Happy Holidays from the Rat Dog Pack

Santa was good to the terriers this year.

Sherbert says, "I'm a good dog, too!"

Election Day

Mini wants everyone who is qualified to vote.  

Driving Miss Mini

Here is an example of an afternoon with Miss Mini.

First, she puts on her nice dress and we go for a ride in the red convertible to go visit friends.

Then get read to

Then play bingo

Sit in laps and get petted by friends

But NO Pokemon or guns!

And then home to nap after such an exhausting afternoon.

Happy 2016!

It's 2016 and the pack is ready for the new year.

We had a great Christmas.  Mini had a cyst on her neck and had to wear a special collar.  She took advantage and made it into a festive accessory

At the vet on Christmas Eve

Spreading cheer

Visiting Santa to raise money for the Animal Control.
Santa, do you kiss your dog on the mouth?

Holiday Time! Elf on the Shelf? No, that's Miss Mini!

The holidays are here and Mini is helping to spread cheer.  What is more cheerful than a rat terrier dressed up as one of Santa's elves?  Combining Mini the dog elf with a choir and a showing of A Christmas Carol, that's what!

Mini enjoys the music along with the rest of us.  She needs her dog ears to listen!  Nothing says, Christmas, than the classic Baptist Christmas hymns.

Mini visits her friends.  Everyone is on their best behavior in case the elf reports back to Santa Claus!

After a few hours of spreading cheer at the nursing home, Mini is tuckered out!  She's lucky to have a friend who is willing to lend her a bed!  Christmas is a time of giving and sharing.  Happy holidays, everyone.

And if you need something fun to read this holiday season, or a wonderful gift for the reader in your life, order the paperback or download the e-book  How Not to Kiss Your Dog, the guide to how clean are dog's mouths really are.  Most proceeds go to keeping up Miss Mini's wardrobe! 

Corny Dogs!

Normal Cornfest time and the rat dogs were out in style.

 

Here is Shoebert in his "I'm so Corny" shirt.

 

 

 

Here is Minibert dressed like an ear of corn.
Mini, your tongue is as long as your ears!

 

And just in time for the Normal Zombie Walk, Hilbert's Zombie Day is on sale at Amazon for the Kindle and Kindle reading apps.

 

And while you are out on Amazon, please buy How Not to Kiss Your Dog, and learn if dogs' mouths are really cleaner than humans.  More books bought equals more kibble for the rat terriers.

 

 



Miss Mini and the mystery of the moving bed

Miss Mini was on her usual Saturday afternoon nursing home visit this week showing off her new pink satin dress. While there, she snuggled up in bed with her friend Jack. As Jack and I chatted, the was a humming noise followed by a suprised "OH!" from Jack.  I asked what was wrong and Jack said the bed had moved. It looked the same, so we ignored it. A few minutes later, the same thing happened. Huhmmm, just what was this mystery hum?  After some detective work, we realized that Mini was lying on top of the control for Jack's adjustable bed!

If you look closely, you can see the control.  

Jack is using his hand as a pillow so Mini's chin won't have to touch the cold rail!

Miss Mini in her new pink satin doggie dress.

Mini loves it when I dress her, because it means a trip to visit Jack and her other friends!

Cute dog pictures of Miss Mini in her Christmas outfits

 Mini in her reindeer coat

 Doggie dress

 Doggie dress

Christmas elf (or is she a leprechaun?)

Trick or Treat Rat Terrier style

And when I say "style" I mean Mini had the most style of everyone this Halloween.  She showed off several different costumes:

Her simple bat collar, her elaborate fairy princess, her scary skeleton and her Batrat wings!

This rat terrier has style!  Happy Halloween, Miss Mini!  Some dogs in funny costumes look silly, but when Miss Mini dresses up, everybody is smilin' at her stylin'.

And enjoy our book.

How (Not) to Play Frisbee Golf

I loaded the rat dogs into the convertible Saturday and went over to the dog park.  There weren't any other dogs around, so we crossed the driveway to the Frisbee golf course.  Unfortunately, Miss Mini forgot to let go of hers!  Rat terriers aren't very good at this game.

Once we finished the first few "holes" some other dogs had shown up, so there we got in some good butt sniffing, too!

Another silly video and a really cute picture of Mini

Here is another Vine video of Shoebert, the wild tongued terrier.  The tongue in How (Not) to Kiss Your Dog is based on his.

 

 

And so Miss Mini won't feel left out, here is a cute photo of her.

 

 

 

 

Psycyfunky Doggie Photos - Mini the terrier

I have yet another new photo app.  It's called pho.to lab.  One thing it can do is take a photo and turn it into a kaleidoscope like image.  Look closely at the photos below and see how long it takes to find Mini's face.

 

 

 

 

Which is your favorite?  I like the one in the middle best.  Tie-dye tripping, puppy dog style!

Happy Anniversary Mini! Free Book to Celebrate!

Mini has been with us for a year now.  The carpets are a loss, but otherwise it's been a great year!

To Celebrate, I'm giving away How (Not) to Kiss Your Dog.  This is the hilarious story of a family that adopts a wild tongued terrier.  FREE on FRIDAY MAY 3 ONLY.

So now, LET'S PARTY!!!!!

Two of Miss Mini's dear friends at the nursing home passed away last week.  It takes very special people to work at a nursing home where the residents become like family over time.  I'm only there for a couple of hours on the weekend and it is still emotionally difficult for me at times.

If there is any one thing that is keeping my little coprophasic, carpet peeing, barking little girl from going back to Paradise, it's the happiness she brings to others!

This is Mini with Delores at the Easter party this year:

 



Here is Joan, another friend who passed away the same day as Dee:

How (Not) to Kiss Your Dog has several stories based on Albert's visits to the same nursing home.  Mini-bert is helping me to write more for the sequel.

Cute Photos

I just downloaded a very nice app for the iPhone and iPad.  It's called FidoFoto and the basic package is free!  It allows you to add a little spice to your doggie photos.  Here are a few of Hilbert, Shoebert and Mini-Bert.

 Hilbert in formal attire,

 Mini-Bert dressed as the clown that she is,

 Hilbert as a pirate,

Mini-Bert and Shoebert ready to get down and party!

Q: What’s worse than a coprophagic dog?

Q: What’s worse than a coprophagic dog?

A: A coprophagic dog that burps in your face! 

Thank you, Miss Mini.

Q: What’s worse than a coprophagic dog that burps in your face?

A: A coprophagic dog that burps in your face and then uses her tongue to give you a big wet kiss on the mouth!

Thank you, Miss Mini.

 

FREE BOOK FREE BOOK FREE BOOK FREE BOOK FREE BOOK FREE BOOK

Don’t forget – January 23 is Hilbert’s Happy Wednesday!  Hilbert’s new book, Hilbert’sStory Tail Day is free for Kindle!

In this book Hilbert, the rat terrier, decides to try different tails, because he doesn’t like his little short stubby one.

Hilbert 2.0

I recently entered a writing contest.  The rules were to write a science related story in no more than 350 words.  I didn't win.  However, you can read the story here!

Hilbert 2.0

‘Drop it.’

‘Grrrrr’

‘I said “drop it.”’

‘GRRRRR’

Whack.

Thunk.

My anachronistic, resource squandering, tree killing insistence on receiving New Scientist in hardcopy comes in handy as Mini drops the remote control.

Mini, aka, Hilbert 2.0, is my dog.  Hilbert, my previous dog, died last March.  When Hilbert died I went into a depression, locking myself in my room, reading years of archived stories on NewScientist.com. 

I studied every article I could find on cloning.  Finally realizing that a cloned version of Hilbert would neither look nor act exactly the same as the original, I decided the world would be better if I adopted a shelter dog.

But then I hit upon robotics and artificial intelligence.  Hundreds of e-mails later, from every continent, with lots of help from Google Translate, I had a workable plan.

I bartered for a wireless router; a set of speakers; a heating pad; miscellaneous electronic bits and a Commodore 64.  For this I gave up my collection of Philip K. Dick hardbacks -- not a problem because I have them all on my Kindle.  I added to the haul some fabric and a roll of duct tape.   Then I set to work.

After eight days straight living on coffee and soldering fumes, I loaded the neural network into my new Hilbert.  Due to some conversion problems (damn metric system!) I ended up with a dog two-thirds the size of Hilbert. Hence, the nickname Mini.  That was six months ago.

Apart from size, Mini is Hilbert, including his chaotic, random number, decision tree powered brain.  If it runs, chase it; if not, eat it.  The only other difference is house-training; I deliberately omitted that.

Tired and sweaty from running after Mini, I go up to soak in a warm bath.  I grab a dead tree edition of New Scientist off the back of the toilet.  At least it won’t short circuit if I drop it in the tub, unlike my Kindle.

‘No, Mini, down.  NO!’

Splash.

Sigh.  Time to visit the animal shelter.   

Shoebert putting the back issues of

 New Scientist to use the rat terrier way

BTW, don't let the story mislead you.  I would never hit Mini or any of my dogs with a rolled up Magazine.

Mini gets another rabbit

A few weeks after the rabbit leg incident, I was home sick (see below) resting in the living room.  The dogs were out in the yard for quite a while, giving me some peace.  Mini came strutting in holding the body of a rabbit.  And I mean body; the head and one of the front legs were gone.  There was no blood, but it still looked pretty fresh.  I gathered it up, wrapped it in some plastic bags and disposed of it as I have others in the past.  Read How (Not) to Kiss Your Dog for the details.

Mini and the rabbit

I was taking a break, eating pizza (focahia bread topped with pizza sauce and melted Ropp Dairy tomato, basil, garlic cheese curds – Yum, yum) and watching TV, when Mini came in with something nasty in her mouth.  I thought at first it was a small intestine (long and gray, like an overboiled footlong hotdog with one end open and half the stuffing fallen out).  Since she has so few teeth, she had to drop it on the floor and I swooped over and grabbed it up.  Luckily for me, I had a napkin in my hand at the time!   It turned out to be a rabbit’s foot and leg that had been taken over by maggots then chewed by Mini.

Since I was curious, I went out in the backyard to find the rest of the rabbit.  I finally found it in the vegetable garden, between the tomato plants.  It had been there for a few days.  Its guts were gone, probably sucked out and eaten by the dogs, parts were here and there, and there was a coating of tiny, rice like maggots wriggling over them.  There was no way that I was going to touch that writhing mass, so I left it to Mother Nature.

Later that evening, I went up to the guestroom to read a book (The Pirates: In an Adventure with Ahab) and smelt something musky and pungent.  I found a bone on the bed – the same bed that Mini and Shoebert spend their days on.  It appeared to be a pelvis.  It was picked clean and didn’t smell.  Then I noticed the spot on the bed.  Someone had either barfed or had nasty diarrhea that oozed all the way down to the mattress cover.   At the time I bought the mattress, I thought I had fallen for the hard sell at the mattress store when Henry, the salesman, talked me into getting the overpriced and WATERPROOF covers, but now I’m feeling much better about the decision!

Sick in Bed

T: How was your day?

S: I kept waking up coated with sweat.

T: What about Minipoo?

S: She slept on the floor by the closet.

T: No-- did you wake up in a pile of Mini poo?  Never think that I would ever use a term of endearment to describe that dog.