Playing the Blame Game

 One of the benefits of having Maisie is being able to blame pretty much everything on the puppy. "Who chewed on the remote?", Maisie I would reply. Who ate the last piece of pie?, Maisie of course. Who pooped in the corner? You guessed it, Maisie. 

Yes, life is good having little Maisie to blame things on, I can get away with pretty much everything. So far Dakota and Zoey have not caught on to this game, they are behaving themselves like good girls, but I am taking full advantage! Who can blame me really? Sweet little Maisie gets all the attention. She eats all her food and she gets praised; Good girl Maisie. She comes when called, then gets a treat. She goes to the bathroom outside and gets a pat on the head. I do all those things to and get nothing! No praise, no treat, no pat on the head! Who can blame me if I take advantage of the situation and blame things on Maisie once in a while. 

Puppy training is two steps forward one step back, there are wins and losses, but the wins are getting more frequent and losses less frequent. Anyone who has owned a Frenchie knows what I speak of. The normal stages of dog ownership are; Puppy (0-8 months), Adolescent (8-18 months, Young Adult (1.5 years-4 years), Maure Adult (4-7 years) and Senior (7+ years). Of course, this varies from breed to breed and even individual dogs. 

The Frenchie has totally different stages starting out at the cute and cuddly puppy stage, then comes the velociraptor stage (4-12 months). This is the stage where they terrorize the house ripping things apart and making noises that could only come from a velociraptor. If you survive this stage, you are rewarded with the Stubborn stage (2-4 years) where they will do whatever they want with no regard to what you want. Then finally, comes the stage you have been waiting for. The stage why you wanted a Frenchie in the first place; The Potato stage (4+ years). This is the stage that Zoey is at, she just lays around next to you or on your lap all day long only getting the zoomies once or twice a day. 

I have a couple videos for you this week. We will start off with this short one of Zoey using Maisie as a dust mop. 

Such is the life of a Frenchie owner. Now onto what we have been up to in the last week. Barb has moved on to the lower bedroom. 

Painting, new bedding, new curtains and she made a floating shelf out of live-edge Sugar Pine we had bought at an auction in '24. 

Speaking of floating shelves, she made four new ones for the upper bedroom. These were just made out of rough-cut ponderosa pine. 

Now that I look at the picture above, Barb not only made the shelves, but she also made the bedside tables and the frame around that picture!

Last but not least, is the downstairs bathroom where she made this shelf out of more sugar pine. 

She is now working on the headboard for the upstairs bedroom. 

I am plugging away at the trim on the garage. The soffit and facia are all done, as are the gable rakes on both ends and the last piece of red I needed to put up. Now I am working on the corner trim. With luck, I will have picture of the completed garage for you next time!

Ryan, Alana, Dan and Bonnie came over for the Vikings/Packer game last Sunday. Oh my gosh did we have a good time. Three Frenchies, two labs and 6 people. Too hard to get pictures and videos of the dogs as they were racing around like crazy for the first hour or so. 

Once they settled down the antics began. When Alana was not looking Barb snuck a Packers jersey on Sophie. Both Alana and Sophie were mortified!

Not to be outdone, Alana had brought some antics of her own, dressing Zoey and Maisie up in the dreaded purple and gold!

Tired and humiliated, each of the dogs found a spot on the floor and crashed. 

Throughout the game, we ate and ate and ate, had a few cocktails and played dice games while we watched the game in the background. 

The Vikings were getting pounded, it was not looking good. I kept telling Alana that we were a 2nd half team and we would come back. And come back we did! The Vikings scored 22 unanswered points to bring us our first victory of the year. Alana was so overjoyed she even did the Vikings theme song for us!

Good times. Then yesterday, we get this picture from Alana....

She had stolen our Packers jersey! She says it was because she never wants to see her precious Sophie ever humiliated with it again, but we know better. She is really a closet Packers fan!

Friday night, you guessed it, Queen of Hearts at the VFW. $116,000! This week we were joined by not only Dan and Bonnie, but also Kevin and Cheryl and Neighbor Jim and Carmen. With only 6 cards left, one of us were bound to win! There were a few other people there though. 

And alas, none of us won. In fact, the person whose ticket was drawn, did not pick the right card so the game goes on! Next week it should be around $130,000!

That's enough for this week, I need to call Barb and let her know that I, I mean Maisie just peed in the corner!