My name is Baloo!

Hello everyone! My name is Baloo! I know this is Cooks' blog, but *heh-heh* I sneaked in to say "hi". According to Mum and Dad, I'm about 1.5 years old (nearly two) and was found on a construction site with my brothers and sisters. My doggie parents are "jungle dogs" - maybe that's why my name is Baloo! You know...Jungle Book, Baloo bear...me, my parents, jungle...geddit, geddit? *heh-heh*

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I LLLUUURRRVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEE my Cooks. And Mum. And Dad. I think they are the BEST people in the whole wide world! I get a whole house to myself - and Cooks of course. I mean, I get the whole house to Cooks and me. Not Cooks all to myself. Mum and Dad gave me a BIG bed to sleep in, it's the exactly the same bed as the one Cooks has! We have matching pillows too, although I've chewed the corner of mine. *heh-heh*

Cooks and I share a bed downstairs, sometimes he sleeps in it, sometimes I sleep in it. My favourite places in the house is between the chair and the window in the living room. There's a small space there, and I like to lie there when I've had a looong tiring day, and I just want to be sleep. My other favourite place is in front of that same chair, with my back tucked into the chair - this is when I'm just chilling, not when I'm super tired. Sometimes the bed gets too warm, so I need to lie on the floor. And then, there's another spot behind another chair, but this space is a lot bigger. *heh-heh* I have a lot of favourite spots! Usually behind chairs.

Sometimes I feel like being alone, and then I go to my small bed in the dining room - Mum nearly threw that bed out when I grew too big. But she brought it downstairs from the bedroom and then didn't throw it out, so I dragged it to a corner, climbed into it with my bone, and there's been no more talk of throwing out ever since. She keeps saying that it stinks though.

I like eating and playing, but I don't like too much physical contact. Mum and Dad always asks me for a "cuddle", and that usually means getting up close with them. But I'm not sure I like that yet - I've slowly gotten used to it, and maybe one day I will crawl onto their laps. For now, I'm just happiest when they are scratching my back. I like to scoot up close with my bum tucked against them, so that I don't slip and slide around, and then they will scratch my back and my chest. It's very relaxing and makes me want to go to sleep.

Cooks and I play together a lot. Well, *heh-heh* I try to get him to play and sometimes he does, but when he doesn't feel like it, he just bats me away. But I will keep pestering him until he gets up and plays with me. We play chase (he chases me but only when I have a rawhide bone in my mouth) and we play erm...we call it "attack" (that's when we pretend to attack each other - but he gets all worked up and starts barking at me, and I just paw at him to tell him to stop it).

He's very patient with me. He's the best brother in the whole wide...oh-oh! I better go, I hear my name being called...I'll come back again another time.

My new sister

Ok, so it's been more than a year since I last wrote about this new black dog. To be honest, I didn't like her much for a while. She was small and got under my feet all the time. And she smelt funny. On top of that, I didn't want her taking all my food! I mean, I've had to live with Venus the Rottweiler for a long time, like 20 million years, and now that I've got my own routine and space sorted out, this new black dog comes in! Mum and Dad spent one whole afternoon playing with her and me when we got back to the house, but she stayed mostly under the dining table. Silly thing. And then they tried to find a name for her - but of course, they can't name her Cookie, coz that's my name. They tried all sorts of names, a lot of them sounded like Cookie, which Mum kept rejecting. Good on her, because it would only get confusing!

In the end, they decided on Baloo, like the Jungle Book bear. I don't know why they would name a dog after a bear, and look at her! She's tiny! She'd never grow into bear size! That's just a silly name. Baloo. Baloo. Well, I guess it grows on you. I guess.

Anyway, it was then time for dinner, and trust me, I was NOT happy that there is another dog in the house. I warned her away from me with a growl, just so she knows that she's not getting MY food! And anyway, Mum and Dad gave her some biscuits while I got my usual wet food. And mine smells better than hers!

And when it was time to go to bed...oh what a racket she made! Mum and Dad had given her a mat to lie on in the kitchen, and Mum left a small light on in the kitchen. And then we all went upstairs. But less than a minute after we got upstairs, I hear a high-pitched yelp and a whine. So I started barking coz I didn't know where it was coming from! Dad shushed me, and Mum went downstairs to look at Baloo...oh yeah, it was coming from her. Mum was downstairs for a bit, and then she came back upstairs. And wouldn't you know it, Baloo starts yelping and whining again! I told her to shut up, coz we are all going to bed, but she wouldn't stop. So Mum went downstairs again and next thing you know, both of them come back up into the room! Mum had brought up this wire thing and put Baloo in the corridor near the toilet and left the wire thing to keep her in the corridor. So she could see all of us and smell all of us. And was she happy? NOOOO! She whined again! What does she want now?!!

Mum removed the wire thing and put her mat in a corner of the room. And guess what? She's now gone to sleep! Yawn...what a racket. Just because she wanted to be in the same room as us. Grumble, grumble...

But over the next few months, Baloo grew on me. She's quite a sweet young thing really. Mad as a hatter when she wants to play. Mum and Dad have brought us to a few places together, and we quite enjoy each other's company. She disturbs me when I want to sleep, she barks at nothing (and gets me worked up, coz I don't know what I'm barking at), she steals rawhide bones from me when I'm not looking, she jumps at me when we're at the dog park (when all I want to do is chase after the ball), and she keeps making phone calls to me! But that's another blog entry...

Here are some photos of us.

This is a picture of Baloo when she first got home. Look at that rat tail!

This is us at the park

This is the wire thing that Mum bought. She put us 'behind bars' coz we trekked wet paw prints all over the floor.