MY LATEST ADVENTURES, by Nicky

Recently, I've had two adventures with Mom, except that I don't have any pictures of the first one because Mom did not take her camera.  But I can tell you about what we did, which was to go to a place called The Ceramic Cafe.  There were a whole bunch of greyhounds there because we were trying to make some money for REGAP (Retired Greyhounds as Pets).

After we got there, each of us dogs got paint put on the pads of one of our front feet, and then a lady pushed a ceramic tile up against our foot.  Mom picked a color called "jade" for my footprint.  It was weird having my foot painted, and the footprint turned out kind of smudgy, but I didn't care because I just wanted the paint to get washed off my foot so I could go back to being normal again and sniffing other greyhound butts.

But Mom thought she should also paint something on the tile -- as if my footprint wasn't enough -- so she did, but she wasn't very happy with how it turned out.  She wrote NICKY, because that's my name, and she also wrote "Greyhound Extraordinaire," because that's what I am.  Also she wrote the date and she made a sort of squiggly border around the edge of the tile.  But like I said, she didn't like the end result very much.  She said the thing that she had to write with was hard to control, but I think that was just an excuse for not having any artistic talent.  I would show you a picture of the tile, except that we had to leave it there to be glazed and cooked in a kiln, and then we can go get it on Thursday.

So that was our first adventure.  And the second one was Saturday, when Mom and I went to a little park in a part of town called Raytown, where Mom doesn't know her way around very well.  And of course, we got lost on the way there, even though Mom had looked at mapquest before we went.  But finally we found it.

The reason we went there was to attend a thing called "Bark in the Park," where there were a bunch of doggy activities and booths and stuff.  We were at the REGAP booth, and I was an ambassadog to show how wonderful greyhounds are.  The other greyhound there looked a lot like me, and he was almost the same age.  His name was Hiway, and he was the same color and everything, except he has a black muzzle and I don't.  People kept asking if we were related, but we're not.

We saw all kinds of dogs there.  Here are some of the breeds we saw:  pomeranian, chihuahua, English bulldog, Great Pyrenees, border collie, shih tzu, Yorkie, German shepherd, puggle, Aussie, Great Dane, Labrador retriever, schipperke, and Welsh cardigan corgi.  Also we saw a bunch of mixed breeds.  Mom saw a dog she knew from the Humane Society, and this dog is named Abby.  I've met her before because her people like to take her to events like Dog-n-Jog and the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

One of the strangest things we saw was a person dressed up like a wolf.  I guess we were supposed to think it was a real wolf, but I wasn't fooled.  I wasn't scared of the "wolf" either.  He was goofy, but he was not scary.  His name was KC Wolf, and Mom told me he is the mascot of the Kansas City Chiefs football team.  I think he must not be a very good mascot, because the Chiefs lost every preseason game this year, plus also the first game of the real season.  Not that I care, of course, because I'm not really into football.

There was a costume contest at the Bark in the Park thing, but Mom didn't make me dress up and enter it.  We saw this little pomeranian, and she was totally dressed up in sunflower stuff, riding in a little wagon decorated with sunflowers.  We don't know if she won a prize or not, but we think she should have.  Oh, and guess what, Hiway's dad took him to enter the peanut butter eating contest, and he won!  He got a very nice little trophy with a doggy footprint on it.

Well, that was all of that adventure.  But now I am going to briefly mention an adventure that Mel had last week.  Mel was out in the yard after dark, and Mom looked out there and she saw Mel running around like crazy, which he doesn't usually do, especially after dark.  Mel kept looking up our big, tall oak tree, and when the rest of us looked up there, we saw a possum!  Mel had treed it, just like a real hunting dog would do!

The possum went partway up and stopped and he (or she) just stayed there and looked down at us dogs in kind of a taunting way.  There was nothing we could do because the possum was so high up the tree.  Mom went and got her camera and took a few pictures.  Then it started raining, so we all went inside and watched TV.