Dick’s suit look like Dick was doing something else. But he is not old enough for that. See Jane’s dress. Jane’s dress does not have white spots. Jane’s dress has brown and green spots. It looks like Jane was rolling in the grass. Maybe with Dick. But she is not old enough for that.

See Dick’s Easter basket. See Jane’s Easter basket. See the Easter eggs in Dick and Jane’s baskets. The Easter Hound also sees the eggs in Dick and Jane’s baskets. The Easter Hound likes eggs. The Easter Hound is hungry. The Easter Hound has not eaten for half an hour. Dick and Jane are very small. The Easter Hound is very big. See the Easter Hound with his new Easter baskets. They are empty. See Dick cry. See Jane cry. Dick and Jane should learn to share. Well not sharing exactly.

See Dick. See Jane. See Dick and Jane watching the flowerbed. See Dick and Jane watching the Easter Hound in the flowerbed. See the Easter Hound watering the flowerbed. The Easter Hound has a lot of water. He is very big and eggs make him very thirsty. See the Easter Hound providing food for the flowers to grow. The Easter Hound has a lot of food for the flowers to grow. He is very big and eggs make him very loose.

See Dick and Jane in the kitchen. See Dick and Jane in the kitchen with the Easter ham. See Dick and Jane and the Easter Hound in the kitchen with the Easter ham. The Easter ham has pineapple. Dick likes pineapple. Jane likes pineapple. The Easter Hound likes ham. The Easter eggs were very small. The Easter Hound is very big. The ham is very big. The Easter Hound is still hungry. Mother is setting the Easter table. Mother left the ham alone to cool. Bad mother.

See the Easter table. The Easter table is very pretty. There are flowers from the flowerbed on the Easter table. There is no ham on the Easter table. There is a pizza box on the Easter table. There is a swollen, snoring Hound under the Easter table. He is making very bad smells. But Jane is happy. But Dick is happy. Dick and Jane like pizza. And the Easter Hound is full.

The End

(In the next installment the Easter Hound learns about Passover and Seder participants learn another reason why that night is different from all other nights)

Well I hope you all enjoy the holidays. I know we all will here. At least some of us.

Until next time,

Wimsey, The Easter Hound