Am I A Plate?

Dear Mom,

I saw a note taped to the front door when Dachshund Daddy took me out for my constitutional last night. The note said: "Wash Tootsie."

What do you mean "Wash Tootsie"?

Am I a plate? A dirty dish? Why don't I get a bath?

Here's your new, edited list:

• Give Tootsie a bath
• Stop referring to Tootsie as a plate

You can see from this evidence that I am not a plate.

I am a dachshund who will fly... someday.

Thank you.

Love you,
Tootsie

French Maritime Alps

A favorite photo from last fall, even though one of us is chewing her fingernails!

Remembering Suni

Last July, during a hike in the Matterhorn region, Dachshund Daddy (DD) met Suni, the Queen of the Alps.

A passionate hiker, Suni summited countless mountains all over the Alps with her human dad, Gabri. You can read all about their adventures on their website. Even if you can't read Italian, you'll enjoy their gorgeous photos.

We knew all about Suni and her prowess as a doggy hiker long before DD met her. We'd read all about her on her website. As a fellow little dog and a fellow hiker, I admired Suni and her passion for the great outdoors.

Suni loved her mountains, and she loved sharing them with her human dad, who gave her the gift of a very special life.

Suni repaid him with the unconditional love that only a dog can give her human. Their bond grew increasingly stronger as Suni entered her silver years.
Blessed is the man who earned the love of an old dog.

Suni continued to power up the hills with her four-paw drive until this spring, when she flew over the rainbow bridge.

Now, every time her human dad climbs a mountain, he and Angel Suni are reunited.

Run free, Angel Suni, in that big meadow in the sky.

TV Show Dogs

We love the TV series BILLIONS. (What is not to love about rocking Damian Lewis as Axe?)

But there are two dogs in the first season of BILLIONS and about halfway through the first season the dogs just disappear. This is not right. Sure, Axe's dog gets neutered, so maybe he becomes invisible. And Chuck's dog serves as a poopy-pick-up foil but then disappears as if this world has no more dog shit to pick up.

I conducted a Google search: "What happened to the dogs in BILLIONS?" Answer, unsatisfactory. Overheard in the Writers' Room: "Don't worry. No one will notice if the dogs are written out." 🐶

We notice.

Dogs are not token characters! If you introduce a dog into a story, the dog should be as important as any other character. (In BILLIONS, the human offspring mostly disappear, too. That's also a narrative problem, but you can guess that it bothers me a lot less than vanishing dogs.)

There are so many things to worry about in this world: climate-change deniers, nationalistic ideologies, fascism, sexism, racism, a trend toward confirmation bias and fear rather than curiosity and intellectual inquiry, plus a commitment to partisanship over community. We have a US president who cares only about enriching himself, which many recognized during his campaign and many couldn't see because they were enthralled by his rhetoric.

During the first hundred days of Trump's presidency, people have courageously made the commitment to fight his policies. Our best hope is that Trump's incompetence is our saving grace. Trump never cared about the voters; he just wanted their votes. He got them, and they got him. Unfortunately, so did the whole world.

So here is a small plea to TV writers during these unstable times: please don't add disappearing TV show dogs to our long list of worries.

We are so thrilled the Climate March is happening today in Washington, D.C. and around the world. Thank you, all, for standing for sane conservation.

Here are some of our favorite pictures of environments that we love from past posts on our blog.

This is a picture of Tootsie's first hike ever in Switzerland, in the Greina Plateau.

This is little Tootsie in Appenzell, Switzerland.

 

This is our Idaho home place. You can see Truffle, too!

It might seem impossible to tackle the issues of climate change, but it's not. We just need Tootsie's gusto.

Darwin! Or Beagles?

One of my many writing activities is as the Managing Editor of Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies where I help run the journal and curate a series called "In the Classroom." We are so grateful to our friend Gail Riekie -- you know her from Bouncing Bertie's blog -- for contributing a fantastic piece on Darwin.

Thank you for popping over to read it, here.

Thank you, Gail!

-Renée (& Tootsie, of course)

 Did Darwin feel like this when he set off on the voyage of the Beagle?

Flight Practice Begins (Again) On Top of Monte Covreto!