Dear Diary,

Hello. It is me, Charlie. Murphy. Charlie. Murphy. It is Murphy. I have some things to get off my beautiful, tufted, flaxen thoroughbred chest.

The rodent “dog” that has come to live with us thinks I am a cow. He is super stupid.

Ha ha. “Super stupid rodent.” I should be that for halloween.

He nips at my heels every moment I stand. Or walk. Or stand. Or breathe. He does not know how to walk. He only hops. That makes him a rabbit. I prefer to say “rodent” though.

I like to stand. Now I must sit all the time he is out of his cage, where he belongs forever, or snap and growl at him which I do not like to do because that is unbecoming for a dog of my lineage.

I am a golden retriever. We do not growl. Except at rodents and people who walk up to my front door and want to sell windowssidingroofdeckstrimguttersordoors to my lady. But rodents? We growl at rodents all the time. Like the one here they call Charlie who has come to not go away again.

If he is not nipping at me, he is trying to eat his own tail. He is so stupid.

The lady has started to snuggle with the rodent. That makes me sad inside. Then she gives me a pat and a long hug and some steak. Then it is not so bad.

The rodent does not get steak.

That makes me happy.

I have to go. The rodent is coming back from his time being outside watering the plants and making dirt. He does not do it outside very well. He thinks the inside is our outside. That is what comes from being born in a hole.

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Rodent, er, Charlie here.

I am now almost four months old. The lady put a box with a long tube on it against her face and pushed a button to get this image of me:

Do not listen to that big blonde. HE is the stupid one. We took the lady for a walk the other day. We showed her the giant birds that sit on the frozen water. Murphy said they are “stupid, no-good geese.”

I am sad.

My image of the lady as perfect has been chewed up and left for someone else to pick up.

She told a lie to a strange man on our walk. First, she let him touch me; that was not so bad. Then she told the man that I am a “Cape Breton cheveaux mauvais” for a breed. The man said, “Oh.”

HE BELIEVED HER. SHE IS A SERPENT. HE IS STUPID TOO.

I overheard her talking to the tall boy a couple days ago. HE said that those words mean “bad hair” in French. Look at that picture of me again. Does that look like bad hair?

And what is Cape Breton but a very cold place where ‘bad hair’ is ok because people wear hats all the days??

She said her friend from high school (low school if you ask me) came up with “Cape Breton.” It is a place so far away that no one can say it is untrue because nothing lives there. How can it? It is not here.

Humans lie.

They make “going to the kennel!” sound very fun. They call me and say, “Come here, Charlie! Time to go kennel!” and they have treats and then they close the door and lock it. When I am finished with the treats, they are in bed. Or watching the pictures on the wall.

What happened there? I lost. That is what happened. I am cut off from the paper on the wall near the always cold water bowl in the small room; I am apart from the things with strings the humans wear on their feet. The lady wears the kind that are long and have fur inside them. I miss those the most when I am in my crate.

I am training them still though. When I go by the door they get up. Fast.

Living here is different than living in South Carolina where there were no rules. I have tried to reach out to Murphy. He is stuck up.

I love to decorate and arrange furniture. The humans do NOT know how to live.

I am also an artist: That mark on the wall? It is a Charlie original. I was helping the lady catch the cat when she had a basket of clothes in her arms. She slipped off the bottom step and the collar she wears on one arm made that mark. I helped her do that.

This is me playing the piano. I was playing the same song again and again: “Chopsticks.” I hate that song. I wanted to play “He’s a Tramp.”

I heard the man in the house yell something about snowmen and wanting winter to stop.

But I like winter. I like to sit on the deck and stalk our cat.

If I can’t encourage him, the lady tries:

When I am not in my kennel, I am doing lots of things, most of them get the lady to sing out loud at me, “Nooooooo! Charrrrlieeeee!”

But even when it is quiet, and I am doing nothing wrong, I am afraid I am doing nothing right. Here I am watching TV with one of the humans.

Murphy told me a joke the other day and I tried to tell him one back. I laughed. He did not.

Because I run everywhere and slide into things, the lady thinks I am a “spaz.” I do not know what that means. I am just getting used to being Canadian. I am a puppy, and that sliding into things thing is normal for me. She gets it but she does not like it when I do this on our walks:

Also, she will not let me have the goose food. Do you see that little piece of goose food on the ground? she keeps on calling it “LEAVE IT!” but we all know it is “EAT IT!”

So to stop me from getting her to rest on our walks and to keep the goose food where it is, for the gooses to eat, she got me a collar that a horse wears. I do not like it.

 

But the small one does not understand how stupid that collar is; so I have trained him to let me pull him wherever I want. Here in this picture, Murphy, the blonde, is trying to catch me laughing at me.

But the lady keeps putting that collar on me.

Bye. For now.