Johann's Howl-a-day Giveaway, and Miss Kylie's 25 days of Christmas

You guys might remember, we won third place in Johann's big Christmas contest. Well, did we ever get a boat load of stuff! It all came in these two big boxes. This is the first box. It was loaded with all sorts of good smelling stuff. As you can see, we were chewing at the corner before mom even got a chance to open it up for us!

There were treats, DVD's, suppliments to make our fur nice, vitamins,


stuff to clean our teeth and make our breath smell nice, shampoo,


antlers, a book about doggie health, a leash, more treats!,


some dehydrated raw food, and even some grass seed to fix the places in the yard that turn yellow when we pee! We also got coupons for food, a name tag, and a gift from Gollygear!
We were as tickled pink as our harnesses!







The other box had toys from PetSmart! Exclusive ToyShoppe toys!





Here we are with all the loot, (minus one box of Honest Kitchen treats that I ripped to shreds).


A BIG THANK-YOU to Johann and his mum. This is really swell stuff!


AND THEN....another package came!




We were one of the weekly winners in Miss Kylie's 25 days of Christmas. And we won one of Kylie's Bed & Biscuits Blankets to donate to a shelter. We decided to let Miss Kylie give it to a shelter near her house, and were totally not expecting to recieve these two nice squeaky toys from Miss Kylie!



Here is a picture of the nice card we got, telling us about the gift!



Thank you very much Miss Kylie,and your mum, Ali. We love squeaky toys!

It looked just like this..

except it had pepper jack cheese instead of cheddar, and lots more onions surrounding all those olives, and mushrooms, and tomatoes. And the horseradish sauce was nice and hot and tasty.
Mom brought it home from work. She had it all wrapped up and in her tote bag which was sitting on a dining room chair. I don't know where she was - bathroom or something, anyhow, within 5 minutes Maisie and I had it on the floor and gone! Foil wrapper and all! Just a few crumbs and pieces of lettuce left.
Mom wasn't too pleased with us though. It turns out that onions are toxic to us dogs, and I heard her say to somebody on the phone that Maisie and I had really bad onion breath. Also, I heard her say she really didn't want to try to make us drink peroxide.?!? Pretty soon we were in the car going to that emergency vet place.
We got there about 1 AM. Nice ride, windows down - something about us being "stinky".
Then they rushed us right in to see the doctor, and we got quick physicals, I heard pancreatitis being mentioned, and onion toxicity, poopies for a couple of days, and mom said "just get it out of them", so then they gave us something and we puked up our delicious hoagie. We weren't sick for too long, it could of gone faster, except Maisie didn't want to give it up, but pretty soon she puked too, and then they gave us something so we didn't feel sick anymore, and then we got to come home.
I wanted to stop at the park on the way back, but mom said it was 5:30 AM, and we weren't stopping anywhere to do anything. She kept muttering about the $250.00 sandwich, but as far as I am concerned, it was worth every penny!

DWB'ers To The Rescue!

So, mom gets home from work last Sunday night, and there was a phone message from the neighbors that said a "huge piece of rain gutter" had fallen off of our house. We went and looked, and sure enough, gone! Brought down by the weight of the melting snow and ice. Anyone who heard it said it came down with a really loud rumble and crash.

Most of our house is 2 stories, and in the back it goes 3 stories high, so mom really didn't know what is behind/under gutters. It was supposed to rain the next day, did she need to call those 24 hour roofers that advertise in the Yellow Pages? Were there now giant holes in the house? Is this an emergency or what?
So, she's googling "gutters, what do they do" and sees Suzy's dad is on line on Facebook! Thank doG! He said he used to live in Alaska, and convinced her it could wait till morning, which is good, because I have heard that some of those roofers are really gypsies, and Maisie and me could of been dognapped and wearing little clown suits and workin' the carnival circuit by now if Suzy's dad hadn't gotten mom settled down!
After that was settled, she decided to go to plan "B", as soon as she could figure out what it was. Our roofer had retired, and she heard on the news that it was nearly impossible to hire a roofer these days because of the snow and all the damage people were having.. Then,she remembers reading that Cosmos & Juneau had blogged about their daddy being a construction guy, or something like that. We have never met them, but knew they lived in the neighborhood, so mom sends their mom an e-mail. Thank doG again! At 8 AM we had their daddy's cp number, and a message to call him. He said somebody would be here WITHIN THE HOUR!!!!
They fixed up the place where the gutter came off, and noticed all of our gutters were "torn or bulging" because of the snow, so then they went to work putting salt in all the downspouts, so the whole mess would melt. When the weather gets better, and mom gets the insurance claim filed, their daddy is gonna get us all fixed up with new gutters all around the house.

We had to have them back again today. (click to bigify)

After the rain, 2 days of warmer weather, and then ANOTHER SNOWSTORM, we had another ice build-up on the other side of the house.



Look at those chunks of ice they hammered and shoveled off! Sure had us barking!

So, big thanks to Suzy, Cosmos, & Juneau's daddy's. We are very grateful.

On a happier note - look what came from Amazon!

A new shovel, since ours broke during the first storm, and a car ice scraper, 'cause ours got lost in the snow someplace. So no more shoveling with the dust pan, which, by the way, held up pretty darn good. And still works best for the porch steps.
And, our play yard melted down to where it is actually fun again!



Still snowing though..

It's just been all about the snow...

And, we are really getting sick of it. There was the really, really big snow, then, a couple days later there was the big snow, and now, we are getting a couple more inches today.



We still don't have a snow shovel, as ours broke on the first day of the really, really big snow. Mom uses a dust pan, or, we just walk over it, I think she has just given up. There is not a shovel to be found in Pittsburgh right now anyhow, and, even if we could shovel it, there is no place to put it!
This is our house and street last night, a week after the really, really big snow.


This is an official "Pittsburgh Snow Chair"

Snow chairs are supposed to be illegal, and can be treated as abandoned property, but anyone who has even spent a small amout of time in Pittsburgh quickly becomes aware of the snow chair rules, and if you move somebody's snow chair, and take their parking spot, it will probably be the last time you ever even consider doing it again!
This is mom's snow chair. DO NOT TOUCH IT!!


These are pictures mom took of the neighborhood on her way to work yesterday.
Bigify for the full effect!










We are still playing in our play room for exercise. Everybodys sidewalks are still covered with snow, and it's just too hard to get around.

DOGGIES!

LISTEN UP!


BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!




We were liking snow, but, this seems a little ridiculous!

This is where the steps up out of our play yard used to be.

Mom could only get half of our porch dug out. we couldn't even get out the door.

The only way out to go potty, was down through our play room, and out the door to our play yard.

Fortunately for us, mom is built for power and not speed, so, she plowed herself around the yard and made us a maze so we could get around.

That made things a little better.












Mom says we got about 20 inches of snow in the backyard. That is a lot of snow!