January 2015 – Page 2 – Viktorsviews. The Next Chapter.

Welcome home. Again.

January 19, 20152 Comments


A shot taken after 2 hours of grooming and 5 minutes of racing around.

Day one after our human returns. And it started out BRILLIANTLY – from my point of view. But maybe not from my human’s…

My human went to church early on Sunday morning. She goes to church and prays that we don’t drive her insane. Sometimes God listens …and sometimes…well remember what “God” is, spelled backwards.

She came home and decided she should push off the light dusting of snow from our 10 mile long driveway with a shovel. OK – maybe it’s not 10 miles – but it still was going to take more than 2 minutes. So. She decided she would let Frodo and I out to play in the yard while she pushed snow around. If you ask me, shoveling is a waste of time – it will melt in the spring anyway. But then, I don’t drive a car…

So Frodo and I were released to play. My human can’t let Paxton out on his own if she’s busy because he invariably takes off in the woods – to get away from us PON brothers. Our human figured she would take him for a walk when she was finished.

So Frodo and I were romping in the snow – and then the next thing you know, my human noticed we were gone. She continued to play with the snow shovel and after a few minutes started wondering WHERE we were. So she called us. No PONs. And she called again. No PONs. She was JUST about ready to head into the woods when she heard the telltale crashing of branches. And out of the woods came Frodo. With me racing behind. With SOMETHING in my mouth. Of course I took a WIDE route around my human – so she couldn’t tell what it was – and promptly dropped my bounty in the snow. And began to chew at it. “Hey” shouted my human. “Put that down. Viktor – DROP IT!” I know that frantic sounding voice so as she approached I dropped my treasure. What was it? Rib bones. “Ewwwwwww, said my human, give me those!!!!!” They were pretty frozen but still had some meat on them. My human couldn’t figure out WHAT they were from. Probably too big for a rabbit. She immediately threw my treasure in the trash. “Yuck,” she said.

The trash can lid closed at which point I looked at Frodo and he looked at me – and off we dashed back into the woods – before our human could grab us. We could hear her loud “UUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!” and the shouting of our names. She called and called. I figured I had better go back, so I did. “Mr. Good Behavior” was still gone. My human shouted his name – and then she heard him coming. He emerged from the woods – and you guessed it – HE was carrying another bone. Which my human quickly pulled from his mouth. “That’s IT” she said – and the two of us were marched back into the house while she finished playing in the snow.

Poor Paxton missed all the excitement. Now my human is afraid to let any of us off leash – because she doesn’t know what ELSE it out there. She tried to follow our tracks back into the woods to see where we got the snacks – but the trees were too dense. If she would just let me out – I would show her. Maybe.

Well, I guess she didn’t pray hard enough at church…Welcome home my favorite human!

Life returns to "normal"

January 18, 2015Leave a Comment

Looking a bit disheveled after bashing around our new toy

She’s back. Our human is home. Our household has returned to normal. Well – that’s probably not a good word – because we are FAR from normal. I should say “normal for us.”

As expected, Frodo barked incessantly when she got home. He just stood and barked at her. For 2 hours. OK. Maybe not that long. But it felt like it. I kept trying to get close to her – but Paxton kept getting in my way. We were all very happy she was home – although we do love our sitter.

And we ALMOST had a completely A+ behavior record for the week. ALMOST. There was just a small incident with the screen door that goes out to the deck. Again. This has happened before. Our dogsitter let us out there one day in the sunshine and she went back in the house for a few minutes. OK. I admit it. It was my idea. I just wanted to try some of my own remodeling. A new entryway. Other than that…we were VERY good.

My human brought us some good guilt gifts – some YUMMY biscuits – AND a new toy!!!!!! It is sooooooo cool. It’s called a Snoop. It dispenses treats kind of like our Pyramid. But it’s made of soft rubber. Each of us got to try it and each of us has our own method for getting those treats out. Paxton kept batting it around with his paw. All around the room. He was extremely productive in getting those treats. Frodo used his nose to push it everywhere. He would use his paw if it was stuck somewhere – but mostly used his nose. And me? I kept picking it up and dropping it – so the treats would go flying everywhere. Bam. Bash. Out popped those treats. It’s interesting how we all used different techniques.

We all crashed early after the whole reunion-excitement thing. Today we plan to torment our human, er… I mean show our human how much we missed her by following her EVERYWHERE. Like velcro. Bad velcro…We’ll be there…count on it!

Have a good one – I know we will!

Rumor has it…

January 17, 2015Leave a Comment

Today’s the day. Our human is due back today!!!!! We can’t wait to see her!! And the guilt gifts. Rumor has it there may be another new interactive toy AND some treats.

Frodo will probably ignore her when she comes in as if to say “where WERE you?” Paxton will try to knock her over and I’ll just jump up and down. And I’ll try to break into her suitcase to get the gifts. Now to stay well-behaved until she gets in…

© 2015 Linda Wozniak

Classes?!

January 16, 2015Leave a Comment

Another day. And more good behavior. This is just about killing me. I HOPE the guilt gifts are good.

And if it wasn’t hard enough being good while our human was away – I JUST saw an e-mail that my human got. Yes. I confess. I have been looking at her e-mail. But this e-mail affects ME! It seems I am going to be starting some OBEDIENCE classes next week. And WHY was I not consulted about this?! And WHY me? OK. Don’t answer that one – it’s obvious why I am going. Oh just THINK about the blog stories ahead.

I think the obedience interest may be because our Kennel Club has one of its big shows and trials weekend coming up in February. And my human figures that since the show site is 5.8 minutes from our house we SHOULD enter something. But the jury is out – beauty pageant or brains – conformation or obedience. Decisions. Decisions. “Beauty pageant” means TONS of grooming. And “brains” means TONS of training. I vote that Frodo be in both. And Paxton and I stay home. But I think our human may have other things in mind….

Behaving…

January 14, 2015Leave a Comment

Well our human’s little holiday is more than half over – and so far no one has eaten anything bad, destroyed anything, demonstrated any majorly raucous behavior, or caused the dogsitter to have a nervous breakdown. Our human called last night and the sitter said everything was GREAT. Yes. We CAN be good.

Like my photo? It’s a shot of me after rolling around on the new dog bed. I think it’s a good look for me. I like to call it my Woofstock look. I gave Frodo a similar look a few weeks ago. He was not as fond of it. I like to style his hair right after my human has groomed him.

Hope everyone is having a good week! We are! And can’t wait to see our guilt gifts in a few days!

Miracles DO happen….

January 14, 20152 Comments

While my human is away, I want to share a little story that happened at Christmas time – a little Christmas miracle. This story isn’t really about us canines. But we were witnesses – so I can tell it. And it is a TRUE story. I meant to share it before – but I got so caught up with all of our gifts – I forgot to tell you this story… so better late than never!

My human has this old watch that belonged to her grandmother. The band is not the original band, and the watch doesn’t even work. It doesn’t wind. It doesn’t tick. She has thought about having it fixed – but never gets around to it. Her mother gave it to her – it was just lying in her mother’s dresser drawer – and her mother said it had been broken forever.

My human wears the watch anyway. She has for years. She thinks it’s pretty, so she puts it on with other jewelry, and doesn’t care that it doesn’t tell time. It has the initials of her grandparents on the back – so she thinks it’s special.

The week before Christmas, she went out with her sister and mother to dinner, and afterward they went for a drive see Christmas lights around the city. She even got out and took photos. Several times. She was wearing the watch.

The next day, she was going out and decided to wear the watch. When she went to put it on, she noticed uh-oh – the crown was missing. Oh no. She looked around the jewelry box, looked on the floor – but realized it could have fallen off ANYWHERE. So now the broken watch was also missing a piece.

On Christmas Eve, her sister and mother picked her up to go to church. As she went to get into the back seat of her sister’s car, she saw something on the seat. The CROWN!!!!! Seriously! What kind of Christmas miracle was THAT?!!!! She was soooo excited. That crown could have been lost anywhere – but there it was – right in front of her. But the miracle didn’t end there…

On Christmas day, my human took the crown and carefully screwed it back onto the watch. Ah. It was all together again. And for some reason, she tried to wind it. The watch could never be wound before. It had been stuck. Well. It wound. There is no second hand on the watch, so my human laughed and thought she would have to look at it in a minute or two and see if the hands moved. You guessed it. They did. The watch is working…

You see Frodo in the picture with the watch, because I tried to eat it. Now THAT would have given the story a VERY different ending!

So that was our little Christmas miracle. It’s not a BIG miracle. And it’s not earth shattering. But it IS cool.

Sometimes miracles happen even when we’re not even asking for them!

And a good news story is always nice to hear – even when it comes a little late!

You catch more flies….

January 12, 2015Leave a Comment

OK. So maybe the bad behavior pictures yesterday WERE a bit much. I think I have been watching too much human TV news. It’s usually pretty negative. I don’t want to TOTALLY scare off my human – so maybe I had better try another strategy…how about some adorable photos. Probably a better idea….


Fun in the sun. Note who got the chair…and who is under it…

Guarding against bunnies…

Helping in the garden

Grooming fun…sort of

Academic shot…

Just plain cute…after I ate something disgusting in the garden…

Obligatory Frodo close-up

Obligatory Paxton close-up…missing our human

The three amigos…being GOOD

So far, we are all behaving pretty well – and the dogsitter has not walked out. So I’m sending the photos to my human to remind her just how wonderful we CAN be. Admittedly, most of the shots are of ME. But then this IS MY blog…All this behavior management and my vacillating between decisions. I TOLD you I would make a good politician!

@ 2015 Linda Wozniak

Enticement…

January 12, 2015Leave a Comment

Haha. Very funny. Oh that human of ours just LOVES to tease us. Well – I guess “tease” isn’t exactly the right word. I guess “entice” might be better. She is trying to entice us to be good while she is away – by sending us photos like the following:

In return, I sent her THESE pictures – of our less-than-desirable behavior.


Making our own opening in the screen door.


Making myself comfortable on the human bed – uninvited

Digging in the mud

Paxton swimming in a pond on the golf course…during golf season…

Illegally relaxing on a wingback chair in the DFZ

Dog bed destruction

Human comforter destruction

We WILL find the bunny while you are away- and you will never see him again…

You can call these photos blackmail. I call it reverse psychology. So, bring us some good guilt gifts…or LOOK what we COULD do. Yup. We canines ARE smart : )

© 2015 Linda Wozniak

Travel guilt

January 11, 2015Leave a Comment

Well. It seems that my human is missing us already. Everywhere she goes she sees dog things- and thinks of us. Look at the photos she sent to me.

Perfect. These are obvious signs of guilt. Which means more guilt presents. Life is good. She’s not here but we still love our sitter. And presents await us when our human gets back. Sweet.

WHERE are you going?

January 10, 2015Leave a Comment

Well. Well. I can’t believe it. My human is going on a little vacation – leaving us canines at home. Seriously. I didn’t see this one coming. Thankfully, though, we DO adore our dogsitter and she loves us soooo much she doesn’t even leave us to go to work! We ARE her work. I don’t think she gets paid enough to look after us. I mean, we are not exactly your average canines. Between Frodo’s incessant barking, Paxton’s kleptomania, and my attitude, she has her work cut out for her. If I Skype with my human, I MAY be able to dash off a blog while she is away– but it would have to be on the OLD laptop since my human is taking the good one with her. So my blog may be quiet for a few days… No doubt I will have lots to tell you about when she gets back. Like about all the great guilt presents she will bring back for us…Hint. Hint.

Have a good week blogettes. I WILL be back!