I'm in charge here!

Hello everyone! Penny here. Hope everyone's having a good month and had a good New Year's celebration.

I'm now 10 months old. According to some of the books my mom reads, I can be considered an adult dog. I'm here to tell you that I'm a Big Dog, regardless of what some may consider my diminutive size. At last weigh-in, I was 12.8 pounds of dachshund fury (ignore those people who maintain that I'm a bit....er... "fluffy"... I'm big boned. Yeah, that's it.).Don't I look fierce??

I'm telling you, I'm the one in charge here. My main job is that of watchdog, and it's a big responsibility. I have to keep an ear out for everything!

Did you know that once a week, my humans foolishly leave belongings outside for people to take?? Large trucks drive up and men get out and load the belongings into the truck then drive off! I have to bark fiercely in an attempt to drive them away. They leave, but unfortunately I haven't been able to persuade my people to let me outside to rescue the belongings before they're loaded in the truck. They keep muttering something about "garbage".

And they allow just anyone to walk in front of our house! With other dogs! Really. How careless. These invaders could be scheming to take the rest of our belongings, including all of the dog cookies I've carefully hidden all around the house. I have to bark fiercely to scare them away too.

And that person in the Big Brown Truck! He assaults our house on a regular basis. He sneaks up and rings the doorbell, hears me barking and runs. Coward. If only my people would open the door quicker, I'd show him a thing or two. He'd be wearing my teeth prints in his ankles!

We're even being assaulted from the air! Day after day I hear things overhead that my people say are "airplanes". I just know they're coming for us. Again, it's up to me to bark fiercely. So far, so good. They've all disappeared.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, I have to bark randomly just to scare away anything that might be thinking of approaching our den. My people don't understand this at all. They refer to it as a "mystery bark". It's not a mystery to me; it's a well-honed protection system at work. They just don't appreciate it in action.

I'm telling you, it's a big job taking care of these people. I think I deserve a cookie.