Riena and her Bodyguards

Hey guys!

I got a letter from Riena! Well, my Mum did anyway and she is letting me post it, plus this picture her new dad just sent. Twain (left), Riena and Dixie. They are her bodyguards I guess!

Well, here's the letter from her - sounds like she's doing great!
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Just wanted to say Hi and give you an update on my life here.

Life has been great. We have all grown closer and I really am enjoying my new family. I really like M (my new mom) alot. Whenever she comes into my room to pet me, I run right up to her and almost knock her over charging her to pick me up. She holds me and I nuzzle her and we just love each other. When she is standing at the printer and busy with paperwork, sometimes I will come up to her and just lick her feet until she picks me up. She thinks it tickles and laughs alot. I also like the others. L (the little girl) is a sweetheart, but when she comes into my room sometimes I hop all around the room and make her chase me a little. Then she will pick me up and we cuddle for a while. Now even the big guy, R, will pick me up or lay on the ground and pet me.

How's Zinger? I miss him, does he miss me? I feel safe here, the two dogs that I live with do not bother me at all. They just come in every now and then and sniff me and the little one, Dixie, even licks my face to say Hi.

Well, hope all is well with you.

Love you, miss you, Riena
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I miss you too Riena, but I'm so glad you're happy. Mum said tonight when she cleans the bedroom she's going to lock Big Dumb Puppy out so I can run around and help her put her laundry away!

(from the archives!)

Happy Gotcha Day!!!

O'Reilly does a great baroo

It's been a year today! I brought O'Reilly and his brother Sam home Tuesday evening, July 24th 2007. You were both about 4 months old. Sam was adopted away in August but you got to be my pup!

Now, a year later, I can't imagine my life without you pal. I love you!

You're goofy, playful, smart, entertaining, you love your sister, and you're a great brother to her and to Boomer.

You have taught me to laugh, take life less seriously and live in the moment.

Thanks for a great year! I'm looking forward to gobs more!

We celebrated with a trip to Dog park followed by a Frosty Paws dessert! Boomer ate his in one bite, O'Reilly in a few. Dear sweet dainty Lakota licked away at hers (no bites, just licks) until there was about 1/3 left and she was done so O'Reilly got the rest!

Squee!!! An Award

Fez and the Gang gave me the Brillante Weblog Award for having to put up with BDP (big dumb puppy). I am so honored! It is hard to put up with him sometimes!

I now have to pick 7 webs to nominate:
1. House of Rabbits who does a great job of keeping us rabbit blogs together! (They've been nominated by Tyler and Sydney already but with 11 rabbits they can get nom'd more than once!)
2. Jan's Funny Farm for keeping the animal blog world together and informed on issues that we all care about.
3. Andrewbun who is my dutchie pal.
4. Bungelina and Mabelline who were the first bunny blogger friends my mum had. (And Hugo too, who is binkying at the bridge with Archi Ann)
5. Kitty Limericks for introducing us to the animals and entertained with great limericks on a daily basis.
6. Life at the Zoo who are our newest friends and we are loving reading about.
7. Sasha and Max doggies that are friends of My Mum.

So all you nominees, head over to pick up your award here.
Please take this as the honor that is is and pass it on to some of the sites you enjoy. The

rules of accepting are as follows:
1) Put the logo on your blog.
2) Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4) Add links to those blogs on yours.
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

Thank you very much Fez and Family for honoring me and my struggle to put up with BDP!

munday bunday...

Well it's ABOUT TIME I get to post again. Way too many dog pictures this weekend!

Mum is worried about me not being more social and so she comes into my enclosure more trying to get me to come play. This is how I tell her, "later Mum, I don't wanna cuddle. Here's my tocks, wave buh bye on your way out." The minute she leaves and closes the enclosure then I come up to the cage and let her pet me. I love messing with her brain!

Have a great week everyone.

Trip Day Three...

or Easy Like Sunday Morning...

Everyone was taking it slow ...


Lulu is the cute little white chihuahua. She was rescued by Gabi and they are looking for a forever home for her. She's cute.



I really like this picture of Lakota.


or, Breakfast at Rei's...

Sam is a part of the family, the brother Gabi never had!... He does actually sometimes eat from the table and in fact has been known to steal from your plate! He's a comedian. A typical counter surfing, mooching, chow hound ridgeback!

Unfortunately, being the end of the weekend, I needed to make the drive home. Boomer was waiting for us, being returned in the late afternoon to my house. I knew he would be fine but didn't want to leave him alone too long. So after a WONDERFUL breakfast (yes that's my big red glass of diet coke, AND my cup of coffee!), we packed up and headed home.



Although I wanted to get home soon I also wanted to enjoy the coast and not have to run the a/c on the drive home. So we took the PCH and enjoyed the drive.

Poor O'Reilly so wanted to smell the smells and feel the air but he was sooo exhausted that he was falling asleep sitting up.


He finally had to give in to total exhaustion and sleep...

Lucky dog... i had to drive!

Meanwhile Rei and Gabi took the dogs back to the beach, Sam wasn't worn out apparently.



Finally, back home and mostly rested ... after an amazing weekend!

Thank you again Gino, Rei, Gabi and Sam, Foxy and Lulu for having us over. Plus a great thanks to Rei's three kitties who tolerated our visit either outside or in Rei's office room safely away from Big Dumb Puppy.

I look forward to the next one!

Trip Day Two...

Carmel by the Sea

This is a hard post - we had so much fun and I took sooooo many pictures

I know I will love the pics but could bore you all ... but it's like the question Katie posed a while back - am I blogging for me or for you or a little of both?... I think as bloggers we enjoy each others' pics so I'll trust you'll suffer through, remembering I've whittled this down from the over 400 I took!

First the day started with Rei cooking an AMAZING breakfast. Oh my, she is awesome! Waffles, bacon, eggs, juice, coffee and GOD BLESS THEM - Diet Coke!!!

While we ate the dogs...

played, wrestled, chased, just had too much fun!

Then we headed for the beach - Carmel. It's a lovely beach and very dog friendly town. Rei said it's usually overcast and cold but it was a PERFECT day!


And the boys are ready to go!

Sam is not big on playing in the water but he did if it meant being with O'Reilly. Foxy loves the water. Lakota is around somewhere, probably by my side, hiding behind the camera much like I do!







There's 2 things going on in the above picture - first I wanted to leave the house in the pic - it was amazing - how would you like to live right there?!!! NO BRAINER!

Second, if you zoom in see that the tennis ball is in Sam's mouth. However it's Foxy that was playing fetch with Rei but Sam would keep stealing the ball.
So here you may think she's trying to bury the ball so Sam won't steal it. Well no, actually she's spinning it on the ground trying to get the sand off it!!! Pretty funny. Rei said at dog park when the ball gets too dirty she runs it over to the water dish and drops it in to wash it off.

She's quite a character!


Notice it is actually a bit cleaner, and ready to be guarded from theft!



I ABSOLUTELY LOVE this pic and a few others taken in this area. This is just beyond the house in the above pic. There's a little pond of run off from a stream or something so they took off to play in that. This pic is awesome and there are several more like it but in the interest of not boring you as noted above, sigh, i picked just one...


Hey O'Reilly, did you have a good time today?

What do you think?

That evening Rei took me and Gabi and a friend of hers to Gino's authentic Italian restaurant for dinner. Gino is an amazing chef there. Oh My! If you are in the San Jose area check out il Fornaio Restaurant. You will NOT be disappointed. For those of you food connoisseurs i had:

Spaghetti all'Aragosta
Vermentino Imported spaghetti served with a 1 lb. fresh Maine lobster, tomato, garlic, shallots and brandy sauce

...along with the appetizers and desserts that i was incredibly spoiled with. Gino was able to join Rei and me for dessert and he ordered several so we could test them all. WOW! I've never been so adventurous and had so much fun going out to eat!

Then we headed home and collapsed in front of a movie - August Rush. Good flick, not great but a neat story! Rei and I shared the couch with Sam between us and it was pretty funny because he does the SAME THING O'Reilly does. Laying on the couch they stretch out and kick you with their back legs trying to get more room! They are SO ALIKE.

I was thinking about it today and it was just so much fun to go on a vacation where my dogs were a part of it and not "in the way" but in the middle of all the activities and they got to be enjoyed!

Rei and I are already wanting to schedule the next vacation!

tomorrow, easy like sunday... breakfast at Rei's style!

Trip Day One...

O'Reilly, Lakota and I got to enjoy a weekend AWAY!!! It was Wonderful!

We left early last Friday morning (4:30 am) and drove to Northern California, just below San Francisco. We were going to see Sam, O'Reilly's brother, who we fostered until they adopted him last August. We suspect they are littermates but have no proof. (Sam's blog)

They started up right where they left off! I don't know if they really remembered each other, but it sure seemed like it! Rei, her daughter Gabi and I had a blast watching them get reacquainted and play! They are AWESOME folks, love animals, and treated us like royalty. We had such a great weekend!



O'Reilly is on the left, he has more black on his muzzle.


This is Sam's sister Foxy Brown. She was adopted a few months ago from the Oakland shelter where they get a lot of rescued pits. The poor girl was used as a bait dog. She has some physical scars and a bad back leg, but emotionally she's just about as happy and friendly as they come! She's living in the moment and loving her family that spoils her! She's in the best family she could get!



Lakota just doesn't understand those boys!


They're like the energizer bunny... just keep going and going...


and going...

We decided it was time for lunch so we left them going and went to the cheesecake factory for lunch and then walked the downtown area which was delightful. We stopped in Borders to pick up a copy of a book I highly recommend - and they had ONE COPY ... it was meant to be!


It's a great book, you need to click on the pic and order a copy now... i'll wait...

Then we decided to get the dogs to the local dog park so that they could maybe run off some energy and get tired out!

The definitely ran and played...


Here they are checking out the small dog section, wishing they could chase all those little dogs i'm sure


i've always loved how O'Reilly (left) is always the greeter at our dog park... apparently so is Sam (right)... they are SO MUCH ALIKE, not just in appearance.


So much for wearing them out at dog park... well, at least Lakota was tired! Yes, Janay, that is my glass of wine ;-p

But it's Sam that looks drunk with Joy!! He's loving having his brother for a visit.

Coming up next, Carmel by the Sea...

Boomer is Happy We Are Home

O'Reilly, Lakota and I got a vacation this weekend! Later this week I will be posting pics of our reunion with O'Reilly's brother Sam and the wonderful family that adopted him!

But first, poor Boomer didn't like that we left him with here with a different dog pack for the weekend.



So I'm very happy to post this video taken this evening of him playing with O'Reilly a little. Of course again I did not get to my camera quick enough to get the more animated play, plus when I grab the camera he stops! The annoying noise in the background is the water from the sprinkler hitting the metal shed!

Here's a pic taken just after the video - he's obviously a very happy doggie :-)

munday bunday?...

Well I TRIED to post this Monday but blogger wouldn't let me post pictures.

Mom shut off the big computer before she left so I couldn't blog this weekend. I don't know where the button is to turn it on. Sorry all!

The dogs are back, it's insane and i think i'm just going to go hide back in my cave... except the cool tile is outside my cave and it's soooo hot here.

Home, Sweet Home?...

Well I'm back from my 7bunny7 trip. It was a riot. I'm so glad I got to meet all my bunny blogger friends. We had lots of fun, though it was bittersweet as we lost Tidbit along the way. We loved her and will miss her furry furry much.

I thought I'd be glad to be home and really I am but then there's BDP...

Mum tells me though that she is taking the barkers away for a day or two so I can come outta my cave. She said something about O'Reilly having a reunion with his Brother Sam at the beach somewhere. Whatever, as long as he's gone!

I will work very hard to get caught up on everyone's blogs, reading and posting.

Done too Soon...

we loved you Tidbit

we will miss you

i just finished reading your story and i thought of something that had an impact on me last night and my life story that fits for you too

i was born into a horrible family and after 10 years was rescued and put into a not quite as bad but not good either foster care system. i was almost 16 before i was put into a family that loved me and actually wanted me. but i was hardened and very angry by then so their love did not penetrate. they later adopted me legally (when i was 25). i am STILL trying to overcome and learn to let that be my past...

last night i watched Road to Perdition for the first time. I didn't hear good things about it so I was reluctant to watch but decided to go ahead. I actually liked it very much. It was dark but good.

in the very end of the movie, as the son is running to the farm with the dog he tells his story in a way that struck me ... gave thought to how i should look at my life:

"People always thought i grew up on a farm.
and i guess in a way i did.
but i lived a lifetime before that."

After reading Tidbit's Story it struck me ... her life really started when she moved in with her family ... that's when she really got to grow up. Before that she lived a hard life... but then she got to grow up and be loved and happy.

She was a blessed bunny and for the time her family had her they gave her a great life. It could have been very different for her, but it wasn't, she was called out and saved and loved. She got to live.

Happy 4th Everyone!!!

Yes I have been WAY behind in keeping up on my reading of all my blog friends' sites. Forgive me... I'll do better next week!

Since Zinger is on his 7-bunny-7 trip I'll give you some pics of the barkers he left behind!



Boomer is doing GREAT! He is toning up, losing weight and the rescue had his tumors removed. He gets his stitches out Next Tuesday!



Here's my guy O'Reilly, taking a much needed nap, after getting up and eating breakfast! Life is so hard...

And here he is, thoroughly annoyed that I would disturb his peaceful slumber with that darn camera!

Our Happy Family!

THIS is the life!

A pile of yummy oats and grains on a nice cool tile... CAN'T BEAT THAT! I have the best Mom!

Of course this must have been taken earlier since right now I'm soaring high above the sky on Bunway Airlines!