Contrary to What My Family Believes...

...I ain't dead yet. No sirree DAWG! I iz alive and barkin' and beggin' for all sorts of head scratches and bits of food. The moms got me some new medicine a couple of weeks ago and I feel like a young pup! Hooah! as my boy would say. Good thing this medicine worked and it takes like hot meat from the outside stove because I was a gonner. Lemme tell you, I could barely move around for the coughing. I sure was gonna miss everyone, too. Me and my boy Buddy have way too many dogs to bark at, squirrels to chase, bunnies to nom and Magpies who need payback.

Mommy called the payback thing: Karma. So today I was taking my second after breakfast nap (I didn't say I was all better, Ima old dog with the Cee Ahtch Eff and need frequent naps) when all the sudden Mommy appears at the door with a treat! A treat!! Yeah! ThatiswhatIamtalkinabout Yay! If Buddy had been over we would be doin' chest bumps! But as I'm hoisting this old body up off the cool grass I notice a big bunch of sticks that reminded me of the time I moved the woodpile into the middle of the yard because that was a better place for it and I was bored when I was a puppy...good times...good times...anyhow, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the big pile of sticks. So I decide the treat can wait and start ambling towards the sticks when Mommy starts screaming at me like she did when I had the little Not-A-Bunny-But-Like-A-Bunny in my mouth.
"Kipper get away! Get. Away. Now." she used her big mean Mom voice I hear when I've run away or one of my boys does something he isn't supposed to do.
Shoot, she always ruins the fun, doesn't she? Resistance was futile as she hauled me into to the house by my collar. Giving her the dying dog look with a little gack cough didn't change her mind,and making myself weigh as much as the mastiff down the street didn't work either. I don't understand Mommy, she gives me chicken skin, pop corn and crackers if I ask for them but she wouldn't let me sniff the baby birds in the nest near my favorite pee tree. Because I really just wanted to, you know, sniff them. It's not like I'm a cat and I've been told I have a 'soft mouth'. So I'm in the house and what's an old dog like me supposed to do? I got my favorite blue baby 'saur and walked from the front of the house to the back about eleventy million times hoping and thinking someone would lose their patience with me and just let me back outside. I was hoping Other Mom would come home and not see the big pile of sticks in the back yard and just let me outside so I could further, you know, investigate the situation with the fragrant birds. Didn't happen and no matter how hard I stared at the big window that opens, it wouldn't open.

Mommy talked into the little black box thing and found someone to come and take care of the birds and the nest. I tried to tell her I would be happy to take care of them but she wasn't paying any attention to me. Then told my other boy to take me upstairs when the doorbell rang. Upstairs? When the doorbell rings? That is so not my style or my job? My job is to make sure everyone who comes into the house gives me an ear scratch and possibly a belly rub! And this is the thanks a dying dog gets for his decade's worth of love and devotion. I have to go upstairs to bed and miss all the excitement. So I stayed put by the back door and was real quiet hoping I would become invisible. I was about to fall asleep when I noticed my two arch enemies poking their heads into the big pile of sticks where the little birds were! Those little birds belonged to my enemies! I had the perfect oppertunity to avenge the years of taunting and abuse I had suffered at their wings so I let Mommy know just how I felt and tried to say: "OH THE INJUSTICE OF THIS WORLD!! THOSE EVIL FOOD STEALING BIRDS THAT TEASE ME CAN PLAY WITH THE LITTLE BIRDS WHY CAN'T I?"

That's when Mommy leaned down and gave me an ear scratch while she explained Karma to me. "It's Karma, old boy, What goes around comes around...those naughty birds won't tease you anymore, now will they? Serves them right, losing their six children to bird rescue after the way they treated you. I bet they won't tag team your food and water ever again!"

I hope she's right because I'm feeling better but the old ticker isn't what it used to be and I can't be running after those pesky things. What a day. What a day and a half! I need a nap.

If you're in the 'hood give a holler over the fence and I'll bark back! For the time bein' at least. Can't keep this old dog down. Nope not the poison berries, the big moving car or the garage door or even the Cee Ahtch Eff with "pro-found card eomaglea"

Love,

Kipper the big-hearted dog and that ain't no metaphor, neither.