Doggie Heaven Hotel

Still Life With Clover

Here is a portrait of the cuddly Clover after she helped me plant flowers around my giant urn.

Henry and Willie: A Conversation

Even Supermodels Have Bad Days

This is Carmel, a male Standard Poodle.

But, I don’t think Carmel looks much like a boy. I think he looks like a supermodel, thin, all legs, a picky eater—he even walks like a supermodel.


I call him Carmel Macchiato because Carmel Macchiato is a supermodel’s name.

I took Carmel Macchiato, the supermodel, for a run at the neighbor dog park. Away from the paparazzi, he could be just another normal dog. He had a blast romping with the pack—but when he came back to me something was odd.

He still looked like a supermodel.

He still walked like a supermodel.

But he didn’t smell like a supermodel.

Hmmmm. It seems rough play with one of the “country” dogs landed Carmel Macchiato in some bushes. My theory is that a skunk had sprayed the bushes not too long before Carmel doddered through them, leaving Carmel—how shall I say this—rather ripe.

But as I’ve said before, dogs love things that stink.

"Wake-Up Call Willie"

I think that I’m going to start calling Willie my “Wake-Up Call” dog instead of Freight-train Willie.

I find that I can learn important lessons from him, such as:

Birdbaths at Doggie Heaven Hotel are a bad idea.

New planting beds should probably have a doggie fence around them.

Shelves with orchids on them are perfect ledges for dogs to put their large front paws on.

I love having Willie at Doggie Heaven because he is always teaching me something new.

For the Love of Gus

A face everyone can love.

Meet Gustavo, my next-door neighbor.

Gus is a wolf hybrid. He is actually my next-door neighbor’s dog. My next-door neighbor tried to tell me, when he first moved in, that Gus was a huskie.

My next-door neighbor came to my front door with this one-hundred-pound mass of grey fur. I was a bit taken aback when I first saw him and I knew instantly that this was no huskie.

I said, “That dog is not a huskie. He looks like a wolf hybrid to me.” My neighbor looked a little sheepish—no pun intended—and said, “That’s what I’ve been told before.”

He was Gus’s second owner and had rescued him from a bad situation.

At first, Gus’s size kept me at bay but he had that unmistakable look of love about him, that sweet, gentle, if-you-were-bigger-I-would-crawl-right-up-in-your-lap-and-stay-there-forever look.

Rats Among the Ruins.

I want to tell you a story. I have lots of stories because I board dogs. I love dogs. I board them at my house. Don’t get me wrong I don’t keep them in kennels; I keep them in my living room and my bedroom.

Their favorite room is the kitchen I think, when I’m cooking, of course, or maybe it’s under the dining room table when my family and I are eating dinner. With two boys eating meals, there are always spills and food landing on dog heads.

Moondoggie the rat-chaser

Actually, food never lands on my dog’s head—she just catches it and eats it before gets near her head.

Besides loving dogs, I also love to garden. The problem is the two don’t mix—dogs and gardens—they don’t mix at all.

I was inspecting the only part of my garden that I consider to be filled in and planted the way I like it—a huge raised bed attached to the side of my house.

I was almost finished with this part of my garden. There’s no dirt visible—this is what I consider finished, if you can’t see dirt. To my horror, I noticed a cement column with a cement container on top had fallen over, taking with it a fuchsia tree, a princess plant, and a couple of azaleas on it’s way down.

I couldn’t figure out what had happened.

I happened to be with a friend of mine. When my shock wore off I walked toward the side door of my house. I was standing at the bottom of the steps of my side door deck.

Through the corner of my eye, I saw my dog followed by a dog I was dog-sitting, Willie (part lab, part freight train) both jump into the raised bed. I turned to tell them to get out when something came hurtling from the raised bed towards me.

I thought it was a ball; something that one of the dogs had grabbed and lost their grip on sending it flying in my direction.

I was wrong.