Attention Walmart Shoppers: A Giveaway! #GetHouseTrained

Tuesday is the big day - the official launch of HOUSE TRAINED! (Eeek!)

Apparently it's already on some shelves though at Walmart, because Rebekah from My Rotten Dogs sent me this:

Photo credit: Rebekah, My Rotten Dogs

Me at Parties. Yes, I'm *That* Person

This weekend we had a party for my mom's 90th (!) birthday. Her kids (all 6 of us!), most of her grandkids (only 1 was missing), and one great-grandkid were there. Also two sets of neighbors that we lived by for years when I was growing up were there.

And do you want to see the only pics I took? There's this one of my "great-nephew", Frank, gettin' some lovin' from the hubs:

The Trees Say "Fall"; The Thermometer... Not So Much

We've been having what the weatherman calls "unseasonably warm" weather in San Diego recently. (I would call it "grossly hot." Or another phrase that would need censoring.) It was in the 90s on Saturday, even here at the coast, so we had to cut our usual morning walk pretty short.

Ice cubes in the water bottle keeps us both cooler!

Getting Crafty Again - Of Course It Involves Dogs!

My sisters and I recently had another of our once-in-a-while forced crafting get-togethers. (We call it forced crafting because it's like a forced march. You will participate. And you will enjoy it, dammit.)

This time we made necklace pendants out of old Scrabble tiles. And of course mine were mostly of dogs!

Click to bigify

Q and A with Author Peggy Frezon - and Enter to #Win Her New Book

Today I'm excited to join the blog book tour for Faithfully Yours, written by Peggy Frezon of The Writer's Dog blog.

Wordless Wednesday: What a Banana

Reggie (our current house guest) was very interested in the banana the hubs was planning to snack on the other night. 

We're Walking Here... Or Not

As I mentioned last Monday, we're dog-sitting our nephew, Reggie the corgi, at the moment.

Here's a pic of Rita and Reg on our walk the other day. Of a twenty minute walk, about 13 seconds of it looked nice and organized like they are in this photo.

Vacationing with the Dog in Cambria

I'm finally getting around to sharing pics from our recent vaca with Rita to Cambria, which is a small town on the coast in Central, CA. We had a lovely, relaxing time.

We spent a lot of time walking on the bluffs (where we could see seals, dolphins and sea otters - LOVE them! - below us in the water). This was in the huge dog-friendly Fiscalini Ranch Preserve. I liked the bluffs path best because dogs have to be on leash there. If you go there, there are other trails where your pups can go off-leash.

Muchas Pooches Equals Muchas Mischief

We are dog-sitting Reggie right now. (If you're new around here, Reg is my sister's corgi). When Rita and Reg get together there's always plenty of mischief! Here's a recap of some of it from this past week. Sorry about the quality of some of the pics. My phone doesn't take the best pics in bad lighting. Or maybe it's operator error!

First of all, I never met a dog who resists going on a walk. If he sees me coming with the leash, he takes off running. He seems to like it once we're out, but I have to corner him to get the leash on him. Funny boy.

Balancing to Build Up the Dog's Confidence

I wanted to try to do a pictorial of our vaca with Rita to Cambria in Central CA today, but I didn't have time to get organized, so instead I'm sharing a subset of Rita balancing on things while we were on vaca!

I'm always impressed by Mr. N., the adorable Tenacious Little Terrier and the Adventures of Zoe & Phoenix and all the other talented dogs out there who can hop up on trees and whatnot and pose for photos. Since Rita has a lot of fears, I figured we'd try some hoping-up-and-posing pics, too, to build up her confidence - but we started small!

Here she is on a bench. (I know: easy-peasy. But they had all these cool benches made of logs and driftwood so it was mostly for the photo op and to practice her "go to your bed" command. That was the command I used to get her up on all these things. If I pat something - sofa, her bed, bench, whatever - and say "go to your bed" she'll get on it.)

A Puffy-Faced Puppy

We were away last week on vacation so took a little bloggy break. Missed you guys! Catching up on recent mischief today, and hopefully I'll get around to sharing our vaca pics soon!

Some of you may have seen this on Facebook, but recently, Rita was happily hanging out on the deck outside, as she often likes to do...

Our Dog is Calling the Drought Police - We Gave Her a Bath

Rita LOVES the drought in California. Because of it, she hasn't had a bath in ages! She was terribly over-due so we had to give her one this past weekend. (Siriusly, Rita - we had no choice!)

Since I knew we'd be giving her a bath when we got home, I let her indulge in one of her fave things to do on a hot walk - dunk in a puddle.

Filthy dunking puppy

What the Dog Ate - In Real Life

If you've read my first book, What the Dog Ate, you know it starts with a woman finding out at her vet's office that her dog has eaten a pair of thong panties... but they aren't hers.

In real life, Rita's cousin Reggie recently had to visit the vet a few times. At first my sis and her hubs thought he was eating his own hair. He'd thrown up a hair ball, and then tried to throw up a few times at night, so off to the vet he went, where he had to endure the mischief of being prescribed some cat medicine! (Oh, the indignity...) (Did you know dogs can get hairballs, just like cats do? Especially long-haired dogs? I had no idea!)

No self-respecting dog wants to take medicine with a cat on the box!

Less-Wordy Wednesday: A Little Library

I found a little library in our 'hood. So fun!

I was out walking Rita the other day, and someone had put a "little library" on one of the side streets by our house. It had just started, so there weren't too many books then, but I did get Room, which I've been wanting to read.

Dog Normal or DOG CRAZY? Meg Donohue #Book #Giveaway!

Today for Monday Mischief, I have some exciting mischief. I recently read USA Today bestselling author Meg Donohue's DOG CRAZY. I really enjoyed it and I think you will too! So, today I've got an interview with Meg (#squee) and a giveaway of a signed paperback copy of DOG CRAZY!

Read on!

Isn't the cover adorable?!

Mad Dogs, Englishmen, and Us

Do you know that saying that "only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun"?

Well, you can add us to that list.

"I wouldn't say I'm *mad*, just annoyed."