Weekend with the Wade's

Ladies and gents, let me tell you, this was a nice week in Iowa. We had a couple 40deg days, a 50deg day and a 74deg day. It was awesome. Some of you might think that is nothing to brag about. But for us Iowan's who are used to 0 to teens weather and snow and rain and ice and "Wintery Mix"(I don't really know what that is, let alone the spell checker) this time of year, those kinds of temps are what some people talk about for ages. In fact, I bet when I'm in my early 100-tweens, I will say to my great great great great grand children, "I remember back in the day when we didn't have Autoweather and we indulged in sporatic weeks like the first week in March of 2008". By the end of that sentence, they will have gotten bored, played 17 virtual games and had conversations with 4 other people about how great great great great grandpa smells, without me even noticing...

Anyway, my point is, the weather was good and that allowed Homer and I to go on lots of walks. In fact, we went on walks 5 of the 7 days this week. That is a new record! Homies was extremely excited to go out this week because of the weather and there were a lot of kids out. Not that he would know what to do with kids, other than bark at them and run away. But at least he was excited about it. We went on our usual route around the lake. This week, not only were there lots of people out walking, the bikers came out as well. They are particularly difficult to deal with when they come up behind you and you are wearing earphones and cannot hear anything outside of your current tune and they about run you over. I almost got taken out from behind by an overweight dude decked out in full biker attire. Not Cool!! Homer had the hardest time dealing with it though. Anytime he saw someone on a bike, I knew we were going to go for a ride. Homer wanted nothing to do with bikes and had no problems dragging my 140lbs along for the ride into the nearby forest or couples of people standing on the side of the walk way. This Saturday I went on a walk with the rents and was able to take both dogs out. Mervin was so completely thrilled to be outside of the house and the fenced backyard. He made sure Dad kept up with the group. Mervin has a tendency to "powerwalk" wherever he goes, so that helps. That last 10mins of the walk it started to downpour. Homer and Mervin had no problem with it though. They thought it was great.

Speaking of walking/running dogs, I listen to AC360 podcast on weekdays and stumbled about this video last week. HI-llarious. I actually had a couple people in the office ask me what I was laughing so hard about...



Homer ran out of food this week. So I ran to Target and purchased a 50lb bag of Purina Dog chow. This bag was enormous. I mean, this would take Mervin literally an entire year to finish. Homer might polish this bag off before May-ish.

Also, Homer spent the weekend hiding/barking and my parents. Homies went through his normal adjustment routine of barking at foreign people from the dining room where he thinks he is safe. Then he will venture closer to the new person but never get with in touching distance. Eventually the barking dies down and he will go about his normal business while maintaining a 10ft radius from the newcomers. If he ever leaves the room to go outside or upstairs and comes back to the same new people, we start the process over gain. Its like he has temporary amnesia. But he eventually got over it and by the end of the weekend, the barking was pretty much done and Kev and Deb could get pretty close to him.

Update:
I was reminded tonight that Homer became the first Houdini dog ever. On Monday and Tuesday, Ellen went through her normal routine packing her lunch and putting the dogs away in their kennels. This is normally a trivial process that lasts all of 7 minutes. However, Monday and Tuesday were different. I came home at 5pm on those two days to be greeted by none other than Homer Brett. Yes it seems that Homer had found his way out of his cage. A feet that would even perplex David Copperfield. The same thing happened on Tuesday when I arrived home. But with every magic trick, there is an explanation. Apparently when Ellen puts Homer away, she lets him in the front of the kennel. When I let him out, he comes out the side of the kennel, and I seemed to have forgotten to close the side the time before. So Homies had two days of pure unadulterated freedom to do whatever he pleased. I'm kinda surprised he didn't pull a Rick James all over our couch...

That's all for now. B-dubs out!!

This week was not nearly as exciting as last week. Homer still leaves a slight wake of skunk smell. You would think that after having him run around outside for a bit, the smell would just dissipate and get covered up by his own dogstink. This is not the case. He now smells like a combination of the two. There is nothing better than waking up to a big smelly skunky Homer head, 3mins before the alarm goes off. This is becoming a regular event. Homer rests his head on the bed, 3 in away from my face, makes some groaning noices and wakes me up just before the alarm goes off. Let me tell you, if you need to send my blood pressure higher than the clouds in the sky, wake me up within 5 minutes of my alarm... However, on Monday morning I was not woken up by Homer's head. I woken up to Homer throwing up everywhere, but mainly right in front of the bathroom. I spent nearly 20 mins. and a half roll of toilet paper trying to remove puke stain. Our carpet was pretty much dyed yellow. It was like Homer pee'd from his mouth. Similar topics have been touched upon by South Park. Eventually it took Ellen's and my team effort to get the stain up. We're not really sure what caused the vomitsode, but this happens to both dogs consistently on a monthly basis.

This Saturday was Ellen's birthday. But of course Homer and Mervin made the day all about them. They are selfish like that. Mervin seemed to want to help Ellen unwrap gifts more than anyone. This conflicted with Ellen's need for space when opening gifts. I had to separate the two for fear that they would start wrestling, and biting and sniffing each others butts. And no one wants to see that... Homer took a more spectator roll next to me. He also made sure we knew when the new neighbor dogs were outside. All in all, it was a fun time. Ellen got everything she could ever want and the dogs got to sniff it all out.

A couple hours later, Mollie showed up on our door step. Clearly this is a situation for Homer to freak out. He eventually loosened up... until Mollie left the room and came back. Then Homer acted like he had 10 min. amnetia. Something that neither dog got over were the balloons that Ellen received from Linda. We kept the balloons in the dining room where we thought they would be out of the way. No no no. The dogs were fully aware of the presence of balloons. Homer would not go near the kitchen or stairs to the second floor. Though Mervin seems to have a little more gumption, he could not even bring himself to eat the bowl of food we had laid out for him. Yes, it takes a lot to scare Merv out of eating. Don't want Mervin to eat? Bring balloons. And of course, Ellen in fine form, thought it would be great to terrorize Merv with balloons AND video tape it. See video below.



We quickly realized that keeping the balloons in the house was causing to much commotion. And Mervin would starve to death. And Homer would wear a hole in the carpet from not leaving the living room... ever. So the balloons have been removed from the interior house structure.

Mervin was an incredibly bad puppy this week. He made the decision that he wanted to eat Homer's food, no matter the cost. Ellen had to drag Merv away from Homer's bowl and the resulting angry fights. The multiple times El had to do this, Mervin would leave trails of mouth fulls of food on the way to his kennel. I mean its not like we do not feed Mervin enough. He gets an allotted amount for his weight. No more, no less. And yet, he is still convinced that he needs Homer's food as well. Clearly Mervin has an addiction and may some day need an intervention.

This week was riddled with bad weather, so Homer and I did not make it out much. This week looks to be pretty good so I am hopeful that we will get out a bunch. On a final note, Homer has developed a small soar on the top of his nose. We noticed this at the beginning of the week in the aftermath of the skunking. By the end of the week, it looked like his nose was scabbed over and healing. If it gets any worse, we will have to take him in to the vet.

Until next time... B-dubs OUT!!