It was a PARTY Like No Other, She Said

Yesterday was Mommy #1's birthday. She is in her third year as a teen. . . Hard to believe. Fifteen seems like such a large number to be - especially since I am 4 (and yet I am considered mature for a dog).

She had a party and invited some of her FRIENDS from high school. They arrived in groups of two and three. The sound level went up exponentially, too, as each group arrived. You cannot IMAGINE how incredibly loud it got!

I was banned from the downstairs while the party was going on - so was Mommy #2. To be honest, I don't think either of us minded too much. Auntie T let us use her extra large room so we could sit and watch tv or movies. Mommy crocheted on doilies, too. I slept ON T'S BED and found it quite cozy - especially where the sun drifted across.

About 3 hours later, the noise level started to go DOWN. Groups left every 20 minutes or so until there was only one FRIEND left. She and Mommy #1 played on the WEEEEEEEEEEE and watched a movie - simultaneously. Kids! Then it was time for her friend to go as well. As soon as she did, Mommy #1 grabbed me and gave me a great big hug for being such a good girl throughout the party.

She said it was the BEST PARTY EVER and there was NO WAY she could ever top it! That's a teen for you - always tiptoeing into the DRAMATIC.

As the Cool Wind is Blowing Through the Leaves. . .

As the cool wind is blowing
Through the leaves it is going
I sit at my desk and write
Memories of the summer's light
Warmth invades my gentle memories
Playfulness courses through my senses
Good times I had out in the sun
I'll need to find a different fun
For now the golden orb has set
Another season anon beget

Stir It Up!

Resting assured

It appears I stirred up quite a controversy with my Facebook versus Blogville post. REST ASSURED I have no intention of leaving Blogville. I am much too long-winded to survive in the fast-paced world of Facebook. I hop in, look around, spout my truisms, and leave. When I come into Blogville, I like to stay awhile and savor the warmth of community and togetherness.

Wednesday is a Little Wordless

Me and my SHADOW

Walking down the avenue

Drivers on the Superhighway Facebook Bypass the Town of Blogville

Traffic through Blogville has been increasingly light over the past year. I noticed this first in the lack of comments I was getting. At first I chalked it up to the time of year or day of the week. Then I noticed it was more pervasive than that. It was without a pattern, but was also getting worse.

I have to admit I am among those non-commenters in Blogville. It is simple - I have little time to spend reading and commenting on posts. What time I have I use to catch up with my FURiends. I am sure many of you wonder where I am. Well, I am reading your blogs (kinda, more on that later) and enjoying your presence, but I am simply unable to comment a lot.

I try to spent a day a month commenting on posts - just so my FURiends know I still love them. Because I do - each and every one of you.

Red-faced, I also admit that sometimes I just skim the headlines - or the Google Reader synopsis. It is all I have time for, really. These forays never show up on your stats because I never really engage. Sorry. So if you think no one is reading your blog, maybe consider the headline skimmers. We are all doing it, I bet. And you have no way to tell.

Then I added a Facebook account for Noodles the Pug. Guess what. I found my readers were hanging out there on that superhighway we call Fb. Why not? News comes fast, comments are short - and then we are on to something else. We have camaraderie and support without putting in a lot of time.

Is Facebook surpassing Blogville? I hate to think this is true since, as a writer, I prefer the longer format of a blog. I also like the closeness of our little community when compared to the vast BIG CITY of Fb. But it is what it is, and I am afraid it may be the bypass that eventually chokes off Blogville from Internet traffic.Along the way, I found out some very interesting information. Maybe a third of my readers are entering via Facebook! They are commenting and "Like"-ing on Facebook. And unless you manually tally up those Fb likes and comments, you won't have a accurate picture of blog traffic.

What is my point here? Well, I guess I am telling myself and perhaps you, my readers, to not give up. Blogville is alive and well AND growing. Check out your stats to see that there is traffic to your site. If not, maybe it is time to reinvent ourselves. I, for one, have no intention of letting the readership highway pass me by.

Missing - Summer of 2013 and a Special Giveaway

NEWS FLASH: SUMMER 2013 HAS GONE MISSING! 

ATTEMPTS TO FIND IT HAVE GONE FOR NAUGHT

Summer left on a long vacation last week and hasn't been heard from since. Temperatures previously hovering in the 80 degree plus range plummeted to the mid to lower 70s without so much as a "See ya later." All around trees are expressing their displeasure by dumping large piles of leaves over lawns and into gutters.

So what can we do to make the transition into FALL - and then -WINTER more palatable? Well, we can celebrate the SUMMER that WAS by entering CHEWY.COM's End of Summer Giveaway.

That is right. Mr. Chewy, as I still affectionately call him, has offered to allow MY FURiends to enter their FACES OF CHEWY: END OF SUMMER giveaway. Entering is easy.

Post a photo of your Cat or Dog enjoying their favorite summertime activity for a chance to win!!  In under 50 words, tell us about your favorite summertime activity with your pet to win a special Chewy prize pack. Tag #teamchewy on Instagram and Twitter, or like us and then message us on Facebook to enter! That's easy, right?

OR

Send me a picture of your furry family enjoying the summer months, accompanied by a brief description, and I will forward it to Chewy.com. You’ll be entered to be a featured pet as well as entered into the raffle for a special Chewy.com Prize package. 

OR

Try entering this way. . .

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The contest will run through the end of September 2013 and the winner will be contacted the first week of October 2013. 

You have ONE WEEK! Get BUSY!

Good luck to all of you!

Editor's Note: I have received no compensation for telling you about this contest. I offer it on my own for my readers to enjoy.

Homer's Odyssey

Hi everyPUGGY! I am not sure how many of you remember the recent contest Teacher's Pets ran a while back. It was when she reached her 800th post -which is really a cause for celebration! Anyhoooo, she had a contest and so, of course, I entered. I love involving myself in contests and tests and drawings, and so on.

Well, as luck would have it, I WON! And I won a wonderful book called "Homer's Odyssey." My first question was - Isn't this wonderful Greek classic a little LOFTY for a young pug to read? The second was "Why is there a CAT on the cover?"

It turns out THIS Homer is an eyeless cat. The book is Homer's approach to living life to the fullest and about the wonderful lessons having Homer has taught his Humom.



Thanks Ms. April for the wonderful read. I will let you know how I like it.

Falling Temperatures and FALL Thoughts

This is how cold it was this morning when I got up. NOTE: winter coat and pug wrapped in it! The weather has been so weird lately. For MONTHS now it has been sweater in the morning weather - AT MOST!. Even yesterday morning it was mild and there was no need for a coat. Then this morning WHAM!!!!

The irony of this temperature change is this afternoon the temps are supposed to SOAR close to 90 degrees in the more interior cities. I think my side of town will be 85 because we are against the eastern hills and below the bay. What is up with this? It is so weird.

I guess I just need to make up my mind that the cold weather is fast approaching and pretty soon we will be waiting for the heater to go on rather than the A/C.

I am comforted by the knowledge that this change in temperature also signals the arrival of something even more exciting!

Yes FURiends - we're talking . . .

HOCKEY

Go Sharks!

A Hoppin' Wordless Wednesday

HI

Hop along with
Blogpaws

The Changing of the Seasons, California Style

This picture is totally irrelevant to the
discussion of the day

FALL will arrive this weekend. For the most part it feels less and less like summer to me. Even though we have had some days where the temps soared above 90 degrees - somewhere in the background it still feels like Fall.

I kinda like FALL because it is usually cool enough for me to go for walkies - while the sun is still up. In the summer, my walks tend to be just after dawn or just before DARK. Not the funnest times to walk. . . at least for Mommy they aren't. But in Fall, the moderate temps and cool breezes make daytime walks a pleasure.

I live in a very temperate zone for weather. Northern California, SF Bay Area, enjoys mild temps all year-round and the SUN is almost always shining down on us. We have rain, but not generally for long periods of time and NOTHING compared to some places. You know what I mean, those of you who are living in other parts of the country/world.

This is not to say we do not have seasons. We have Winter when it is gray (sky and hills); Spring when it is green everywhere; Summer when the grasses in the hills become golden; and Fall when the hills become gray again and the trees lose their leaves. And a lot of the trees provide bursts of color before they lose their leaves.

Yes, I am looking forward to FALL and all of the smells, sounds (HOCKEY IS BACK), and fun stuff to do.

P.S. These are all OLD photos of
me. I need to talk to my
photographer AGAIN!

The Package

I love the POST PERSON who brings all the fun stuff in the mail. I wait anxiously for the sound of her (sometime it is a his) truck then I get all excited when I hear it. Then there is the best sound in the world, the DROP of the MAIL. I loves loves loves it! Mommy #2 says she is not such a fan of mail these days. She gets lots of mail, she says, but it is mostly BILLS that she has to pay. That does not seem like much fun.

So last week I was listening to our mailperson when I heard an especially delicious sound - the PLOP of a box! A box! That could only mean ONE THING:
Chewy.com



From Time to Time I am asked to review products for a business. In exchange for my opinion I receive free stuff. The reviews are my honest appraisal of the item , and are not necessarily good in some cases. This is a great benefit for me because there are many things my Mommy #2 would like to try but does not have the extra $$$ to spend on "experiments."

So, as we say in the BLOG biz: I received free product for the sake of this review. The opinions are my own and I was not otherwise paid to tell you about them.

I ran, ran, ran out of the room to wait by the door for Mommy to open it. When she did, this is what I saw. . .

I don't know if you can see it, but it says Sunshine Hamilton!

Wha' in the WORLD is going on? I stammered.

Now Noodles, said Mommy. Sometimes it is nice if Sunshine gets a chance to try something new. Especially since she is so picky and it is SO hard to find a food she likes.

The package contained 3 little pouches of food called Platefulls. It is like canned food only FRESHER and more natural.


Hmmm. Looked interesting - sorta. Sunshine will like it ONLY if it is more like DOG food than CAT food. She totally SCARFS my food if I don't hoover it down immediately.




Also inside the package were some special things for MOMMY only. She smiled a lot at that. Could be coupons and stuff. . . I dunno. She smiles at funny stuff.

So here is the legal mumbo-jumbo about Platefulls food by Natural Balance (Hey! I like their stuff. I eat it on occasion. . . the dog kind, that is):

Key Benefits

• Complete and balanced for all breeds of adult cats
• Cats love the taste!
• Grain Free formula 
• Great For Skin & Coat
• Enriched with vitamins and minerals
• No Corn, Soy, Wheat, Artificial Flavors Or Colors
• Convenient pouches are easy to open
• Can be served as a standalone diet or as a topper for dry food
• Made in the USA!

So that all looks good, huh? It is also by some DUDE called Dick Van Patten. He is this HOLLYWOOD type that now makes animal food. . . kinda like Ellen Degeneres' HALO and Rachel Ray's NUTRISH. I think you have to have a cutesy name if you are a celebrity in the pet food biz.

They have many many flavors, as well. SO if Sunshine that extra PICKY cat does not like the one we have - well maybe we could sometime try another flavor. We'll See, I thought.

I needn't have worried, though. This is a picture of 

Sunshine the Cat doing something we seldom see her doing at dinnertime - obsessively eating what is in her bowl. She never does this. She normally jumps up and takes a look. . . then she jumps down and takes a bath. Then she jumps up to her bowl again and takes out ONE ORT and eats it. Then she proceeds to do the same thing for the next 5 minutes - take out one ORT and eat it. Then she jumps down and goes to stare out the window. She repeats this FOR HOURS before she finishes ONE MEAL.

Not so with PLATEFULLS. She stood there and chowed for a solid 15 minutes - until every drop of gravy and morsel of food was gone. GONE as in bowl-licked-clean gone.

Mommy repeated the feeding for the next 2 nights and Sunshine did the same thing every night - scarfed her food like a PUG!!! Mommy considered it quite a success.

The only issues Mommy had with Platefulls were

1. The GRANDE portion size. You are supposed to feed one 3oz pouchfull for every 5 pounds of weight. That means Sunshine the Cat should have eaten 2 pouches. If she did that, she would soon LOOK LIKE A PUG in addition to eating one. She has HUSKY tendencies.
2. The Smell - maybe not too much for most humans, especially if your Dogs, Cats, and Pugs are fed RAW or almost RAW foods. But for a veghead like my Mommy - it was a little too fishy and gamey for her. I think that is her problem.

Other than that, she thought PLATEFULLS represent another FINE product provided by CHEWY.COM.

So was the experiment a success? Well YES. It was. Sunshine ate like she NEVER eats and that is a plus. The food was fresh looking and smelling which is always a plus AND not so full of preservatives that she would worry about my sisteroid's health (she is getting on in years, you know). In fact, she HINTED that SOMEkitty might be getting PLATEFULLS in her stocking this Christmas. I guess Mommy has an IN with SANTA?

Thank you Chewy.com for providing us with the opportunity to do this experiment. I am a little PEEVED that it wasn't all about ME because I consider you MY TERRITORY and we all know how PUGETTES get with their TERRITORY!!

Just keep THAT in mind. . .

What's the Buzz? Tell Me What's Happenin' . . .

This is an oldie but goodie. I wonder where that costume went to? It fit me like a GLOVE.

But I digress.

Can somePUGGY tell me what in the WIDE WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS is going on these days? I am flummoxed, and not in a good way.

Such as - what is up with this weather? Hot one week, cold and rainy the next. I live in NorCal where we have one of the best and most regular climates ANYWHERE and even I don't recognize it lately. I am CHILLED to the furs this morning and just 2 days ago I was ready for a cooling vest.

Then there is the Four CORNERS area where it keeps raining and is flooding like crazy (be safe my FURiends there). My Grandma S, Auntie L and Uncle K live in the area in the New Mexico corner and I am so worried about them, as well. And not one month ago they had SNOW!

I need to talk to Mother Nature STAT and get her straightened out now! This cannot keep happening.

Then there are all those FIRES. We had one not 50 miles from our casa. The smoke column was not only visible from my area, but it settled in our valley making the air dangerous. And today I heard the Boardwalk in New Jersey burned down. That is scary stuff!

What's a PUGGY to do?

On the BRIGHT SIDE, I received ANOTHER package yesterday which I will be reporting on NEXT WEEK. Hold on to your harnesses, it's gonna be a DOOZY.

I might be exaggerating a little there - but it will be interesting, I promise.

In any case - stay safe My FURIENDS because without you, well I'd be lost. Have a GREAT WEEKEND!

It's a Dog's Life After All . . . and THEN There's PUGS

Hi. This is Molly. As much as I like to deny it, she is my BEST FURIEND and kinda like my sister. I CALL her my sister but like the rest of our family (Mommy #2, Mommie, and Auntie T excluded), we are sisters from different birth parents, different cities, and different circumstances.

You see, Molly is a DOG. See the snout? She is a Maltese mix which is a fancy dog mixed with something we have no idea what. She looks pretty much Maltese, though. But unlike me, she is a NON-PUG and therefore a dog.
Mind you, I am not saying that in a BAD way at all. I love dogs. Sometimes I ACT like a dog.

But I am a PUG.

THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO MOLLY. She would not HAVE to stick her whole head into a bucket of yogurt to get every last drop of goodness out. She would just stick her snout part way in, extend her tongue and VOILA, yogurt is gone.

Dog vs Pug

Dog          1
PUG         0

You Got a FURiend In Me Wednesday

It's CLEAR To Me
You're My Destiny
Cuz
You Got a FURiend in ME
YES
You Got a FURiend in ME

Tug-a-War Tuesday

You know how good it feels when you get into a really righteous tug-a-war with another dog? Well, here ya go - a typical Tuesday evening, everyone watching "So You Think You Can Dance" on the television. Suddenly, Molly and I get the urge to grab a toy. We grab the SAME toy. Next thing you know, war breaks out. And we can do this for hours. . .
or until we are put on TIME out.

Package from Pip with Precious Prizes

Look! I got a package and it is from PIP!

I enter contests all the time. It is my competitive nature to try and defeat EveryPuggy that I can. I accept defeat with my usual aplomb and a good sense of humor. I have to because most of the time. . .

I LOSE!

So I entered Pip's giveaway for pumpkin treats from EntirelyPets.com and this time, I did not lose. I won and I WON BIG! I won 2 bags of  Grandma Lucy's Organic Pumpkin Cookies Dog Treats (14 oz). They are made of human quality ingredients and are all natural. They do have wheat, though, so are not for pets who are wheat sensitive.

Look at the size of these bags of treats! They look bigger than us.
(Mommy note: Photo illusion, the bags are big but nowhere
near as big as Noodles and Molly)

Do these look DELICIOUS or what?

Molly displaying patience

Once the box was open and ONE of the bags was open, Molly and I  hopped and whined and otherwise made a ruckus like we sometimes do until Mommy gives us a treat. That decidedly DID NOT work, though; and we had to wait for our reward. First we had to pose for the above photo with the bags. Then we had to sit like we usually do for treats. Molly waited patiently for the command to try her pumpkin treat. But I one-upped her by not only waiting - but waiting with the treat ON MY PAW!
It was worth the wait, I tell you. They are the yummiest.


And you KNOW WHAT? My Mommy #2 ATE ONE! She read the ingredients and saw there were no meat products in them AND they were made with ingredients she would use if she was baking them for us. So she ATE ONE! She said they were really TASTY!!!

I see your patience and RAISE you

That Mommy #2 is a crack-up!

Thank you Pip for having such an AWESOME giveaway and thank you LADY LUCK for shining down on ME! I love my new treats and if you come to my house to visit me, I can totally promise you I will share with you.

Only TWO HUNDRED To Go!

Something wonderful came to my attention yesterday. Look, look below 

                                                                             |

                                                                             |

                                                                            V

Yes Folks, you saw it RIGHT! I have published 800 posts as of September 5, 2013! 

Now, I know I should be celebrating and stuff; but I sorta set my sights a little higher - like TWO HUNDRED posts higher. I know I will get there - in about 200 BUSINESS days or so. So be patient all of you. In 200 working days we will have a MEGA-PAWTY and PRIZES to celebrate reaching such a milestone.

I PROMISE!

WHILE I AM AT IT (this post I mean)

Today is Benny's (of Benny and Lily)

Virtual Hug Day.

SO here's a hug or two for all of you

Something Interesting in MY bowl

Sunshine the Cat! What are you doing in my FOOD BOWL? 

Like, A THOUSAND Words Full!

Me and Molly in our EARS the Mommys brought is back
from THEIR trip to Disneyland!

Respect the Mouse!

Will you be HOPPING?

BlogPaws

CraftySpice

Feeling Beachie

Nurse Noodles

So this is pretty much all I did the LONG LONG Holiday weekend - sit on a pillow on the couch. What you cannot see is Lil One over on the OTHER couch being all feverish and stuff. She slept almost all day Friday and most of Saturday. Then by Sunday she felt better - enough to eat and sit up and watch movies. Monday she was ANXIOUS to go outside so I took her. I made sure she did not over do it, too. A NURSE cannot be too careful with her patient.