Bruiser and I are in mourning…

…for one of our fellow bloggers.

For those that have read my blog for a long time (well before my blindness-induced hiatus), you know I had a good back-and-forth relationship with K T Cat from The Scratching Post. For a few years, we had a bet going on weither the Saints or Texans would have a better record among other things, I even had dinner with the man behind the blog once when he was in Houston on business. He’s a cool guy.

R. I. P. Katie The Cat. We had a really good run. pic.twitter.com/BplX9dM6IT

— K T Cat (@ktcat) June 30, 2015

For those that don’t read the blog, it’s “written” by K T herself.

Bruiser and I are both in mourning of Our Maximum Leader but we’re sure she’s got plenty of sun spots to lay in.

As far as the human behind her, I owe you a dinner and a beer whenever I make it out to San Diego. Remember, it’s nowhere near as long a haul for me now.

UPDATE: There’s a great post remembering K T over at The Scratching Post.

Video of the day: Bruiser fights with the “cone of shame”

We had to get a cone of shame for Bruiser because he’d managed to mess up his feet somehow and he was licking the heck out of them and making them just that much worse.

While I was at work, my wonderful girlfriend shot this video of him trying to escape from it to no avail:

Bruiser trying to remove the cone of shame

The good news? Bruiser’s feet are already looking better than they were.

Updated: Counting down

I’ve had the date for my return to Texas planned for a while, but I’d been seeing it as something that’s “still a ways off.”

Until I realized something this week: that it’s really not all that far off anymore.

It’s less than two weeks.

In all fairness, I’m only spending a few days back at home and most of the time will involve me packing my car and taking care of things.

But it’s still a few days with family and friends that I really hadn’t said “bye” to… after all, it’s not like I’d planned on staying in Arizona.

---

UPDATE: And, yes, Bruiser is coming with me on the drive back to Arizona.

Twitter just got a whole lot cuter

Today Bruiser started his very own Twitter account.

You can follow him at @Sir_Bruiser. I’ll put a feed for him in the sidebar sometime soon.

No, this isn’t one of Bear, though she does look a lot like him.

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Sassy, my mom’s dog:

I know I’ve said it before, but she’s only a week older than Bruiser.

Coming home

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Bruiser went to the vet this week. I shot this with my cell on the way home.

Can’t say I cared for that kitten…

There was a cage set up in the reception at our vet’s office with a sign that said “free kittens.” Bruiser walked over to take a look, and as he extended his nose to give it a sniff, one tried to claw him.

LOLdog of the day: Well, would I?

I get this look a lot from Bruiser:

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And, yes, he usually did it…

Happy happy happy!

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Bruiser’s a very happy dog!

I love this backyard!

They loved the backyard in Fort Worth when we were up there for Gustav and Ike. My aunt’s backyard is a lot bigger than ours is.

The hill

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Bruiser’s out playing in Fort Worth:

This hill might be fun to roll down!

A few days before we went back to Beaumont after evacuating for Ike I finally built up the courage to roll down the hill myself. I got to the top of the hill and started. When I started, Bruiser took off towards me and nipped at my neck (I’m assuming) to try and stop me.

The kid’s first time

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I took Bruiser outside briefly when it snowed last week. He wasn’t terribly thrilled about it.

OK, I’ve seen snow now. Now can we please go inside?

And I took him in not long after that.

Of our three, only Taffy’s seen snow before. Not because she’s old, but just because she lived in Fort Worth before coming to us.

Here’s how the three kids reacted to it:

• Petey: Ran around in it some, but went back in pretty quick.
• Bruiser: Walked around a little, but wasn’t very interested.
• Taffy: Didn’t want anything to do with it.

I don’t have pictures of the other two in it.

Updated: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Might be worth it to hit play while reading this:

Dean Martin - Let it Snow

Overnight something happened that hasn’t happened (that I can remember anyway) for almost 20 years.

We had a decent snowfall.

Beaumont missed out on the 2004 Christmas Eve snowstorm, not getting enough to do anything with.

This is only the third time in my life I’ve seen an accumulation of snowfall. It happened once here when I was about four years old and once when I was traveling to Washington, DC.

My brother happened to be up when I looked out the window just to see if any had accumulated. Boy had it!

He got dressed and we went out and did what kids do: play in the snow.

This is the first time he’d seen it in his life. He was around the last time we had snow, but he wasn’t old enough to remember it.

We had snowball fights, made mini-snowmen, and even made snow angels, as you can see.

We even briefly took all three of the dogs out in it.

As you can see from this shot of me with Bruiser, they weren’t very thrilled.

When I was out there earlier I stuck my finger in a random place just to see how much was sitting on top of the grass. My finger went most of the way, making it at least two inches worth.

I walked down the street and talked with a neighbor who’s a college student from another country, though I’m not sure which. I told him that the last time we’d had a snow like this I was four years old. He countered by saying that, where he was from, it snowed six months out of the year. He later commented that it “felt like home.”

I’ve got a lot more pictures that I shot, and I’ll share them here in Friday Photos during the upcoming weeks.

If you can’t wait, then you can check out my photo gallery, in which the snow pictures have their own category.

Sadly, the snow should melt off quickly once the sun comes up, as the high today is supposed to get into the 50’s.

Which I’m not really complaining about, considering it was rainy, windy, and never got out of the 30’s all day yesterday.

UPDATE: The NWS put out this Record Report today. Shows you just how amazing this is:

... Record earliest measurable snowfall set at Beaumont Port Arthur...
... All time record snowfall for December set at Beaumont Port
Arthur...

Officially 1.8 inches of snow was measured at the southeast Texas regional Airport. This sets the all time earliest measurable snowfall record for Beaumont Port Arthur. The previous record was set on December 22 1989 when 0.7 inches of snow was measured.

Lurking

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Bruiser tries to hide…

Can you see me? You can? Darn.

Sorry kiddo. The grass may have been high, but it wasn’t that high.

It’s not what you think it is, I swear!

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Bruiser’s in the backyard doing WHAT?

I’m not peeing, that’s for sure.

I promise y’all, he really isn’t. He’s the only male dog I’ve ever seen that doesn’t (usually) hike a leg when he does his business.

Having fun

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Well hey there, Petey!

I just love this backyard!

This is from the same set of pictures where I caught that great one of Bruiser running.

Gnawed down to the bone

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Bruiser was working on a bone when I was shooting these:

So much fun!

They're rather silly about their bones. We'll give each one of them one of those and they'll fight over one of them.

Technorati Tags: beagle,dog,dogblogging

The bailout: In response to K T Cat

K T Cat announced today that (he or she?) is against the bailout in any form.

I’ll admit that I don’t really get all the factors involved. I know I don’t.

I’ll admit that I’m weary of taking out credit, preferring to pay for things in cold hard cash-in-hand if at all possible.

But I know that it doesn’t always work that way.

I mean, after I’m established in Fort Worth (or wherever I end up in my “get the hell away from the coast” move) I’m probably going to want to buy a house with a fenced-in yard for Bruiser to run around in and all of that.

And, unless you’re rolling in dough, you have to take out a loan to do so.

The reason I support the bailout is because, without it, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that. If I can’t do that, then most Americans won’t be able to. And that spells problems.

Sure it’s hot happening now. However, I keep hearing that it will begin to happen unless something’s done. Will it? I don’t know, I’m not smart enough to answer that. I do, however, think that this country should do everything in it’s power to prevent that from happening.

Of course, our politicians in Washington are more concerned with keeping their jobs than looking out for us and preventing that kind of disaster from happening. I didn’t vote for you to do what’s politically popular. I voted for you to do what’s right for this country, not throw it in the toilet so the big kitty cat can flush just because something’s unpopular.

Round and round it goes!

I’m not of the persuasion that says “don’t re-elect anybody.” but right now that might not be such a bad idea.

Bruiser's first Christmas

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This is a shot from Bruiser's first Christmas back in 2005:

Hey, I've got a Santa toy!

Yep, we got all the dogs Christmas-themed toys.

Technorati Tags: beagle,dog,dogblogging,Christmas

LOLdog of the day

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Reminds me of Bruiser.

By the way, you can click on the image to see a larger version.

loldog of the day

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Reminds me of Bruiser when he was humping one of my mom's (boy) dogs that was visiting. That's what got him fixed.

Digging out more dog pictures from the archives

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This week we've got an old one of Petey and Bruiser out in the backyard:

What the hell is Bear doing?

Beats me, boys!

It took me a long time to get to the point where I could think about Bear and have a smile on my face again. Taffy's helped with that a lot as she took over a lot of the same roles in the pack that Bear had.