Tuscumbia-I must explain, I have these three rescued Border collies that keep me young. By that I mean, they are always busy, and those of you familiar with Border collies understand what I mean. Just multiple it by three times. Border collies are constantly on the go even up to the day they die. My three are known as the ‘Hooligans’. Google hooligan Border collies and you’ll find some of their adventures.
Two Christmas’s ago I decided I wanted to do a nice Christmas card with my three wearing big red bows and seated around me while Mom took our picture. No problem right? What transpired next was a big series of bloopers. At one point I’m holding Patches and Blackie apart to prevent a fight. I’m sitting at my computer going through all of the pictures that we took and not a useable one in the bunch. A light bulb came on and I decided to do a collage of the bloopers on the cover with a Merry Christmas message on the inside and a letter to Santa on the back from the Hooligans explaining the perfectly good reasons why they got into the things they did.
Christmas of 2011 they were in Santa hats. One of the pictures was of Patches running across the yard with the Santa hat in her mouth. Again the letter was a reasoning of why they got into the things they did. The 2012 card, I attempted to put the hooligans in antlers and these red pom pom things. Again the letter to Santa was, well you get the drift.
Merry Christmas from the hooligans!
Mom decided to that we needed to make a Christmas card again this year. She is not going to learn isn’t she? After we nixed last year Santa hats and the Christmas bows the year before, we thought surely she wouldn’t try anything this year. We even snuck the Santa hat out of the garage and played tug of war with it until it came apart. They just don’t make things like they used to. When Mom came home she thought a cotton picker had driven down the driveway going to the field behind the house. Well it turns out Momma wasn’t planning on using the Santa hats this year. She decided that we were going to wear reindeer antlers and this little red ball thing this year. We just didn’t want to do it and had other ideas. After Mom chased us around and kept putting the antlers back on us several times she finally gave up. We hope you have a Merry Christmas; Patches, Blackie, and Levi, oh, and Mary.
Hooligans letter to Santa:
Santa we’ve been very good kids this year. Mom was digging in the garden and lost some daffodil bulbs and we found all of them for her. Wouldn’t you know it she lost them again and also some fingers looking like bulbs. We found those for her. She’s so very forgetful as she lost them another time and we had to find them for her again. When she is planting in the garden we help her by digging holes for her.
When the wireless fence was broken we didn’t want to worry her so we went visiting the neighbors while she was at work. We meant to get back before she got home, but she came home early that day. We just hate that she had to be out in the cold all day Saturday putting a new wire in the ground because of it.
We keep busy catching mice for her, but for some reason she got upset when we dug up those trees down in the lower forty. We just thought they were in her way while she was mowing grass and really thought we were helping. And we thought those daylilies and iris that we dug up chasing mice were big clumps of grass that needed to be weeded out of the garden. After all, the best thing in life is to be able to roll in fresh garden soil. How were we supposed to know that she had just planted those new beds that we were running through and wrestling in? She had just dug it up and we thought the fresh dirt was for us.
Those things that we drug out of the garage into the yard, we just wanted to put them in the trash for Mom, but we couldn’t open the lid to the trash can. Honestly Santa. And if we knew that she was going to send out our Christmas card with all of the tomfoolery on it, we would have posed nicely, honest Santa. We will do better next year.
And that downspout we pulled off of the house, it was an accident. We were shaking it trying to get the lizard to run out, honest Santa. That screen we tore out, well the lizard ran out and we grabbed it and accidently bit into the screen instead. Those lizards are faster than a Border collie.
We’ve really been good Santa. When Mom comes home after a long day at work smelling like the hospital Levi rubs himself all over her to get the country smell on her good clothes. When it’s been raining and we’ve taken a bath in the garden, we are very good to share with Mom and get her wet just like us.
And that pair of pliers we chewed the handles? We were only trying to pick it up to bring back to the house after Mom forgot it. Honest Santa, we didn’t know she was coming back to work on the faucet some more. Oh and that tree that the cicadas killed that Momma was saving for her article? It was propped up near the garbage can, so we thought we could trash it for her, honest Santa. Really we did. We help by leaving Mom presents of mice at the end of the driveway and all she says is “what have you been rolling in? You stink, and I hope you haven’t dug up something important.”
Anyway Santa, please bring us some chew bones, and good biscuits, none of that healthy stuff or stale multigrain bread that she feeds us. Also we want another one of those tires with the rope on it. We lost the one you brought us last year again. We think the coyotes are stealing it when we are asleep. Also we asked you for this last year and you didn’t bring it for us, another one of those roll around play balls. Blackie left it the front yard and Mom accidently ran over it with her tractor and its lopsided and hard to roll. Patches got hungry when Momma had to work over late and tried to eat her pull rope and lost the stuffing all over the yard. Mom said she was going to tell Santa not to bring us anything that has stuffing in it.
Please bring us a large bag of raw hide chews and each of us a big bag of dog biscuits, but don’t bring those healthy ones that Mom gives us each day. We also want a triple amount of our dog food. Mom had us on a diet and dieting time is over now that it’s Christmas. Honestly Santa, we’ve been good this year.
Patches, Levi and Blacki
