New Meaning to Living a Dog's Life

"Helmsley Leaves Dog $12 Million in Will

NEW YORK (Aug. 29) - Leona Helmsley's dog will continue to live an opulent life, and then be buried alongside her in a mausoleum. But two of Helmsley's grandchildren got nothing from the late luxury hotelier and real estate billionaire's estate. "


Hmmm.

We think we'd prefer the Rainbow Bridge.

Jake and Just Harry

Scattergories

Blue tagged us to play"Scattergories."

Here are the rules:
Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the questions. They must be real places, names, things ... nothing made up!
If you can't think of anything, skip it.
You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

So here goes:

We, the Barkalots are Jake and Just Harry, so we shall attack the "J's" And we glimpsed Jackson's answers, so we'll have to go out of our way to find new responses. We're a four "J" family, so there's no recourse!!

1. Famous Singer: Janis Joplin (I, Jake, was bon in Joplin, Missouri)

2. Four letter word: Jack!!! (That's what Mom screams when she gets in trouble!!)

3. Street: Juniper Street (A narrow street in downtown Philadelphia that Mom remembers)

4. Colour: Jatropha (We couldn't find one single color with a J so we substituted a beautiful plant with red flowers. )

5. Gifts/Presents: Jewelry (for Mom).

6. Vehicle: Jaguar (We were looking for a new car for Mom, and she couldn't decide between the Jaguar and the Masarati!!! Hah, more like a Honda in her future...)

7. Things in a Souvenir Shop: Anything at the Jake's Dog House stores.

8. Boy Name: Jack (The rules say nothing about using Dogdad's name)

9. Girl Name: Joan (Ditto for Mom!!)

10. Movie Title: Joy Luck Club (Mom loves Amy Tan)

11. Drink: Jack and Coke.

12. Occupation: Journalist

13. Celebrity: Jack Nicholson

14. Magazine: Jack and Jill

15. U.S. City: Jacksonville, Florida

16. Pro Sports: Judo (Kind of like humping???)

17. Fruit: Jackfruit (Is there a theme here?)

18. Reason for Being Late for Work: We, Jake and JH, took too long to do our business!!

19. Something You Throw Away: Juice carton

20. Things You Shout: DAWGS!!!! Quiet!!! (Mom again)

21. Cartoon Character: With apologies to Mike Peters, we love Jrimmy (For those who don't read our comics, that's Mother Goose and Grimm)

So, J's can be pretty hard to find, and this sounds more like Mom than we wires. No Peanut Butter (color, it is a color, isn't it??), if my name was Petey; no Bark (magazine) or Baseball (pro sport) or Books and Bones (gifts/presents) if my name was Benjy; no Old chewed up paper (what we throw away) if my name was Ollie; no Sleeping in (reason for being late for work) or Squeaky toys (things in a shop) , or Snoopy (cartoon character) if my name was Stripe. But it is what it is.

WOOF!!!

Jake (and Just Harry)

The Middle Name Game

A and A tagged us, so here I go.

My middle name has a special meaning. Mom and Dogdad brought me home just before the Passover celebration in 2002, when I was 3 and a half months old. Elijah, called the prophet of peace, plays a key role in that celebration, so they decided to give me his middle name. I don't think they realized that my presence would guarantee anything but peace -- especially in those early days before I learned any manners (Mom still shudders when she remembers what I did in the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom before my training sessions). But now I do have manners, and somehow I think I have brought a sense of peacefulness to our house, despite my terrier ways.

So

E That's easy, it's for ENERGETIC
L That's easy too, it's for absolutely LOVABLE
I What about INTERESTED in everything and anything -- but also INTELLIGENT!!!
J How about the best JUMPING ever?
A ADORABLE would be too too easy, so how about ALL MUSCLE ?
H Again, HANDSOME would be too easy, so I think wholeHEARTED in everything I do!

Now for Just Harry. The problem is, that's his name -- and so far he has no middle name, unless it's goofball, or knucklehead, or goober, or you all get the idea. But just for fun, let's assume that his first name is Just and his middle name is Harry.

H HAPPY-GO LUCKY, fits the bill.
A But so does ANXIOUS...
R Sometimes he's REALLY SWEET!!
R And always REALLY FRISKY !!
Y But above all, he's YOUTHFUL and YOUNG AT HEART!!!

Gee, did I say all that about Just Harry? What's wrong with me? Didn't we just bark our heads off to see who would chase the trash truck away first??

Who shall I tag? I have to think about that -- and Mom needs the computer -- so more later. And maybe I will let JH have a go at it.

Jake

There is Nothing Like a Dog's Nose!!!

One of our very favorite and really smart dog gurus from Texas shared this note about dogs' noses.

Not to brag or anything, please read the part highlighted in red. The link to the article is at the end.

Jake and Just Harry

The World According to a Dog's Nose Article #1388
by Ned Rozell

This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.
A dog can tell you a lot about the outdoors. When Jane, my Lab, vacuums the ground with her nose and her tail moves like a helicopter blade, I know a grouse is about to fly. When Jane stops as abruptly as a dragonfly, then runs off sniffing an invisible path, I know a snowshoe hare has crossed our trail.
All this entertainment is courtesy of that most sensitive appendage, a dog's nose. It's an instrument man has not been able to duplicate. A local search-and-rescue group, PAWS, uses dogs to find lost people, dead people, and people buried under earth and snow. Dogs have also been used to find gas leaks and the presence of gypsy moth egg sacks. A researcher here at the University of Alaska Fairbanks even wants to train a dog to find tiny wood frogs hibernating in the duff.
Lurking behind those textured, damp nostrils are sensitive membranes that allow a dog to distinguish smells--molecules of odor that emanate from every living or once-living thing--at least one thousand times better than humans. A dog processes odoriferous molecules more readily because a dog has a much larger set of scent membranes within its nose, explained Robert Burton in his book, The Language of Smell. While humans have a pair of these "olfactory receptors" in our noses each about the size of a postage stamp, dogs' receptors can be as large as a handkerchief, depending on how big the dog is.
Dogs noses work much the way ours do: We inhale molecules of odor, which then dissolve in mucus. The dissolved odors are picked up by the olfactory receptors, located behind where sunglasses rest on the nose. An organ called the olfactory bulb shunts the chemical messages straight to the part of the brain that deals with stored feelings and memories, bypassing the cerebral cortex, the main part of the brain. This short-circuit is one reason smells so rapidly trigger strong emotions and memories that may have lain dormant for years.
With its larger olfactory membranes, a dog's nose does amazing things. Researchers at Duke University found that a randomly selected fox terrier could after three weeks detect the scent of a fingerprint on a glass slide when compared to four clean slides. When the researchers placed the slides outside in the rain and dust, the dog was still able to pick out the slide with the fingerprint after 24 hours of weathering.
Dogs have fantastic tracking ability because humans leave a pretty good scent trail. Most researchers think the scent trails consists of "rafts," tiny bits of skin cells that have an odor when mixed with sweat and fed upon by bacteria. Because the human body sheds about 50 million cells each minute, rafts fall from the body like a shower of microscopic confetti. Dogs quickly detect these rafts, as well as other scents that may not be apparent to the producer, including breath and sweat vapor. Each person's scent trail is unique, and dogs are remarkably good at separating one person's trail from another's.
In an experiment performed a century ago, G. J. Romanes lined up 11 men behind him. He started walking, with each man walking precisely in his footsteps. After they walked 200 yards, the men dispersed, with five going to the right, six to the left. All the men hid. Another person released Romanes' dog, who found Romanes almost instantly after hesitating slightly where the men separated.
Seventy years after Romanes' study, H. Kalmus performed a similar test using identical twins. The twins must have had quite similar scents, Kalmus reported: "if the dog was given the scent of one twin, it would happily follow the other." When both twins were used in the experiment, however, the dog was able to pick one from the other. What a great tool a dog's nose is--it rarely malfunctions and the body it's attached to is always happy to see you.

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF13/1388.html

How Do I Look?

There's a TV show called "How Do I Look?" I thought that would be a fun way to ask what you think of my two faces. What Mom has noticed is that without my WFTie muzzle, it's easier to see me smile. And I've been smiling a lot since I've been liberated from that collar.

Just Harry


This is Side A (New Look)
This is Side B (Classic Terrier)

"These Are A Few of Our Favourite Foods..."

Our human friend, Blue from the UK (who has an owie on her wrist much worse than JH's puncture was), tagged us to tell everyone what our five favourite (extra "u" to give credit to our British pals) foods are. JH and I had no problem. Mom -- who was given permission to participate too -- was still counting at eleventy hundred as of dinner time....

We haven't added photos like our buddies Agatha and Archie and Gussie have, but we hope you'll all get the message anyway.

Jake's Five Favourites
1. Peanut Butter (seems to be a universal top pick!!)
2. Pop corn (we go nuts when the folks make popcorn)
3. Cheese (string cheese is yummy)
4. Apple slices (desert)
5. Nuts of all kinds

Just Harry's Five Favourites
To paraphrase from When Harry Met Sally, "I'll have what Jake's having!!!"

Mom's Eleventy-Hundred Favourites
1. Maine lobster
2. Crab cakes
3. Steamed clams
4. Fresh buttered corn
5. Guacamole
6. Salmon sashimi
7. Steak au poivre
8. French Brie and Camembert
9. Dark chocolate
10. Mint chocolate chip ice cream
11. Chocolate mousse

You wouldn't know it to read her list, but she and Dogdad eat oatmeal with berries and walnuts and cinnamon for breakfast, soup or turkey and cheese for lunch, and lots of salad and small portions of meat for dinner!! We just get kibble and whatever apple, berries, popcorn, they decide to have for a treat and share with us. There's wine, but that's another story...

Jake and Just Harry

Collar Free, Wheeeee!!!!

Just a quick note to tell everyone that I am officially collar and stitches free. As one of my first acts of liberation, I tried to hump Jakey.

Mom was not amused.

More later, pals.

Just Harry