The Ruby Rose and the Big Little Angels 3 Blog

We don’t mean to worry our parents, but some of us can’t help it.  Foley gave my parents only a few scares in thirteen years.  River Song has frightened them a couple of times.  Unfortunately, I make up for that by scaring them several times a month. I am not to blame. The upper part of my body is very sweet.  I have a beautiful disposition, a sweet face, a lovely personality and a happy smile.  It is my lower end that is the culprit. I have an irritable bowel, an angry stomach, a quarrelsome colon, and a disagreeable intestine.   My upper body is continuously good.  My lower body is intermittently bad. Last week my lower body decided to be bad for some days.  My bowels become irritated when our schedule changes.  On Monday we had our typical day working in the yard, but our parents went out for a few hours afterward, and our supper was late.  Their leaving must have pissed off my bowels because they decided to become active at 4:00 AM. I got out of bed and did a messy poop on

Barkley T. Dog: Undercover mailman assassin

I am known as a trailblazer on both the mortal and immortal sides  of the River of Life.  Truthfully, I am not a trailblazer in my own family.  I was my parent’s second dog.  Their first was a Shih Tzu named Blake. One morning, while Blake was still a single dog, and I was a glimmer in my dog dad’s eye, the alarm clock went off, and Blake had a seizure. Seeing your beloved pet have a seizure is terrifying for any parent.  A seizure is like an alien being that has possessed your sweet pup,  There is no sign of the dog you raised.  Your baby is a trembling, shaking, drooling mess.  Their eyes are rolled back in their heads.  All their parents want is for the episode to end.  Every second seems like an hour. My parents were inexperienced pet owners, and they did not have the social media friends they do now.  They were at a loss, and scared.  Their vet told them to keep an eye on Blake and see if the seizures continued. They did, coming two months apart.  During this seizure

I have recently been appointed the Rainbow Bridge ambassador to a new territory:  Westeros.  It is the home of the Seven Kingdoms on the popular television series Game of Thrones.  If you don’t recognize the name, then this blog may confuse you, which is a state many of my reader's experience. I had one request:  That I am allowed to fly a dragon on my initial visit to Westeros.  This desire was denied, but I was granted a dragonfly body to adopt for my voyage:  Quite a disappointment. My first stop was to speak with Daenerys Targaryen   I had received a complaint that her dragons were chained in a cave in unsanitary conditions with little access to food and water.  I demanded access to the creatures.  When I gained entry to their habitat, I was hit with a foul smell. I immediately determined that the Queen of Dragons was the Mother of Messy.  I took out my citation book and began to write.  One of the dragons turned to me, breathed, burned my book and some paw hair.  I let

Yesterday was my third Gotcha Day.  I did not wish to celebrate it.  My Gotcha Day and birthday are within weeks of one another.  I did not wish to be over celebrated.  That is very tiring. I am very lucky.  I have a beautiful family.  My first mom had lots of Griffs, and she knew I needed my own family.  She was right.  Now I have my one, the way Tony Soprano had his family.  It is mine, and I am the boss.  If you break, the rules expect the stink face. I have been incredibly lucky when it comes to second moms.  I adore mine.  Her lap is perfect.  Her food is exquisite.  When she looks at me, there is so much love in her eyes.  Her voice makes my ears perk up.  She is superb at petting.  She gives the best belly rubs ever. She does do one thing I cannot tolerate.  She leaves!  She doesn’t go often.  Some weeks she only leaves on Saturday, but that is too often for me.  If Pocket and I are left alone and are crated, I give out the most pitiful cries from my prison.  They are

Kick this chair one more time and we will find out who the good boy is

There is a joke that was told by a comedian who no one wants to discuss anymore.  He said:  “Fathers take their sons outside, teach them how to play ball, take them to tryouts, drive them to practice, spend hours training them, drive them all over the world to games.  Then the son becomes famous, gets on television, the camera is on them and them: ‘Thanks, Mom.’” I think the same is true with dogs.  In two-parent homes, our dads do a lot of the hard work like the walking, the training, and the poop picks up.  But moms get the credit because they feed the food, provide the laps, and, in the majority of cases, write these very blogs for us (which, somehow. paint moms in the best light.) Dads become the butts of jokes.  They are the stupid ones who leave the gate open, forget to feed us, don’t take us out, or leave something out that we shouldn’t eat, and inevitably we do consume.  I have written many blogs where my Dad was run ragged during a K-9 Kamp challenge or ended up in

I was lazing on my floatie, riding the waves of the River of Life, and sipping a Foleytini, when Angel Willie, who was enjoying his morning swim, emerged next to me.  He put his front paws of my floatie.  I held my Foleytini, and he took a big gulp.  I inquired about his family. “My Mom is still having a hard time,” Willie said as he slid off my floatie and tread water.  “Last year she fell, and she shattered her knee.  She could not walk at all.  We thought that I had a hard time on the mortal side as a tripaw but that is nothing like being a one leg.” I knew about this, having flown many prayers up the mountain for Mama Sandy, but we dogs can be wordy, and he was worried, so I let him talk. “You would think after all the time my mom spent helping me walk, caring for me so that I could live a normal life, and acting as my fourth leg, that she would be rewarded with knees that would support her until she was 100.  For my mom to lose her mobility, because she broke her knee, isn

My Mom and Dad’s first dog together was a little black and white Shih Tzu named Blake.  That was 20 years ago.  There were no Internet groups to help to raise a pup as there are now.  Mom and Dad made a lot of mistakes with Blake including feeding her so much she was five pounds overweight at her first vet visit. They loved little Blake very much.  When she was a puppy, they taught her all the tricks:  sit, stay, come, paw.  There was one thing Blake was very stubborn about doing.  She did not like to bark.  She had a very cute little bark, and my parents loved hearing her little arf. My parents would hold a treat in front of her and say, “speak!  Speak!”  After several days, Blake realized what they meant.  They wanted her to bark.  So she started barking.  Our parents were very happy.  So she kept barking. And they grew less happy. A few months after Blake turned five Foley came to live with them.  On the first night, Blake told Foley “I don’t know why but these two really

                                         I am forever blowing bubbles, pretty                                      bubbles in the air

A pack is a very delicate organism.  One small change in the family can change the entire balance.   When I began my social networking life the pack of 12, Chappy and Whiskey was the strongest unit l I knew.  Then 12 went to the Bridge, followed by Chappy, and now the pack is Whiskey, Blue, and Jasper.  That organism is not thriving as it once was. My pack has not suffered from these issues.  I went to the Bridge and passed pack leader to Pocket.  River Song came to live with us.  Pocket said, “I am the pack leader.”  River said, “The hell you are!” and Pocket was back to being number two.  But she was all right with being second.  She has been her whole life. The problems with Whiskey’s pack began when Blue’s herding instinct took effect, and he insisted on corralling Jasper and Whiskey, who had no desire to cooperate.  Whiskey became frustrated and stopped eating unless he was alone in a room with his mom.  Blue continued to try to herd the pack which started fights.  Jasper

I have seen some extraordinary ceremonies at the Rainbow Bridge, but I have never seen one like the festivity that happened earlier this week. There were hundreds of dogs, all dressed in uniforms, with many ribbons, waiting for Bretagne, a beautiful Golden Retriever, the last rescue dog to work at the Twin Towers after the attack on September 11, 2001, to remain on the mortal side.  Every dog stood, one paw in the air saluting, while the Corgis played a slow drumroll, and Bretagne approached me to take the oath of angeldom. This year, for the first time in since 2000, people will cast votes for President who are too young to remember that day. I wish I could forget it.   I could sense that something very bad had happened that morning but I had no idea of the magnitude.  Daddy came home from work and took Blake and I over to the State Mental Hospital across the street from our house, where he watched us frolic in the sunshine.  Blake and I played very hard.  We didn’t know why,

Pocket and Odie have been holding top level meetings every day.  They discuss ideas to raise kibble.  They developed a million cookie plan and put me in charge. Humans, if they are like our parents, get very upset when they see people wearing coats made from animal fur.  But other humans find them luxurious.  Pocket and Odie have discovered a compromise:  Live animal fur coats. Because they are thinkers and I am a dog of action I was put in charge of this exciting project.  My first step was to hire my dog friends to catch, but not kill, cute little vermin with shiny fur.   In our first two weeks we went zero days without an accident.  It is terribly difficult to teach dogs, who are bred to catch and kill, to catch and release, in a cage, where the vermin can happily live.  Each day we increased the numbers of captures and decreased the number of fatalities.  I had the dogs upload their catch to me. When the vermin would downloaded to mommy’s computer she was very displeas

"Excuse me?  Are you the dog who ate my sister?"

 We angels have been inundated with prayers, of late:  For Leo, Josie, Paco, Dot, Junior, and so many more.  Life holds one terrible promise:  All mortal dogs will join me on the immortal side when it is their time.  When that happens hearts will be shattered.  I know of only one cure:  The New. I have a couple of friends who are The New.  One is Tommy, named for the legendary Tommy Tunes.  He is a puppy.  Puppy breath is an elixir for broken hearts.  It is the new car smell of the dog world.   We have gleefully witnessed Tommy grow up.  We met him in the middle of March at seven weeks old.  We watched him as he grew from a constant pee machine and a chewer to learning the sound of the kibble bag and can opener.   Then through his toilet training, his invite to sleep in the big bed, his shots and gradual weight gain, and the loss of his baby teeth.  Watching, and reading about Tommy growing up has done us all good,  Puppies are hope and Tommy has given us hope. The New d

Rainbow Bridge has no end.  Next to where we dogs live is the humans’ area, and beyond that horses, and farm animals, and further out the truly wild animals like the lions and gorillas.  We dogs never visit the wild animal area and they never visit ours. Until Monday. I was curled up on a bank watching Romey, the fish.  He was reeling in a fish, swallowing it whole, then looking down into the water where the same fish magically appeared and bit his hook ready to be reeled up again. “You know that’s the same fish,” I told him. “I don’t care,” Romey says.  “Tastes good. Then the ground began to shake.  We heard paws rapidly pounding on the ground.  We looked up to see a giant beast walking towards us. “Big monkey,” Romey said.  “I am going to tell Smoochy.” Before I could stop Romey, he was scampering towards Smoochy’s house.  The other dog were giving the gorilla a wide berth, but I refused to show I was afraid.  I walked up to him and asked him if I could help him “I

In 2009 when Foley founded the Tanner Brigade neither of us had the room in our kitty condo’s) for the servers to support the traffic created by our friends.  We needed partners. Foley investigated various services and decided to pair with a group called Ning.  Ning stood for Nice Internet (Not Great.) I was skeptical because weasels ran the site Foley said cost wise this was the best solution, and she could handle the weasels.  She scheduled a meeting.  We met in a dumpster behind the 7-11.  We met with three weasels, all wearing raincoats and fedoras, I began shaking. They told Foley their service worked intermittently, that they seldom had representatives to handle complaints, and they were only in it for the money.  Foley calmly explained that she represented a conglomerate of dogs who would hunt them down and bite them in their tails if they did not cooperate. To my surprise, the weasels capitulated to a little Yorkie. The site functioned for years with little problem.  If