The Long and Short of It

"I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me."

That is Barney's father. I do not know which one is Laura. My assistant found this picture on the web. It says "Bush-Hunde". That is German. I think it means "Bush's hind-end." They have a lot of funny sayings in German.

Barney's father is a special American. He does not have to follow the rules like everybody else because they are not special. That is how you get to be President. You have to be special.

My detective skills are excellent. That is why the boss needed me to help her find pieces of plastic that some fitness crazy bipeds left on my beach when they had a contest because they did not have time to pick them up and nobody else did either except management but she was complaining the whole time.

First she was going to mail them to the people that had the contest because she is sick and tired of picking up everybody else's mess. You should hear her. We have a bag full of them and lots of pictures. They had the contest two months ago. Boy are they going to get a haircut.

Oh, how nice. A lovely walk on a Sunday afternoon.

You have been watching Touched by an Angel reruns. I live in the real world where your biped bolts and you are left to walk the path alone. You do not hear or see as well as you used to, and you think, "Maybe she ditched me for good. Where will I get free WiFi? Who will buy my dog food and give me leftover cheeseburgers?"

For my blog and newsletter subscribers who might think I am spoiled because I am an only dog who gets to ride along in the car with the boss just about everywhere and who has two boxes of sheets and towels to spread over the back seat that I have all to myself, well, guess again. I have a lot of competition, and the main reason I get to ride along in the car is because people will look in the car and think, "Oh. A dog. I will not break in this car and steal it." You see? Always an angle when you are dealing with a biped.

This evening we rode to the little lake-lette where they let you hunt but you cannot bring your dog or horse, so that management could see her friend, Mrs. Mallard Duck. She is a blabbermouth and a grabby pig - the stupid duck, I mean - if you ask me, but I sat in the car and pretended to be asleep. The guys in the 4x4's who are in the neighborhood watch and who would probably shoot Mrs. Mallard if they could aim straight do not know what a Corgi is, and I am beyond tired of, "Is that a cross between a shepherd and a beagle?" (Sure, Huckleberry. )

Today we took some Panera bread to Mrs. Mallard, and she was plucking at management's leg to get some more. Then some other bipeds in a blue car came with a big lunch in a box, and they were rude to Mrs. M., but she was practically jumping on their table.

So to lure the duck over to her, the boss put MY DOG FOOD on a plate on the ground. What do you know? The duck stayed by the other table. Here is your choice: a croque monsieur with pommes fritte or dog food. Take your pick.

I hope this canard does not think that she will use my blog as a platform to get into an AFLAC ad. Corgis are cuter than ducks any day.

The bipeds who run things around here want to put a golf course on my beach. I have never heard of a golf course that advertises, "Dogs welcome." or "Please bring your dog." They yap about families all the time. Well, who is a very important member of the family?

The deal is, they want to take land away from the poor people and give it to the rich, but to get everyone calmed down, they are saying that it will be a public golf course. They can charge a bunch of money, anyway. Poor people do not play golf, except that Tiger Woods was a sort of poor kid. I do not know if he had a dog.

Well, management thinks that they are pulling a bait and switch. If you give away the land, we will give you jobs, and you will be rich like Tiger Woods. Only you cannot get rich on $7.00 an hour. Also they might hire illegal immigrants to build it, not like Field of Dreams where Kevin Costner builds his own baseball field. Baseball is the All American game. Golf is kind of snooty. Baseball is not.

Management is a mess because the Mets won their division, and the Cubs might lose 100 games.

Miss Manager is a genealogist, or she thinks she is. That is when you spend hours and hours looking at mildewed papers. That is the definition of genealogy. Mold and mildew made respectable.

For fun - remember I am a big kidder on this blog - today we drove along a road called Red Bud Trail for quite a while, and then we stopped at a cemetery where there are dead bipeds. I am sorry they died and everything, but once again, there was a sign "NO DOGS". I do not know if they meant that you could not bury your dog there, or if dogs are not allowed to walk around saying,"I thought they were over here. 'Guess not." and other dumb comments.

I stayed in the car anyway. Then we drove back and bought some organic heirloom tomatoes.

"Beefsteak?" you say.

No. No steak. They do not have organic steak.

Then we went to the storage units where the boss always ends up slamming doors and swearing. Now we are at Panera. She is inside getting me a cinnamon bagel. We tried them, thanks to a trusted reader. They are excellent.

We go to check out the beach pretty often. It is fall migration if you are a bird, so just a reminder, a lot of humans with binocculars will be stalking you. Management is a bird watcher.

"Ooh, ahhh, look at the piliated woodpecker in the dead tree!"
"Look, Jane."
"Over there, Dick."
"See anything?"
"Only a parasitic jaeger and a black-bellied plover,"
"Oh, that is too bad. I saw a pterodactyl and a carrier pigeon. They flew away. Fly, pterodactyl, fly."
"Bummer, Jane. I am just a dumb white male biped."
"That's right, Dick. You said it."

I am working on dialog for my book.

We go to Panera Bread a lot because they have good soup, and management likes the Greek Salad. Also they have free WiFi, and you can get the signal in the car, which is very important for yours truly because, like most biped institutions, Panera will not let dogs come inside.

Well, yesterday, because management is such a good customer, they gave her a free whole grain baguette. It was still warm, and it smelled really, really good in the car when she brought it out. Also, they made too many whole grain baguettes, and they had to get rid of them.

Today we had bread and cheese. It was very chewy and delicious. It rained and was gloomy. It smelled like fall. The boss took a walk, but I just hung out with a golden retriever named Hannah and her brother. They were nice. They did not get any of our bread, though.

I hope I do not get sued because I am using one of my all time heroes, Snoopy, on my blog. My lawyer is already busy.

Did you ever wonder how I got so smart? It was not from dog school, I can tell you that. My dog school days came and went without so much as a foil star, let alone a diploma.

The headmistress of my school was called Ronnie, like Ronnie Reagan, only she supposedly was a girl. For money she raised Rottweilers on the side. They are big. I think her Rottweilers were mean, too, and I do not blame them.

Every week we drove to school and took along little hot dog pieces as rewards in case I did everything Rap Master Ronnie demanded. The dog who had his lesson right before me ate Tofu hotdogs - no, I am not kidding. His person blabbed on and on about how healthy she was about everything, including prejudicing her canine companion and loyal friend for life against true, honest American hotdogs. Don't liberals have anything better to do? I guess not.

Anyway, Ronnie the "girl" dog trainer did not like me because I was willful. So what? Do any of her dumb Rottweilers have a blog? Can they even fetch the newspaper? I think not.

On what turned out to be my last day at dog school, after weeks of "Sit", "Stay", "Settle", "Now", "No speak" (This is making me sick), I could not take any more of it, so I "had an accident" in class. That is one of the quickest ways to get your point across I have discovered.

Ronnie came unglued and yelled at management that obviously I had to "go" really bad, and so we never went back.

My Valedictory speech to Ronnie's Dog School in Wayne, Illinois is this: "No speak!!"

That is so satisfying.

I have not done a food column in a while. That is because I have been negotiating with various companies who naturally want a big star like me to say that they eat their product all the time, even if someone isn't paying them to say it. I thought it over and decided that pizza is just about the best food there is next to M&M's. I will see if this is enough to shake the old Pizza Hut money tree. I am sure that you want to go out right now and buy some Pizza Hut pizza just because you saw my column and pictures, proof that I really do eat Pizza Hut pizza. What more could they want?