To All the Dogs We've Sniffed (and More) Before -- and Aft!

Here starts a several-part narrative of our adventures between here and St. Loulis and back over the holidays. Since we are dogs, writing primarily for other dogs, we thought the best place to start would be with our canine encounters -- whether as related to us by our humans when we were not present or as experienced ourselves.


The first two encounters fall into the first category. We were not there. Why we were not there is another matter. But as we said before, we are dogs so sometimes we do not get to make the choices we want. On the other paw, as you will see below, sometimes we do get to make the choices we want (BOL) with interesting consequences.


So (get on with it, Mom): here are our St. Loulis pals, Gussie and Teka with their muzzer and dad. The humans had brunch together one very rainy morning. Since we live in South Florida, where it is mostly too hot to leave dogs in cars, Mom didn't realize they could have brought us and let us stay in the car, the way G and T did. As it was pouring rain, however, our post-brunch vicarious encounter with our two pals was very brief -- but we have to say, Gussie was looking spectacular and Teka quite the provocative imp. Muzzer and dad weren't too bad either!

Next, and this surprise is for Khyra and the Op Pack and Tubey -- we actually have Sibe cousins - Alexandra and Chinook. Our silly humans thought it would be too much if we came along for a visit, so once again we had only a virtual encounter. Smiling below is Alexandra, with her brother curled up behind her.
Alexandra and Mom hit it off -- Mom does do a mean scritch, having practiced on us. And Alexandra and Chinook enjoyed Dogdad as well.

How 'bout them floofs??? Ah, but finally, after we left St. Loulis for Paducah, we got to do again what we'd been looking forward to ever since last year: spend another evening with the waggle (and their very special humans)!!! Here are four of the waggle in their private waggle room: clockwise from the right: Mama Pajama, Lindy Loo, Swede William, and Sam I Am.After a while, Swede William, known for his savoir faire and gentlemanliness, was allowed out to greet us. And here is where we once again embarrassed Mom and Dogdad so much that they almost denied knowing who we two "hairy dogs"* even were. Jake? Just Harry? Nope. Not ours. Never seen them before. * In case you don't know the story, whippets prefer whippets to all other dogs. And they disprefer hairy dogs, like we terriers, to most all other dogs.

Let the videos speak for themselves.

Things quieted down a bit, or so the folks hoped, after we left Paducah and visited one of Dogdad's colleagues in Georgia. They live on a huge farm, and have several dogs as well as beautiful horses. Here's one with our new friend, Meredith.The tiniest dog was Daisy, a Jack Russel Terrier like Teka.

And the largest was Biddyock, an Irish wolfhound puppy --who was to celebrate her first birthday on the same day as I, Jake -- January 1st. She and Meredith are almost the same height.But then things weren't all that quiet as JH seems to enjoy trying to get it on with the ladies. Daisy wasn't interested in playing with him. And Biddyock was a bit too young to even know what was going on. But we decided you can't blame the lad for trying, right???

The last stop on our canine caravan was at our human brother's in Athens, where we played with our beagle-mix cousin Marcy. We don't have those photos as yet -- but we do have several statues of the University of Georgia's mascot "UGA." Like many cities, Athens has commissioned statues that artists can decorate as they like.

We don't think lover-boy JH would have been interested in trying his charm on these somewhat aggressive-looking characters -- but since we weren't there to find out, we can't say for sure.

Next time, we'll share a few different vignettes from our trip. In the meantime, if you look at a weather map of the US and see a tiny tiny yellow spot at the end of the Florida peninsula, contrasted with all the blues and purples everywhere else in the country -- that's us. It's in the low 40s, which is kind of chilly for here -- but we know it's better than anywhere else except Southern California right now.

Jake and Just Harry