Hi everyone; it is I, Mani the purebred border collie. I forget what I’m supposed to say next.
Oh. Thanks for all the comments on my first post. I couldn’t respond to every one, because I’m little, you know.
I slept in my portable fort next to the bed upstairs last night, with a night light on. I made the guy who brought me here get up at four o’clock in the morning, which he said was “perfectly okay”, though later he seemed to regret saying that.
I had some breakfast, played some with the guy who brought me here, and then discovered that there was a basket of toys in the living room. There was one in particular that I liked a lot, and you can see by the blurriness of the pictures how fast I was enjoying chewing on it. It belonged to Chess, of whom I’ve heard a lot. 
The chicken next to me is pretty fun too. It makes a honking sound when I chomp on it. When I chomped on the guy who brought me here’s fingers he just laughed. There don’t seem to be very many rules here.
I can take naps whenever I want to.
The guy who brought me here said he thought maybe he might call me “Keith”, because it looks like I wear eyeliner, which I don’t, but he thought that was really funny. I think he’s just jealous because he can’t take a nap with his tongue sticking out. You have to be fairly advanced to be able to do that.
He also thought I didn’t know how to climb stairs. “I guess, with feet that big, you probably can”, he said after I showed him I could. 
I already saw the room upstairs so I didn’t feel like going all the way up.
Speaking of upstairs, I understand that this is basically a gardening blog, and so I have to talk about that for a minute. It helps me take a nap if I talk about that, some. It’s not very interesting to me; right now, anyway.
Well, the guy who brought me here told me that he’d been sowing seed of this rare cactus, Sclerocactus mesae-verdae, outdoors in pots, for twenty-five years, and nothing had happened. Einstein would have had something to say about that, I think. (We purebred border collies are born smart, if you didn’t know.)
So then just recently he decided to try “chipping” the seed, which involves a watchmaker’s loupe and a razor blade (which I’m not allowed to play with), and the seed germinates in, well, as long as I’ve been here. Hardly any time at all.
Okay, well, that was boring. I think I’m beginning to like the guy who brought me here, and he seems happy with me, though he has some sad moments too. Someone else lived here who would have loved me, he says. I heard him make an appointment for me this afternoon, which I don’t like to think about, and he did stick me in the big new fort he bought, which you can see in the first pictures of me, so he could sleep a little (because of the four in the morning business), but after the sun came up and it got kind of warm outside, we both went out in the back, and if you haven’t seen this blog before, you would never guess what was out there.
A big back yard. 
I found a honey locust pod. The guy who brought me here said all the border collies who’ve lived here have enjoyed snacking on them.
Then I looked around more. I ran through the snow; it was really excellent. But mostly I surveyed my new territory.
The guy who brought me here says he’ll put a fence around the plants that could stick me. I think that’s a nice idea. I’ll eventually learn to avoid them, because all the other purebred border collies who’ve lived here have. We’re all different, but in some ways all alike, if you know what I mean. 
My yard goes all the way to the back. 
I guess I should stop now. I wasn’t hugely happy being dragged away from home last night, but I think I’m going to like it here.
the miserable gardener 