A darker than intended blog with a happy ending

With us here in the Monster House we work and work to reach a high, and within a few short minutes we are knocked low again. But like skyscrapers, rising up, floor by floor, we don't give up. Mommy finally got the irresistible condo across from the state mental institution ready to go on the market. Daddy went to the website of the retirement community we all wanted to live and under rules it says only one pet. Which is a problem because counting Daddy Mommy and I have two.

So I immediately took the Yorkie by the horns: I rain this posting on Craig's List. "Looking for good home. One slightly under house trained, obsessive compulsive, attention deficit deficient, Yorkshire Terrier, who answers to either Pocket, or to OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU STOP BARKING BEFORE I HURL MYSELF OUT THE SECOND STORY WINDOW THROUGH THE CAR'S WINDSHIELD. We will take nothing, or pay the lowest bidder to have it removed."

Then Mommy made me delete the post. OK humans. If we're not proactive we'll be living in a van by the river! But then Daddy had an idea. You remember our Auntie Bev? She's not been doing well lately. She doesn't really remember people. The other day her daughter, grandson and son in law took her out for ice cream. When she got back to the home she thought she was a teenager, and that the home was her son in law's house, and he was a boy she knew, and he was trying to get her into his house for just a dish of ice cream, and Auntie Bev ain't easy. It took awhile to get her back into her room. Very sad for everyone involved, including Grand Pops, who can't stand going to see her anymore because she thinks he's her father. Sometimes I wonder if it's humane to put us down when our quality of life has been destroyed why can't humans be humane to one another?

Now, at this point in writing this, it seems like we are an opportunistic family of Monsters. Because Daddy got the idea of buying her house. But it really isn't as cat eat cat as it seems. Auntie Bev has been out of her house for a year. Her son has been taking care of both her house and his own. It's a cute little place with a few flaws and needs some work. The hope is to work out a deal with no relaters for a reasonable price, sell the enchanted condo, and move. Then we'll have our own back yard. We need everyone to cross their paws on this one.

If this all goes through then Mommy can retire from her job, and Daddy can work on getting his retirement. Daddy works in a housing project that was recently rated one of the most dangerous in the area. None of us like him working there. There has been a few times he's narrowly escaped serious injury including being alone with a mean gang member who had a gun pointed at Daddy's temple. I don 't understand it all myself but there are different levels Daddy can retire on and he wants to retire on the one which is for the people with the most dangerous jobs. As his lawyer I spend a part of every day in the laundry room preparing his briefs.

Dr Pocket wants to do an entire psychological work up on Daddy to prove that Daddy is mentally incapable of working. But there is an ancient Chinese proverb that says a man who wants to prove he is disabled, and uses a dog who pees her diaper as his expert witness....well, he usually wins.

So we are bracing ourselves for a year of big changes, including another knee replacement for Mom, which means a hospital stay, which means lots of alone time for Pocket and I, then poor Mommy's long rehab for which she has to be on one floor, for which we need a new house, and around and around we go.

To get the ball rolling I placed this ad on Craig's List: "For sale: One well lived in condo. Sight pee and poo smell in the carpets. Slight water damage in the basement. Insane escaped convicts rarely enter house while you're sleeping. Interesting neighbors who spend hours trying to outwit squirrels and forgetting to wear their pants. Only used by lady who can hardly walk, various Yorkies, and strange man. Either best offer or bank foreclosure accepted."

Well, this turned into a darker blog then I intended but sometimes blogs work out this way. But guess what. This morning out human brother Chad came over and he told us that he and his wife Lisa are making a new grandbaby! I'm going to the a grand doggy again, and Pocket too.

It's like Pocket says: Even on the darkest day some light comes through. Sounds like wise words to me. But then again, she pees herself, so take it with a grain of kibble.

Sage is our August 29, 2010 put of the week

While the luckiest humans are the ones who get to live with wonderful dogs like us who comprise the Brigade I also know that being a pup parent can be a difficult duty. We do all carry with us in our mouths our own baggage of stress. Some of us bark; some poop; some chew; some pee; some dig; some bite; some are aggressive; some passive. But we never cause more stress then when we get sick.

We don't mean to cause stress. Oh we mean to when we do all that other stuff. Sometimes we do it just out of spite. But not when we get sick. It's no picnic for us either.

Our pup of the week, Sage, has been causing his Mom some unwarranted stress for quite some time, and he's been just sick about if - and just sick.

Like a bomb blast it started with a tick. We all know ticks. They are tiny and live in tall grass, which we can't help sniffing because sometimes you never know when a friend is going to leave pee mail there. While we are innocently catching up on the news those blood suckers latch on to us (and they really are blood suckers, not the way humans call politicians or plumbers blood suckers, they literally suck blood, which shows you how bad they are; they're the second worst thing you can be, and I won't mention the worse one, but once one crawled off me and climbed on to Daddy's....and then the thing bit....and boy did Daddy whine about that) and not only do they suck blood but they carry disease like some wanton woman who wears short dresses and waits for the Navy down at the pier and spread it to my friends (and this is the longest sentence I have ever written I need to lie down for awhile.)

Now our friend Sage wasn't bit by just any tick. He was bit by a Rocky Mountain tick. He was bit by a tick with an address. Probably a condo. Up in the mountains. And these are the worse kind of ticks to get bitten by because they need a lot blood because they have a mortgage and yard tp keep up. Originally it looked very dire for our friend Sage. But he fought and fought to stay with his Mom.

This week his Mom waited for an important blood test to come in. She was looking for an improvement. Unfortunately the blood test had not changed and she was very upset. Damn tick with an unaffordable mortgage. Ticks buying homes in the mountains caused our economic problems too.

But then she got another call and said that it was a good thing that the blood levels hadn't changed. Not only had our little Sage kicked that upper class tick's ass, but they can't hurt him now.

So for overcoming the odds, for making his Mom happy, for writing a blog with the biggest font size since Hattie Mae's blog on the bombing of Pearl Harbor because she was so happy, and for sticking it to the rich tick, Sage is our pup of the week

Of Slats and voices in the box

Hi gang. How is everybody doing? You remember how my Nana went to the Bridge and the Grand Pops fell down and hurt his Cock Ox bone? Well Daddy made an agreement with Grand Pops after Nana went to the bridge. They agreed that Grand Pops had one free fall. After that he was going to have to get a medical alert bracelet. This is really cool. When you fall down, you press a button, and it sends you help. I need to get a pee alert system for Pocket. When she needs to pee....well you get the idea.

We all went to Grand Pops house when the package arrived from UPS: Underdog Postal Service. There were no packing peanuts. This was a huge disappointment. "Pocket take a note" I commanded as I was going to rectify this situation immediately but she had got her nose stuck on the postal tape.

Daddy took control of the situation. He needed an electrical and phone outlets. He momentarily forgot that whenever he stepped foot in his parent's house he was transported back to 1892. His search took quite some time.

Somehow every electrical outlet in the home was attached to a light switch. If you flicked on the one in the bathroom you turned on a blender, the upstairs TV and the toilet flushed. If you flicked on the one in the living room the dryer turned off, the sump pump began to work and a guy in Milan had his garage door shut. He finally found an outlet that was hidden behind the bread box and no one had rewired it. (Those of you who guessed that inside the bread box was a key to a Dodge Spirit, a package of Chiclets and some rolls swiped from the Olive Garden in 1998 give yourself five points.)

He plugged everything in exactly how it said on the instructions. Mommy suggested that maybe he put one of the lines in wrong. Oh, silly Mommy! Daddy then pressed the button that would send the signal to the Lifeline people. Suddenly a loud voice began to yell out from the machine: "EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY. DANGER WILL ROBINSON. OLD MAN DOWN. OLD MAN DOWN BY THE RIVER HE SHOT HIS LADY. HELLO! OLD MAN! NUMBER FIVE STILL ALIVE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"

Daddy was picking up the phone, turning it over, looking at the bottom. "It should be calling someone by now," he said. Mommy suggested he put the lines in the phone wrong. Silly Mommy!

Grand Pop was getting anxious over the loud noise. Pocket and I went to hide under the bed in Nana's closet where Grand Pop's slept. But someone had taken the mattress and box spring off. What a dirty trick that was. We looked up and all we saw was slats. SLATS! What the hell are slats? I don't know but I doubt they were created to provide protection.

We ran into Daddy's old room and there were only mattresses. What was this old man doing? No wonder he kept falling down. He was trying to dethrone the Mattress King. We ran back downstairs and found a bed in Grand Pop's office. We trembled together while Grand Pop yelled at Daddy to turn the thing off and Daddy tried to talk to someone in customer service about why it wouldn't shut off. Finally, Daddy pulled the plug, on the machine, not on Grand Pop. And it continued to yell: Emergency, Emergency. It had a battery back up. Well that's good to know.

Daddy turned the phone over again. He decided he may have put the lines in wrong. He changed them. Then he hit the big button of doom again. The screaming emergency voice came on. But it only repeated four times before a voice came on. Daddy had figured it out all by himself! Well, no, but if he reads this it will make him feel good.

The voice from inside the box then told Daddy to go to different rooms and say hello so they could judge if they could hear him everywhere. They told him to stand in the living room, to stick his head in the toilet, to lay at the bottom of the steps and moan lowly, and to run around the yard quacking like a duck. Man, humans will do anything a voice inside the box tells them.

Mommy had found us under the bed and had leashed out, wanting to get out of this house of horrors as badly as we did. But there was one more test. Daddy had to push the button on the strap that Grand Pop wore on his arm. "Hold on babies," Mommy said holding us close. Daddy pushed the button and then he and Grand Pop turned into Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

Oh I'm just kidding. The alarm went off again. We got very tense in Mommy's arms. Daddy told the voice in the box that it was just a system check and then we went outside with Mommy and away from that house of horrors. A little while later Daddy joined us.

When we got home Daddy rolled the TV stand outside and left it on the porch, still don't know why.

So my pup friends, if you ever see a talking box with a big button run for the nearest bed to hide, and make sure it had more over your head that slats.

SLATS!

Junior Johnson is our August 22, 2010 pup of the week

What a difficult time we had this week picking a Pup of the Week. Who to go with? There is Kady who is having her patience and love tested by a new blob. There is Otis who managed to save his life by swimming across the pool after a viscous squirrel pushed him in. There is Shiloh who traveled half way across the world and did an excellent job in an off leash competition. But there was one dog who's story had us on the edge of our tail all week long.

Junior Johnson had something wrong with his ear. Now human ears are nothing compared to ours. Ours turn, they go up, down, they can be floppy or alert. Us dogs we literally wear our emotions in our ears. We can also hear things that you humans can't. You know when someone silently breaks wind and everyone blames everyone else and then you blame the dogs. Well we heard it humans, you're not fooling anyone.

But do you know how hard it is to here something like that with an aural hematoma? When I heard that this was the affliction that had caused so many problems for our friend Junior I went to Dr Pocket and asked what this was. She told me he was the foreign guy who can't design outfits on Project Runway. Sometimes I have concerns about her credentials.

Our poor Junior's ear was puffy and filled with blood like a pastry a vampire would buy at the True Blood Starbucks. This is such a painful injury it would cause Bret Farve to retire twice before deciding to play. The Dogtors were able to fix it, but poor Junior had to stay in the hospital in a cage all alone at night. If she had come to Pocket General Hospital we would have set up a wonderful bed with blankets and pillows on the floor, make Daddy sleep on it, and given Junior his spot in the bed.

Then they put a tube in his ear. I am an older dog and I can teach you younger pups something important here. You don't want them to stick a tube anywhere. Particularly anything with four letters: ears, eyes, anus, feet, legs, whoo whoo, none of those things.

I don't know how Junior made it through the night. But then Junior's Mom came for him, got him some medicine to make him feel better, and brought him back to his house of love. Junior, you are such a strong pup, I don't think I would have been so strong. I admire you.

You got home, you did your business, you laid down the law with Chelsea so there was no unnecessary roughness, took your medicine, and even if you cried a little not being in your Mom's bed (if you were at Pocket General you would have but you were better off at home) you were still one tough little nugget.

So for being such a strong, brave, dog, and showing us all how to face surgery, you are our pup of the week.

The Days of Our Lives

Let's see, when last we left you our Grandpoppy had fallen down in the shower, scooched himself up the stairs, and got himself dressed, He then waited for his friend Dr Croteau (it's French, Lollipop) to come and take him to the ER. When he was there he had so many x-rays that you could see more inside him then out. But they didn't find anything broken. Just lots of Art's Rice Est and hollow bones like the cheap ones Daddy buys at the dollar store. (And he calls those treats: Indeed.) Grandpops remembered Daddy's cell phone number and the Doctor called Daddy to tell him his pops had fallen down. He told him he would be bringing him home soon and Daddy should be there. But Daddy had not driven since his surgery, and Mommy wasn't home, so it looked like Foley Eanrhardt Jr. to the rescue.

Daddy got all worked up about me steering and Pocket pushing the peddles. He called Mommy, who was getting her car inspected (I hoped they did something about that spring that sticks into me in the back seat) and she came home. So I got Pocket ready, little latex gloves and booties, muzzle, robe, and then Mommy brought us up stairs. Is there a doctor in the house? Yeah but she's stuck in a crate. Why the darn can't people accept that Pocket is as good as any other doctor? She might have to become a politician again and work on the DRA. Dogs Rights Amendment.

So we were stuck home. Mommy and Daddy made sure Grandpops was safe and comfortable, and then to add our insult to his injury, they got some strange Northern person to take care of him: Viking Dan. This was the guy who Mommy went to the Farm Me See to get to help Daddy but I never saw him so I don't know why they thought he would help Grand Pops. Who needs a viking caregiver anyway? I looked them up on Dogapedia and they are very violent, smelly men with clubs, or indecisive men from Mississippi. Pocket could do such a better job then either of them.

On Saturday we went to the groomers. We love the groomers. We get dropped off at noon and picked up at 3:00. On Saturday the woman told Mommy she could pick us up at 1:30. What? Were they going to hold me by my hind leg and dip me in shampoo like I was being baptized? I am sorry but you can't make all this beauty happen in an hour and a half. When we got home from our abbreviated spa day human sister number two with the big injury to her paw called us to babysit. Oh we love to babysit. When we got there Pocket, having been bounced off the case and got a half-assed spa day, was barking loudly, and Daddy, maybe under the effects of Viking Dan, held her up to Grandbaby Number Five, who began to cry loudly. Daddy is such a putz.

We barely saw her after that. She stayed in the back room playing with Grandbaby #3 while I snarled and barked keeping Pocket from getting on the sweaty black leather chair because that's how I roll, Lollipop. Sister #2 got home way earlier than usual because her cut on her paw was hurting her. Since it was a party for someone in her husband's family, and she hadn't wanted to go, she told us she was going to cut off his balls. We know how Pocket chases balls so we got her out of there before she peed.

Earlier that day Mommy helped get Grandpops landline turned back on. It had stopped working after he fell and he couldn't call anyone. Daddy talked to someone in another country (Paco perhaps) on Friday, and Mommy got it turned back on Saturday. But there was a mystery. There was a cell phone that wasn't working, in our late Nana's name, and no one could figure out why the contract wasn't canceled. So Pocket and I put on our detective caps. Mine is a big cap with the ear flaps hanging down and a pipe. Pocket puts on her basset hound disguise. We down loaded ourselves into Verizon headquarters and got Nana's account and get this. Daddy's sister, our invisible Aunt, (she's invisible because in the ten years of my life I have never seen even though she lives a mile away) had put two of her kids on Nana's cell phone account, so if Nana's contract was canceled they'd lose service and have to go on my invisible Aunt's account. I was so mad I wanted to download myself to her house and bite her in her fat invisible butt. But we went back home, and told Mommy and Daddy and they were fuming. But Grandpop still thinks he should pay for his grandchildren's cell phone so he is still stuck with a crappy phone because only Nana can get a new phone. Confusing right.

OK, tired again,going to bed, we will be back soon with more of the tails of the days of our lives.

Daddy's rising, Grandpop's falling, Mommy's napping

Wow, have we ever been busy lately. No lake vacations for these two pups. We've been working 24/7 trying to protect our family and our possessions.

We have made Daddy a lot better. Dr Pocket refuses to write him a letter so he can go back to work. We like having his lap home. But he's going to a human doctor to get the letter. Grrrrr.

On Wednesday Mommy went to "lunch" with the girls from work. When she got home she took a nap for two and a half hours. Mommy really loves her "lunch" with the girls, but her burps make me dizzy.

When she was there a man came to fix her windshield. Pocket sat on the back of the couch to supervise. I went upstairs to lay in the sun. she must have done a good job because she barked a lot. Plus the windshield came out nice.

Thursday we had the day off. Mommy took Daddy to the movies. They saw a movie called the Other Guys. I guess The Guys was sold out.

We thought we would have a restful day on Friday but wow did that not occur. Grandpop fell in his shower. He is alone since Nana went to the Bridge. Luckily he did not break much because he was neeked and humans who are neeked bounce. But he had fallen and he could not get up. So he scooched. I scooch too. Mommy doesn't like it when I scooch because I leave a mark on the rug. Guess if you live long enough you can scooch. He got to the phone, but get this, he landed so hard he knocked out his entire Verizon Network. That's why I have a Brigade. It is much more reliable then a network any day. So, he couldn't call Daddy, or his daughter, or even Moviephone, which is annoying when you don't know when your movie starts.

Grandpa pulled himself using the couch as support. He then went upstairs to get dressed. Stuff I don't understand about humans: The need to shave and wear clothes. If they didn't shave so much their fur would grow out and they wouldn't need clothes. And why didn't he bring his clothes and change them in the bathroom? That's what my humans do. They get dressed in the bathroom. Where do yours get dressed? Is this a question of the week? TMI?

So he got himself upstairs, came back down, found Nana's cell phone, and realized he had it charged on a wall switch that controlled the over head light so there was no Verizon network there either. Man, networks suck. He knew he had a friend coming over. Dr Crouteau. He's not a real doctor, he's a Bill Cosby doctor, without the pudding, yum yum yum.

So what happens to Grampy? And how does it effect the lives of your two favorite Yorkies, their Mommy and healing Daddy? Well you are just going to have to wait for part two because there is warm sun for me to lie in. Night night.

Reba, Logan and Dodger are our August 15, 2010 pups of the week

It seems we spend so much time writing Pups of the Week for friends who have either gone to the bridge, or are waiting to hear if their ticket is pending, it is a treat to write one for pups who have returned home.

This week Reba, Dodger and Logan finally came home, to their Mom, and to the Brigade. (Please do not confuse our Brigade with the one on the silly show about abandoned humans in the pound, it's called Big Brother or something like that. We are filing papers to sue those abandoned humans for illegally seizing our intellectual property.)

They left us under some mysterious circumstances. One of those human things. We missed them right away and pestered them to come home but there was much drama in their lives.

Their Mommy was selling their house and moving down the coast to a new city called San Diego, which I have it on the best of authorities means "A whale's vagina."

Moving a human to a new home is very complicated. You would think that it would be easier then moving a pup, with the tag team of drivers who bring us to our new home, but Mommy and Daddy are planning to move to a new house in the same city we live now and this seems very complicated, so I cannot imagine how hard it is to move to a whale's vagina.

As sometimes happen when humans move, especially when they are working, they don't get a new place for the pack to sleep before they start their jobs. So they become lodgers. The first place they lodged was at their Aunt's house. We have an Aunt, but have never met her, and Mommy does not like her, so we don't have good opinions of Aunts. I really didn't understand in their blog what they were saying about their Aunt but it sounds to me like she was drinking more than her share of water and blowing the vuvuzelas which scared Dodger, so they had to bug out and find a new place for their pack to plop.

They went to their Grandpops home, but that was sad because he had recently gone to the bridge, and their Mommy was heartbroken. As much fun as they had chasing the vermin at the house, they missed Grandpops. It was a familiar home, but not their home.

Mommy got to their new home first, but accommodations needed to be made to make for it to be safe for our friends, and to get this done she had to rely on contractors, and contractors are as reliable as cats. Instead of working they prefer to sit in the sun, drink, and lick themselves. Actually, so do I. But hey, we don't pretend to be working for you, like contractors....and cats.

Finally the work got done and the pack was back with their Mom and finally back where they belong with the Brigade (The Brigade is a fully registered trademark held by Foley Monster and Dr Pocket Dog, any unauthorized use of this trademark and we will mess you up, seriously, don't push us on this.)

So, for being the prodigal dogs, and finding their way back to their new home, and to us, Reba, Dodger and Logan are our August 15, 2010 pups of the week.

When Daddies don't listen to their dog doctors

There is noting more frustrating to a doctor then when a patient won't follow their instructions. Somehow my Daddy figured out my plans for his operation, perhaps because I blogged them on the Internet, and he chickened out, deciding to go with a human doctor, which completely contradicts Darwin's survival of the species, which states mammals should not operate on their own kind, which is why there are no dog veterinarians.

But Daddy decided to go with a human surgeon and I think he has regretted it ever since. Mommy drove him to the hospital and only almost hit one car. It wasn't her fault, that mail truck should not have been parked there and the mini van was going too fast. Anyway if they had an accident, they were headed for the hospital, which was a whole mile away.

They got him to the hospital and had him sign screw up forms. I would not have had him do this. Screw up forms are what they have you sign in case they screw up. It says that you would be very happy if they screw everything up and you won't say a bad thing about them after they do. Humans are big on screw up forms. Sometimes they even sign them before they get married.

Then they made him change his clothes and put on some cheap little dress with his butt hanging out. They kept asking him when his birthday was. It's all part of their plan to break the human's will. "You're old, you're poorly dressed, we're going to rip you open, and we're probably going to screw it up, sign here."

Then they started sticking pins in his little arm with the accuracy of one armed blind whale harpooners, stabbing over and over until something squirts in the air. I wouldn't have done any of those hurtful things. Just a conk on the head and down to business. Finally the anesthesiologist arrived. Now listen, we are all different kinds of dogs from different places, but we all bark the same. This lady, she spoke in some silly language no one understood. Daddy kept saying yes because holy heck how would he know what he was saying no to.

Then they rolled Daddy away from poor Mommy who was very worried. Gramps was going to be there to wait with her. He's the Worrier King so there isn't much comfort there. I can't believe they rolled Daddy away. I would have hung upside down. But humans have their owns ways. They then moved to a new table, spread out his arms like he was getting a prison tattoo, put a mask on him telling his it was to help him breathe, and told him that he would feel a burning in his arm before he went to sleep.

But Daddy wasn't getting any air through the little mask and he said "Can't breathe" and the anesthesiologist lady said "yes it burns" and he said "not burns, can't breathe," but then he was out.

When Mommy next saw him he was sitting up eating Nilla Wafers. Mommy soon brought him home. First she got a pillow over his stomach and we came down stairs. Foley and I both jumped on him (wise choice, that pillow) and sniffed and neither of us were very happy with their work.

That night Daddy went up to bed where we examined him very thoroughly. We licked just about every spot on his body. We were concerned about his long term prognosis. Daddy had become very fat during his operation. Not fat and jolly like St Nick but fat and mean like St Roseanne. Whenever he tried to lie on the bed it put pressure on his tummy, which pushed pressure on his lunge, and he couldn't breathe.

He went downstairs to try and sleep on the couch. I heard him at 4:00 in the morning. He had tried to get off the couch but fallen, and the hard floor constricted his lungs, and he couldn't breathe, and he was lying going "awk, awk, awk" like a penguin. Foley thought we should go check on him but I said he would be fine, and anyway, this is the only way for humans to learn not to let other humans operate on them.

Mommy helped him in the morning. He sat on the couch and tossed the ball for me but soon he was awking in pain. I wasn't being selfish. I was giving him a stress test. He failed miserably. (I did terrific.) He went from the couch, to a hard chair, to the recliner, to walking, to whining.

Little by little he has got better. He slept in bed Friday night after starting on the couch. By Saturday night Foley and I were doing our lick tests again and he is improving. Just for all humans out there, please, if you feel something is wrong, contact your dog, and if it is an emergency dial rug ruf ruf,.

Maggie is our August 8. 2010 pup of the week with an assist from Ms. Laura and Pokey

Lots of times our Pup of the Week has as much to do with their Mom and family as it does with the pup, and this week is a perfect example.

Yes our new friend Maggie deserves a lot of recognition. This poor kid has been through many tribulations in her short life. All she wanted was a good home. But the Rainbow Bridge angels looked down at this lollipop and decided they weren't satisfied with a good home, they wanted the best home. They set the wheels of fate in motion, and controlled circumstances long enough for the wonderful Ms. Laura and Maggie to meet

We all know Ms. Laura's sad song. On New Year's Day she opened her heart and home to another sweet rescue, Cooper. But Cooper had things going on that no dog could understand. One night the silicon switch inside his head was turned to overload and he attacked his poor Mommy, sending him to the bridge and causing her to undergo months of painful recovery.

No one would blame sweet Ms. Laura if she never rescued another dog. The people who surrendered Cooper were not truthful about his problems. Their lack of truth, while keeping Cooper from being put down for being aggressive, came close to costing both Ms. Laura and Pokey their lives. Some would consider it wise for her to only deal with new born puppies and leave it to the unscarred to do the rescuing.

Bur not Ms. Laura. Despite months of pain she adhered to her belief in rescuing dogs. She went back to the island of unwanted pups and with a little help from the Bridge Angels she found Maggie, and brought her home.

And a tip of the tail to our good friend Pokey. Having a strange dog come in your house, befriend it, play with it, go on long walks with it, then watch it attack your Mom is more stress then most pups could handle. But the Pokster opened up his heart and welcomed Maggie in like a long lost sister.

Additionally, Maggie's addition to The Brigade has started an era of good feeling for all our members. It inspired a wonderful Ms. Connie drawing our girls, and today we had a rocking good induction party for Maggie.

Maggie is our August 8, 2010 pup of the week because she has a wonderful Mom who took in another lost dog after her first experience with a lost dog ended in unspeakable tragedy; because her brother, the wonderful Pokey, welcomed her with open paws and the two have become brother and sister and best buds; and, because Pocket and I have a good sense for these things, and Maggie is one rock star of a dog.

So congratulations to Pokey, Ms Laura and Maggie, or August 8 family of the week,and Maggie, or Pup of the week.

MacDougal is our August 1, 2010 pup of the week

There is no predicting when hard times will come. There could be a bad snow storm that makes your roof collapse on Thanksgiving. A twister could hit the homestead on the Fourth of July and put your gas grill in the crik. On Christmas Day those sons of a bitches the Bumpuses could let their hounds loose, they could steal your turkey dinner, and you have to eat holiday dinner at the nearest Chinese restaurant. (This happens a lot, like every two hours on Christmas Day, according to the big truth telling machine in the middle of the living room that fills us in on so many human secrets.)

And sometimes hard times comes on your birthday. Like our wonderfully special friend MacDougal. He just had a birthday last week. But it looked like there would be no party, no streamers, no hats, no balloons, no heffalumps jumping out of cakes.

You see last year MacDougal's Daddy was called to the Bridge in the time around his birthday. I don't know why humans put so much emphasis on dates, but they do. When the calender counts down to that day human sadness grows, then breaks, and tears flow. All us pups can do is lick their tears, wag our tails, and try to cure their broken hearts with love.

So it didn't look like we would be celebrating MacDougal's birthday this year. And we all understand. Sometimes Mom's hearts break and we all must respect what pups have to do to heal their Moms.

But when the day came, guess what? MacDougal's Mom came through for him like a champ. First she went out and rented a beer fountain. Oh boy let me tell you there is nothing like a beer fountain on the hot days that we had here. It was truly a stroke of genius.

To help the beer down Mommy followed it up with some Frosty Paws. Beer and Frosty Paws are better than a day at the ball game. Then we all dug into Hattie's Leaning Tower Cake. Among her many other talents it seems that Hattie is our Cake Boss. She has Fella doing the frosting. Everyone who works for her is Mia Famiglia.

And that caused our little friend to do what she does best. She tooted. She did it over and over again, and we all know the power of her toots. I know where we live it caused all the humid air to be pushed out to sea. They said so on the big truth telling machine. The never accurate weather man said the humidity went away from a small amount of flatulence being released in Southern California.

So, for having such a wonderful Mom who would not let your birthday go by without a celebration despite her pain, for always bringing a big smile to our face, and for having the most powerful toots we know, MacDougal is our pup of the week.

Now does go wasting those toots. Who knows when the next natural or man made disaster will come and we will need them.