This is an old post that I know went live a long time ago but somehow reverted to draft back when blogger was having all those problems and posts were disappearing. Since I don't have anything else ready and you all love Duke here it is as written back in 2011

Hello everyone. Today is my day just like the title says. So here's a picture of me inspecting the back yard.

Duke is very good at getting his point across both vocally and through facial expressions. Let me show you what I mean.
This first one means
"I am a fierce and ferocious puppy, hand over the treats and no one gets hurt"

 This one means "I'm feeling weak and dizzy, quick give me a treat before I pass out"

 This one means "I'm a good dog, I'm a good dog, May I please have a treat?"

Don't go thinking you are going to learn all my deep dark secrets here today. It's not going to happen. That's not what Duke is here to tell you about.
Take it away Duke.
 Hello all my wonderful blog friends. I know so many things that I could tell you today. I think there is only one thing that you really want to know though. You all came here today to find out who won the magnet with my wonderful picture on it. Of course you also came here in hopes of getting to see me so today is  your lucky day. You get both.
There were a total of 26 comments on the giveaway post. Random org says the winner is....
That would be Jerry at As the Crackerhead Crumbles
There were three people who removed themselves from the drawing so that makes 23 comments. That way Random org says the winner is...
which would be Donna from Made in Heaven
I have decided that since mom was offering such a cheapo prize for her giveaway that BOTH of them are going to win. If mom would show me how to use the printer I would make a magnet for all of you. Maybe when I figure out how to do that I will.
Jerry and Donna, send my mom your address and she will put your magnets in the mail.

Being the thoughtful and generous Westie that he is he wasn't asking for treats for himself. He said that it was time to give one of you a treat. Duke suggested a giveaway. A very small giveaway but a giveaway non the less.
He wants one of you to have a fridge magnet with his Halloween picture on it.
So what do you have to do to win?
It's simple

1. leave a comment saying you want Duke's face on your fridge
2. be a follower if you aren't already
3. follow us on facebook
4. blog about it
5. do cartwheels across your room because you are so excited about the chance to win
6. send a self addressed stamped envelope with $9.95 to cover the cost of shipping and handeling
7. repeat steps 4-6 and include the line "I love Ann's blog"
8. Send a minimum of 6 friends here who will become loyal and faithful followers
9. Promise to send Duke a bag of bacon flavored treats once a month

Ok so I'm getting carried away. All you really need to do is leave a comment and say you'd like to win. Easy Peasy, Pumpkin Pie.
Duke and I will let you know who won on Sunday.

I had another day off today and I'm really liking this. Today I cleaned out my car and washed Duke's nose prints off the window. I ran some errands, played on the computer A LOT, got my hair cut and did some shopping.
And Duke...

That's right, Duke napped. He found the whole thing very exhausting. Or maybe it was all that digging he did in the yard that wore him out.

If one Duke is good then two must be better.
Duke has a new friend and his name is Duke too. When we went to visit Wade's friend Carl (the guy with the tree) his neighbors dog came across the street to check things out. They got along really well and were fun to watch together.
Both of them had to check pee mail at this rock. 

Seeing eye to eye. Or maybe that's nose to nose?


Now you all know that I love my Duke but I have to say that this other Duke is a real sweetheart too.
 The woman who owns him said that he was a stray that they found in their yard one morning. She said that he was pretty beat up when they found him. He's looking happy and healthy now.

Mom says that this is the start of a long weekend here in the U.S. She said that Monday is something called Labor Day. It makes no sense to me because if it's Labor Day then why don't they have to go to work and labor?
She also said that back in the day, they used to spend the whole weekend watching something called the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.
I don't know what a telethon is but I'm going to do some channel surfing and see if I can find out.
Oh, wait a minute. Who's this Lassie lady? Maybe I'll just watch this for a while, she's a looker.

Nothing much to blog about today. Mom and I just don't feel like doing much of anything. We decided to even turn off the comments for tonight. So all you have to do is look at me and smile then you can move along.  Have a nice night everyone

Apparently at 3:30 a.m. I made a movement that indicated that I was awake and ready to start the day. That's the time that Duke jumped up on me, wagging his tail, letting me know that he was ready to go outside for his morning routine.
Already awake after letting him out it seemed like a good time to get some coffee and catch up on emails and blog reading. By 7:30 I was ready to get started on the crafting and I spent the next eight hours working on projects.
What do you suppose Mr. Duke was doing while I was busy as a bee?


That's right he hit the lounge chair, with a pillow no less, and napped.

I'm going to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That's just the kind of dog I am you know.
The truth about me is that I like to bark. I like to bark A LOT. I bark at people going by, the UPS truck, funny noises, and anything else. I just like to bark. One day I barked so much that mom said she would get me a special collar just for barking. She never made good on that promise though. I never did get any special collar. It's OK though, I can bark just as well in my every day collar.

The truth about mom is that when she first found out she was going to do that whole craft show thing, she wrote a list of all the things she wanted to make and how many of each. Well she hasn't been very focused on getting things done. Now she only has 24 days left and she's starting to think she's not going to reach her goals. She decided to set mini goals for herself. I'm shutting her off of the blog reading until she does at least a little bit every night. If she doesn't come around to see you you'll know that I have her under tight supervision.

The truth about our blog friends is that we love you guys.

Happy Monday everyone. Yes, my mom did it again. She forgot about the old blog. She was being lazy busy doing other things and totally forgot about doing a post. When she noticed the time she asked me to make an excuse  apologize for her absence. I know you guys really don't mind that she's off doing other things though because we all know that you come here to see me. I am after all the star of the show. I may have to consider getting a new mom if she keeps slacking like this. I probably should go check my food dish to see if she managed to remember to fill that.

Did I confuse you? Tee Bee Tee Em or T.B.T.M stands for Too Bad Tomorrow's Monday. I was just talking about time yesterday and here I am wondering what happened to my weekend tonight. It sure did fly by fast.
I did get a little bit of crafting time in though.

Back on day 3 of my vacation I showed you picture frames that I had painted. I finally finished them on Saturday after we got done doing all our running around for the day. I have 2 frames finished but only took a picture of one of them.

Before settling on the above picture I had a little fun. I framed my flip flopped foot.

I tried to frame Duke but he wasn't in to it.

I got a little side tracked making origami bows.
My blog friend Helen did a tutorial on these. I thought they were really cute and now I'm in the midst of a bow obsession.
I also managed to finish off 3 Scotty dogs, 1 Westie, got 4 more cans ready for flowers, edited some pictures to use for cards, and started a 3rd frame.
Now it's time for me to go get ready for my kicking and screaming tantrum tomorrow morning. Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend

It's no secret that today is Sugar's 10th barkday. Sugar asked all her blog pals to help celebrate with her by posting a happy smiley dog photo. Now how could I say no to Sugar?
So here is my happy smiley face
Happy Barkday Sugar from me and mom.

Mom sent me to do the blogging today. She said to tell you that she didn't do much of any crafting today. She blamed it on dad because he said that there was something called thunder in the city going on and they went to that. I don't know what he was talking about because I didn't hear any thunder. Even though they left me home alone it was ok because mom bought me a super duper treat to chew on while they were gone.
I'm headed back outside to sit with mom and dad on the deck now so you have a nice weekend.

Can you believe I'm up to day 6 already? It's a good thing I got off to a good start because I sure have gone down hill since Tuesday.
This morning I took the quilling stuff out on the deck and sat down to do some work. Wasn't in to it so I went to the shed and got a shovel. I've been wanting to dig up the flower bed on the side of my house and this morning was a good time to do it.
This first picture is going to need some explanation
See those roots right there at the corner of the house, right above the green arrow. That was a tree or something that has been growing right where the yellow arrow is pointing to.  I started to dig up the flower bed and all I wanted to do was to get my braided hibiscus in the ground. Yeah, I know, I should have done that a long time ago. So I dig up the spot I want to plant it but then I decide to dig up all the way to the end and pull out anything and everything that is growing there. That included that tree thing. I didn't realize how thick of a trunk it had on it. The roots ran under that piece of wood landscape timber (red circle in the picture)  Where it's at now is as far as I could get with it. I'm sure Wade will just go out and chop it off right where it's at and be done with it. His solution in the past and it keeps growing back which is why it was so darn big.

So finished that project and headed inside for a shower. Next order of business was Duke's appointment with the groomer.

He looks so much better and he's pretty happy about losing all that hair he had on him. Just for fun I turned the above picture into a painting.


While Duke was at the groomer I did manage to put together three Scottie dogs. 
Duke's says there is no such thing as a Scottie dog. He says it's a Westie with a negative attitude. He's so goofy.

Only two more days before it's back to work. I hope I can get a little more finished before Monday. Hope everyone is off to a good start on their weekend.

Do you remember Lola? That's my sons dog that I posted about a while back. Remember how cute she was and how much smaller than Duke?
Lola was over last Monday for the picnic we had and she's grown some


Normally I'm very careful about not showing my deck in pictures because it's really quite awful looking. However today I'm going to break away from that because the pictures of Lola and Duke playing together are just too cute not to share.

I don't know if they are kissing or telling secrets

Duke looking not quite so sure about what Lola's next move will be



These two did not stop all day long. I was constantly running around chasing after them. Duke is good about staying around when we are outside but Lola had a thing about wanting to check out the front yard. I finally ended up putting one in the house and leaving the other outside just so I could sit down for a while. Duke was exhausted by the end of the day.

Have any of you seen my mom? Do you know what she was doing all weekend and where she was?
She was home part of the time acting all busy busy and stuff. Her and dad went in car rides more than once on Sunday and I didn't get to go. Then she has the nerve to come home last night and fall asleep on the couch without even taking care of her blog.
She wanted me to give you a message today. She said to tell you that she'll be spending tonight catching up with emails, and blog reading. She also said to let you know that by the end of the week she will be making a decision on which fantabulous quote or word to use on that picture of me.
OK, I'm going back to working on that yummy chew stick mom gave me. You have a good night.

I just love the chance to play in Photoshop. Sometimes I like what I get and sometimes I don't but I always have fun.
I dug this picture out of an old file the other day
Now I know that this picture is no photographic wonder, but I like it. I said to myself, "Self, lets see if we can make this picture better" Of course I agreed and set out to tackle the job.

Last weekend with all the nice weather we had, Duke got to enjoy the pool a little bit. He had a lot of fun on the raft. His favorite game is to get on the raft and then I splash the water and he tries to catch it.

When he had his fill and got out Wade took the opportunity to enjoy the raft for a while

Appears someone doesn't like this plan.

How about a compromise?
I don't know about Wade but Duke was satisfied with this arrangement.

The other day I mentioned that we had worked on the pool. We have a rather odd way of doing it but what can I say, we're odd.
We drain it and scrub it then refill it. Now this seems like a lot of work but I have never had a year where you take the cover off and it's crystal clear ready to go. With the pump we have it would take all summer to clean it up so we just drain and scrub.
By 4:00 p.m. Saturday I was a little on the pink side and felt like I had been wading in pond scum all afternoon but we were done and ready to start filling it back up. Duke had a hand in the work too. He couldn't stand the fact that both Wade and I were down in the pool without him. He stepped onto the ladder then jumped in. 

Needless to say, Duke is very happy that the pool is almost ready. He watched the hose and prayed for it to fill faster. Yes, we do fill it with the hose. It's actually cheaper than having water hauled in. 


Happy pool boy waiting for his first dip.
Now if we can just get that great big ball of sunshine to stay up there in the sky, the water might warm up enough that I'll join Duke.