Update on Sam the Service Dog

I want to thank each and every one of you pups for stealing your human's money and donating toward getting Sam a little boy to care for.

Enough funds were raised, and Sam came to Alex's home to see if he was a match and if he could do the work that Alex needed him to do.

Unfortunately, Alex's condition made it very hard for him to help Sam learn the skills needed to help him. Service dogs are typically meant to bond with the person that they are helping by having their person care for them, teach them new skills and give them very detailed direction.  Alex is unable to clearly communicate with Sam and the challenges were just too much for Sam to do his job.

The good news is that Sam will go back to his training and will be paired with another person to learn how to help them.  The Wales family thanks Sam for trying so hard to be Alex's best friend and helper and wishes him the best on his next assignment.

Don't fret pups, your money will still go to a good cause, as the family is now looking in to finding the perfect therapy dog for Alex.  Its quite clear that what Alex really needs is a friend to snuggle with him, calm him down when things get too much for him, and to have someone there for him when the times get tough and he doesn't feel good.  The really good news is that the money collected will just about pay for a trained therapy dog.  The family is receiving guidance from people familiar with the therapy dog programs, and will go about finding the perfect friend for Alex.

If you have experience with therapy dog training, know of a good organization that trains therapy dogs, or are a therapy dog team member, can you just give me a comment and I can get you in touch with the family so you can provide them with some help in deciding the best friend type for Alex and his condition.

We will continue to update you on the family and the new addition to their home, and how a pup can make a sick little boy feel like a part of the world again.

- Meeshka

In Memory

Sad Soft Woos in memory of HULA Hoop Member Kodiak of Thundering Herd

- Meeshka & the Gimpy Gang

Help a Service Dog Get a Little Boy!

As you know, we dogs come in a myriad of shapes, sizes, and duties.  As a "working dog" I know the importance of having a job, and while most huskies are employed by pulling sleds, I found a cushy gig laying on air vents, looking very fluffy, and digging for grubs.

Border Collies herd sheepie things (according to Bet of North Wapiti)

Airedales collect big sticks and pine cones (according to Bogart Handsome Devil)

Labradors destroy furniture (according to Ping of Dogs with Blogs)

And Sam's job is to help young boys with disabilities do fun things and lick their faces and generally make bad things go away for them.

This is Sam:

Clockwise: Sam, Zach, Mike (Dad), Alex, and Kathy (Mom)

Sam really wants to come live with the Wales family so he can be there for Alex.  Alex (according to my human woman) is a really cool kid and has this really horrible disease thing called ALD and he needs Sam's help.  But, as usual, he can't come live with Alex until human money gets paid, and blah blah stupid human things (As Tubey would say).  Until all of this money thing is taken care of, Sam can't do his job.

If you want to help Sam get his job, go steal money from your humans and send it to:

Mike Wales, 
c/o Friends of Alex, 
6424 Birchleigh Circle
Alexandria, VA 22315

Or you can click on the convenient paypal button on the upper right hand side of my blog. 

Its the Human Woman's paypal, but she will make sure that one big honking check from all of us 4-footers will get to Alex's dad so he can hire Sam to do his job.  Not only that, but the Human Woman will make sure that your WHOLE donation goes to Sam's employment as she will cover whatever fees Paypal rips out of your kind donation.  (a note from the weasels in the legal department: this is not a tax deductible donation, just one from your heart).

So help us create a job, and let Sam do his.  You'll make Sam and his human boy Alex very happy!

- Meeshka


P.S. This is not Spineless Bionic Hip/Knee pup Sam.  That Sam would actually require a boy to fetch his things and bring them to him on the Sleep Number Bed.

Etiquette

Its essential to maintain good hygiene at all times.

After a busy day of grub mining, its best that you clean up before dinner

Its Grub Season!

Thanks to the Irene rain, rain before Irene rain, and the torrential downpours we've had today, I'm officially announcing that its grub season in Merryland!

Its all nice and muddy out in the yard, perfect for grubbing!  Here is some of the earlier handiwork before the torrential downpours this afternoon:

Its blurry only because the Human Woman has been doing nothing but cleaning since she's been home this week, and her arms shake uncontrollably from the exertion.  If she's not flitting here with cleaning, she's flitting there with cleaning.  Cleaning all the time, and yet... amazingly enough, the place still looks like it hasn't been cleaned.

Of course, this may be because we've been spending a lot of time outside, digging for grubs in the rain, then coming in to take a break and shake our mud all over.  She loves when we do that!

At one point she yelled at me for being selfish.  She told me that the pups in Texas didn't have grubs and they didn't have rain, and it was so dry there that the whole state is on fire and pups and kits and other animals have to flee for their lives from the icky fire.

Well, I didn't like that at all, and I stomped my delicate (yet muddy) feety feet at that.  As the Queen I cannot allow one state to get so much rain when another state needs the rain, therefore I am hereby announcing that all rain needs to go to Texas right this very moment.  If the rain doesn't move to Texas, then I am calling on all pups, kits, and other HULA members to do what I am doing:

I am standing out in the middle of the rain to collect all of the moisture in my incredibly fluffy fluff, and then I will walk to Texas and shake, thus putting out some fires.  I have a lot of fluff, so that's a LOT of water I can douse on the flames.  I want all HULA members to immediately go outside and gather as much rain water as you can and meet me in Texas.

Of course, I guess I should have told the Human Woman what my plan was, as she's not very happy at my water collecting mission at the moment, so I may be a bit late to Texas.

By the way, Human Woman friend Laura... its MEESHKA... I looked you up, you better be glad Misery isn't on the way to Texas... harumpf.

Laborless Day

Yawn everybody!  Its apparently "Labor Day" for the humans, which means for the past few days, the Human Woman has been laboring.  She's been like a total freak cleaning the house with garbage bags.  We feel it has something to do with the disappearance of the Human Man, who the Human Woman claims she took to the airport... but we're beginning to wonder if he isn't really stuffed in one of those contractor bags.  We're waiting for the tell-tale odor of good stinky roll in it smell.

We've been very helpful though

As some of you have remembered... its usually the time that Uncle Jack comes to visit, which means:

• Horrible catastrophe (natural and man-caused)
• The unexpected death of a celebrity

This year, the Human Man went to visit Uncle Jack... leaving us here alone with the psychotic Human Woman and her contractor bags of doom.  This doesn't mean that there won't be a horrible catastrophe, or an unexpected death of a celebrity, because the rule is: if more than one of the Human Man's family is located in the same area at one time, chaos and wackiness ensues.  It'll be a triple whammy on Thursday, so you have until then to get in your ghoul pool guesses:

• Horrible catastrophe
• Celebrity death

Just comment on the blog with your guesses and we'll see who wins.

Just as a hint:

I'm just sayin...

- Meeshka

How I Weathered Irene

Get it... weathered... as in Tropical Storm... fine, shut up!

Don't know what the big deal was.

Meeshka

The Thundershirt

As some of you may know, the Human Woman finally went and purchased 2 thundershirts lately.  She only "needed" one for me, but since the Mutatoe has to do everything like me, she had to buy him one so he wouldn't feel left out and cry like a girly dog when he didn't have a pretty dress to wear... he's so embarrassing.

So... in review:

• I don't like storms or fireworks.  
• I pee in the house when it thunders or loud fireworks goes off (my little way of saying "screw you loud noises", 
• and then I pant and pace and claw the Human Woman bloody.

Its fun.  She doesn't think so.  She has no sense of humor and really REALLY thin skin that bleeds a LOT.

Anyhoo, she heard all of these wonderful things about the Thundershirt™ and watched the videos all slack jawed and amazed, and immediately ordered 2 and had them shipped jiffy quick because we had a lot of storms and she was low of plasma.

Meanwhile we had some doozy storms and chaos, mayhem and lots of clawing.  When she wasn't being clawed, she was hitting the refresh button on the tracking number for the package.

FINALLY the Thundershirts arrived and... no storms.  Nothing.  Weeks went by, and no storms. 

Frankly, I was fine with that and was satisfied that the Thundershirt did its work by warding off all of the evil storms in the world.  Job well done... bravo.

Then last night...

The humans had just settled into bed early (because they're getting old and senile) and we pups had done our usual bed rearranging and space shifting and I was laying on my cold air vent when...

boooom

I knew it was thunder because the humans were whispering and turned the tv up.  They try to fool me into believing its a jet, or loud car, or that vroomy motorcycle thing, but

BOOOOOM

Yep, no doubt about it, it was thunder, so I jumped on the bed and began clawing and panting, as usual.

That's when the Human Woman pulled out the Thundershirt, and I made a dash for my life.  No way was I wearing that thing again.  She put it on me when it first arrived and I humored her, let her take a picture of me, post it on Facebook (where she CLAIMS she has friends) and bragged about how easy it was to put on.

She chased me with that thing into the kitchen, I ran around the kitchen table, she followed.  We ran around the kitchen table about 10 times with me in the lead, just out of her reach.  She tried the soothing screechy voice thing, but I wasn't fooled.  She grabbed a handful of those very tasty calming caramel things that she got from the pet store to bribe me with.  They are very tasty, but she can only give me 3 of them (per the label) and frankly I think I should get about... the whole bag... very tasty.  After the 15th circle around the table, she gave up all pretenses and just started cursing and using the "when I get ahold of you" voice, and I finally dashed into the living room and was going to hop into my crate (which is home free and they can't touch us), but the bitch had closed and locked the doors!  She's evil.

I dashed into the corner hoping to throw her off, but she followed and trapped me, and then there was no escaping it until she dropped the caramels by mistake and then it was GAME ON!

She's right... it does calm and soothe me during storms.  I had to lay down from exhaustion after all of that running and then clawing her while she was trapped.

-Meeshka

HURRY UP!

I'm pretty sure I've already told you (a zillion times) how slow my Human Woman is.  She dawdles to the door when I have to pee, she dawdles opening the door up for me when I want to come inside, and most importantly, she DAWDLES when she feeds us!

First she'll yell out the annoying "Who wants food-food?" in that high pitched meant to be cute and adorable but its very painful to our sensitive ears double speak crap.  She gets us all worked up and hungry, and then she sloooooowly walks upstairs.  Sometimes she gets lost or distracted by something pretty and starts doing something else.  Meanwhile we're drooling in our EMPTY food bowls.

Then she'll manage to find her way upstairs and into the kitchen, where she may open the fridge and find the canned food, then sloooowly walks to the counter to place the dog food can.  Then she'll sloooowly gather the food bowls, perhaps remembering to do something in the middle of getting the food bowls and wandering off.  Meanwhile we're screaming at her to hurry up, and Mutatoe is gnawing on the water bowl.

Finally she'll get the bowls on the counter and open up the sacred food bin.  She has a scoop she uses to measure out our meager portion and she does it ONE FREAKIN SCOOP AT A TIME!!!  By now the spineless bionic hip/knee pup is springing in and out of the kitchen.

I finally had enough of this and took matters into my own hands.

Yeah, don't mind me, I'll just get it myself, thanks though.

- Meeshka

HULA Corporate Sponsor

The Human Woman and man went out to breakfast (without us) the other day and much to her shock, the Human Woman found that the Husky United Liberation Army (HULA) now has a corporate sponsor: Dennys

Its subliminal advertising, but its a start... pretty soon we shall take over the world... one pancake at a time. 

mmmmm pancakes

- Meeshka

Poo Interupted

Woo everypup,

Its your Queen Meeshka.

Yes, I know its been a while since I blogged, but it is summer, and summer means those horrible thunderstorms, and it is July, and July means those stupid humans™ are setting off fireworks, and generally its been nerve wracking.

The human woman has purchased about a gazillion dollars in "calming" potions, lotions, gels, creams, caramels, treats, liquids, and poultices to help me through the loud noises, to no avail.  FINALLY Einstein gets a clue and ordered one of those Thundershirts off the interwebs.  Of course she did this AFTER the Independence Day weekend, and since we live in Merryland, where its required that bombs burst in air and rockets have a red glare, it was nothing but explosions, panting, clawing, and peeing.

Please note: if you want sympathy, pee on the carpet and not on the human's bed.  I'm just sayin from experience.

To top off the fun, the Mutatoe has developed a disabling fear of fireworks.  I still think he's trying to suck up and be just like me and faking it, but he'll go hide under something, or throw himself in his crate and stare in a catatonic state (and that's hard to do if you aren't a cat).  The human woman gave him some stuff called "rescue remedy", which is perfect, as he was rescued, and he could certainly use a remedy.  I'm pretty sure she gave him shot of tequila instead because he sat in one spot, stared into space and drooled, just like I've seen the Human Woman do when she's had too many chocolate martinis.


She ordered a Thundershirt for him too, and I'm sure he'll LOVE to wear it and will want to wear it all the time... because he's not right in the head.  I'm not too sure if I'm going to like it, or if it will work, but I assure you that one way or another, you'll get to hear about it, and most likely see the claw mark action photos on the Human Woman when she tries to put it on me.  I've worn a regular shirt before, and I contend that it didn't so much as calm me down, but more like embarrassed me so much that I would crawl under some place dark so nobody could see me or take pictures of me.

As you can see by the cool blog post by the Army of Four, not only did the bitch take a picture of me, but she combed me, AND make a stinking card out of my misery (for which I have yet to see any money from).

Oblivious Sam

The Spineless Bionic Hip/Knee Puppy Sam is totally oblivious to the fireworks and storms of course.  He also loves to go out and watch them, and will stand with his head up during a thunderstorm.  Why I am surrounded by such strange huskies?











So, in the meantime, I'm just hanging out inside with the suck up Mutatoe because every once in a while the stupid humans™ will shoot off more fireworks (even though the holiday has been over for FIVE FREAKING DAYS NOW!) which means that every time I go out to poo... a rocket goes off and I have to skitter into the house without having done my business.  This makes me cranky.

Cranky because the Human Woman didn't bother to purchase one of my very own Wunder Thunder Cloaking Robes and also because I really have to poo.