Ghostwriting for a Dog :: From the Compost

May

Ghostwriting for a Dog: Moving On Up

By Kim · Comments (2)

Alex Terrgi here. My sister Goody Beagle doesn’t feel like writing today, so I’m stepping in for her. This makes me feel like I might be moving up in the world.

When I came to live with my human, Goody Beagle was already here. So even though I am the boy dog, I did not come first. Before I came to live here, I thought boys always came first, but now I live with a she-dog, a she-cat, and a she-human, and I’m here to tell you that boys do not automatically come first in this house.

But since I get to blog today, I might have a chance to come first – at least on blogging day. So here’s to lifting our legs, guys!

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

Comments (2)

Apr

Ghostwriting for a Dog: Cancer Schmancer

By Kim

Goody Beagle here. I haven’t been feeling so hot lately, pretty crappy really. Even my food doesn’t taste good. My human noticed and took me to that bad place, The Vet.

The Vet poked me with a needle and took my blood, and felt me all over and found something they called a lump, and poked at it and took part of it away for something called “testing”, and then they put me in a machine that took pictures of my inside. Then The Vet told my human I had something called cancer and there wasn’t too much they could do for me unless she wanted me to go to another kind of Vet called a Specialist and do something called Chemo but even then the Chemo might not help, and my human cried a lot.

After an awful afternoon at The Vet, my human came and got me and took me home again and fed me special easy-to-digest food and gave me a medicine covered in peanut butter that made me feel better, and she petted me a lot and said I didn’t have to worry because she would make sure the rest of my life was full of love and goodness.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the rest of my life. I just enjoy living it now. So that is what I will continue to do, until it’s time for me to leave.

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

Apr

Ghostwriting for a Dog: Hoarding

By Kim

Goody Beagle here. Sometimes the human gives Alex and me bones to chew, and sometimes she gives us toys like balls to chase. I don’t like chasing balls, but I do like chewing bones. But I treat them both the same way – I hoard them. I gather them into a pile in a corner and I guard them. Sometimes I sit on them just like they are eggs and I am a bird.

Why do I do this, you ask. It’s because I don’t want Alex to have them. This is the same reason Alex hoards them too – he doesn’t want me to have them. But I am a better hoarder than Alex, because he is a scatter-brain who after a minute or two of hoarding forgets what he’s doing and will run off to see who’s at the door (even though no one is) or run off to check on the human (usually just sitting in front of her computer) or run off to check the food bowls to see if food has magically appeared (even though the human hasn’t been near the food bowls for hours.) And while he runs off, his hoard goes unprotected, so guess what happens? Heh heh

This is just one more reason why I am the superior dog.

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

Mar

Ghostwriting for a Dog: Cat Tricks

By Kim

Goody Beagle here. You cannot trust a cat – any cat, but especially The Cat Who Lives In My House. I never trust The Cat, but Alex is dumb and still falls for her tricks. Just yesterday Alex was sleeping peacefully on the sofa, not bothering anyone, not even me, when The Cat came into the living room and decided she wanted to sleep on the sofa. In the same place that Alex was sleeping. The sofa is a big piece of furniture, and there was room for both of them, but this does not matter to The Cat. What She wants She gets. So she jumps up on the sofa and sits close to Alex and starts rubbing her head on his head, like she’s being all lovey-dovey with him. She even purred a little (not a big purr, just a little one—she doesn’t waste her big purrs on dogs). Alex opened one eye and thought that The Cat was at last being nice to him – maybe She even loved him, he thought. Alex is a glutton for love and thinks everyone loves him, even when he has plenty of evidence to the contrary. The Cat knows this.

So Alex nuzzled her back. And that’s when she smacked him on the nose with her claw.

Of course he yelped and jumped off the sofa. Which is what The Cat wanted, so she curled up in his nice warm spot and went to sleep, purring a Big Purr.

Alex is dumb, The Cat is mean, and I am the only one worth loving around here.

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

Mar

Ghostwriting for a Dog: The Litter Rules

By Kim

Goody Beagle here. The Cat Who Lives In My House has made rules that she expects even the human to live by. Two of the most important rules concern the Litter Box. Rule One is that there must be a litter box available to The Cat, even though we have a dog&cat door that allows us to go outside whenever we want. The dog&cat door opens onto the back porch, and from the back porch there is easy access to the back yard. The back yard is a place where The Cat could find excellent dirt to pee and poop in, but The Cat scorns regular dirt. Instead she prefers to do her business in a litter box on the back porch, and for The Cat a preference means the same thing as Rule. It does not matter to her whether the human (or dog) prefers not to see The Cat’s digestive evidence. Our preferences are not Rules.

Rule Two, also known as the One Turd Rule, is that the litter box on the porch must be Clean. This means that after The Cat makes just one deposit of pee or poop into the litter box, she will refuse to use the box until the used litter is thrown away and completely new litter has been provided. It does not matter to her how expensive the litter is, or that the human may have more important things to do than continually monitor the litter box. (Like taking us dogs for a walk.)

If the human does not follow these Rules, The Cat poops in planters inside the house, and pees in whatever handy corner strikes her fancy. This makes my human very angry and she swears she is going to throw the cat out of the house for ever – but she never does. Sometimes she threatens to kill her. The Cat knows better; She is now 15 years old and She knows that the human often makes empty threats.

I think the smell of cat pee and cat poop is quite interesting when it’s outside and doesn’t belong to The Cat Who Lives In My House, but I agree with my human that inside our house it just reminds me of what I must endure to live here – my forced association with The Cat.

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

Feb

Ghostwriting for a Dog: The Happy Smell

By Kim

Goody Beagle here. What do you do when you feel that your life is going excellently well?

I have a suggestion. Go to a room where there is a cushiony rug that smells like a happy dog, and roll around on it until you have rubbed even more happiness into it. Even if your human brings the evil smell-destroying vacuum into this room and tries to eliminate the happy smell, she will not be able to do it.

If you want to stay away from the vet, I recommend that you do this at least once a day.

(PS – If you enjoy reading my posts about my fascinating beagly life, my human and I will be gathering the very best ones, expanding them a little, and making a book out of them! Check out some of my earlier posts by clicking the tab above called “Ghostwriting for a Dog” – and I’ll be writing more every other Monday here on this blog, so come back. Plus you could hop over to Amazon.com and buy my book that my human and I wrote in 2008, Dog Park Diary – it proves what a good writer I am.)

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

Feb

Ghostwriting for a Dog: Recycling the Rat

By Kim

Goody Beagle here. I just want to make one thing clear. Beagles are not ratters. We are hunters, it is true, but we were bred to catch things worth catching, like foxes and rabbits. It is way beneath our dignity to hunt inferior rodents like mice and rats. We are not terriers, after all.

But Alex, my so-called brother, IS a terrier, at least partly. So if there is a rat in the house he should take care of it, right?

Well, he didn’t. The other day my human went to dump her recycling bin, which lives under the kitchen sink, and as she was transferring empty dog food cans and paper wrappers into a paper sack to take to the garage, guess what should pour out of the bin but a rat with a long hairless tail and sharp teeth – lashing the tail and gnashing the teeth and looking pretty fierce. Then Alex noticed him, of course. My human shrieked (she’s a wuss) and Alex yapped his sharp bark, and I bayed my special beagle howl.

I had known the rat was there for some time, because I smelled him. But it is not my job to take care of rats. It’s really not even Alex’s job – it’s The Cat’s job. So where was she when you really need her?

Asleep on my bean bag chair, as usual. She didn’t even wake up when my human took the rat outside to the big garbage bin in the garage. She’d trapped the rat inside a plastic garbage bag where he was violently thrashing (that’s lashing and gnashing and thrashing – I would be a poet if I weren’t a beagle.)

Do I have to do everything around here?

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

Jan

Ghostwriting for a Dog: Vets Smell Bad

By Kim

Goody Beagle here. A couple of weeks ago my human took Alex with her in the car – and didn’t take me. I was really upset because my feelings were hurt and while they were gone I curled up in my bean bag chair and cried. But then they came back and I forgave my human because I noticed right away that Alex smelled like the vet’s office. I much prefer to stay home in my bean bag than go to the vet’s, which is a horrible place where they stick things in your mouth and poke needles in your butt and squeeze your stomach, and the whole place smells like poison.

And then last week my human took Alex back to the vet and he had to stay all by himself for a couple of hours, most of the time in a little cage. That’s because he has something called “gingivitis” and they had to poke him with a needle that made him fall asleep so they could do things to his teeth. Poor Alex, even I felt sorry for him when he came home, even though he had that nasty smell all over him and it didn’t go away for days.

I will never get gingivitis or any other tooth disease because I make sure I exercise my teeth regularly by eating everything I can.

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

Jan

Ghostwriting for a Dog: Age

By Kim

Goody Beagle here. Last month (on Christmas Eve, actually) I had a birthday, my tenth. I heard my human telling one of her human friends that now I am an old lady dog. Pooh. Just because it’s harder for me to jump up on the bed now, and I don’t run fast for no reason, like other dogs I could mention. Speaking of my so-called brother Alex Terrgi, I bet I could find more squirrels than he could, just by my superior nose, which is every bit as good as it ever was, and way better than Alex’s nose will ever be. Youth isn’t everything, you know.

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

Dec

Ghostwriting for a Dog: Going Naked

By Kim

Goody Beagle here. It’s getting cold outside, the season when my human has the quaint idea that dogs need coats as well as fur. A couple of years ago she bought a wool sweater (so itchy!) made just for dogs my size, which she’ll be breaking out any day now. I can hardly wait to see what horror she bought for Alex Terrgi – but wait! Maybe she’ll make Alex wear the wool sweater and let me go naked, the way dogs are supposed to be. Alex won’t care, he panders to the human (so disgusting!) and will probably wear that sweater with pride instead of shame.

I think humans should get rid of their fear of cold and their prejudice against nakedness. Raw unadorned nature is always best.

My human and I are still working on my next book. If you missed my first book, it’s called Dog Park Diary and is available on Amazon.

Categories : Ghostwriting for a Dog

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