Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Pet bowl disaster

By Hobo Hudson

I sent Mom to the store the other day to buy my kitty sister and me a new water bowl. Ever since Blondie started to drink out of my bowl after she decided to share the living quarters with me and my parents, my water bowl seemed to deteriorate from week to week. I don’t know what the cat is doing to it, but it’s all scratchy and has lost its vibrant shine. I like it when the water sparkles in it.

Blondie always hisses at me not to clean my beard in the water bowl, but that comes with the territory. My duties in the backyard include sticking my nose deep into the ground to check for unusual smells and when I come inside afterward, all hot and sweaty, I certainly need a good gulp of water.

Anyway, I wanted to tell about the water bowl. When Mom returned from the shopping trip, I grabbed the bag she was carrying and rummaged through it. There it was. A new big water bowl, and it was a beautiful green one. Green is one of my favorite colors because it reminds me of grass. I love grass, and I love to roll around in it, especially if I find a place that has a pungent scent.

Handing Mom the bowl, I told her to hurry up and fill it with water to make sure I get the first taste out of the new bowl. Instead of following my orders, Mom put the bowl in the sink and gave it a good brushing with dish soap and water. Then she pulled off a sheet of white paper towel and started to dry the bowl. I stretched my neck higher and higher to see better what Mom just did to the white paper towel. Not trusting my eyes standing on the ground, I jumped on the counter. I blinked a few times and stared at the paper towel Mom was holding in her hand. It was not white any more, it was green.

There went my new beautiful green water bowl. It even had a sticker on, saying: “Pet bowl, safe for food and water.” I guess our ancestors did right eating the leftovers of their human parents’ meals straight from the floor and drinking the water out of the toilet. Now, we not only have to worry about poisoned or tainted pet food and treats but also about pet bowls.

Searching the Internet about what kind of water bowl Mom should buy that would be safe for Blondie and me, I ran across another disturbing article. In June, officials in Illinois affirmed the contamination of some stainless steel pet bowls with low levels of radioactive material. The affected products had appeared in a few Petco stores in Chicago.





Proverbs fit for a dog

By Hobo Hudson

Don Marquis (1878–1937) once said or wrote, “The successful people are the ones who can think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.”

Whoa, BOL, that’s my philosophy of life. Without even knowing the proverb existed, I acted all along with those guidelines in my mind. Only because of my acute sense to figure out what makes other critters and people click and how to get them moving have I become a famous writer, prosperous farmer and globally admired BIC of more than one lucrative business.

I think it’s in order to adjust the proverb as followed in acknowledgment of my hard work: “The successful dog is the one who can think up things for people and other animals to keep busy at.”




Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Advanced Dad training

By Hobo Hudson

I consider myself pretty accomplished at Dad training. However, I know there is always room for improvement, and I constantly strive to learn new techniques. While recently browsing through our local library as I waited for Mom to pick up the books she had ordered, I chanced upon a book entitled “Subliminal Suggestions” and decided to check it out.

The first part of the book was about how to implant messages into TV shows and then have them flash by so fast that the hooman eye won’t see and read them but the hooman brain would recognize and process them. This, of course, was of no value since I didn’t have the resources to accomplish it.

The second part of the book was more interesting. It dealt with the use of headphones to listen to tutoring lessons while sleeping, and it seemed to work for some people. I immediately decided to try out the method on Dad, and during the following night, I began softly barking into Dad’s ear as soon as he fell asleep. My bark was a continuous series of “Obey Hobo.”

It seemed to work on Dad as I noticed the next morning, but it kept me awake all night. To avoid losing another night’s snooze, I recorded my barks as a continuous loop on my tape recorder and started playing it as soon as Dad fell asleep, and it worked like a charm. I am now at the point that Dad will do anything I ask until he is about at the middle of his fourth cup of coffee whereas prior to my indoctrination sessions, he would begin to fail to respond at about the middle of his second cup of coffee.

After I outdid myself indoctrinating Dad, I looked around to find an even more efficient and permanent way to do it and discovered a doll with a programmable microchip on which a hooman mother and father can record a message for their child. Anytime the child squeezes the doll, the microchip sends out the recorded words. I bought one of those dolls, recorded my message “Obey Hobo” and then destroyed the doll to retrieve the microchip. While I was racking my brains about how to fasten the microchip to Dad’s ear so that it would continuously play my message 24/7, I suddenly came up with an even better idea.

I have become very close friends with a California lollypop. Two days ago, I found out she is a doctor, renowned throughout California for her medical expertise, and professionally known as “Dr. Lily.” My plan now is to visit her in July and to take Dad, whom I will have to drug so that he doesn’t know what’s going on, with me and have Dr. Lily surgically implant the chip into Dad’s brain.

If this works as well as I expect, I’ll form a partnership with Dr. Lily, and we’ll open hooman training clinics all across the country to give all dogs the opportunity to benefit from my new discovery for a reasonable, not yet determined, price. I see the potential for Dr. Lily and myself to pick up a few million bones each in a short time. Afterward, we will have an IPO and be able to retire to live in the lap of luxury forever.




Dove Field

By Hobo Hudson

I supervise Dad twice a day feeding the birds on the sun deck in our backyard. For some time now, after Dad has refilled the bird feeder in the evenings, an old dove lands on the top of the feeder. It continually scans the sky and never jumps down to eat. A few minutes later, a small flock of doves appear, and a series of tweets go back and forth. Then, the flock flies parallel to the sun deck rail, makes a left turn, another left turn and lands on the rail and walks to the base of the feeder. As they begin to land, their bodies tilt upward, and their tail feathers spread wide to cushion their landing.

It struck me how similar their actions were to hooman pilots when they come in with their planes to land at an airport. They always contact the tower and report their position, altitude and intentions. The tower then gives them landing instructions. Just before touching down, the pilots raise the planes’ nose and pull back the elevators for a gentle touchdown.

I bark a variety of bird languages but don’t understand a chirp of dove, and a while back, I asked my pal, Gimpy, next door to listen and give me a translation.

This is his translation: “Sundeck tower. Bomber Brigade-flight of six with you 100 feet north, decending through 50 feet. Inbound landing for refueling.

“Bomber Brigade. Sundeck tower. Enter a left downwind for niner. Wind 080 @ 6, Altimeter 29.89. Cleared to land. Contact ground on tweet 2 when clear of the active.

“Bomber Brigade: Roger.”

The Bomber Brigade is a group of young doves who acquired their nickname when, as rowdy teenagers, they used to sit on electric wires over sidewalks waiting for an unwary hooman to walk under them. They would carefully compute the hooman’s course and speed, and then—SPLAT!  Since growing older, they have mended their ways but have never outgrown their nickname. I guess the reputation you acquire in your early life is hard to live down later.
 




Monday, August 6, 2012

The battle of Hobo’s sun deck

By Hobo Hudson

The Tanner Brigade and the squirrels which have infested Hobo’s sun deck fought an epic battle last month. The battle has been memorialized in song and is presented below:

In July of 2012 we took a little trip, along with General Foley, down the mighty Manatee to the town of Russ kin
We took a little bacon and a whole lotta beef, and we caught the silly squirrels on Hobo’s sun deck.
General Foley said we can take ‘em by surprise if we don’t throw our peanuts till we look ‘em in the eye.
So we held our peanuts till we could see their eyes, and then we threw our peanuts and really gave ‘em….. Well, the squirrels kept a coming, but there wasn’t near as many as there were a while ago.
We threw once more, and they began a running. Down the sun deck, across the yard and through the fence to the safety of their old oak tree.
We fired once more, but our peanuts wouldn’t reach ‘em; so we grabbed a monkey, and we fought another round.
We loaded up his hands with peanuts and sent him up the tree, but he sat and ate the peanuts; so we considered it a battle fairly won and celebrated ‘round the pool, lapping Folitinis.


Books

About Hobo


This was Hobo Hudson, my doggy brother, a little terrier mix with black fur. He became famous after his first attempt at writing stories, which was an article published in the newsletter of our local animal shelter, the same shelter in which I ended up years later before Hobo and his parents adopted me. Hobo’s fame quickly spread as he made a name for himself as a business dog and an adventurer. To keep his memory alive, my doggy sister, my three kitty siblings and I, Wylie Hudson, are continuing his blog. Our mom is the blog’s editor.

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