Once upon a time, there was a young family–a husband, a wife, their son, and their daughter. They didn’t have much money, but they needed a big home in a beautiful, small town. When they looked for such a home that they could afford, the homes were either too small or cost too much money. So, they decided to build what they needed with a very small amount of money.

People came to help them: a banker to give them a loan, a builder to make sure the home looked the way the family wanted, a painter to make the walls look pretty, and many, many other people. It took a pretty long time to build the home because it started raining and just kept on raining until finally, the home was ready for them to use.

There were four bedrooms to use. The daughter picked a bedroom that had a beautiful arched window and high ceilings. The son picked a bedroom that overlooked the next-door neighbor’s home. The husband and wife picked a bedroom near the kitchen. The remaining bedroom was for people who wanted to come and visit the family in the new home.

I am busy taking a nap today, so I’m going to let the Mom person have access to MY keyboard just this once. If I’m not satisfied with what she writes, I’m taking it away from her.

Dear Maizie Fans:

Our family has learned some sad news. Maizie has cancer.

She has had several benign growths removed recently, but the last one was malignant and she has other lumps on various parts of her body. We have elected to let nature take its course.

While we could pursue treatment for her, it’s costly and doesn’t have a great success rate. Maizie has handled the multiple surgeries well, but since she’s been such a great dog, we can’t bear to subject her to the difficulties that normally ensue from cancer treatment.

She is still a happy girl and often gives us her “cute puppy looks” when it’s playtime. She still jumps up and down when one of her favorite people arrives. She can’t wait to jump into the “big water bowls” when she gets a chance. She is eating pretty normally and still fond of chewing on bones.

My least favorite thing about my people is that they are very busy. They seldom have time to give me sufficient head scratches and belly rubs. This is just not cool.

Now they seem preoccupied with someone new…a little Dad person. At least that’s what he looks like to me. He’s very short, has blonde hair, and blue eyes. The last time I saw him he was unable to do much, except sit on the floor or crawl on his hands and knees very slowly. He sleeps almost as much as I do. I can’t understand the gibberish often emanating from his mouth. He often holds things in his hand. Is he a band conductor or something?

When he gets unhappy, he makes an awful racket. I don’t know what he’s doing, but his version of barking is very distasteful to my ears. And my whole group of people go running to him when he does this. Why would you run toward that??? 

The Mom person and Dad person will play with him all freaking day. Don’t ask me why. They’re just weird. What could be more fascinating than me?

While the Mom person generally feeds me a scoop of my dog food in my trusty green china bowl, there are additional “bowls” that I get to at least lick when the Mom person is finished with them.

She eats from a lot of these and for some inexplicable reason throws them away afterwards. They come in a cardboard box and stay in the really cold part of the refrigerator until she’s ready to eat them. She must not want the Dad person to know she eats them, because she seldom eats them when he’s around. And if you ask me, his food is way more interesting than hers! There can’t be enough food in those bowls to keep her fed well.

The bowls are also kind of flimsy. My green bowl doesn’t bend and is not easily moved. This is ideal for licking them at the end of a meal. But the flimsy bowls slide all over the place and this is a problem, because the Mom person usually gives them to me when she’s finished eating the 5 bites of food in them.

The dining room isn’t my favorite place. I only go there if the Mom and Dad person work on my claws. I don’t know what I have done to deserve this, but it must be something really bad.

I try to convince them that it’s not necessary by lowering my head, looking dejected and slumping my whole body. I walk very, very slowly to the designated torture area. But the Mom person still makes me lay down, flips me over on my back and straddles my body with her legs.

She also holds down at least two of my legs, while the Dad person takes this loud, dusty whirring device and proceeds to grind down my claws on the other legs. The Mom person talks to me in a soothing voice, but that’s a big trick–while she’s talking to me like that, I’m shaking like a leaf.

The Mom person is stronger than she looks, for such a short person. She can, if required, completely immobilize my entire body! Did she go to school to learn that?

As you may have deduced, I drink a lot of water. Especially in the summertime. I seem to need a lot of water right after I come in from protecting my yard from the winged invaders. Quite obviously, it takes a lot of energy to ensure my people and my yard are safe from these vermin. That’s why I need the water after I come inside.

The Mom person can take a long time to refill my water bowl. I don’t understand why this is. She goes by it several times a day–the woman must be brain damaged.

But, I don’t seem to have to worry about that these days! The Mom person got me a new water bowl–it’s rather enormous and has this big bubble-like thing at the back of it.

I don’t know how the Mom person does this, but the water bowl never seems to run out of water anymore. No matter how much I drink, the water bowl stays full! It must be magic. 

The Mom person and I do not exactly agree on my food. I will grant you that she buys me tasty food, but she and I don’t see eye to eye on the matter of how empty my bowl should be before she refills it. Doesn’t she know that it’s my food and thus, I should control when it gets refilled?

She maintains that it should be really empty–absolutely no food in the bowl, no matter how long and how stale it gets. I espouse the “sniff test method” and if I think it’s past its expiration date, I’m not eating it. Besides, the last few morsels are usually pretty difficult for me to get to, since the ornery little suckers move to the outside of my bowl where it’s hard for me to get my rather large, lumpy nose and mouth positioned so that I can eat it.

I’m getting lumpy. Seriously lumpy. I have lumps on my nose, my legs and my torso. This does not exactly make me jump for frisbees, folks.

One got so big that the Mom person made me go to the place where they often stick me. The people are nice enough…I’m just not wild about what goes on there. There are weird smells and I have to heel and I just want to get out of there as fast as I can before they can stick me again.

The last time I went I not only got “stuck,” but I had to spend an entire night there! It was the longest night of my life. There were all kinds of dogs there, barking and whining. We were all together in one big room and we had to eat weird dog food and drink weird water.

And I don’t even know how I got there. One minute they were sticking me and the next minute I was in that room with all the other dogs and I had a wowie-owie on my leg. They wouldn’t even let me lick it to make it feel better…it had this weird kind of meshy fur all around it.

It’s been a long time since I played in the Big Water Bowl. Honestly, I had begun to wonder if I had done something wrong while there the last time. When the Mom person leaves with those ominous suitcases and bags, she gets angry if I hop in the back of the thing with the  round legs.

But, today I got to go with her and the Dad person both! And when I was whimpering, as usual, once we got inside the green metal gates, I noticed that there was a NEW big water bowl. I say, big only because my regular water bowls are very small by comparison.

However, this is a bit of a misnomer (Yes, I know the word misnomer, because I live with very brainy people.) since this big water bowl is much smaller than the old big water bowl. The new water bowl is in front of the gray house with the big back porch (great for naps on a warm afternoon, by the way) instead of near the big back porch.

When I’m very, very, very good, the Mom person or the Dad person give me the special treats that sit on top of the big gray box in the cold floor area of the house. The cold floor area of the house has a lot of my favorite things—like all kinds of meat, cheese, and crispy things. The meat and cheese hang out in the big gray box, so I know EXACTLY where those special treats are.

I only get the special treats on really special occasions like when I let the Dad person work on my toe nails. He gets this whirring thing and grinds my poor nails down to a pulp. I’ve heard of human pedicures and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why humans get pedicures. Working on my nails unnerves me so much that the Mom person has me flip on my back and then she holds me tightly in one place by straddling me with her legs and holding my other paws.