Gerret Swirled

Yes!! Yes!! Yes!! I threw The Gerret an awesome surprise birthday par-tay today!!! Now he's sooooo old!!! Har!!

So I made like this totally awesome birthday cake!!! It was an organic sausage layer cake frosted with JIF peanut butter! It was sooooo cool!!

Here's Chigger being a butt and scarfing up some of Gerret's cake! She's like such a bee-atch! Oooh! Don't you dare tell her I said that! Nah, she's cool, she just thinks she knows more cuz she's older!

So here's the Gerret after partying all day!! Har!!! LMAO!!!

But I guess we must have made too much noise, cuz now the neighbors are all setting off big explosions!! It's sooo lame!! And like scary! Chigger says it happens every ford of jewel eye around here and it happens like every day in a rock!! Exposions in a rock? I'm so sure!! But I gotta go!!!! Yours truly!!

Hi! Maggie here again!! Things are just soooo busy around here!!!! I can't even keep up! Gosh it's been more than ten dog weeks since I wrote anything! Duh!!! You probably figured that out on your own!

But hey, we got new animals hanging around!!! It's soooo cool! That first picture, that's Slippers, she's a kitten, or maybe she's a he, what-evah!!! Slippers is awesome!!! Sooooo teeny-tiny! Slippers showed up on the road by our farm! She was with four brothers and sisters, but they wouldn't come and now we can't find them!!! Major bummer!! But Slippers loves it here!

But wait!!! That's not all! We also have Whinehouse visiting thanks to Gerret! Stump saw Whinehouse on the road twice but couldn't get anywhere near her, even though she didn't have any place else to go! But Gerret was along for the ride, so that after they got home the second time, Gerret ran off on his own, and a couple of hours later he returned with Whinehouse!!!! Totally awesome! My hero!!! (He's sooooo dreamy!)

Whinehouse is an older dog but a really really really tiny one! She's older than me but I could still play house with her as the baby! Har!!! And speaking of babies, Stump says that Whinehouse looks like she recently had some babies! But where are they? We looked and looked and looked but it seems that whoever brought Whinehouse out to the road didn't bring the baby puppies along!! Maybe that's why Whinehouse keeps going away and coming back! She's probly looking for her puppies!!! That's what I'd do! Awesome!!! But sad!

I call her Whinehouse because she stands outside and whines and then she sneaks through the dog door at night and sleeps in the house!!! She doesn't trust Stump and Tweet, so she hides during the day, but she comes back at night to eat and sleep!! Stump says she's probly a "puppy-mill dog" that's "outlived her usefulness" and "never been socialized with humans" whatever that means!! But we feed her and she's hanging around so maybe she'll be something else next!

I just don't know what it is with these humans around here!!! They take their cats and dogs out for a drive, let them out to run around, and then they forget to take them with them when they leave!!! Geez, it even happened to me!! I just hate it when that happens!! Bummer!

And speaking of bummers, that Slippers better watch herself or she's going to be sooooo sorry!! She's flirting with Gerret and that's just totally not awesome!!! He better get that dreamy look off his face or I'm going to have to kick his butt!! And I can! You believe it sistahs!!! But I gotta go!! Yours truly!!!

P.S. - I didn't even mention the awesome new chicks we have!!! Too late now!!! Later!!!

Well, it's been a long busy week here at Lake Whoabethegerret.

Whinehouse stuck around for a few more days since the last post then split. She was looking a lot better after a few good meals and sneaking in through the dog door to crash on the sofa at night. But she wasn't going to be tied down, no way no how. I'm not sure running off was the best choice for her, but I wish her well. Maybe she'll find her puppies.

On the other hand, Slippers, the kitten, looks like she's planning on staying. Actually, it turns out that Slippers is a boy so The Gerret is taking some heavy-duty grief from the fellas down at the dog park who saw this picture in the last post. How was I to know? Really?

In her last post Maggie did briefly mention the six new chicks that had just arrived. Well that's been a bit of drama in itself. About the middle of the week one of the chicks disappeared, and soon after another one. There was much speculation and innuendo around the place that yours truly and Maggie had something to do with said population decrease. Accusations were flying and the atmosphere was becoming very, how you say, acrimonious. Stump and Tweet tried to make us 'fess up but The Gerret don't cop to nothin'. But I think they were using the ol' water torture on Maggie. She was pretty much ready to turn state's evidence. She hates water.

So just when it looks like Maggie and I are going to have to change our names to Connie and Blyde and go on the lam, Stump goes out to the chicken coop and discovers that now there's only THREE chicks plus one REALLY FAT SNAKE.

All along it was SLIM! That connivin' varmint! You might remember Slim from his starring role in "Snake on a Plain." Now he's just another celebrity gone bad, driven to self-destruction by a habit he couldn't control. Stump captured him and drove him way into the woods and released him. The Gerret went along to yell at him and tell him to not come back. Is he dead? No. But his career is finished in this town.

Three chicks hanging out, doing nothing.

This was also graduation week over at K9 Prep & Neuter. Maggie finished up puppy kindergarten and Tweet said she did real good. But her final grade was a 4.0, which if that's in dog grades, is really really low.

The Gerret was doing post-dogtoral work in the three "R"s, which is a class called "Really Reliable Recall." The whole point of RRR is to train your human to carry lots of very high quality treats at all times or else you won't come when they call. I was skeptical, but by the end of the seven-week class Stump seemed to have the fancy treat thing down cold. Now I just have to keep working with him here at home so he doesn't start backsliding. Sometimes he'll call The Gerret and think he can get by with a "good dog" or a pat on the head when I show up. Sheesh. You can't let bad habits like that get started.

But it's not all fun-and-games around here. The Gerret still gotta go to work. (Funny. I never see the cats having to go to work around here. What's that about?)

So anyway, this week I finished editing my evaluation video for the second installment of "For Dogs on a Budget." This was shot a while ago but because of all the film festivals and legal stuff I'm only now free to release it here. You can learn more about the series in this earlier post. And yes, that's Maggie acting as my assistant.

So granted it's not colorful as most store-bought dog toys, but there's just as much plastic, so I'm given the water bottle four gerrets!

Water bottle as toy:

And that's it from Lake Whoabethegerret, where all the people are lazy, the cats are annoying, and The Gerret is waaaaaay above average.

There's been some rumbling behind my butt lately that The Gerret is a bit of an elitist who's not all that in touch with the more, ah, "working class" animals around here. It's been suggested that I think I'm better than everyone else, that I think that everyone else's shit doesn't stink as good as mine.

So? What can I say? There's a reason my middle name is Alpha.

However, as Chigger has pointed out, this has created a bit of a dilemma for me, since not all the other animals recognize the reality of their lives relative to the reality of The Gerret and sometimes fail to exhibit the appropriate approbation. And yet I so desire to be a benevolent despot.

So after studying the lives of contemporary politicians, I've come up with a plan to win the hearts and minds of my constituents. I will pander.

To do this I'm initiating an occasional feature here called "Profiles Encourage" [them to like me]. I will flatter them. They will share their food with me. Pure genius. Today's profile is on Jane.

Jane is a chicken. She's been around here since before The Gerret was bored. Actually she's what they call an Easter Egg chicken because she lays blue and green eggs. (You have to take that with a grain of salt. They may be blue or green on the outside, but they're still white and yellow on the inside.)

Anyway, every day when Stump leaves the house to go to the office, Jane tags along, waits for the door to open. Then she goes inside, jumps up on the desk, finds her box in the corner and sits there, sometimes for hours, until she lays an egg. Pretty weird, but here's proof. Pay attention and you'll here the egg drop and see it roll around.

Argh. The Gerret has to admit that after that display I'm sorta glad I don't have to lay eggs.

Okay, so we got this new rooster named Wooster (or Worcester?) hanging around. He's still just a kid, and so young you'd have to get real up-close-and-personal to actually determine for yourself if he was a guy or a girl. But for some reason he's soooo important. You know how I know? Because he comes with his very own admonition. It goes something like this, "Ger-RET! Stop chasing the rooster!" There's often a couple of other words in front of "Gerret" that are repeated in front of "rooster" and that seem to be references to some human belief system that can provoke cosmic retribution, but they don't translate into dog so I ignore them.

In fact, at first I ignored the entire admonition because they never said "THE Gerret" so I assumed they were talking to some other Gerret. But when I politely inquired, "Are you talking to moi?" the answer was most demonstratively in the affirmative.

So that's where it stands right now. I chase, they admonish, Wooster (or Worcester?) runs like a chicken. I'm thinking that if I hold out they'll change their minds, because hey, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, right? Which segues nicely into the real theme of my post. The Gerret is officially post-puppytude! I'm now the old dog that doesn't have to learn new tricks! It's been pretty much seven dog years ago that Stump and Tweet came to the county lock-up, posted my bail and sprung me from the joint. (Yes, "Roscoe" was my prison name, but I was nobody's bitch. And I'll be getting to that "German Shepherd/Spaniel mix" stuff soon.)

And there ain't no way they're takin' me back. Now I got a warm place to sleep and one square a day. So who knows, maybe The Gerret will learn not to chase roosters. Just maybe. Cause I like it here. (But then I also like chickens. Fried chickens, barbeque chickens, roasted chickens, broiled chickens, boiled chickens, broasted chickens, original recipe chickens, stir-fried chicken, popcorn chickens, chicken tartar, chicken sushi, chicken nuggets, chicken casserole, chicken salad, chicken-fried steak and all those various wild animals that taste like chicken. Chicken aspic, not so much.)

Remember Slim?! The Snake?! The star of The Gerret's totally awesome movie "Snake on a Plain"? Well OMG, he's back!!! And this time he's got a girlfriend and he's being like just totally romantic! Ha!

You probly wonder, what's a romantic snake do? LOL! Well here's some dude named E. Mohrman on eHow to explain it all for you!

Female [snakes] are resistant to mating from the beginning and throughout the process. Male snakes must hold females down with their heads and coil their tails around the female's. The female will continuously try to slither off, dragging the male along as he attempts to line up their cloacas. When successfully aligned — an effort that can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days...

Anyway, you get the picture! "A few hours to a few days"???!!! Sheesh!!! And I totally don't want to even know what a "cloacas" is! ROFL!!! Anyway, here's my latest movie, starring Slim!!! Careful! It's hot! NSFW!!! Ha Ha Ha!!

Gotta run! CUL8R!!! And watch out for your cloacas!!!! Ha! Ha! Ha!

So just when you think The Gerret is never coming back, well here I am! Chillin' in my Christmas crib, celebrating the end of my 14th dog year in residence and marking the close of the second human year of this, my carelessly casual but occasionally compelling blog.

So for your collective Christmas creature comfort I've crafted a customized and comprehensively creative cinematic experience containing a congregation of local characters. I call it: "A Corny Copious Collection of Christmas Clips."

Oh, BTW, it snowed here yesterday. Not a common calamity.

I'll grant you that the weather's been tougher than normal around here recently. And yes, The Gerret likes a nice cozy sofa as much as the next dog. But sheesh! Stump and Tweet are having their own little couch potato olympic marathon here. Time for a bit of preaching from my main dog Rufus: