GOLDEN CHAPTER 2

It's yer little Buddy here again. Please don't tell Mary I'm using her compuder2846$#0* (Oops sorry, my big feet got tangled on these darned tiny little keys!) I meant computer. You see, that's why I'm late writing you! She wouldn't show me where the on switch to the computer was cause she said I had to do my homework before I could play! Oh my gosh, have I ever had fun this week! I didn't know there was such a big world out there. Everything is a really neat new experience. I get to go for rides in the truck every day, meet new peoples and do new things.

Mary comes home from work and picks me up every afternoon at 1pm, and we ride to Olean, NY to Uncle Steve's for school. I like school, it's not like what I heard from all the other kidz. I get to play, play, play!

This week I learned that things I never knew about are not as scary as I thought. The big yellow garbage bag in the corner of Uncle Steve's building did not eat me after all! Mary shook it and teased me with it and all the sudden it was fun! For instance, there was this little cardboard box with a monster in it, I just know there was. But then Uncle Steve put my favorite narcotics towel in it and got me to stick my nose in to get it. I wasn't "a scared," I did it!

But then they made fun of me cause my towel was stuck in the box when I proudly carried it around the room. Yup, all you could see were my eyes sticking out of the box stuck to my muzzle. I'm not sure, but I think they were being mean to me when they called me a boxer! Uncle Steve took a picture of me doing my Boxer impression.

We worked a little more on my obedience this week (not that I need it, mind you). I now sit automatically . . . sometimes when Mary stops (I trained her to stand still for this); and, I can do a little bit of a stay. I'm really good at "come" cause I really like my new mom Mary; and I do a great return to heel or "finish." The bestest part is, when I take Mary or Butch out for walks, I never have to put them on a leash anymore, they stay right with me! I am so proud of them!

Now let me tell you about the drugs I'm doing. (A side note: If any of you kids really think that Buddy the Wonderdog would really do drugs, Ggrrrr . . . I'll bite you!) You see, I play with drugs so I can learn to sniff 'em out when BAD peoples hide 'em. I can now do searches for drugs for 20 minutes at a time without even getting tired! This week I progressed from a product called pseudo scent, the stuff that just smells like heroin, cocaine, or marijuana, to the real thing! Yup, I'm a big boy now.

Today Uncle Steve filled my special towel with a bag of real marijuana and then the pseudo scent of heroin and cocaine. He said I can't have the real chemical stuff in my towel cause I could die if I got any. Well, I thought it was just as good as the pseudo scent from last week except that with real marijuana...something weird happened. After every training this week I felt like I wanted to eat Twinkies and watch Pink Floyd movies. Why is that?

Wait till I tell you about my tracking this week! We got to do lots of different stuff. We go to a different place every day and do at least two tracks. Everything new can be a little unnerving for me at first, but my new friends make every new thing I'm unsure of into a game. Like for instance, today on the way back from tracking, Mary took us through this thing called the automatic car wash. Arrrgghhh! It tried to eat our truck . . . Honest! First there was this water everywhere, then this purple stuff, and this blue stuff, and more water, then this big loud air thing. Mary didn't tell me it was OK to be scared. She just kept making it into a game and when I wagged my tail she told me I was such a good boy! (I just did it for the attention . . . I wasn't a scared one little bit! . . . really, I think? You believe me don't ya?)

Anyway, about that tracking. If my new mom wasn't so messy, she wouldn't keep dropping all that food and making me pick it up! We had better watch her weight though. She's not dropping near as much food lately and she's making me go a lot farther to get it! (Just between you and me, I think she's bingeing) Today was cool cause I got to do a track laid by a pond and a creek and I didn't even do my swamp Collie routine.

Now on to the bestest part of my whole week. On Sunday, I got to go to a real search and rescue dog "rubble/disaster" training in Pittsburgh, PA with Mary, Butch, and my stepsister and brother Willow, and Badger. They had a huge area with debris piles all over the place. There were tires, huge log piles, concrete slabs, sleuce pipes, and all kinds of neat places for people to hide. Willow and Badger, along with lots of other real search and rescue dogs got to go find people, and me...well, I was the PR man. Mary brought my towel along (not the "Twinkie" towel mind you!) and had me climbing and playing on all this really cool stuff to get me what she called "socialized." There was even a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The story (which doesn't even talk about me if you can believe they had such nerve) can be viewed here.

Well, as you can tell, I've been very busy. I think I really do like detection dog camp after all! I better get off to bed now cause I gotta big day tomorrow, we get to start at 10am! Oops, I almost forgot. Did I tell you about getting to be in the house with Mary tonight? I did really good till I had a little "accident" on the rug. I'm still dizzy from watching it circle the sides of this scary sounding water dish you humans call a toilet. Talk to you all next week! Until then, stay Golden!

Love and Sloppy kisses, Yer little buddy . . . Buddy
(Send comments or questions to Mary MacQueen)

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