Proposal

I don't know what the humans do at 'work', but I don't like it. I've barely seen The Mom for two weeks. She had the laptop off and the door closed!!! How am I supposed to blog? How am I supposed to keep up with my friends?!
And more important, how am I supposed to know if he said YES??????

See, I've been single a long time. Oh, it's not a bad life, travel, playing with The Mom, foot loose and fancy free. And I do have a big brother, Bandit, so it's not like I lack canine company. But I wanted more. You know, someone special to share those tropical nights with, walking paw in paw on the sand under the stars. So I answered a personal ad. And I waited. Just when I thought that I'd be single forever, spending my days walking on the beach looking for delectable delights on my own..........

Chili offered his paw in puppy love!!!!!

I had barely dared to hope! So handsome! So cuddly! And did you see that picture? He's already in the sand waiting for me! My very own red hot hunk of Husky!

Chili, my honey, let me just say this.............

YES, YES, YES, YES, YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I accept your paw in puppy love! Don't you worry in the least about that diet thing. I think you are fabulous the way you are! We can take those long walks together, and I can live without Pina Coladas. We'll just switch to Cruzan and diet! You are OK with walking in the rain though, right?

Read of the Week

Well, I apologize for being late. Between being Bandit's nursemaid, and keeping The Mom from having a nervous breakdown about work, I couldn't get to the computer!
Which is a shame, because the Iditarod started!!!!!

Yup, you guessed it. This week's Read of the Week is THREE websites we go to to see and hear things about the Iditarod. I'm not going to go in to the history of 'The Last Great Race', I'm going to jump right in and show you how we're following.

Of course, the best coverage is the official website, Iditarod.com. This covers the Mushers. The dogs. Hey, I think I even saw that a HUSKY has his own official blog on this site!

We also like to visit the site for North Wapiti Kennels. Did you know that these folks run an ALL Siberian Husky team at the Iditarod? Yup! It's the home of 'Pretty Sled Dogs'. Nothing but Huskies! The Musher, Karen Ramstead, is a veteran of many Iditarod races and is a very nice lady. The Mom got to hear her speak a few months ago - she was funny and honest about the race and some of the challenges she faced in the past.

For the past few years, we've also followed a blog, Zoya's Kennel Journal. These folks rescue dogs, and have a kennel (and a sled dog team!) that features rescued dogs! 2008 is Zoya's rookie year, and we've been following her thoughts and challenges.

Race on over to these web sites for the Read(s) of the Week!

Iditarod.com, the Official website of The Last Great Race

North Wapiti Kennels - Home of the 'Pretty Sled Dogs'

Zoya's Kennel Journal

There's one other site this week, one we've been reading for just a little bit. It's not really a 'Read of the Week', but it's sort of cool.................. these guys aren't Sibes, and well, they just aren't what you expect, mon!

To those pups everywhere who are racing........ stay safe and I'm sending Sibe Vibes to you for good luck!

Now, I'm going to go turn on Jimmy Buffett and curl up with a good book!

Husky Home Decor

Apparently, somepuppy got 'muddy paw prints' on the usual ugly green thing on the bed. Now, nopuppy in particular was blamed for said infraction - it's not like CSI came in or anything like that, and hey, it could have been the cat. I'm just sayin'.

So, while The Mom's back was turned, I thought I'd redecorate. What do you think?

Unfinished business - part deux

So, I've done some surfing. In the spirit of 'funky', I nominate the following blogs for the 'Funky Blog' award!

A Siberian View of the 'verse - we love the funky new redesign! Aren't Lee Lee, Thor, Smokey and Bandit cute?

Beware the Bamonster - we love the funky 'Husky Dog' song! Have fun with Chili, Cracker, Mikki and Bama

Got Chocolate? - Frankie and Maddie, those funky girls from SoCal!


You guys are all funky! And you make me smile! Enjoy! And don't forget to spread the smiles..........

Unfinished business

In our haste this week, we almost missed a comment left by our friends, Essex and Deacon, the Key West Collies. They think we are funky!

We think the collies are funky too! I've got a few blogs in mind that I want to tag with this award, and I'll be visiting them soon!

Read of the Week!

It's been a very busy week here. The Mom has been doing school work and doing something called 'working from home'. I can't say that I much care for either of these activities - the school books are, well, B-O-R-I-N-G and that stuff from work? Eeewwwww. The only really good thing there was I got to lay all over her papers........tee hee hee.

This type of a week has us thinking of 'short' reads. You know, reads that don't take that long or don't interfere with walkies or dinner or other important and necessary things. For us, that means.......... blogs!

We LOVE blogs. We love learning about other places and keeping up with our cyber (and our siber) friends. In our 'Favorites', there's a long, long list of blogs we stop by to catch up. Some of them, we only visit every now and then. We read, and sometimes say 'Hi'. But, some of them, we check every time we log on to make sure that everything is ok and to share the latest with them. Today's Read of the Week is one of those blogs, one that we check all the time (perhaps it's time to have Google Reader installed?), and one that I know is a favorite in the blogging community.

If you haven't met Tucker, Dot, Samantha and Bear or their human assistant Maryann - you are missing out on one of the best blogs on the web and one of our favorites. Our Read of the Week this week is...........

Tucker, Dot, Samantha and (the handsome) Bear - The Brat Pack!

Head on over and be prepared to smile, laugh, cry and be totally enthralled! Oh, and did I mention great pictures? They need to send their photographer over here!

I'm going to go have a long talk with The Mom about the widget thing...... honestly, she's no further now than she was a few weeks ago........ and after that........

We're going to curl up with a good (not a crappy school) book!

Read of the Week!

This week's Read of the Week is a work of fiction by one of our favorite authors.

We are huge mystery fans, and when we find a book or a series that features dogs, we get very excited. But when we found this series, one that features a musher and sled dogs, well, we were totally enthralled!

We're tickled with the choice this week - we're enjoying the 25th running of the Yukon Quest . One thousand miles between Fairbanks, Alaska and Whitehorse in Canada's Yukon Territory. (Have you seen the Yukon Territory flag? Check it out if you are a Husky lover!) So, we thought what better time to feature one of our favorite books from author Sue Henry........... This week's Read of the Week is:

'MURDER ON THE YUKON QUEST' BY SUE HENRY

For you young pups, the title might be very scary. If so, remember to make sure your humans or your parents approve of you reading this book The story follows heroine Jessie Arnold and her team of dogs as they face danger while they run the Quest. A young musher is kidnapped and Jessie does what she does best to help try to solve the crime and return the young musher safely. Will she be successful? Well, we're not going to spoil the ending!

Here's one of our favorite parts of the book, which helps us to picture Jessie's run in to Dawson City, hot on the trail of the kidnappers!:

"The area they crossed seemed an unending series of mines, hills, mountains, valleys, and creeks - of going up one ridge only to come down the other side and start up again, ceaselessly, for hours."

Doesn't that just take you there!! Tank in the lead!!!! Oh, I just love Tank!!!

I hope you enjoy this book and the rest of the Jessie Arnold books from Ms. Henry.

We're going to go curl up with a good book!

Snow pictures

A very busy week for us, but we did take some time to play in the snow.........

Announcement

As discussed yesterday, The Mom and I love to read. We read lots of stuff! Here's a picture of a very small part of the wall of books in my (yup, that's MY) room:

We read text books:

And we read blogs. Lots and lots of blogs. And that got me thinking. We like to read so much, and I guess that you all like to read too (you're here, aren't you?), that we probably like to read many of the same things and that we should be somehow sharing those things with you. So, without further delay, I am announcing today................. my

READ OF THE WEEK AWARD!

Starting today, I'm going to share what we're reading with you. I'm going to select blogs, books, magazines, something that we're reading and think you would enjoy. Here's the rules that I'm going to use to select my Read of the Week award:

• My Read of the Week will be dog related.
• It may be a blog, or a book, or a magazine article or a web article. Really, anything that we read is fair game.
• I'll try to keep it 'G' rated, but every now and then it might be 'PG' related. Reader beware!

So, I thought a lot about my very first Read of the Week Award. I wanted to feature something very special to me, something that really got me started with reading blogs and encouraging me to start my own blog. The Mom and I were surfing the 'net one afternoon about two years ago, and we did a random search on 'Siberian Husky'. We got a lot of the usual stuff, you know, breed standard, famous Huskies and so on. We also got a link to the VERY FIRST blog that we read. And we were hooked ! That first blog belongs to a Siberian Husky who lives with five other canines and one human. We've enjoyed reading all sorts of cool stuff about logos, and the 'stupid' Dyson, and now we're enjoying reading about his candidacy for President of Dogcountry!

To thank him for showing me this wonderful world of blogging and in honor of his stupendous wins last week on 'Super Tubesday' and his expected win of the Pawmary Election being held this week in my own state of Maryland, my first Read of the Week award goes to:

Tubey and his blog - World of Turbo

I'm going right over to his blog to tell him, while The Mom tries to think of some cool widget thing we can use to award our deserving winners. Then, we're going to curl up with a good book!

Tag, I'm it!

We stopped by Ari's blog, and found out that we'd been tagged to reveal seven quirky and unusual things about us. I sort of thought that I'd invite Bandit and maybe The Mom to give some input on this one, so:

1. Bandit looks much like the breed standard for a Labrador Retreiver, but is not a pure bred. His mother is an AKC registered Yellow Lab. His father.......... well, they aren't sure.

2. One of my favorite things is to sit or lay next to The Mom while she is reading something. She will read out loud to me if it's something we both enjoy. I'll be posting more on this tomorrow...... something new that I'm going to do.

3. The Mom is a college student. Probably the oldest one on the campus too.........

4. Bandit is afraid of water!!!!

5. I like to lay on top of the chest that The Mom's The Dad made and watch everything that goes on out in front of my house.

6. I have two human siblings. Two older sisters, who were here when I got here. One of them is a teacher, the other one is a social worker. I am constantly amazed that The Mom raised two really good kids................. and then there's me!!

7. I have a very unHusky like past time that I dearly love..................... I will fetch a ball, stick, frisbee and return it. I am so enamoured of the idea of 'playing ball', that The Mom has considered this as something that we could do for fun and exercise.

OK, so now I'm supposed to tag seven friends. Well, picking seven of you is too difficult to do! I want everyone to reveal something new! So we're tagging all of our readers. If you decide to play, and we hope you do, just follow these simple rules:
1. Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Post 7 random or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
4. Tag 7 people and link to them.
5. Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

OK - lets play. Tag, YOU are it!!

Sportin' our new duds.....

Literally.

I'm a bit worried about what's going on here. Let me lay it all out for you, show you the evidence and see what you think.

There's way, way too much of this music being played.

The Mom has spent HOURS looking on the internet for fabric for curtains. For OUR bedroom. And I am not being consulted AT ALL about this choice.

She's trying to buy this book to read.

And here are our new collars:

Bandit's is called 'Turtle Reef'. Mine is the 'Wave Hound'. Yes, I know they are sharp and sexy and all, but..............

I THINK THE CRAZY OLD BROAD IS THINKING ABOUT MOVING SOMEPLACE TROPICAL!!!! Hot. Humid. Not Husky friendly. I need cold! I need snow!

Winter bliss

It's snowing here and The Mom is home. It's a happy day for me.

I know I promised a post about our new collars, and I'll get one done soon, but I figured that I'd sneak on and check out some blogs and do a quick post to make sure everyone knows about the snow.

Not that I'm rubbing it in or anything.

No pics, mostly because instead of taking fabulous pictures of us frolicking in the snow, The Mom was fooling with some big, loud thing that throws snow everywhere. Quite funny to see it throw The Mom on her butt! OK, she slipped, I saw her, but still it sort of looked like it threw her too.

Big business woos

It's not bad enough that The Mom hogs the laptop. The darn Internet provider has to get in on the action and make sure I can't get access to anything!


The big business company recently added about 52,000 new channels for the people to sit and stare at. According to The Mom, it's mostly crappy sports channels and music channels. Then, she figured out that big business took away some of her favorite channels. So she called them. To ask why. And not long after that, pow, there goes the Internet. We went DAYS without being able to update the blog, or read about our friends. Sigh. So, in that 52,002 channels, we can now watch BBC America and Discovery Home. I'm not sure why. It's not like The Mom and I will be traveling to Europe. And you should see her attempts at home improvement. Honestly, if she doesn't rake up the leaves in the back yard soon, I'm going to have to dig myself a hole to, well, you know. And we finally, finally got Internet access back! Unless you are Momma Bev. They hosed up her email account.


So, since I couldn't post them on Christmas, here's our official Holiday portraits.

BANDIT WILSON CHRISTMAS 2007

DAKOTA MOON CHRISTMAS 2007

I hope your New Year is going well. Next post - our new collars. Or why The Mom is nutso.

Dear Santa Paws,

Dear Santa Paws,
I know I'm a bit late with my requests this year, but it's been tough trying to push The Mom aside to use the laptop. I know the school thing is important, but hey, it's important for me to keep track of all of my blogging friends too. And to let them know how I'm doing. So, the first thing on my Santa Paws list is
1. My very own laptop, complete with Internet access.
2. A bigger back yard.
3. Cheese.
4. More Cheese.

Wait, that's not right. I have some other things that I think I really want more. I love my The Mom, and it's really OK if she hogs the laptop, as long as she's here with me hogging the laptop. I'm fortunate to have a family and a warm place to sleep. Many dogs don't. Please help those dogs find their furever homes this Christmas.
While you are busy with that, make sure that you give all the Husky rescue groups, well, all the dog rescue groups, everything they need. They sort of act like elves for you in accomplishing the first thing, right?
For those pups who are spending the night locked up in the slammer, well, may they all have a full belly and a warm blanket. And then if you can find them furever homes too, that would be cool.
Some of my Husky friends have gone to the Bridge this year. Can you make sure they find the right part of the Bridge, and that they aren't scared or lonely waiting for their humans there?
And to all my blogging friends, my blogging family really, please make sure that they and their families have all their wishes come true.

Love,
Dakota

Very sad news.....

My friends at Five Happy Hounds lost one of their pack. Woo bye, Thrawn. You were a friend, a brother Husky, and you and the rest of the Brat Pack are one of my favorite blog friends. Special woos to your pack mates Dot, Samantha, Tucker and Bear. Kisses for your The Mom.
You will be missed.

Human Intervention

I just locked The Mom in her room and took over the computer. She's addicted, addicted to.......
SCHOOL.
Everypuppy, if your humans ever woo the words ' I think I'll go back to school', watch out!!! Warning, warning, warning!!!
What it means is that you will not see them for long periods of time while they hog the laptop and woo all those nasty, awful words that you are not supposed to woo. I don't really know what 'accounting' is, but if it's anywhere near as bad as The Mom is wooing right now, I don't understand why humans would subject themselves to it!
In addition to laptop hogging, you can also expect them to lay in bed at night with big, ugly books. Not the little paper ones you can chew on, but really big, really heavy unchewable books. Oh, I suppose they are chewable, but it's so big, I'm not sure it's worth the effort.
Forget about your daily walks. All that time that you and your human were spending together will now be a fond memory as your human spends more time with 'instructors and other students' instead of you. One nice trade off here is that there are lots of new smells. And she leaves half eaten food in her school bag. Yum..........

I have reason to believe that two naps from now will be the end of school for The Mom for a while. I sure hope so. I'll be glad to have her back!

Besides, I heard Santa Paws is coming soon, and we don't have any decorations out for him! How's he supposed to leave a new bone for me?

Starry, starry night

Wooing at the moon here. After many days of rain and mist and other such things that give you wet fur and muddy paws, the clouds have cleared. There's a quarter moon (my middle name is Moon because even as a young Husky girlpup, I would stare at the sky and search for the moon) and lots and lots of stars.
It's clear, windy and cold here.
It's Husky weather. Finally.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow - I woo to the Moon Goddess.

Or whomever is listening.

Fall cleaning or why I haven't been blogging

I haven't done much blogging lately, and I thought you would all like to know why........ and this time, it's not my fault!

About a month ago, The Mom decided that it was time for some fall cleaning. Now, I don't know if you all have this problem with your humans or not, but every now and then, The Mom decides that it's time to make everything smell 'clean' and picks up all of our fur and other hidden delights.

This time, she decided that she would clean the office and replace her desk.

Well, it's about time on that last one. The old desk? Just barely big enough to hold the laptop. And not even close to big enough for a Husky to curl up under. I had much difficulty with the last HULA assignment, because it's not like I could curl up under the desk and switch the wires so...... well, it was a covert assignment so I'd better stop woooing about it.

Where was I? Oh yes, it was piled, PILED, with stuff. All sorts of human stuff.

Here's a list of what she's found so far:

* The all important tag that identifies me as an up to date member in the anti-rabies club. It should have been part of my collar MONTHS ago.

* The Harnessed to Hope volunteer application. Complete with a human paper that's almost like money, except this one was too old to become money.

* A very nice piece of newspaper about a place near Deep Creek Lake called Husky Power Dogsledding. I read the article while she was still digging in to the mountain of stuff on her desk. It looks like a nice place to visit, particularly if you like SNOW! Sheesh.

* In the same newspaper, another nice article about winter in Ocean City. Hey - I am a Maryland dog, through and through!

* One of those plastic cards that is also like human money. Although this one was so old that it can't be used.

* Those really cool Star Wars stamp things from a few months ago.

* Old paper. LOTS of it. The thing that chews up the paper has been making noise non stop.

* Her address book, so we can send Christmas cards to all the people she knows.

* The payment booklet for the car.

* Lots of pictures of ME!

* A card she bought to give to someone, but couldn't find it, and then had to buy another one. Too bad it's not some place cool, like White Pine!

I could go on and on.........

At any rate, once this all came off the desk, we spent an entire afternoon putting together a new desk. The Mom used two things to put all that paper in, and put an old door on top of it. A better use for a door than locking me out of the room, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, the new desk is big enough for a Husky to fit under, but no, I don't have a picture.

Guess who lost the USB cord...............again!

I'll close with an old picture, one of Bandit and I snow playing, one to celebrate the SNOW from Friday! It ended up being just a few flurries, but it was cold and windy, so I was very, very happy!

Attention everyhusky!

OK, so it's been a while since I blogged. And, it's a really good story. But, I'll be posting it later.

For now, wooing out on the Woomergency Husky Broadcasting Network:

IT'S SNOWING IN THE CATOCTIN MOUNTAINS!!!!!!

SNOW, SNOW, SNOW!!!!

WOOOOOOO!!!!

It's that time of year again

It's Colorfest time.
Around here, that means that lots of people will be bringing lots of things for me and Bandit to eat and chew.
Nana brought us treats and toys. I got a stuffie bat, and Bandit got a stuffie ghost. Nana loves us. She wasn't mad at me about that, well, that incident with the other pup. I love my Nana. She makes us donuts!

The Mom is better, and we are spending lots of time together. She talked to me about my behavior, and we are going to spend some time visiting with some of our friends and trying to help out the nice people at Harnessed to Hope. Even if we couldn't adopt another Husky (and I'm still not sure why were doing that, I'm Husky enough for anyone!), we can help them find other homes.

I gotta run! The Mom is cleaning the kitchen and I heard something about leftover crabcakes!!!