Hello friends!

I know that all of you living in America are probably already totally excited about feasting on turkey and dressing and tons of side dishes and pies and other goodness. Or maybe you’re totally past the Thanksgiving mania already and are just out getting ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals…or shopping for personalized Christmas ornaments.

I have been watching things arrive all week that smell and look delicious…but we don’t get to chow down until Saturday. I sure hope that all this waiting will be worth it. But I’m pretty certain that I’ll get a little something special in my bowl. And even if I don’t, I’m already pretty ecstatic about the salmon oil and powdered sea critters (or whatever that stuff is) that mom started giving me to get my fur softer and keep my joints young and springy. I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore…but I still run around like a maniac. So I guess she figures a bit of preventative medicine is a good thing.

At any rate, I wanted to tell you a funny holiday story today. Mom is helping me because part of the story is about her when she was a really little kid…and then a bigger kid…and of course then there’s my part of the story. I do feel awfully special that she’s letting me share the story, though. So here’s how it all started…

When my mom was a little girl, her mom would always put out a big bowl of walnuts. And like all small kids (she was a couple years old, probably a little bit older than Mackenzie) she was curious about things. So she was playing with the walnuts and she kept trying to put them in her mouth. Problem was, her mouth was barely big enough for the walnut.

Please allow me to demonstrate what that might look like…except I’m using a golf ball which is clearly too small for me to be playing with…but I still just love them!

So back to my mom…she keeps checking out these walnuts and getting closer to getting the thing into her mouth, even though it’s impossibly huge. And her mom keeps telling her, “Don’t stick that walnut in your mouth!”

Yeah, much like me, she just had to keep going. So her mom was going around the house and photographing things for Christmas, and she turns to my mom and says, “Tiffany, smile!” So the little Tiffany turns around and her mouth is forming a huge “O” and it’s all walnut. Apparently there are some great blackmail photos of that somewhere but they’ll have to be tracked down first. 🙂

At any rate, the story goes on. Needless to say, my mom never lived down that story (much like her 23 cans of Spam moment — but I’ll have to let her share that one with you another time). And when she was about 8 years old, she had a Cocker Spaniel which thought it was a cat (another long story for yet another day).

Now I’m a bit appalled that my mom could have had a dog before me…and that it would have been anything but a Newfie. But the fact of the matter is that she had quite a few dogs before me and not one of them was anything remotely close to a Newfie. I guess she was just experimenting with the smaller pups since she was still a smaller person. And clearly she’d never seen a Newfie’s floof– like mine!

But back to this Cocker Spaniel. That dog happened to find a roach motel…you know those funky little black boxes? This dog was determined to recreate the “don’t you put that walnut in your mouth” moment with the roach motel. I guess she’d heard it a few times and thought it would be a good laugh. I have to admit that I’ve definitely had one or two of those things in my mouth before too. But to be honest, it gets totally lost in my mouth. And apparently what was really funny about this dog putting the roach motel in her mouth was the fact that when she turned around, her lips totally stuck out to the side because the trap was so big. Newfies have to use really enormous things to get that effect. Unfortunately a golf ball will not even remotely do the trick.

Thats the end of our silly tale. I do hope you’ve enjoyed it and had a few laughs…it’s good exercise before the main feasting event!

I hope you have a barktastic Thanksgiving Day (if you’re celebrating it) and that there is plenty of leftovers in your bowl tomorrow night!

Until next time,