Barky New Year!

Hi everyone

We want to wish everyone a Barky New Year!

Our human's staying home with us tonight, to make sure Trixie learns to not freak out about the fireworks. But we went to the beach today for the first time in ages so we're both very, very tired, and have only been half-heartedly wuffling at the firecrackers going off in the street, and mainly just sleeping through them.

It's been ages since we've been to the beach, because we had to wait for Trixie to get her stitches out. It all started when our human said she was giving Trixie a spade for Xmas, which we thought was a bit weird, because Trixie's already very talented at digging with her own giant little paws.

And then our human didn't actually give her a spade. But that could be because Trixie went to the vet and came home with an owie and stitches on her tummy, and then we both had to keep quiet for forever!

So we didn't do much walking at first, and then only short walks. And we both had so much energy we just did lots and lots of barking - especially at all the unauthorised activity happening outside in the street.

But Trixie got her stitches out today and she's all better, and now we're exhausted after a long, long run on the beach.

And our human says now we don't have to worry about Trixie becoming mature on our road-trip at the end of January. Though, to be honest, we don't think there's much chance of anyone being mature on that trip - we're going with our friends Penny and Reyna - four Schnauzers in the back seat! But that's not until next year, and we'll have plenty of time to tell you about that when it happens.

Right now we want to tell you about our New Year's resolutions.

Firstly, because we need more balance in our lives, Trixie will spend more time doing doga...

... and Sasha will spend more time contemplating the universe...

And we promise to share our things!

Barky New Year, everyone!

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Are you looking at me?

One

Today's post is brought to you by the Number One.

One teensy black puppy, with

One white blaze on her front, and

One white tootsie, went walking

One morning, and met

One new puppy.

One minute of play-bowing in the freshly cut grass resulted in

Artist's impression

One burr-encrusted teensy puppy. It took

One whole episode of Merlin to remove
One giant handful of bindis. There were

111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,
111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111 bindis

Eleventy gajillion of them (that's lots and lots of ones).

Actual puppy 

One bindi-free puppy emerged from the chaos, and
immediately ran outside to find more bindis.

Snorfling

Hi everyone

Sorry we haven't blogged for a while - our human says she's been too busy to help us because puppies are a lot of trouble, what with having to take them outside all the time, and them being all bitey all the time and making it very difficult to walk around the house.

We're not sure who she's talking about, because Trixie is no trouble at all!

And we've both been busy, too, snorfling ...

... snorfle ...

... snorfle ...

... snorfle ... snorfle ...

... rinse and repeat ...

Our human promises to help us with more blogging now that Trixie's pretty much house-trained and we all have a bit more free time.

Wordless Wednesday

The Digging-est Puppy

Hi everyone, Trixie here!

I found out that my human's favourite book when she was a pup was called The Digging-est Dog.

I thought all that digging sounded like fun, so I've been practising my technique.

Me showing my new friends Reyna and Penny how to do it
(I'll tell you about them another time)

I also want to say Happy Barkday to my gorgeous big sister Sasha, who turns four today, and who plays with me and looks after me, and almost never has to teach me manners!

Princess Trixibelle

Hi everyone!

I'd like you all to meet my new little sister Trixie, the waggingest puppy in the world!

She's 10 weeks old now, and as well as being my little sister, she's actually my first cousin - my mother and her father were littermates!

She's a black schnauzer, but she has a white blaze on her chest, and on her back left foot is a little white twinkletoe!

Our human called her Trixie because she thought I was a very tricksey puppy, and so she expected my little sister be tricksey, too!

We told the breeder that Trixie's nickname is Trixibelle, so the breeder registered her as Princess Trixibelle - she's a princess, just like me! (I don't have a formal title, for me it's more of a lifestyle choice.)

We get on very well - of course, I have to teach her some manners from time to time, but she's learning quickly!

And we play like maniacs every day!

What the...?

What's that?

...

Did you see it?

...

I'm sure I saw something...

...

Tell me you saw it!

...

It looks like...

A little sister!

Hi! I'm Trixie!

Helping

A while ago I told you how we had a tiger snake, and that we had to get rid of our lovely cottage garden out the back, because it's the kind of place snakes like to hide in, and coincidentally the kind of place that Schnauzer Princesses like to hunt in. My human thinks that's a bad combination.

So my human gave the gardening human some paper money to remove the lovely garden. It looked like this when he finished.

I had to check it out, of course.

Then this weekend, my human spent several hours in the pouring rain picking up all the rocks, and raking the dirt and sowing grass seed. So now it looks like this.

You can see all the bricks and bits of birdbath that had been hiding under the cottage garden. Plus there's a big stone right in the middle, that was too heavy for my human to pick up or even roll. We decided to keep it there as a feature.

My human doesn't have any pictures of me helping, because it was very wet and she was soaked and covered in mud and frankly a bit grumpy and not at all appreciative of my efforts to enlarge the holes left over from where the stones were. She suggested that maybe Schnauzer Princesses shouldn't overtax themselves, and perhaps I should repair to the shelter of the house, there to rest my weary bones.

She was right, of course, because I am a delicate little Princess, but I decided to screw my courage to the sniffing-place*, and help from the inside.

Here's how I helped on the back room couch.

Then I helped on the chair.

And in the laundry.

If you look closely, you can see how muddy my beard and paws got, with all that helping. But it's ok, they got nice and clean after I spent some time on the lounge couch.

By the time she had finished, my human was so cold and wet and tired and sore, she could barely move. But she managed to make some herb & parmesan dumplings to go on the beef & guinness stew she fortunately had the foresight to put into the slow cooker before she started on the garden. So by the time she had warmed up in the shower, it was all ready for her to eat.

This is what the stew looked like a few minutes after she put the dumplings in. They took about 45 mins to cook coz it was in the slow cooker.

And I helped by eating some of the beef!

Now my human gets to use her new sprinkler to water the grass seeds every second day, and stand there with the hose on the other days (we still have water restrictions, even with all the rain). I help by standing inside the door and barking at her because she won't let me out in case I dig. As if I would!

She put couch ("pooch cooch") in the main part of the garden, and kikuya around the edges where it's not so sunny. Those types of grass manage well in the kind of heat and sometimes lack of rain that we get, so by next summer they should be well-established.

I can't wait until it grows enough for me to spend some time in the back yard!


* I hope you don't mind my literary quotation from Macpup by Hairy Schnauzerspeare.