GUS'S GREAT ADVENTURE!

Gus here.  Traveled in the car crate a very long way from our cold place to a warm one.  We stopped at places that had new smells.  We lived in a place that had one room, two beds, my food and water and crate.  Oh, and a TV.

We had to ride in a small room that went up and down to get there.

Every day we took the crate to the car and rode to a place where there were lots of people and dogs.  Guardian seemed excited and happy.

Every day we took a walk with all those people and dogs.  It was hot and one day I had to go to a cooler place away from the walk.  I had a funny coat that helped me stay cool sometimes, and I liked to walk with Guardian and all those other people and dogs.  They became my pack.

Cool coat, eh?

I met a man who was different somehow from other people I have met.  He gave me some food, and I was REALLY excited!  I love food and no one better get between me and my food! But then he made me stop before eating without yelling or jerking my leash. He made a funny noise, though. I just had to obey, but it was ok.  He was nice, but just different.  I liked him.

He also spoke to Guardian and things began to change at meal time. Not fun.

What was fun was this:

Yeah, that's me and some sheep.  I eat lamb sometimes, but just chasing these sheep was SO much FUN! I didn't want to eat them.  

And all these people came up to me and started petting me and telling me how amazing I am.  I'm just a pug, though. Still, I sometimes herd sheep and that's when I turn into a Border Collie, (only not as smart, Guardian says). That's OK, 'cuz it was JUST SO MUCH FUN!

Pure JOY!

Jazz here. I just have to add my take on all this.  I was NOT happy being left behind, although I knew the people and animals where I stayed.  But I came home with some itchy critters called fleas.  For days I had to stay away from everyone. Now it's OK and the fleas are gone. But don't ever do that again to me!

HAPPY 8 BONE BIRTHDAY, GUS!

JAZZ HERE: Hope you didn't expect some witty things in this post. Not too much comical about getting older now.  

It’s birthday time again--for Gus, not me!  Now Gus and I are both officially “senior pugs.”  Of course, I’ve been one of those for 3 years now, and it’s not so bad. I get to sleep longer.  I can still put Gus in his place when he gets too...well, just too too.  We’ve both gotten to the “black and white” pug coloring now. You can see how we’ve earned our senior status below.  And that's not so funny.

Gus age 3 2009

Gus age 8 2014

Also, Guardian has him on some different food, so she gave him some cans of it for his BD.  We’re both on a “wolf” diet now.  Like all meat mostly.  He can’t eat things like rice and beets and salmon and had to cut back on carrots, or his hair falls out.  Didn’t leave much for him to eat, so Guardian switched us both. I mean, Gus sure loves his eats.  Even more now that he thinks he's a wolf.

His hair looks really good, if I do say so (and I do say so, like always)...and none of those white flakes all over his hips. Now, he just has some white hairs there instead.  He's earned those, living with me plus time.

Hey, eating meat is fine with me...I like snarfing up ancestral eats just fine.  I'm still a meaner wolf than he is...except if I try to eat his food from his bowl.  That's when his inner wolf REALLY shows up!

 I did get dressed up a bit for him. Other than that...well, I’m not really a gift giving sort of pug!  Gus would have said something here, but he's too busy stuffing his mouth and growling if we get too close.

I offer you the gift of my company, Gus!

PUNCTUATION, PARENTHETICAL, "COMMA"TOSE PUGS

Yeah, yeah, we know.  Our blog has been asleep for a loooooooooooooooong time.  Don't blame Me and Gus, though.  We dictated and dictated and dictated until we could dictate no more.  All fell on Guardian's ignorant, deaf ears. We tried writing it ourselves....but the only thing closest to writing we could manage was some punctuation.

CommaTose Jazz

Parenthetical Pugs

We'll keep doing our dictator efforts, though.  Stay logged in!

(IM)PLAUSIBLE PUG POSES

People say pugs do weird things with their bodies.  I don't know.  I might sleep with one eye open while sitting.

Or sleep with my head up while lying down.

Or try to use Gus as a sleeping pillow.....

Yeah, not very successfully.

But Gus can really do some weird things with his body.

Melting pug look

Or this...

Broken leg look

And this...

Who sleeps with his back paws under his muzzle?

But why would any comfort-loving pug ever want to sleep like this!?  Honestly, how he fits in this world as a pug, I'll never know!

PRIZE WINNING PUGS

Hey, didja see our last post?  It was really to enter a contest that library-bus was having.  And...oh yeah...guess who won!!

Well, I see that they've added a new name to mine....June.  June Jazz...sort of catchy, huh? 

We've never won anything before, so we asked Guardian what a "Zoo" was and what I (and Gus) would be doing there.  She said it is a place where people come to look at animals up close.  Most are animals from the wild and are in cages to protect them and us. They don't live with people normally. 

This sounded exciting, but then why was I going to be there? I mean, I live with wild-pug Gus, but both of us live with a human.  And I definitely do not live in a cage.  Hmmmm...but Gus sleeps in a crate.  Isn't that sort of a cage?

Guardian:  Silly Jazz.  You and Gus can't go to a Zoo.

Jazz:  Why not?  I mean it's named after me.

Guardian: But the only animals there are ones that live there.  Some were hurt and came there to be healed.  Then they couldn't go back to the wild.

Jazz:  I'm confused. You mean, my name is on the paper, but I can't even go to someplace that's named for me!!?? I mean, we pugs won the prize, didn't we?

Guardian: Give it a rest, Jazz.  Your name is also a kind of music.  And June is a month that comes after May.  So the music, Jazz, is coming to the zoo in June. Not you.

Jazz: Hahrumpf!  Humans are so weird!

BIBLIOTHERAPY LITERACY PUGS

Guardian reads a lot.  Maybe that's why she takes us to so many libraries..not because she reads to us, but because kids read to us.  She wants kids not to like to read; she wants them to LOVE to read.  That's where we come in.  Kids who like dogs (you mean, there are some who DON'T!!!??), love to read to us.  I don't know what this means, but she says, "Kids, dogs, and literacy...that's the best trifecta there is!"  (Does literacy mean throwing stuff around in a messy way?  That doesn't seem to be right.  Maybe it means they throw words at us--like littering our ears with story words?!  That's a good kind of littering, y'know!)

But there's one library she took us to a couple days ago that was really weird.   Now, we've been to a lot of parking lots, but we never, ever saw a library there. But that's where this one was.  It was small for a library and had wheels.  Sort of looked like a bus without side windows. It had words on it and a couple pictures instead of windows.

There were steep steps that I was afraid of (you know, I don't see so well now), but Gus, the oblivious, just went right on up. Probably thought there was food in there.






When we got in, though, we found just two very nice people--no kids, but a lot of books. There was a very happy lady who wanted to read us a book about pigs (closely related to pugs, I'm told--just a letter off).  Her name was Eileen.

The other nice person was a guy named Joe.  He held some kind of signs with our pictures on it with kids reading to us in other libraries (the ones that don't park in the parking lots, but at least have parking lots).

One sign said:

And the other one said this:

Okay, so now we know this strange library is called a "Bookmobile."  Whatever. 

And April 16 is NATIONAL BOOKMOBILE DAY.

I guess our message to all you kids is---you can get all sorts of books and other library stuff--like movies--from this odd bus-like thing.  And Guardian told us it comes to places all over the map.  I bet it comes to a place near you, too!  No, they haven't invited us yet. That's OK.  Because there's no room for both kids and dogs along with the big people anyway.  

But maybe if you kids have dogs, you can take books out from the Bookmobile, go home and read to them.   And grown-ups...you can take books out, too!  

Guardian also told us if they don't have a book you want, they can get it for you. Then the Bookmobile can roll right back to near where you live and hold it there for you to go get it.  FREE!  We like free...whatever that is. We just know it makes people smile...and smiling means people are happy...which makes us...relieved!

A GRAVE MATTER

 This was an important day! Our first adventure since the ENDLESS WINTER began to trap us inside for all except bathroom breaks.  The sun was out, but it was still chilly.  Guardian took us to place where lots of friends meet.  That's great, I always like friendly people! More ways to get someone to put their hands all over me.  Well, that's sort of what the sign says, doesn't it?  OK, not the hands...just friends. 

There was this BIG yard there, but there were these stones sticking up all over it.

Must make it hard to use that machine to shorten the grass.





Gus and I wanted to see one of these stones up close. So Guardian took us to see one.

It had some sort of writing on it. And it didn't look like nature made the stone or the writing.  Gus wanted to see another one. 

I wasn't so sure that I wanted to.

 This one was hard to read, and it had some numbers---like 1741 and 1593. Wonder if that was some sort of secret code.  Sort of creepy.  Everywhere we looked, we saw all these crazy stones. And no friends anywhere...no sorts of people at all!

And still s***, that lousy, cold, wet white stuff....yeah much less, I know.  Just hate to see ANY of it anymore.  

Honestly, I wasn't sure this was a good first outing for us.

Guardian said to show a little respect. This was the final resting spot of a lot of people.  Who would want to rest all the time with all these stones and the coldness outside?  She explained that these people had all died in the past. Died? as in Dead?  as in maybe Ghosts?  Were these all the friends, and is this where they meet?

I mean, I know this was our first outing in a LONG time, 

but this was seriously too grave for us!

ONCE AGAIN...WORDLESS WINTER WEDNESDAY

WINTER WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

MELTING MOUNTAINS.....MAYBE....

So you know we're having the winter from hell here.  It's not that we have the most snow ever...it's that just when we think there's no more, Wham! we look out the door and the sidewalk that was sidewalk color is then white.

Well, the last few days the snow mountains that looked like this

Yeah, we know it runs into the words over there...well it's run into our lives like that!

have turned to this

You remember seeing us like this

complete with yellow snow everywhere.  Then, it went to this

We didn't care where the snow went--just glad it's melting.  YIPPEE!

Then even though another pretty lady on TV told us how much snow we'd had already (like, the biggest number there--more than Alaska!), we knew that we were--YIPPEE #2!--watching it melt away.

Until she showed us THIS picture

Do we see that s*** word again!?  And because Guardian is layering us up again in coats, even in the house, we figured no more melting mountains.

PLEASE SAY IT AIN'T S***!!!