Happy holidays, everydog! We’ve noticed by your blogs, that some of you got your Christmas presents really early this year. Mom told us that Dog Christmas falls on January 13th this year (today!), so we can’t figure out why some dogs got their presents so early…

I guess it doesn’t really matter, because today is Dog Christmas, and boy did we celebrate!

[Mom's Edit: Wow, I really dropped the ball on Christmas this year! Luckily, they believed the whole story about Dog Christmas being on January 13th.]

Here’s our tree!

This Christmas shiba came home from Japan with mom. I hope it doesn’t give her any crazy ideas about dressing us up!

Our tree got a new ornament this year. It’s a fox!

This is us seeing our presents and tree for the first time!

I went straight for the monkey from Aunt Laura. It grunts (but not for long)!

Tsuki went for the hedgehog with the tennis ball in his tummy.

Look out, Hedgie!

I’m going to share some wisdom with you. If you tear off their feet, it’s much harder for monkeys to run away.

Watch how the master does it.

If either of these toys still contains stuffing by tomorrow, we haven’t done our jobs.

Tsuki says: What else is there to open?

Tsuki says: I think I must have opened Yoshi’s by mistake, because this one says “Naughty” on it.

I guess an Orbee snowball is okay, but a real snowball would be better. Although, it was rated 5 out of 5 chompers on Planet Dog’s Chew-O-Meter.

An Orbee Frisbee!

A Christmas lightbulb? Made out of Orbee? Santa must be running out of ideas.

Tsuki took her two favorite toys up to higher ground, just in case anyone had any funny ideas about sneaking up on her and taking them.

Tsuki looking pretty in her Christmas collar.

Mom says: We tried to get Yoshi to pose by the tree, but these next two are the best we could do.

Mom says: This one was a raging success, since the command I gave was “please block the tree and all of the presents with your bum.”

Hope everyone had a terrific Dog Christmas!

Happy New Year, everydog!

Hey, wait! Why is Dog Christmas after New Year’s Day? Something fishy is going on around here.

MOM!!!!

We’ve certainly gotten our money’s worth out of the pet bed in our office. Actually, the pets love this bed so much, that we put two more in different locations around our upstairs. They are constantly in use, but the one in our office is probably the busiest. Here’s the photographic evidence:

First, we have Yoshi, the master of ridiculous sleeping positions.

Then, sometimes we have Willie, who is frequently found belly-up. Good thing he’s not a fish!

It’s as if he’s saying, “Mom, can’t you do something about him? He’s hogging my bed!”

Unfortunately, I see the bed as being a first-come-first-served sort of thing, so Yoshi sometimes has to rough it on the floor (or, he could walk 10 steps away, and sleep on the exact same bed out in the hall).

It’s also a place for Tsuki to snuggle with the stuffingless husks of her Teddy Possums.

Or, chew them a little more.

…which is exhausting business.

And, last but not least, is little Desi. Out of all four pets, she’s the only one who will consistently allow any of the other pets to share the bed with her.

For anyone who takes pictures of animals, eyeshine can be one of the most vexing problems, and can ruin an otherwise beautifully composed photograph. Over the years, I’ve tried numerous trial-and-error methods of getting rid of it using Photoshop, and have had some success. Unfortunately, because I never took the time to write down what I was doing, I always found myself reinventing the wheel. Well, today, I finally decided to look up the problem on the internet and see how other people were dealing with it.

I am happy to report that I actually found a pretty good set of instructions. I did have a couple of places where I got confused, so I created another version that includes some comments in the places where I ran into trouble. I hope you find it helpful.

Here is an example of how well this method works (with some additional tweaking to make the eyes look more natural):

Before.

After.