It's time ...

... for this year's annual Christmas/dog/shopping video. This one is really sweet ... and a tear-jerker, too!

Minners got her hair cut yesterday and when I was waiting to pick her up, I saw a group of 5 dogs that were there, looking for their forever homes. If you are looking for a dog to join your family this year, you should check out the adoption events at your local PetSmart. Such cute babies!

Happy Girl

She was probably looking at the tiny squirrel in our neighborhood that keeps climbing just out of her reach on the tree trunks. Now every time we go outside, Minnie sits at the bottom of the trees, looking up like she might be able to catch it. Or play with it. You know how much Minnie likes other animals :)

I was so happy we could get outside for a quick photo shoot today. And quick means less than five minutes in this 100+ degree heat. It's brutal out. Too hot to do much more than lay on the couch inside. We needed to get outside to do something, even if it was quick. I wanted to post this picture of a smiley Minnie because I picked the more serious picture of her for my photo blog today. She definitely shows lots of different emotions ... that's one of my favorite things about her!

Hope you are all staying cool ... people AND animals. Don't leave your pets out in this extreme heat. Just think about how hot you are and then imagine wearing a fur coat every time you went outside. Now I've got to get back to my DVR. The Closer and Rizzoli & Isles are waiting for me.

I needed this laugh!

Watch this one ...

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And then feel free to waste some time watching the other Walk on the Wild Side videos, especially if you're home sick and can't seem to move off the couch.

Don't let me go here ...

I might come back with everything I see!

Ha!

P.S. That baby in the drawer looks exactly like Minners when she was a puppy! So cute!

P.P.S. I laughed out loud at the saleswoman taping the tissue paper around that pug! Go back & watch again ... you'll laugh, too!

Worth a watch!

I've liked the band, OK Go, for a while. They became well known with their first music video, "Here It Goes Again" that involved a group of 6 treadmills. I probably watched that video 100 times. I bet you've seen it too!

Last year, they came out with another great video for "This Too Shall Pass" that was based off of a Rube Goldberg Machine. They had to do the entire thing in one take. I can't imagine just how many times it took to get it perfect!

Here is the latest video for "White Knuckles". I couldn't tell you any of the words of the song, and I probably wouldn't recognize it if it were played again, but I was glued to my computer. You'll see why ...

Pretty amazing, huh?

Seen on our walking route

{Yes, that's a mattress & box spring under the highway.}

{Tree completely covered by vine plant. It's GORGEOUS in person!}

{She stopped half way through our walk to rest a bit. Cars driving by laughed at us!}

{Minnie's new "friend" that we ran into on the way home. This poor turtle was awfully far from any sort of nature. I wonder how long it took him to get on the walking trail from his home.}

Who wants to join us on our next walk?

Meet my new friend ...

This is Webster.

His egg came from our custodian's farm.

He was born in the preschool classroom on the other end of our building.

He is the only duckling that hatched.

He has some chick friends in Kindergarten.

He is cute.

He took a field trip to 4th grade this afternoon.

He looks funny when he walks.

His feet & bill feel funny.

His wings are so tiny, they look funny when they flap.

I've never held a duckling.

I didn't want to put him down.

He likes to nuzzle in your neck.

Webster moves too fast to pose for a picture.

Can't I keep him?

There's no place like home

Oh look! A pretty goose. Sitting on her eggs. She found a nice spot now that it's Spring and the snow is (hopefully) gone.

Wait a minute! There is a sign to warn you to leave Mother Goose alone. That's strange.

Now do you see her? There she is! Right in the middle of a median in the Macy's parking lot. If you happen to see Mother Goose & her babies crossing 119th Street in a few weeks, please be polite. She's worked hard to take care of her babies and all she wants to do is get them to a pond across the street!

I think there's a joke in here somewhere ...

Why did the goose cross the street?

To make a nest for her babies at Town Center??? Surely one of you can come up with a better punch line!

Do Johnson County dogs have anything to howl about???

Apparently, they do!

We are REALLY close to the highway, but in the 18 months that I've lived here, I've gotten used to the sounds that are always coming & going. The first few nights, I couldn't sleep ... now the traffic helicopters don't even wake me up in the morning.

Last summer, I was sitting on the couch, when a fire-truck drove by our condo on the highway. All of a sudden, Minnie sat up & started howling at the sirens going by. I've NEVER heard her howl ... I didn't even know that she knew how to make those sounds. It just goes to show that dogs have canine instincts, no matter how cush their lives are. She "makes her bed" before she lays down to sleep, she likes to "bury" my phone or remotes in blankets ... and now this!

I was fast to get out my handy flip camera just in time to catch her howling at the trucks going by. Excuse my howling to get her started ... I couldn't let this moment pass my flip by! :)

The first thing I do when I wake up is hit "Snooze"

She does this!

Every morning when we get up, Minnie promptly goes over to the sliding glass door I have in my bedroom. It goes out to a balcony, but she never really scratches at the door to go out. My bedroom is on the 3rd floor of our building, so I don't like for her to be out there alone. She mostly just wants to sit there and watch for any birds, squirrels, kids, cars, leaves, whatever that might move by her line of sight.

Sometimes she just sits here like this. Sometimes she completely lays down behind the curtain, which is strange to me, because that means she can see even less of what is going on outside. Sometimes she hides completely behind the curtain so I can't see her.

I've been meaning to get a picture of her doing this, but I never bring my camera upstairs with me. By the time I would get out of bed to go get my camera, she'd move to follow me downstairs. Last night, I got smart and brought my camera up with me BEFORE bed. So smart!

Just wanted to share a little bit of our mornings.

I give this girl an "A" for her report on Kittens!

I saw this on BoingBoing, and couldn't stop laughing! It even made me forget about the fact that my head feels like it's going to explode!

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The whole video is like one big LOLcat!

This made me happy

Very cute video about two unlikely friends.
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Hmmmm ... I've never seen that before

Minnie & I just walked in the door tonight. At the last minute we went over to Mitzi's to watch a little NBC, do a little knitting and have a little dinner. Adam & Jill were there, too. The evening was just what we all needed! We're getting close to the end of this semester and the stress levels are very high for all of us! Minnie joined us, because my friends are nice enough to let me bring her to their houses. I hate to leave her at home at night after she's been cooped up in my room all day, too.

Minnie & Mitzi's cat, Betty, got some play time in. In fact, I think Minners gets so excited about being around Betty that she wears herself out. We've been home about 10 minutes and she's already conked out on the couch! We thought they were starting to get used to each other after so many "inner-species playdates", but at one point, I saw no animals around me and it was silent. Silent animals is not always a good thing. I went looking for Minnie and sure enough, Betty had trapped her on the back stairwell by sitting right at the top so Minnie couldn't get up! It wasn't as bad as the Kitty/Puppy fight that Jill caught on video, but poor Minnie was so sad. (P.S. you HAVE TO go watch the video for a laugh!)


See how concerned Betty is that Minnie is trapped? Not very! If you look closely, you can see Minnie's ears pinned back ... she does this when she's in trouble or when she's scared. Poor baby! This picture makes it look like she has two friends for back-up at the bottom of the stairs. They are either running shoes with reflective spots on them OR animal ghosts sitting at the bottom of Mitzi's stairs.

Anyhoo ... we were driving home, ready to do some relaxing on our own couch before bed and I saw THIS as we drove in the parking lot at home:
This isn't actually my picture because the two critters ran away before I could stop, get my camera out and take a picture ... but this is what it would have looked like! I drove up and saw 2 raccoons scurrying out of the dumpster area and hurry into the storm drain before the car got close. YUCK! I guess THIS is why there are signs posted all over to close the dumpsters before you leave and make sure that they aren't overflowing. Clearly, someone didn't follow the directions.

I never thought that was why you had to close them. I thought it was just to be curteous. Now I know! This also made me very thankful that Minnie gets to walk on a leash at our new place. If she were off-leash, she could get into all sorts of trouble. It's one thing to get her booty kicked by a house kitty, but quite another thing to get beaten up by a gang of street raccoons!

Who needs a TV when you can watch Shiba Inu Puppy Cam!?!?!

I saw that a friend has posted a link to this website on his FB page. How in the world did I NOT know about a website that has a live feed of 6 puppies sleeping, eating, playing and being cute??

The website apparently started a few weeks ago, and after I googled to find out more, I realized that the whole nation is watching! There is sound to go with the live feed. For some reason, my sound kind of went in and out, but when Minnie heard the dogs barking & whining at one point, she jumped up on my lap to figure out where it was coming from. I wish you could have seen her standing on my lap with her front paws on the edge of the table, watching the moving pups on my laptop screen! It was priceless.

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This is almost as great as the Puppy Bowl that Animal Planet shows during the Super Bowl for people like me who could care less about football!

I love what Gawker had to say about the site:
It's been a week, and the voyeuristic viral puppycam live-feed is still rolling and we can't tear ourselves away. (It may be the most popular live streaming video of all time, reports Alley Insider.) It's not just that they're so darn cute—it's the economy, stupid! The puppycam is a fantasty that cures us of our free-floating anxiety in an uncertain world. We all want to be those puppies: the Shiba Inu fluffballs don't have to worry about losing their jobs, or making money. They are completely provided for in their little box, their mom comes in and nurses them, and they have human caretakers who play with them as well. They've got it made.

Also, we all know that Obama is about to get his kids a new puppy. That new-puppy feeling that rushed over the country wasn't about the love of dogs: we want to be the Obamas' puppy. We want him to be a paternal figure who will swoop into office and take care of us. We want him to provide for us and feed us and to make our lives safer.

That's also why the people who are running the puppycam have become objects of speculation. All we ever see is the bottom of the man's legs, who comes in to feed them. "Puppies, you want your toys?" you can hear him saying. He's like Curious George's Man in the Yellow Hat, whose character is so sparsely sketched that the reader can project whatever they want onto him. Why did they decide to start a puppycam? How long will it last? Where do they live? WTF is going on?

Meanwhile, Gabriel Delahaye of Videogum thinks the puppycam is ruining the Internet: "Don't even get me started on the livefeed puppy cam and the threat it poses to the rest of the internet... because who cares about any other site? Puppies!"

Quick! Leave my blog! Check out the live feed and then bookmark the page. We don't know how long the site will last, so get your puppy fill while you can! I wonder if I can get to the site from my classroom computer. My kids might like to watch the cam for a few minutes as a reward for good behavior! :)

The real truth about cats & dogs

No, this isn't a re-post that Jill had of the boxing match between Betty & Minnie last year ... it's a good story. No fighting animals involved at all!

My Aunt Dinah sent me this video to share on my blog.


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There is something about inter-species niceness that makes me tear up. CuteOverload even has a whole section of the site devoted to what they call Interspecies Snorgling. Go check out the posts they have under that label!

I think I have some friends that will like this video

Found on CuteOverload, of course.
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Girls (you know who you are) ... whatcha think of this one?

It kinda reminds me of this pic, which we've been talking about for weeks!
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more animals
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How hard do you think she'd bite me?

I saw pictures for some of these doggy wigs on Cute Overload today.

I've seen and posted some pretty funny pictures of yorkies from CO, but this one might take the cake! This is one in a collection of many wigs for dogs called Wiggles Wigs for Dogs. I went to see if they had any fun, gray wigs for Miss Minners. I assume there aren't any gray wigs, because what fashionable girl wants to have gray hair by choice??? I think my favorite of the whole line is the "doll face" wig. Check it out!

Don't worry ... for you cat people, there are Kitty Wigs out there, too! They are even more ridiculous, if that's possible! :)

This kitty & I feel the same way today

This is the latest from Itty Bitty Kitty Committee!


I've told you before that IBKC is one of my favorite blogs that I read daily (you should, too)! This is today's post about little Orson Davenport that is the last of his litter to be adopted out.

The human foster parent is starting to think that maybe it's because of his poor attitude! ;) I love the "twin" girls in the background giving the stink-eye. It's like this is a picture of a bunch of kitty bullies! Ha!

Always saddle your own horse!

This morning, I saw that my cousin Katherine has posted a link to this fabulous video about American Cowgirls! The video (see below) features Miss Connie Reeves who passed away at age 101, after she was thrown off her favorite horse Dr. Pepper.

While this may not seem interesting to you, it is interesting to me because Connie Reeves taught horseback riding at the camp I went to in Texas for seven summers. She also taught my sister (even though she was terrified and quit after her first year), my cousins Katherine, Hannah & Janie and our mothers Caroline, Dinah & Suzanne! Connie saw met me at age 9 and then continued to talk about the Hampton twins (my mom and aunt) and told stories about teaching them to ride horses, too!

These beautiful photos of Connie come from the American Cowgirl website. There are many other great women who are featured on the site, but Connie holds a special place in my heart because I know her. In addition, she was not only inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, but she was one of two women to win an award from the National CowBOY and Western Heritage Museum. Pretty amazing!

If you look at her in this photo, that is exactly how I remember her. I distinctly remember her hands and they look the same way in this photo.

Here's a picture of Connie riding one of her horses from Camp Waldemar in the Guadalupe River. She rode horses every day that she could, up until the day that she fell off the horse that ultimately caused her fatal injuries at age 101. She taught young girls to ride horseback for 67 years at Waldemar, and was estimated to teach 36,000 girls! Pretty impressive.

This is the last photo I found. When Connie died in 2003, the news was shared all over the world. She made such an impact on people, whether or not they knew her.

Here is the video from the American Cowgirl site:
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I think it is really touching, and Connie is also really funny in the video, talking about how you can't have much to say if you can't curse, calling a girl riding with a saddle a sissy and making fun of her 70-year-old friends!
{On a side note, I like the song that goes along with the video, but I can't figure out what it is. Anyone know?}

I hope you enjoy! Any Waldemar girls reading, feel free to share your thoughts on Connie!

Way to go, Kansas Zoo!

Check out this great article I found on the MSN homepage about a golden retriever adopting tiger cubs in a zoo in southeast Kansas. Pretty touching!