Miss M vs Stairs

Unlike Mr. B, Miss M has nice lanky legs that enables her to go up and down the stairs with ease. Her issue with the stairs is the troll that lives on the stairs leading to the basement. It is purely coincidental that the troll appears whenever A or I are on the stairs to the basement.

According to Miss M, this troll strokes the luscious fur on her rear whenever she is laying in the bed by the stairs. A and I have yet to see this troll that she speaks of. Though we know when the troll strikes, because Miss M will quickly jump out of the bed, shake and lick her lips.

Unlike Miss M, whenever the troll strokes Mr. B, he just smiles and enjoys the pets from the troll. The only troll he fears is the one named Miss M.

Mr. B vs Stairs

One of our biggest concerns going from a single floor condominium to a single family home were the stairs. We were worried that our elderbulls would not fair so well on our stairs that lead up the bedroom and down to the basement. Miss M has long and gangly arms that are perfect for our stairs. She can ascend and descend our stairs with amazing grace. Mr. B on the other hand, has a harder time up the stairs. Though his stubby arms really makes it difficult for him to climb up our stairs, it is actually going down the stairs that has caused Mr. B the most problems. As written many times before, Mr. B loves his stuffies. He loves them so much that he has to take them everywhere, even if it means taking them up and down from the second floor.

We were wary, but we thought it was nothing to be concerned about. Until that fateful day when we heard a loud crash coming from the hallway. really early in the morning. A and I jumped out of bed to find a stuffy on our landing and Mr. B hobbling a bit on the main floor.

Luckily for us, the vet examined Mr. B and found that his injuries were minor, but we are really shaken by the whole event.

Now Mr. B is no longer allowed to carry any stuffy down or up the stairs. A has even separated his stuffys, where the ones that dangle and can cause Mr. B to trip are Mr. B's downstairs stuffys and the rest are his upstairs stuffys.

Unlucky for Mr. B, whenever he wants his stuffys to all be together, it is quickly yanked out of his mouth whenever he approaches the stairs. No longer will his stuffy collection be complete and in one place.

The Halloween Ends Not With a Bang but With a Whimper

From us to the pooches, we were all so excited for Halloween this year. We were finally grown up, or acting like we were grown up, by giving out candy to all the trick or treaters from our home.
A and I went out and bought almost $100 worth of candy, we were so afraid of not having enough candy for all of our trick or treaters.

Mr. B sat eagerly in his turtle costume, ready to greet all knights and princesses with smooches to go with their candy.

Miss M was over it and partially wore her butterfly costume and waited upstairs for the first
ghost and goblins to knock on our door before she went full butterfly.

The weather did not cooperate and potential trick or treaters were greeted with rain, wind and even snow. Sadly we did not get a single trick or treater and Mr. B's costume was all for naught.

Also:
At least the pooches went trick or treating with Be Fido's Friend
Halloween through Mr. B's eyes
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How to Spy on Your Dogs when You're Not Home

We have always been curious about what our pups do when we're not home.

Perhaps Mr B is having grand adventures with his beloved stuffies,

While Miss M is being sneaky and fulfilling her dream of sleeping on the bed.

Usually we never know because our pups are careful to cover their tracks, running back to their beds and pretending they've been there the whole time.

Most of the time we come home to 2 sleepy pups with everything in order.

But, there has been times when we mysteriously came home to things like this:

Or even this:

And we can only wonder what really happened.

After several failed attempts of trying to sneak into our own home and catch them in the act, we found an easier (and inexpensive!) option.

We purchased the iCam for our phones (only $4.99 for our phones!) and downloaded the iCamSource software from their site. 

We set up multiple cameras in different rooms using the webcams on our computers, and we are now able to monitor and record pooches when we are away. 

Our cameras caught this footage of Miss M eating her kong:

(Doesn't it look like Miss M is on to us and looking right at the camera??)

And while we were expecting to see some other crazy hijinks, most of the footage looked like this:

From our spying we have learned: Mr. B will pick one bed and sleep in it. Miss M will pick a bed, change positions several times, then creep into Mr. B's bed and use him as her trusty pillow.

We have yet to catch any of the crazy hijinks we were anticipating, but there tends to be some excitement when we're coming home:

Is there anyone else out there with doggycams? Or is it something you have thought about?

Also:

Because Miss M is over it.

Mr B is guilty.

This.

Check our Facebook page for more photos, comments, and story lines beyond the blog.

Lazy Weekend in 10 Pictures 4.27.11

We were all recovering from our vacation, the pooches were too tired to do anything but eat and sleep. A and I were busy getting our grading and school work done. So we all just stayed in only to leave in short spurts for the pooches to do their business.

The pooches spent most of their time moving around the house trying to find a comfortable place to lay.

Pooches: Deja-vu Mr. B

Just like Linus with his blanket, Mr. B has developed a velcro-addiction to his stuffed toys. He knows how bossy Miss M is, and he keeps them in his sight at all times:

And even keeps his collection stored in his tepee:

The problem Mr. B faces each day is to leave his precious toy collection to go on his walk. Check out Deja-vu Mr. B trying to take his bone on our walk.

The Story of Miss M and the Sofa Part Trois

When I got home yesterday, I looked up to find Ms. M and Mr. B staring out the window.

I noticed right away that Ms. M was a lot higher than Mr. B and she was way to the left.

But when I entered the house, Ms. M and Mr. B were already in the beds acting like they have been in there all day.

After their walk, I started preparing for the next day and then I looked up to find Ms. M laying very nicely on the sofa.

She allowed me to snap some photos, before she realized that I was using this as evidence to show A that she was on the sofa.

Before I knew it, Ms. M was off the sofa and in her bed, trying to prep herself for A.

Pooches: Mysterious Dark Room

This is what it looks like when we go for our walk each morning:

And this is what it looks like when we go for our walk each night.

It's hard enough putting up with frigid Chicago winters, but I think it's the darkness that make them nearly unbearable. I always look forward to Winter Solstice knowing that today, the day after, it can only get better.
Though there are some positives to the darkness. For some reason, all the irresponsible dog owners we used to run into in the mornings are apparently not taking their dogs on walks anymore. So we have free reign of the dark neighborhood without the fear of running into off-leash dogs.
We have also been noticing some mysterious events in the dark rooms of our house:

Ms. M 's Droste Effect

Yesterday as I was sorting through our videos, I noticed Ms. M randomly performing a trick as I was watching the video used in this post. I realized, that she was reacting to the commands in the video, completely confused about how I was giving directions without actually speaking, yet still compelled to perform.You can actually see the confusion on her face before the twirl:

It was even funnier when we were watching the video of her watching the video and she was even more confused. I'm not sure if this makes her really smart, or just kind of dumb.

Pooches: The Mystery of Two Pooches in One Crate

Even though Mr. B has his very own tepee, the pooches always end up squeezing both their 80 lb pittie-bodies together into Miss M's small crate:

Though it's obvious Mr. B is not as comfortable in the crate as Miss M:

We were trying to remember how they first started sharing a crate, and we stumbled upon this 'vintage video' from the first week we adopted Mr. B. Not quite what we expected.
My favorite parts are Mr. B's nervous laughter and Miss M's pained expression:

Lazy Wednesday in 10 Pictures

In preparation for Thanksgiving weekend, we decided to show our favorite past time here in Schwang manor, lazing around the house. During the day, we get a lot of sunlight in our front room, so it is the perfectly lighting for taking an afternoon nap. Though Mr. B is usually the pillow, sometimes, though quite rare, there is a role reversal.

Ms. M could rest her head on most anything, but her favorite head rest, other than Mr. B is this orange ottoman.

Mr. B tries his best to separate himself from Ms. M and he goes to extremes such as placing two ottomans between him and Ms. M.

After the sun goes down, Mr. B loves to lay by himself in Ms. M's crate, but he soon finds that he has company.  

Eventually Ms. M finds a comfortable spot and Mr. B is trapped for a good part of the night.

Sometimes he finds himself getting pushed out of the crate.

Other times, the bed gets pushed around such that they have a little fort.

 Though he tries to escape the clutches of Ms. M by running to his tepee, soon enough Ms. M has found a way to make that space her own as well.

At the end of the night, Ms. M had enough and heads off to the "nest" waiting for her pillow to join her.