Showing posts with label Tripawds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tripawds. Show all posts

November 1, 2012

A Special Beach Day

Last Wednesday a handful of current/former Tripawd owners met up at Fiesta Island. In attendance, we had Linda & Bernie Bin Laden (siblings to Angel Max), Queen Nova's mom was there (unfortunately, being a Great Dane and all, it was not possible for Nova herself to fit in a carry-on and come along with Mom on her trip out from Michigan), Wookie (the lone Tripawd in attendance), and of course Rita (sister to Angel Abby).

It was a beautiful day - sunny and hot and the water was about as calm as I've ever seen it in the bay.
Linda, Rita & Bernie immediately head for the water.
Rita & Big Bear

June 27, 2012

It's All About the Ears... And the Meatballs


Abby has a go at Barney
Today, Rita got some very special mail. Remember when we hosted Barney last summer? Boy, there was a lot of blog fodder there! Well, just like Barney is meant to spread joy (and a desire to kill the stinky purple beast) amongst Tripawds, "Monkey Me" Elmo is on a mission to spread joy (and sometimes meatballs) to Monkeydogs (aka: Monkeybutts, Monkeybunnies, or Monkeybutt Bunnies), the often beleaguered four-legged siblings of Tripawds.

Elmo began his tour, officially the World Tour of Monkey Me Elmo – It's All About the Ears!, last year in Sin City.  He didn't just start there cuz it's a hip and happenin' place for a party animal like Elmo, but because the leader of the Monkeydogs, Rocket - the MBBVP himself, lives there. MBBVP (the MonkeyButt Bunny Vampire Pirate) appears here in this video of Elmo kicking off his world tour.

[Let me just interject here... I know it might seem like Tripawds people have a little too much time on our hands, but when you are going through the loss of your pup's leg - especially if it is due to cancer - it helps to have a lot of silly folks around making you laugh!]

"For me??!"
Anyway, Elmo mysteriously disappeared for a while in the Windy City, only to later reappear in East Tennessee, sans one eyeball. I'm not sure what happened, but maybe he wanted to have some empathy for Tripawds. (Unlikely, since Monkeydogs are all about having no empathy and tolerating no special treatment of Tripawds!) Luckily, after some reconstructive surgery in E.T., he's back on the road, with his pirate scarf over his missing eye.


Even though Rita doesn't live with a Tripawd and therefore doesn't have to compete with one for treats and car rides (translation: pills and trips to the vet), she does sometimes seem to tire of hearing about how great, wonderful, pawesome, beautiful, amazing, etc. her angel Tripawd sister Abby was. So, she was pretty excited to get some mail that was all her very own today.

Even better than a stinky Monkey Me Elmo and his traveling companion, Curious George (or is it Bi-Curious George... They were alone in that box together for a long time...), the box came with MEATBALLS!
"Forget the dolls, give me the meatballs!"
Elmo & George chilling after their journey

"Seriously, I'm outta here. Can someone open this for me??"

"Please give me the meatball!"

"I NEED it! I need it NOW!"
 Yup, this Tour is All About the Ears for Monkeybutt Bunnies. 

"Yes, I'll wear the ears. Just give me another one of those."

"Um, a little help here!"

Stay tuned for more of Elmo's adventures in San Diego!

In other book-related news...
The print version of What the Dog Ate is progressing! I spent the last two days obsessing about fonts (for the text, the title page, even for the page numbers!), but I think the formatting is all set and ready to rock and roll. So, on to the next step - submitting to Amazon's CreateSpace print on demand service and making sure it looks okay. I'll keep you posted!

Also, thanks to everyone who voiced/typed/posted their opinion on which "author shot" I should use on the back cover of the book. The winner, by far, was the black and white of Rita and me together, so I sent it off today to the book cover designer!

Finally, I got interviewed on the Manga Maniac Cafe blog the other day. My favorite question was "What are three things Kona would never eat?" You can check the link if you want to know the answer! 

Thanks for reading!

May 16, 2012

Reservoir Dog

I usually try to update the blog at least once a week, but we were away last week on a very last minute vacation. Since it was so last minute it was too hard to figure out something to do with Rita, so she went along. And since Rita was coming along, our options were limited to a car trip so we drove 8 hours north to the little one-time gold mining town of Murphys, CA.

A puppy in the poppies
Murphys is in the central Sierra Nevada foothills sort of halfway between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite. It's a cute little town with wineries and nice restaurants. It's nicknamed the "Queen of the Sierra," which seems funny for a town with such a masculine name. Maybe they should change it to "King of the Sierra." Or better yet, the gender neutral "Monarch of the Sierra." But I guess that just doesn't have the same romantic ring to it. ["Where'd you go on vacation?" "Oh, we went to Murphys. It's the Autocrat of the Sierra."] I guess the Murphys PR people know what they are doing. (BTW, I keep wanting to write Murphy's, which is not correct. You can read a funny little story about why there's no apostrophe in Murphys here.)

As you can see, it was lovely. We hiked every day and since it was HOT (mid- to high-80s) we had to always go someplace with water so Rita could stay cool, like New Melones Reservoir. Most of my pics ended up being just of Rita chilling in the water, hence the Reservoir Dog title.
On our first hike, before she got too hot!
Reservoir dog, pic #1
More reservoir dogging
Here she's at least playing fetch-the-stick in the water.
And there were LOTS of geese, including wee babies
...which Rita loved! (And thankfully did not eat.)
Other than that, we chilled at the cabin, on the chaise...
...or the sheep skin rug.

A relaxing time was had by all. Until we had to drive home through Friday afternoon LA traffic. Bleh. Not a great way to end a vacation. Still, it was wonderful to get away! I just hope Rita's not getting too spoiled. She's been with us less than 4 months and this is already her second vacation. Definitely not the norm around here! Now it's back to the grind little puppy! Back to the grind! (Laughable, as she has a totally cushy life. Right now she is sleeping on the sofa after a one hour romp at the beach this a.m. Her work is never done.)



Cinco de Meow Update

Thanks to everyone who voted for Rita in the Cinco de Meow contest that I wrote about last time. We ended up third, which is kinda fitting since three is obviously the lucky number of all Tripawds. Our 3rd place winnings of $50 went to support Tripawds.com. And Rita got some special lamb and duck treats as payment for her modeling services.

April 11, 2012

Hoppy Belated Easter

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter. We didn't do a whole lot, but we did take Rita down to Fiesta Island, which is nice at this time of year when all the daisies are blooming. We tried to recreate the famous Abby lifeguard photo, but Rita wasn't playing along. She was willing to sit next to the lifeguard stand for treats, but wouldn't strike that "lifeguard at the ready pose" that Abby had. (I included the old Abby picture at the bottom, just cuz it's a classic...)
One of the MANY dogs she played with Sunday
Rita loves Fiesta Island and tries to play with every single dog. A lot of people are shocked when their dogs play with her and will say, "My dog never plays with other dogs," which is causing her to start to be well known there. On Tuesday when we went back, I heard a woman yell, "There's Rita!" which was kind of fun as it reminded me of how people would recognize Abby and call out her name. (They never recognize me. It's funny how folks that loved Abby have no idea who I am. But I'm the same - I mostly just know the dogs and the dogs' names!)


We saw three tripawds on Easter Sunday, which was pretty special--and which really made it a hoppy Easter. Unfortunately I was not quick enough to get photos, and they were all heading opposite directions or were too far away so we didn't even get a chance to talk to any of them.


In other Eastery news, my sis and I took a break from felting little wooly pups to felt little wooly bunnies, complete with nests full of colored eggs. It was fun to use some bright colors for a change! We might try doing some birds at some point, just to have fun with some of our colored wool.


Happy Spring everyone!

April 4, 2012

What the Dog Ate - Nonfiction Version

With my book, What the Dog Ate, now available, I thought I'd do a post on dogs and their real life eating adventures. If you've been following, you know Rita recently ate a bird. (In fact, all our dogs wrapped their lips around birds at one point or another.) Well, then just the other day, I brought home a new bag of dog food and dumped it in the big plastic storage bin. I got distracted (oh, something shiny!) and walked off, not realizing I hadn't put the lid on. I'm sure you can see where this is going... but luckily I found Rita with her head in the bin before she had a chance to blow up like the Goodyear blimp. (Like our beagle, Bailey, did once when she let herself into the closet where her food bag was not-so-well-hidden when we didn't come home by her 5.30 dinner time!)

My friend sent Tastykakes! Luckily Rita did NOT eat them.
Rita is actually pretty good about not eating things she shouldn't (well, other than that bird, and there was also a dead gopher incident at the beach). We were a little worried about what she might eat/destroy since her foster mom told us Rita ate an arm chair at her house. (!) Luckily, we've never had a dog that would eat everything that isn't nailed down - but then we've never owned a Lab, like Kona, the dog in my book. Bailey did chew the corner of a coffee table once as a puppy, and Abby tried to work her way through our speaker wire, but other than that we haven't had too many losses to the pups.

A while back on the Tripawds' community site, someone started a topic about "things your dog has eaten with no ill effect." I had nuthin' even close to comparing with what some folks posted. For your enjoyment, here's a partial list. (Remember, these are all with "no ill effects" as the dog either threw up later or things went right on through, so no pups were harmed in the making of this post.)  
  • Raccoon paw
  • Road flair
  • A bunch of dog treats (no big deal, right?) along with the knit Christmas stocking they were in!
  • Typewriter keys
  • A zipper (What would even possess a pup to want to eat a zipper?)
  • Barbie doll legs
  • Tea lights
  • Diapers (Yes. Plural.)
Helpful tip: Did you know if your pup swallows something bad you can give him a teaspoon (or tablespoon if you have a large dog) of hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting? I learned this handy trick from Charley's mom. Charley is my gorgeous cover model, and his mom used this trick to get him to "return" a sock he'd stolen. Read more about how to do it here. Remember, though, in an emergency, call the vet first!

In other What the Dog Ate news - things are going pretty well with book sales. I'm working on getting some book review sites to read it as reviews are a big deal for helping sell books! I've also been working on my web site and will let you know when it's 100% ready to reveal.While working on some marketing ideas for the book, I came across a blog of the same title! It's written by Donna (Hi Donna!), a wife, mother and fellow Californian/dog-pawrent and it features lots of yummy recipes (for humans, not dogs). Check it out, but I don't recommend looking at it while you're hungry as the pictures are drool-worthy. (Personally, I'm thinking of trying the eclairs recipe.... although I should probably be combing the vegetable ones for ideas....)

Finally in some non-eating related news, we felted another little woolen pup. This time it was Tri-pug, Maggie:






Maggie's mom, Karen, was the one that made me the hysterical "lung mints" video. She was very supportive during our journey with Abby's cancer and even though we never got to "meet" Maggie, we love her spirit, which Karen keeps alive on the Tripawds site.

Feel free to share any odd things your dog has eaten in the comments. Thanks for reading!

January 11, 2012

A Fiesta Island "Tribute to Abby" Day

If you'd told me I'd go back to Fiesta Island the day after losing our girl, I'd have said you were crazy. But that's what I did today. And I'm so glad I went.

You might remember that one week ago, I posted that we planned to meet up with some Tripawds folks, including the famous Tripawd's Spokesdog Wyatt and the feared-across-three-states (or is it more?) Bernie bin Laden. Even though none of those folks live in San Diego, they still wanted to drive down today to have a Tribute to Abby day at Abby's favorite place, Fiesta Island. They said they would totally understand if I didn't go, but I knew that Abby would want me to. If I didn't go, she would say, "Are you kidding? Miss a day at THE BEACH?" She would have said, "You're nutty, Mama. Go!" So I went.

It was really hard at first - especially turning onto the island without Abby in the backseat. She would always get so excited as soon as we got off the freeway. While we drove around the island, she'd stand in the backseat and hang her head out the window. She could barely contain herself until we'd park and I'd let her out.

But it got better once I got there and met everyone - especially the crazy pups! I took over 100 photos and had a hard time winnowing them down for this post, but here goes:
This is Wyatt Ray - how handsome is he??
This wily ball of craziness is, of course, Bernie bin Laden
...he does sometimes stand still.
This is the aptly named Linda, Bernie's sister
Um, this is also Linda
She can hold her own with the boys.
The boys started a tug-o-war that went on...
...and on...
...and on...


And then Wyatt went for his first ever swim!!

Oh,...and then back on...
...and on...
...and on...

...until talk of burgers broke up the war.

Don't worry - the dogs all got theirs too. (Ab would have LOVED this part...)
And no limbs were lost...
...or even fingers.
Tribute to Abby day was a huge success!

When I came home this afternoon, I downloaded the pictures from today. Then I got side-tracked looking through some of the last photos I took of Abby. All of a sudden, I looked up and saw this:
That is Abby's color! Tripawd-Warrior-Princess-pink. I'm pretty sure she wanted to let us know that she got there okay, and that she is painting the town pink! I'm hoping she met the Original Tripawd, Spirit Jerry, there shortly after arrival. We made a felted wool version of him for his pawrents.

Jerry and Abby would make a cute couple.


I'm sure she is flirting with all the boys up there.

As first days go without a beloved furry family member, it was actually pretty darn good. I laughed more than I cried - and who would have thought that? Certainly not me.

Thank you to everyone! All our family & friends & all the folks at Tripawds for the love and support. It really does mean a lot to know so many other people loved her too and were touched by her.