For the past 3 weeks or so I have found it difficult to breath. Not just after a good run chasing birds but even when I am just lounging (which we all know I love to do). I do not believe I am that out of shape that I should get winded walking from my food bowl to the couch but there you have it. I wheeze and whistle when I breathe. My two-legs thought it was funny at first. Chalked it up to my getting older and being out of shape. Then I started hacking when I got excited. I never coughed up anything, just clearing my throat I suppose; however, it started to get less funny for my two-legs. Then, on Saturday, it got even less funny, I began to cough little specks of blood.

I am very upset. I am going to jump.

My two-legs and the skirted-one took me over the Animal Wellness Center on Main. They recommended I go to the Pet Medical Center to get some X-Rays. Little-big-bro was left at home for all this. He missed out on the fun.

I did not like it there. First off, there was a non-dog 4-legs just hanging out in the lobby. My two-legs went over and had the nerve to pet her! I got so upset that I promptly hacked and coughed blood on their floor. They then proceeded to whisk me into a little room. I guess they do not like it when you get your fluids on the middle of their lobby floor.

In the tiny room my two-legs proceeded to perch me on top of the little metal table suspended a good 4 or so feet off the floor. I did my best to claw my way back on to my two-legs but neither he nor the skirted one would let me down.

I went through the normal exam. Weight. Thermometer (not in my mouth). And then prodding by the V-E-T. She said my breathing was not normal. (She also said I seemed a bit skinny, suck on that two-legs and feed me more dinner!) Next on the agenda was X-rays. My two-legs was not invited to join us. Frankly I blacked out once I left the room. When I awoke I was in a cage, yelling. I do not like cages. I especially do not like them when I can see my two-legs standing 6 feet away looking at pictures of my innards. I was not a good dog.

They drew some blood (again I had blacked out at this point as my two-legs and the skirted one had left me alone in a cage) and soon I was back in the arms of my master.

Tests are currently being run. Word on the street is I have largish specks in my lungs. It could either be fungus or cancer. I am rooting for fungus as I do not think I will look good bald.

I should know more this week and will keep you posted. And in case you missed it, I posted another one of my back dated posts. I can’t believe in another 3 months I will have been here a year!

It is I, Ruffles! Did you miss me?

So, where to begin. We will start with the basics. I haven’t posted since June of 2009. Can you believe it has been 7(ish) 4-legs years since I have last graced you with my wit and candor? I had some posts in drafts which I have now finally posted, you should see them back dating to October. I may back date some other posts I had been working. I may not, you never know.

I still live with my two-legs, big-little-bro, and the skirted one. So the people have not changed but the surroundings sure have. I no longer am forced to spend my days in the gray, drizzly, cold weather of the Pacific Northwest. I get to be a California boy again! Ah, sun, surf and sand.

Look at how handsome I look on the beach (OK, by the beach, 4-legs are not allowed on the beach)

It would be great if I liked any of those things. I get sun burnt and hot, I hate the water, and sand gets everywhere. The change of pace is nice though.

Life has been pretty status quo for me. Sleeping, eating, chewing. I have learned a few tricks (I can lie down!) and my new digs are much more conducive to the life of a 4-legs (I can let myself out to go poop!)

I have a few good stories that I will fill you in on in the coming days. I vow to you, my dedicated readers, I will not vanish for weeks, months or even years at a time.

I will keep you informed of my happens and hopefully continue to entertain you with my unique take on life as a four-legs in a two-legs world.

** I was going to call this post “Back in the Saddle” but then I got the damn Aerosmith song stuck in my head. It has been rattling around in there for hours now. Out of spite, I changed the title. That will teach them to make catchy songs…

Smells! We four-legs have noses that are 10, 100, possibly even a million times more powerful than even the best two-legs nose. As a schnauzer, I may not have the best nose, but it is pretty darn good (my ancestors were ratters and those critters like to burrow). Our noses were designed for smelling. We have deep folds and pockets to trap odors and particulates, huge clusters of nerve endings all around to quickly past the smells to our brain, and those little slits on the sides of our nose, those are so when we exhale, we do not blow the scent away from directly in front of us. Pretty sweet. So when I got to my new home I was overwhelmed.

A cleaned house still has plent of old smells.

My two-legs and I had just pulled up to the apartment and already I was pretty excited. I love new places and was sick of the smells in his car (dust, fast food, and funk) and was itching to run my sniffer over this place. The previous tenants had done a decent job cleaning up, but they were no match for me…

There was a chair there, a rug here, the dog slept over here, and had an accident over there. Someone dropped perfume on the rug in the bedroom. Oh, a bit a dried old food (nom nom nom). And so on and so forth until my olfactory senses were pooped.

This place was big too, probably as big as the first two places in Seattle combined. Good solid hardwood floors for playing and running, soft carpet in the bedroom for napping. And with no furniture there except 3 boxes and my dog bed, I had the run of the house!

oh, oh, oh, and there is an outside. For the first time since I lived in San Jose I finally have a way outside on my own. Of course, it only leads to a little concrete path that runs three quarters around the house but it is better than nothing. I can do my business on my own schedule now. My two-legs has no power over me.

Furniture comes in a few days, then all of these old smells will slowly be replaced by my two-legs smells. The memories of old fade and give way to new smell memories (smemories?).

Until then, I am going to keep snorting and sniffing and sucking up all the delicious aromas I can.

Thank the maker for giving me the ability to nap for hours end. I would have gone crazy if I had to stay up for that whole drive. My two-legs on the other hand did have to stay up the entire time, but I think he is crazy anyway so it just added to it. In spite of the old saying, sometimes it is the destination and not the journey that are important. Take for instance our journey. The first half (the pretty half where you go through forests and quaint towns) was all done under cover of darkness. While moonlight treetops are nice to look at for a while, it gets boring. Good timing two-legs…

My bed was in the passenger seat. Gave me a good view (when I wasn't sleeping).

The second half (the ugly half were you drive through straight sun-burnt valleys) was all done in the middle of the day in the blazing hot sun. Oh two-legs, you never learn. This is how I spent my time (see picture at right).

I was stressed, needless to say. I think I had a bone for stress chewing, but it did not help. My time was divided between sleeping and pouting. I probably was not a very good passenger, but whatever, my two-legs stole me away from my home. And who is the boss of whom anyway!

The road just seemed to stretch on forever. A never ending march to a destination unknown.

My two-legs hates to stop too, we stopped my three times on the whole way down, and that was just because he had to refuel. Not because his puppy was bored and wanted to run around and smell things. He never cares what I want to do.

*Sigh*

Ok, maybe I am being a touch melodramatic. I suppose if I rack my brain I could think of a few good things…. hmmm….

There were some good smells at the rest stops, mostly urine, not all of it human. I saw a few birds, smelt some bovines, sheepies, emus, et cetera, along the road. I got a sunburn. Yeah, that was not fun. My two-legs cut my hair too short before we left, then let me sit in the sun in the car for hours… it was to be expected.

Sometimes there were exciting things. The almond trees behind me are not one of them. (note my sunburn)

Coming through the mountain range and into the LA Basin our vehicle died. Putt, putt, putt, pfft. sssssssss.

But it was just a minor snag, my two-legs knows how to get his clunker going again. Some time, some water, some more time, and drive really slowly. We eventually managed to crest over the range and coasted into the basin. Phew!

Near the end of our journey I did start to get excited. My two-legs started to perk up and I felt like we were actually headed somewhere.

And we were headed somewhere. Somewhere new. Somewhere exciting. Somewhere I had never been and would in short order be calling my new home.

Santa Monica.

My new home.

I feel like every time I sit down to bang out a post, I have to start off by first apologizing for not posting more. I have excuses though, and this time good ones. Last month I was stricken with an illness that is all too common for us four-legs. Kennel Cough. The hacking, the wheezing, the licking up my own phlegm. I was not pleasant to be around. I had a pretty mild case but it really stuck with me, I just could not shake it.

So then my two-legs (technically the skirted-one) took me to the V-E-T. Yeah, they spelled it out to try to trick me, but I am smart enough to form simple sounds into words. I do have a brain. Anyway, that involved some booster shots, some probing, some sitting on a cold metal table while a strange two-legs examined me. The one silver lining is that it was confirmed that I am no longer a fattie. Hooray for being average weight! The icing on the cake is that big-little-bro is actually now the fattie. He could stand to lose about 5 lbs. Ha! Fattie.

For the past couple weeks I have honestly been too stressed to do much of anything. It all started mid August when my two-legs left me with a stranger for a few days. Then, when they came back my two-legs never left the house. He was just puttering around the house. Cleaning stuff, sometimes putting things into boxes. Something was definitely happening, but I just could not put my paw on it. Suddenly, in a flurry of activity this past weekend, our beautiful home was suddenly picked up an boxed away. They even tried to but me in a box!

I do not deserve this kind of treatment.

Every time they left the apartment it felt like it would be for the last time. I cried and cried. And pooped on the carpet (they did not appreciate that).  Then, two big burly two-legs came and took everything. All my toys, all my bones, the comfy couch, the bed, everything! The apartment was empty except for the skirted-one, my two-legs, and two sad, worried puppies (and tonnes of big-little-bro’s fur. Just look at the contrast where the bed was):

That dark stuff? Dirt and fur. Puppies are messy.

And then, we all left. Separately. My two-legs and I went to his car and the skirted-one and big-little-bro to theirs. I would not see them again for days.

This is all getting too emotional and I will have to break the post here. I will finish up the exciting conclusion in Part Two: It is Not the Journey.

I used to get spoiled before I lived with my two-legs. I could anything I wanted. But now I have to scrounge. I only get his hand me downs. Take my computer for instance. You would think a hip young pup like myself would be rocking a MacBook Air or something. I do have an Apple computer, I suppose I should be happy about that. But being forced to this this jury-rigged computer is just sad:

A beatup PowerBook G4. My window to the world

My two-legs has had this since before I even existed. Both of the hinges have broken off so the screen just flops around like a dead fish. He “fixed” it by adding decorative string and gaffers tape to hold the screen up. Classy eh?

What’s more, his rigging put serious stress on the screen power cords. Now, every few minutes the screen shuts off. I then have to close the lid and reopen it, hoping it will come back on. If not, I close and reopen. Repeat ad nauseum. I think the power brick cord has a short in it… I keep burning my little paws.

Ugh! Forced to use inferior products.

So I have been pouting, and dealing. You have no idea how long it takes to get stuff done when you have to constantly open and close your laptop, are only surfing the Internet with Wireless B speeds, and have to download photos with a USB 1.1 speed port. Slooooooooow let me tell you.

I have a new system in place though. I just log on to my two-legs nice computer when he is at work. Ha! Suck on that two-legs.

Stay tuned for more of TheRufflesReport!

This was my two-legs second year in attendance. And while four-legs are not technically allowed, everyone there was too high to stop us. Read on.

Phase 1: Infiltration

Like a swarm of red-eyed locusts they descend.

We began by scouting around the primary entrance. This was midday on Saturday. It was packed to the brim. Myrtle Edwards Park is a perfect place to cage hippies. To the West is Puget Sound. Hippies hate water (just go smell one). To the East is a set of railroad tracks, bordered with high fences. At the North end are two small footpaths, one of which crosses aforementioned tracks. And to the South is the primary entrance. Pictured above. We opted to walk the extra mile up to the northern, less heavily guarded entrance. Along the way we met this charming fellow:

A small contingent of hippies trekked with us.

He was taking a break from HempFest to try to find a place to get some beer around here. We directed him to a Shell station half a mile back. Cottonmouth is a dangerous health hazard that affects many fest-goers. As we talked with the hippies we seemed to gain their trust. It is easy for me to blend in with a crowd. I am small, and my hair was pretty shaggy that day. My two-legs is a different story. If there was every a poster boy for a dorky narc, he is it. Add to that the fact he was carrying his giant camera with him. I was so embarrassed.

Phase 2: The chicken is in the Pot

This is the "tame" side of the event

We entered the loosely fenced off area and began to soak up the fun. Pretty standard fare if you ask me. Lots of two-legs, just wandering aimlessly around. Sometimes stopping to look at hemp clothes and bongs, or stand and sway for a few moments in front of the many music stands where generic beats keep tempers low. Mellow man.

Out of the pier, away from the hippies, provides a pretty good shot.

We typically stayed toward the fringes of the event. This was out on the fishing pier. Hippies on the rocks, hippies on the ground, hippies in tents. There was no escape. The big grey thing is the grain tower. The weird art deco thing is the Space Needle. The largest white tent was playing rave music, not typically hippie fare, unless they need to swing those tennis balls in socks like they like to do. The breeze was blowing the sweet smell of freedom inland.

Phase 3: Mary Jane and Me

We were about halfway through, sticking to the coast.

This is probably about half a mile from the last picture. Definitely headed into pot infested waters up ahead. Most of the canopies belong to food vendors. Delicious food. It was really odd though, my sense of smell could not really pick up on any tasty treats, a local source was overpowering it. I did manage to score half a brownie when my two-legs was not looking. Pretty tasty.

This was what my two-legs saw. I just saw ankles.

And then we were trapped. No movement. No direction. Just people. More and more kept piling on behind us. And no one seemed to care. They all just sort of shuffled around and chatted and toked. No pushing. No yelling. Just “This is really strange, man.” and “Do you think we’ll start moving.” We were now about 1000 feet from freedom the main entrance. It turns out, so many people were trying to come in, and so many other people were to leave, it just sort of bottle-necked. And then all order collapsed. My two-legs stood there for a while, then realized nothing was happening, and he was not high so milling around is no fun. We then did a 180 to make it back to the North entrance.

Phase 4: Escape

Going back was basically just like coming in. Push through the hippies.

My two-legs has a pretty good eye for composition. The banner in the background with the event title. The giant pot leaf. And two-legs from all walks of life. Old guy. Shirtless dude. Teeny boppers. Psychedelic shirt guy. Middle aged hippies. Truly all the colors of the rainbow here.

Getting out was pretty easy. Bobbed and weaved. Inhale deeply. Check out the scenery.

This two-legs was making crazy sounds come out of this stick. It fascinated the hippies.

Phase 5: Rest

All in all it was pretty darn fun. I got to explore all afternoon with my two-legs and he got to take pictures and observe other two-legs. And the best part is big-little-bro did not get to come. Karma for all the times the skirted-one takes him on walks without me. I will bet he never gets to taste colors like I did.

My two-legs is a huge nerd, and having lived around him for a few years his nerdiness has begun to rub off. I asked him to set up Google webmaster account for my domain. It has some cool referral stuff, and shows where your page is ranking in searches (there is much more cool stuff in there but I have not figured out what it is for yet). Page ranking is a tricky business. Companies spent untold amounts of money trying to get their web pages ranked number one on the various search engines. I know personally that I never go beyond the first page of Google results. If it did not come up at the top, I probably did not define my search properly. Page ranking also varies on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. You may be king for a while, but someone else is always trying to knock you down. Let us see how TRR ranks with the Google:

You can try these out, none really worked for me.

These are results from the last 7 days (there are even weirder ones further back). I tried most of these links, and could not find my little corner of the web. *Sigh*
One that was very interesting (and for whatever reason not shown here) is I rank in the top 10ish for “what is ruffles” and of course, number 1 for “the ruffles report.”
But, are people honestly going to be searching for me? Like one day they think, “oh, I wonder if any dogs named ruffles are blogging about themselves” No. They are probably going to find me via referrals (or “friends”).

The two-legs’ web host has some decent tracking tools, one of which is the referral URL (how people got to my site). The top referrer is… *drumroll* … valria.wordpress.com! She has sent me a whooping 85 unique visits for the past year. I have no idea if they stayed to read anything, but I like to believe they did… I can hope.

Suck it Bing!

Here is some of the other data (because I know everyone loves to look at stats). Pretty standard stuff, except for the flux of people who found me via domaintools.com using a whois search… I guess therufflesreport.com is more valuable than previously thought. Hooray for land grabs.

And just for the fun of it, let us look at the number of unique visits to my little blog here:

Check out July, thanks for the support in my sad times!

So, why all this talk of visitors and referrers and other things you probably do not care about. Well, I was checking out the tumblarity of some two-legs I know (no, my two-legs does not tumble) and lately I have just been thinking about blogging, and internet popularity and all that jazz. I honestly do not know what to make of it all.

Hmmm, I honestly thought I would be able to come up with something more profound than all that, some sort of all all encompassing nugget of wisdom. I have thought on it a great deal (after all, I do nap and think every hour of every day) and I have not reached a definitive conclusion on anything.

“The internet is frickin’ awesome.” (I think we all can agree on that one) There is a great deal of noise though. “But we can generally filter the noise and only get what we want.” But there is just so much content out there. “True but so much of it is just rehashing of previous content and/or junk; so we rank the content.” But who does the ranking? “The crowds.” Hrmmmm. Do we trust the crowd? “Well, we can start with friends and family, see what they like, who they follow, and then build our own little internet crowd.” So, like a clique in high school? “Yes like a clique… no, no, no. It’s better. Cuz they are like, our friends, but we don’t really know them, but they post funny or interesting or insightful stuff, that we like.”  Do you happen to know what an echo chamber is (metaphorically)? “It’s not an echo chamber, it’s fun, and I like it, and shut up.”

The preceding was a conversation I had with myself the other day while looking introspectively at my own internet habits. I spend a fair amount of time surfing the intertubes. Not too much, just enough I would say. Certainly I could be on it more. There are some core sites I visit, I live by my feed reader. Some comics, some tech stuff. I do not really follow any two-legs directly, or any four-legs directly. To be quite honest, there is simply too much stuff out there. To many bloggers, too many tumblrs, two many twitterers, way too much stuff on youtube, quite frankly I just try to block it all out.

But there is a trap there, if I do not follow people, does that conversely mean people will not follow me? If I do not make my web presence known through blog rings, and referrals, and ranking, and search engine optimization, and re-tweeting, and re-tumblring, and generally being part of the Internet community, will I be left blog alone in my own little corner. Is a blog with no readers truly a blog?

Last week, he might as well have been out of town. I never saw him. He would leave the house early, the skirted one would still be sleeping, I would be nestled in my little bed. He would just get up, shower, and walk out. We were all still asleep. Sometimes he would not even pet me goodbye. How rude!

I would have to sit at home all day, napping and dealing with big-little-bro. He would stumble in with the skirted one at 2000 or 2100. Then we would take a quick jaunt around the block. Then he would go back to bed. Is that lame or what? If I was lucky he would pet me for 20 or 30 minutes before going to sleep, but those days were few and far between.

On the weekend, which is supposed to be our time, he mostly just slept. No 4-legs park. No long walks. No nothing.

Yesterday he was all grumpy because a hard drive of his failed. I do not care if lost tons of data. I want to go for a long walk dammit! (He apparently had most of it backed up somewhere, but not everything. Always backup your data, and never buy Maxtor drives.)

Today he left early again. I can only hope this trend does not continue. I am in dire need of attention.

It was just a normal Thursday afternoon. I was napping. Then suddenly he walked in. “O frivolous day! Callooh! Callay!” I chortled in my joy.

I immediately grabbed Frog and began prancing around, to show him just how happy I was.

My back arched in excited as I show him how much I missed him by carrying Frog around.

Big-little-bro kept on trying to steal the show and gain my master’s attention, but I knew he was there only for me. Even though I was so excited I nearly wet myself, I did my best to play it coy. I paraded to one end of the room to the other, all the while dragging Frog along for the ride. This would show him I missed him right? If I cavorted around with a toy larger than I am? I moved so fast I must have looked like a blur to him.

Bounding, skipping, mincing, sashaying, romping, springing, capering! (Boy am I glad I can read a thesaurus)

Then, like dinner, it was gone. The excitement died down. Balance was restored. And my two-legs gave me pets for the next few hours.
He had better not leave me ever again.