Snuggling with our owners is one of our favorite things to doI By-the-way I can't believe I have not written anything for several months. It may be because our lives have been disrupted by the construction going on in our backyard. It was transformed from a grassy area, which was nice enough, to a mud pit, to a concrete bowl, and now (finally, according to our owners!) to a pool of deep blue water! Our owners claim that one day they will actually venture into this pool of water, preferably after it has stopped snowing! Back to the snuggling... There is often competition between myself and Stella regarding who will get the best snuggle location vis-a-vis the location of our owners. I think so far things have come out pretty even. Just so you know, we are excellent snugglers!

Taking a "walk" with our owners turns out to be quite challenging! They have no interest in walking at our pace at all but keep pulling and tugging on our "umbilical cords" (an expression I picked up watching spacewalks on the NASA channel!) to make us walk this way and that. Poor souls, they even have to color code the cords so that they know which of us they are connected to (check out the picture!).
Since we are very sensing creatures we know when a dog has walked on "our" sidewalk recently. We even know which one, leading to varying levels of excitement on our part. We really like all people and all dogs but just have a little more difficulty in getting along with some than others. Eventually though I think we will be just fine.

Now I am not a very sensitive guy but I am getting a bit annoyed at my buddy Stella, since she always tries to steal the spotlight. If there is a picture to be taken (of me!) then Stella almost always squeezes in front of me... The picture to the right is a case in point. Now I was perfectly placed on the pillow and guess what? There she is all of a sudden almost entirely blocking me from view from the camera! What is that all about? I am sure there are no humans that behave like that...
The same thing happens if I am being petted by one of my owners. Everything is fine and then there she is, sticking her big head in front of mine trying to grab everyone's attention and affection. I do like her a lot and we have a lot of fun together but come on!!!

You may have thought that Jaws was a scary movie with that shark with all its teeth... I am just telling ya': I am almost as scary!! And that's in my sleep!

I just wanted to share how moved I was when one of my owners had fallen asleep next to Stella and I noticed their paws touching (human paws do not have much hair, which we find intriguing and an opportunity for licking...).

I found it to be a very "touching" moment!

Sleeping is one of our favorite activities. Well, it is more of a non-activity I guess. (I am actually sleeping right now as I am writing this blog. Don't ask how I do it!) Earlier today we had a visitor at the house and we showed that we are really well behaved. Our owners were SO happy that we did not attack the visitor and try to eat him. Apparently they have had some bad experiences with their previous dog, Molly, that had a mean streak in her. I'll show you a picture of her sometime. We know Molly is a sensitive topic to our owners since she passed away quite recently after twelve years of great companionship. She must have been something special by they way our owners talk about her. They get all teary eyed... Today though it sounded as if our behavior with respect to the visitor was a welcomed and positive change. Not that Molly was not a fantastic dog. She really was.

Could I introduce you to one of our owners? Just wanted you to know what the 8-year old looked like. We are best buddies, can you tell? I would trust him with anything and I know he feels the same about me. Stella loves him too.

If you are a dog you know what the so-called owners want you to do and what they don't want you to do. We may not always obey but hey, we know this stuff like the back of our paw! In our house there is a special device that apparently indicates that it is very important that our owners are left alone. When we are shown the stylized apple (above) we know it is time to go and lie down and be quiet for a long time. Our owners seem to go into a trance when they put up this "shield" between themselves and us. I am guessing that the apple symbolizes something very profound and deep, perhaps a symbol rooted in human mythology somehow... Again, humans are very strange creatures.

Now I have done it! Stella is not happy with me for posting that picture of her. She gave me very clear instructions of what to do to rectify the situation. By the way, when my owner saw this picture of me they thought that I had joined the search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Again, I have no clue of what they are talking about but I am willing to search for pretty much anything so count me in!

OK! OK! So many of you have asked for a picture of my girlfriend so I guess I had better show you one. Before I do I want you to know that she is the best girlfriend a dog could ask for. I don't want you to think that I am trying to make fun of her by showing this particular picture but you know what they say: A picture says a thousand words so here goes. Isn't she cute? Actually this picture does not do her justice because the cone shaped object our "owners" put on her head is not that attractive in my opinion. It is also very annoying in that she bumps into everything and everybody in the most ridiculous way! I know what that feels like since they tried this cone on me too. I figure they realized that it didn't look that good on me so they took it off after a while and since then I haven't had to wear it. Perhaps it's more of a girl thing. My owners keep saying things like "Sure glad that's over with" and "No puppies for you!". Not sure what that is referring to since I never planned to have any puppies with Stella anyway! She is more like a sister. You know what I mean? I am sure you have felt the same about someone in your life. Humans do and say the strangest things...

Hello! My name is Stanley and I was recently adopted by a very nice family (they call themselves "owners" - I don't know what that is all about...). The same people also adopted my girlfriend, Stella, which was great because that means we can continue hanging out together! I am not sure that Stanley and Stella were our "real" names, whatever that means, but we are already used to our new names so there is really no reason to linger in the past.

Apparently our names our famous since they appear in a play written by someone named Tennessee (or possibly Missouri) Williams. They also made a movie of his play, A Streetcar Named Desire, where Stanley was played by an actor named Marlon Branded (or possibly Brando). He was nominated for an Oscar for the part. I'd like an Oscar too! I bet they are yummy!

Anyhow, you may wonder why a dog is blogging. First of all there is the rhyming thing.... dog-blog... That was just too cool to resist. Then there is the fact that not many dogs get to speak up in this world and we actually have a lot to say, about ourselves but also about the humans around us. You may also enjoy finding out what I am learning about life with our new family and how we are adjusting to living with an 8 year old boy who presently most likely is creating lego replicas of yours truly (or at least I hope so!).