Must Be Santa Paws

Christmas Time makes us want to wag, so we made a video where Tootsie and her buddies listen to Dachshund Daddy's very special rendition of Must Be Santa.

Bryan Adams recently released a very special video for his own version of Must Be Santa and asked his fans to come up with their own version. We hope he likes Tootsie's very special version!

Hello Peaches!

Like my dad, I'm a huge Bryan Adams fan. Bryan is coming to Switzerland in December for his Shine A Light tour and we can't wait! In addition to being a fabulous musician, Bryan is also an advocate for the ethical treatment of animals and a great dog dad. At the end of October, Bryan posted a photo of his fur-kid Peaches to his Instagram account. I'm taking the liberty to post the picture here on my blog so you can all say hi to Peaches! Look how happy he is with his dad. What a sweetie!

Toots & the Maytals

The Dachshund of Music

My friend Moira asked me if hiking in Switzerland and/or Austria makes me feel like I'm starring in The Sound of Music. Yes, it does! (Minus the nasty WWII parts.) So it comes as no surprise that I am uniquely placed to audition for a new film: The Dachshund of Music.

For my audition, I'm warming up my voice with special tongue, mouth, and face exercises.

I'm practicing my German and learning apple strudel recipes.

I'm hiking long distances over high-elevation pastures and sniffing for marmots along the way while looking for Christopher Plummer singing "Edelweiss".

And with Mom's help, I'm twirling. I'm twirling. I'm twirling.



How do you call a dachshund named Maria? Me!

Do you think I'll get the part?

Urovision Song Contest

I would like to thank all my friends who watched my live performance at this year's Urovision Song Contest, where dogs from all over (E)urope get to pee while singing. I chose to sing Dachshund Daddy's hit single "Be Like Yugi", which is why I had to pee like a boy.

Some of you also may have heard of a loosely related event called Eurovision Song Contest, the annual singing competition among representatives of European countries. Here are three fun facts about Eurovision that you may not have heard:

1. The very first edition of Eurovision was held right here in Lugano, Switzerland in 1956; it was also won by Switzerland.
2. The Swiss only managed to win a second time by hiring Céline Dion to sing their song in 1988.
3. The idea for a European singing contest was (of course) copied from Italy and her Sanremo Music Festival.

Mom's Birthday on Mount Rigi

It was recently Mom's Birthday, and Dad bought her a Happy Birthday Ticket, which gives you unlimited access to the whole Swiss public transportation network for an entire day. For our destination, Dad recommended Mount Rigi, the quintessential Swiss mountain. He helped us figure out a route involving two big trains, one boat, two cogwheel trains, one more regular train, and finally our little train, the Flippie, to get back home.

An added benefit of the Happy Birthday Ticket is that the conductors wish you a Happy Birthday in the language of the region, so sometimes the conductors spoke French, sometimes Swiss German, sometimes Italian, and also English. Mom got the gist every time. The only national language Mom did not hear was Romansh.

After we rode the cogwheel train from Vitznau all the way up the mountain, we spent a full hour and a half just sitting and looking at the view. We watched a woman take off on her first parachute ride. Lots of people talked to me, both in Swiss German and in English.

It was foggy to the southwest, so we couldn’t see Lake Lucerne, but we had a perfect view of the craggy Alps poking through the sheet of clouds. We could see the top of Pilatus, too, which was neat because lots of tourists were wearing Pilatus baseball caps. We learned that Mark Twain visited Rigi and James Fenimore Cooper, too, which really excited Mom because she loves the Natty Bumpo tales.

A man was playing an alpenhorn, which we’d never heard before. The sound seemingly echoes off the wind, and I took time for reflection while listening to the music of Swiss mountain people.