Big Dog vs Small Dog

So here I am with my Great Dane Sampson, who is now in heaven.  He was an amazing dog.  It was really great having him for the short time that I did, he developed spinal degeneration at the age of eight.  I used to hear so many silly comments from people, it used to make me laugh at the things they would say about his size... "Hey is that a dog or a horse" coming from some dude with a big pie eating grin on his mug from across the street on a walk.  I'm thinking, really... seriously? Or there was always one of my favorite's "Hey do you have a saddle for that?" Again, some really "A" material on the big dog jokes don't ya think?

Since Sam's passing, I went in a totally different direction with my dog size choice. I now have three Pekingese who weight 8,10, 13 lbs & one little 4 lb Maltese... Collectively they don't even make half of a Sampson. Which is kind of handy seeing as though when I go on tour it's like having one big dog in four little pieces. So I was thinking about what makes people choose the pets they do, or do our pets end up choosing us?

I have always loved animals, even as a little girl.  I was out in the yard as early as four years old picking up snakes (yikes).  One time I rode my bike down to the local pet store (2 miles away) to buy a hamster with a $5.oo bill I found on the floor in a diner (yup I was even in the Greek diner's back then at age seven).  Or my personal favorite, hiding a kitten in my room thinking somehow my mom would not find out, what was I thinking? You see I'm allergic to cats, but I just could not resist a neighbor kid giving away a kitten, so home I'd go and hide it in my room.  Only to come home from school to find my mom sitting on my bed hold it asking "Ava, what is this..." Me: "ummm what, I don't know what it is or where it came from."...

Bobo sporting a party hat!

So it only stands to reason that this grown up Greek Girl has always had lots of fur kids around. To tell the story of how I ended up with four dogs, would be four totally different blogs.  We all know this Greek Blonde Girl loves to yap her trap but to keep it short I'll just tell you about my Pekingese "BoBo".  He was a rescue from Petfinder.com  It is a really wonderful option to choose if you are looking for a fur baby.  They have been around for fifteen years and have had over seventeen million adoptions. That's a lot of fur kids finding forever homes (well lets hope they were forever homes).  It's great because you can search in your local area for specific breeds of dogs, cats, horses, birds, whatever creature floats your boat.  It helps rescue organizations help more animals, as most have a nominal adoption fee that covers vet expenses, etc. and this helps them to be able to help more animals who need saving.  Pets really only want our love, and they have so much to give.  No matter what kind of muckery a day has brought there is nothing like coming home to the love of your fur baby.  Even Mr. Bricks has a wire haired fox terrier named Sunny, (he's adorable btw).  Gee I just hope Mr. Bricks doesn't feed him McRibs.

Mr. Bricks please do not feed Sunny any McRibs

*Please remember to spay & neuter your furkids....  just sayin.

Blessings ~

Ava xox

The Extreme Couponing Queens

The Greek blond girl grocery shopping for fruits & veggies. 

Don't get me wrong, I like saving money just like the next person, but what is up with all of the grocery store coupons? I'm a Greek girl, and the only thing us Greek girls likes better than shopping is going shopping and getting a discount on what we buy.  That is why I personally love Kohl's. For every $50 I spend I get a $10 in Kohl's Cash...but my Kohl's experience is a blog subject for another blog day. Today it's all about those rabid ladies and all of their clipped coupons.

Yesterday I ran to the local market for some fresh-cut flowers and a few other items. I thought it would be a quick 5-minute errand. WRONG. Turns out Wednesday is a day the newspapers run their mid-week supermarket sale ads. They always have a few coupons that are good for that day only. Oh lucky me.

So there I was trying to play supermarket roulette, you know where you try to decide which line would be the fastest?  Normally you just park your cart in the shortest line or behind the person who has the fewest items. But because it was "Coupon Wednesday" it was like they were filming an episode of Supermarket Sweeps in there. It was total muckery. There were Soccer moms weaving in and out of the aisles like Dale Earnhardt, Jr at the Daytona 500. They were pushing their carts and running around in their sneakers snatching up anything that slightly resembled the picture on their coupons in their hands.

It didn't matter what line I went to because every lane I checked had two or three people in line and it seemed like each one of them had about 500 items in their shopping cart, so I knew I was pretty much screwed no matter which checkout lane I decided on.

Since I knew I was in for a wait no matter what line I chose, I picked the one with two pleasant-looking older ladies with beehive hairdo. There must have been a 2-for-1 coupon down at the Beauty Barn as well, because their hairdo's were spittin' images of each other and clearly the masterpieces of someone who knew how to fix only one hair style.  I kinda laughed to myself thinking that in 50 years that is going to be me and one of my sisters, beehive hairdo and all.

So these ladies were chatting and comparing their full shopping carts as if they were pirates eyeing treasure chests full of loot! And then I found out why. They whipped out their coupons. It seemed like the Baldwin Sisters were taking full advantage of every coupon that the store has ever offered. They were going to make the store suffer for offering coupons and they would split their bounty later.

Their extreme couponing would explain why they were buying 16 boxes of Swiss Miss Cocoa,  20 cans of Campbell's chunky soup, 14 boxes of Nabisco Shredded Wheat, 16 loaves of Wonder Bread, 8 boxes of Kellogg's Raisin Bran, 4 bags of Taco Flavored Doritos, 6 gallons of milk, 12 DiGiorno frozen pepperoni pizzas, 4 cases of Dr. Pepper, 6 heads of lettuce, 8 cans of olives and 48 rolls of extra ply Scott toilet paper.  I wanted to recommend that if they intend on eating all of that Raisin Bran at one sitting perhaps they might consider getting twice as much toilet paper, but I decided to keep my Greek mouth shut.

One by one as the checker scanned their items these adorable ladies would first look at each other, then find a corresponding coupon from the brightly colored organizer that said "COUPONS" on the front and then they looked at me. I mean directly at me! They wanted this Greek girl to know that they were the Queens of  Extreme Couponing and with each ka-ching of savings they wanted me to know just how much they were saving!

When they got to the DiGiorno frozen pizzas they turned and smiled and then one of them looked at me and said "BOGO." For a moment I thought I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. I looked at her and said, "excuse me?"  You see I have a dog named Bobo and I thought she was making a reference to one of my dogs. She smiled and said, "BOGO." I said, "Bogo" and she smiled again and said, "Yes, BOGO. Buy One, Get One free" I smiled and nodded as if I was up to date on the coupon lingo.

What seemed like an hour later when the cashier was done scanning the items and their coupons I was stunned to hear him say, "That'll be $11.89"  They got their change from the $20 bill they handed the cashier and turned and smiled as they walked away. These spinsters were walking out of the market with a truck load of food and because they had coupons and were buying items that were Bobo BOGO, they were paying way less than $20.00.

I had my fresh-cut flowers and a handful of other items scanned and the cashier said, $31.46, that just doesn't compute in my noggin.

Blessings,

Ava

xox

 Photo of Ava Aston 2011 © Ava Aston All Rights Reserved

Who Let The Dogs Out?

Today's blog is written by Guest Dogger Bloggers BoBo, Itty Bitty, Punkin and Pookie.

Enough of this crap. The four of us can only sit back for so long before we were compelled to speak up against the so-called goody two shoes image our Doggie Mommie Ava is trying to paint of herself on this blog.  As that pudgy TV psychologist Dr. Phil says, "Get Real."

She is always talking about how healthy she eats. Well this is some of the crap that really goes on in our house. Last night she was watching a movie and when the movie got over around 1 am she ate a candy bar! That's healthy? Mom said it was something called a Zone Bar and Mom assured us it was really healthy, but hey, it has chocolate and it is all gooey inside. We say that is a candy bar no matter what she calls it. Well if it was so healthy why didn't she give us a small bite? We would understand if it was real chocolate because we can't eat chocolate, that would make us poop ourselves to death.

Our Doggie Mommy is always telling us to pick up our doggie toys, yet a quick glance around any room in the house and it is scattered with wall-to-wall sneakers. Why doesn't Miss Fancy Pants learn to pick up her own stuff if she expects us to pick up our toys? Sounds like a double standard to us. But her noggin doesn't see it like that.

We're not going to lie, all 4 of us are dogs and we all love to sleep. In fact sleeping is one of our favorite pastimes. (well Bobo also likes licking his own butt too) But none of us can sleep as many hours as Miss Van Winkle can. Holy crap, we had never seen anyone take so many frequent 4 hour "power naps" as she does. She says she needs her beauty sleep. We will give her that, she is pretty.

Our Doggie Mommy says she is Greek. We are doubtful of that. We think she is just making up a fancy pedigree of her own.  We know a terrier mix down the street who says he is a bichon frise. Our Doggie Mommy is an actress after all - so nothing will surprise us.

Another thing about our Mom Ava that gets us hot under the collar is how she treats her manager Mr. Bricks. She treats him like...ahem, a dog. We like Mr. Bricks, we think he is a funny old man. Whenever we see him he always has food in his pockets like old cookies or half eaten sandwiches to feed us. And Mr. Bricks always gets down on the floor to play with us and scratches our bellies. We all giggle when he tries to stand up because he usually wobbles all over just trying to catch his balance. We think it is hard for him to stand up because he is over weight and he has that lazy eye. Whatever the reason its kinda funny to watch and we like Mr. Bricks. We feel bad for him and just wished our Doggie Mom would not boss Mr. Bricks around so much.

Another thing that is not fun in the Aston household is watching TV with our Mom. OMG, I think we all would rather get sprayed by a skunk than to have to sit through a night of TV watching with her. We don't think she knows that when she screams at the TV the people can not hear her. How blonde can she be? I mean we're dogs and we even know that they can't hear her. She says she thinks Mr. Bricks should lose weight and eat healthier, yet one of her favorite shows to watch is "The Biggest Loser" - which is all about fat people who use to eat doughnuts, but now have that lady Jilliann yelling at them to eat right, keep working out and to get a positive attitude. Hmmm, that kinda sounds like a typical phone conversation Mom has with Mr. Bricks on a daily basis.

Well, you-know-who is awake now and she needs to use this computer to check for email and to update her Facebook, Twitter, Ping and YouTube pages, which she does like a bazillion times a day instead of paying attention to us. So we better sign off for now.

So hopefully we shed a little light on Ms. Goody Two Shoes and you can get to know her like we know her. Don't let her pretty face fool yah. But we do hope you continue to enjoy her blogs, enjoy her music and her wicked fun sense of humor. Just be glad and count your lucky stars that you don't have to live with her. To borrow her favorite word...it's Muckery!!

Love and Fishes,

BoBo, Punkin, Pookie and Itty Bitty

(Woof, Woof)

xoxxoox

Knick-Knack, Paddy Whack Give a Dog a Bone

Me and Bobo

The other night at around 9:30 pm (after hours for any vet) Bobo, one of my little furbabies started uncontrolablly shaking. I thought he might be having a seizure. So I wrapped him in one of his dog blankets and packed him up with the other 3 in the car. I knew things were not good for my little Bobo.

I headed for the vet and my mind started racing, as much as I wanted sugar plums to be dancing in my head there was no fancy fruit doing the jig -- instead there were just dollar signs jumping over fences and taunting my Greek little noggin.

Now for me, if any one of my 4 little canine babies get sick or need help I don't care what it costs, they are getting what they need, Stat. That's just how I roll.  They are more valuable to me than any amount of money in the world -- but at the same time, I just know what an after hours emergency vet visit would cost -- and that thought wasn't too far out of my mind either.

As we were driving around I noticed Bobo stopped shaking. In fact he even climbed from the front seat and had joined the ranks of the other 3 dogs in the back seat. Well this was certainly a positive sign I thought.

I decided to drive around a little bit more before I decided to help a veterinarian (I had never met)  put his kids through college. In all fairness to the vets out there, I realize your after hours prices are high to discourage people from calling them in the middle of the night for a case of doggie diarrhea. The the vet still has to get up and do a 12 hour day in the morning and then they will be on call again the next night! So guess I would charge high prices for emergency calls as well.

I was just giddy because Bobo was coming back to his normal self without the vet looking at him. Now this might be wrong for me to think like this -- but as we were driving around,  and with all 4 of the dogs seemed to be doing well - I realized the Greek Girl just saved about $300 - $400 by not actually having to go to the vet, thanks to Bobo's miraculous recovery.

So when I drove past Kohl's I fought a good fight, but the car won -- I (the car) pulled into Kohl's, left the dogs in the car with my Sweetie and went inside to check for any bargains. And no I wasn't on a sneaker hunting expedition this time -- just looking for any good old-fashioned Christmas sales.

45 minutes later, and with my wallet  $150 lighter I emerged from the store. Bobo and the dogs were all happy to see my return. They never know if and when I will return when I'm out shopping. In fact if the doggies could talk (well actually they can, but I will leave that for another blog at another time) I was saying, if the furbabies could talk they would have a nickname for me. They would call me "Ave the Great."  Yah, for all of the right reasons because I spoil the snot out of them, but also because I can do magic. Yep, I can walk down the street and within seconds I can turn into a mall.  Amazing!!! tap, tap hello is this thing on? Can anyone hear me?  Come on folks I'm using my A material here.

As I was driving home I tried to think what was behind Bobo's shaking episode. And then it dawned on me...he had been watching the Biggest Loser with me and there was a lot of screaming and yelling going on since it was the finale, I think all of the commotion spooked him.

When we all got home I was much relieved that it was all really much ado about nothing with Bobo - so I gave him his typical night-time dog bone, a hug and also gave him and extra set of Mommy kisses -- just to let him know how much he is loved.

Have you hugged your dog today?

Blessings,

Ava

xox

PS Don't forget the Christmas Bonus Buy on my CD's!! Only 3 Days left.