travel orders » Abbey Q. Howley

s.o.s.

Abbey — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:06:33 +0000

Hi there, Abbey the beagle here. It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me, but I need to write now because something very serious has happened — my owners up and left me!

It’s been over two weeks now, and I have no idea where they are. Rumor has it that my boy owner might not be back for quite some time, and let’s be honest, we all know he’s my favorite (I could do without the other two, frankly).

Last thing I knew we were all together enjoying a nice family Christmas.

See how happy we were?

Then, boom, gone.

What did I do to deserve this?

I suspect it might have something to with that new miniature owner. But you all need to understand that it doesn’t count as stealing his food if he is the one to reach down to give it to me! And licking it off his face? Well, once it’s on his face it’s no good to him, now is it? I’m just helping. And yes, sure, one time I accidentally bit his hand going for a cracker, but it was a mistake and I served my time out in the yard and learned a valuable lesson.

If you want to know the truth, my owners have not paid enough attention to me since that little guy came along. So really, I should be the ones punishing them. But I miss them anyway. The lady who usually tags along with the little guy is here tagging along with me now. She lets me sleep under the covers with her so I guess she’s alright. And I hear she also saved me from having to go live in a house with other dogs, because she knows how much I hate other dogs. So that’s good at least, but I’d still like my owners to come back, even the little one. Please tell them that whatever I did, I’m very sorry.

not yet friends

Abbey — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 15:44:00 +0000

That miniature owner really wants to be friends. Me, I’m not so sure. For a long time it was easy to avoid him. I just got up and left whenever the big owners brought him around. But now it’s harder because the little guy has learned to use this contraption to chase me all over the house himself.

Luckily I just discovered a solution. If I just go down this step, one of the big owners will run over and keep the little one from following me.

Phew. I’m safe from having to hang out with him for now.

finally, the respect i deserve

Abbey — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 17:31:50 +0000

Back in my old homes of NYC and DC, I would bark at people on the street and they would just laugh at me. Laugh! Like I’m some kind of a joke!

Well, luckily here in Cotonou, life’s taken a turn for the better. Here, when I growl at people on the street, they cower. When I bark, they scurry away out of sight.

I don’t know why everyone’s finally so scared of me, like they should have been all along. I heard my owners mumbling something about rabies, but I know I don’t have that because I had to get all kinds of shots for it. So I guess it’s just that they finally realized how tough of a dog I am.

Because I am very, very tough… except when it comes to bed time.

You know who’s not scared of me, though? Those pesky salamanders. I hate them just as much as I used to hate squirrels, but they’re dumber than squirrels, I think, because they let me get much closer to them before running away. I’m going to get one of those salamanders one day, just you wait.

the terrible twos

Alex — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 22:56:18 +0000

Today Flynn turns two! Okay, okay — two months, not two years, and he’s really not terrible at all. But it does feels more like two years than two months; it’s hard to remember life before the little guy. It’s probably good we don’t dwell too much about life before Flynn, though, because we’ve already broken a fair number of our parenting resolutions.

Pre-baby promise #1: He will always be dressed in cute clothes.
Reality: Eh, he’s just going to get it dirty soon anyway; sometimes a diaper is good enough.

Just chilling in my duck.

Pre-baby promise #2: We will continue our lifestyle of minimalism.
Reality: That toy makes him bust out the slightest smile? Buy 10 of them!

Imagine how much more fun this will be when my feet touch the ground!

Pre-baby promise #3: Early on we’ll start him on a strict sleep schedule.
Reality: We’re grateful for any sleep he decides to bestow upon us, whenever and wherever it should come.

Yes, I sleep on patio tables. What’s it to you?

Pre-baby promise #4: We won’t let Flynn take too much attention away from Abbey.
Reality: Whoops — totally forgot about Abbey for this year’s family picture. Sorry girl. Maybe next time.

The one picture in which Flynn isn’t crying or sleeping.

Pre-baby promise #5: We won’t burden Flynn with unrealistic goals and expectations.
Reality: Based on his early interest in standing, we’ve decided he should be walking any day now.
Thanks for the help Mom, but I’ve got this.

abbey’s newest trick

Abbey — Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:10 +0000

Yep, time for a diaper change. You're welcome.

i think i’m going on a trip (but I don’t know how)

Abbey — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:15:40 +0000

It’s been a little while since I’ve written a post. Last time I gave you an update I had just learned a great new skill – how to shake. My owners were real excited about that. Well guess what I figured out how to do now? Yep, I can lay on command. I admit I sometimes get confused and lay when I’m supposed to sit, or shake when I’m supposed to lay, but the number of treats I’ve been getting lately tells me I’m doing something right.

At this point you basically have to rub my belly.

In other news, I’ve overheard a lot of conversations about some upcoming trips. The first one seems fun. I’m going back to the midwest! Apparently once the baby comes, we’re going to stay in DC for a while and then head to my vacation home. I love it there because I get to see a lot of people who always give me extra food. (Also, could someone please explain to me what a baby is? I think it’s a new kind of stuffed toy, but I want to be sure.)

The other trip doesn’t make me so excited. I’m getting in an airplane and going over the ocean. That’s not happening for a while, but my boy owner is pretty stressed out about it. He said to someone on the phone that because it might be hot during the summer, some airplanes won’t let me on. If they won’t let me on, I’m afraid I’ll get left here by myself. Does anyone out there have any advice on how to get a (very well-behaved) beagle to Africa during the summer? Please? It’s pretty important.

diplopets need training too

Abbey — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:04:17 +0000

Now that her consular training is done, my girl owner spends her day at something called “main state” and doesn’t get home until almost six o’clock every night. That means I have a lot of time on my paws and I’ve decided that since I’m going to be a diplopet, I need to learn some new skills to help me when we’re at post.

Because I’m going to be meeting a lot of new people, the first thing I needed to learn was how to shake hands. I couldn’t do it alone, so I employed the help of my boy owner. It took a lot of biscuits and a lot of patience, but I think I’ve finally figured it out.

Nice to meet you. Please give me a biscuit now.

Just between you and me, I actually figured out this whole shaking thing pretty quickly. I was dragging it out because I kept getting more food. Don’t tell my owners.

consular officer

Abbey — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 03:42:01 +0000

Lately my owners have been talking a lot about something called “consular training.” Apparently they are almost finished with a class that will teach them how to become consular officers. I’m not really sure exactly what a consular officer does, but from what I’ve overheard, they can help American citizens when they get into all sorts of trouble overseas – like when they get sick or go to jail, or when someone steals the socks they carefully hid under a bed and they want them back because socks taste so good.

Well let me tell you, I could have used a consular officer this weekend. You see, I was all set to enjoy a relaxing long weekend with my owners when, without doing anything wrong, I was sent to jail! They called it a “kennel” but it seemed like jail to me. There was a phone there for dogs to talk to their owners, but I wasn’t allowed to use it. I don’t think I could have heard anything anyway because all the other prisoners were barking so loud.

One time I heard my owners say that a consular officer will usually visit a prisoner within 24 hours, but nobody came to visit me at all! I had to wait three days before I was rescued. I was treated well, by prison standards. And they did give me that wet food I love so much. (They even told my owners I “gobbled it all up.”) But I was still in prison and I didn’t even know why.

I came to find out later that my owners went to New York City to visit friends and see their old neighborhood one last time before something called a “baby” arrives. They even saw the old dog park where I used to go every day! I loved it there, except when other dogs would try to come in. I hated those guys.

I’m glad everyone is back and it sounds like there won’t be any more trips for a long time. But I’m worried about what this baby thing is. I wonder if a consular officer can help me with that too…

the holiday letter & other traditions

Alex — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:09:45 +0000

Abbey is famous! Well, at least among those who will be receiving holiday greetings from us this year. See for yourself:

Unfortunately we underestimated how many stamps we’d need, so quite a few people aren’t going to get a special one. Darn. Not that anyone probably cares about a stamp with Abbey on it nearly as much as we do.

But I must say, personalized stamps were a great invention. A total racket too, but still pretty great.

Anyway, this was our first time participating in the whole holiday letter tradition. We resisted at first — and with good reason, it ended up being a huge amount of work — but we decided that being married with a real job and a baby on the way… that’s about as grown-up as it gets. It was now or never.

Mostly, we decided to do it for the baby. My mom used to send out a Christmas letter every year full of funny anecdotes about my sister and me. I love going back and reading them, and I’d love to give the baby the same thing, even though his/her role in this letter is just a cameo, swooping in and making me suffer for a few months. But still. At least now I have documented evidence of such, which hopefully I can leverage in the future — say, when he/she is an ungrateful teenager. Yeah. That sounds good.

With the baby coming, we’ve also started to think about other traditions we want make sure to take up, such as things we each grew up doing:

Eating chili on Christmas Eve (Andy)
Eating cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning (me)
Reading the holiday book together as a family each year and having everyone present sign it (Andy)
Having a real, live tree with tons of ornaments (me)
Midnight mass (Andy)
Advent calendars with delicious candy (me)

You get the idea.

We’ve also started thinking up some new traditions we’d like to incorporate into our holiday repertoire, like:

Volunteer work Christmas afternoon
Writing a thank you letter to someone who had a big impact over the year

I’ll be curious to see how the Foreign Service shapes our holiday traditions (I’m guessing a real, live tree isn’t going to be an option in Benin, for instance), but for now…

abbey has an announcement

Abbey — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:07:58 +0000

Do I look happy? Yeah, exactly.

But… good news for me! Come early May, I will finally be off the hook. My owners will have a baby to torture with this sort of stuff!

It seems like my owners are pretty excited about this news too, although I’ll let them tell you more about it themselves later.

As for me, I’m enjoying my stay at what I’ve come to refer to as my Ohio vacation home. There are so many rooms to sniff, and a yard too. And I don’t get abandoned as much during the day. And despite an accident on white carpet, they still give me lots of treats. And most importantly, there are no costumes whatsoever.