Get your hankies ready.

Well not my very best friend; that, after all would be my mom. I have to say that because she feeds me, picks up after me, and lets me walk her. She would be upset if I didn’t consider her my bestie.

However, my best canine friend was Ollie. Ollie and I spent many happy hours playing together while we were growing up. Our mommies would get together for coffee or dinner (with lots of wine) and we would be able to run together, jump on each other, and share our toys. Oh, we had such a lot of fun!

Ollie and his mommy lived on Vista which is only a short way from where we live on Barcelona. I know my way there on my own. I just have to go right out of my driveway and when I get to Vista, which is only 4 houses away, go right there and stay on Vista till almost the end.

(This is Ollie, Emma, and me on walking with my human brother, Eric. Ollie is the other Shih Tzu.)

Ollie’s mommy took him to New York for a few months every now and then. Ollie has a human brother there. So when I hadn’t seen Ollie for a while, while we were out walking, I led my mommy right to their house and up their driveway and sat there by their front door. Actually I was sad and crying, as only I can do, because Ollie wasn’t racing to the door to greet me. I was sad. My mommy kept saying “Brady, Ollie is in New York”.  So….. …I didn’t know where New York was. I thought it might be like St. Cloud or Winter Haven, only a few miles away. So I kept taking my mommy there when we walked, but Ollie was never there. “He’s still in New York” she’d say.

Pretty soon, my mom insisted we go left out of our driveway on our walks, she didn’t say why, but I can guess. She didn’t like distressing me because I couldn’t find Ollie.

Then on our trip up to New England we stopped by New York, and there he was, waiting for me in the doorway wagging his tail. We were so happy to be reunited. We ran and played and Ollie showed me his big back yard which is all fenced in. We ran there and played with his canine sister Emma and just had a fabulous time. I sure wish I could do THAT again;

But now I know that will never happen again. My friend Ollie has crossed that Rainbow Bridge; he’ll never again be running to the door to greet me with his tail wagging. I won’t see him for a long while, not till I cross that Rainbow Bridge myself, and my mommy says she hopes that won’t happen for a very long while.

So this is what I think, when I think of Ollie, who will ALWAYS be my best canine friend.

Yep, that’s correct, I’m an uncle. Uncle Brady, that’s me.

My niece is a young pup who belongs to my human brother, Eric. Eric named her Weetamoe. That seemed like a strange name to me, especially for a girl. Who names a girl Weetamoe?  My brother, that’s who.

Well, it turns out that Weetamoe is Algonquin for ‘sweetheart’. Eric is a student of the Algonquin Indians and King Philip and all of that era. You know, don’t you, that King Philip was the  Pokunoket chief called ‘King Philip’ by the English, the bands known today as Wampanoag.

We wonder if maybe Eric is part Algonquin Indian himself, their spirit certainly lives within him. He is happiest when he is outside either canoeing or building fires in his fire pit, or of course walking Weetamoe over at the agricultural high school. We won’t know for sure about Eric’s heritage until we receive his DNA results.

It was a little over a year ago when my mommy changed my name to ‘sweetheart’. She did that when she found out that Tom Brady was voting for Trump. But she forgets it 90% of the time, I guess she’s just too old to remember stuff all the time.

I’ve never met my niece, but I hope to next summer when we go to Massachusetts. I hope she will like me, but she has to understand that I’m not a pup, I’m an old guy, just like my mommy is old. I won’t be able to play as much as she likes to play.

This is Weetamoe: isn’t she beautiful!

Very mysterious things have been going on in Solivita. One of the biggest is about our Turkey Population.

We did have a large turkey population here. For years when I walked my mom in the early mornings, we would see the turkeys getting down, sometimes we would see about 20 turkeys. Turkeys don’t get up in the morning, they get down because they sleep in the trees.

They have a ritual in the morning. Once the leader flies down the rest of the rafter flies down. Then they have a little opening ceremony or a dance, after that the lookout takes off and the rest of the turkeys gradually follow, all while the lookout keeps her distance.

I don’t mind the turkeys at all, they are beautiful and they mind their own business, they don’t interfere with me at all. They are much better than those awful sand cranes that march in wherever they want to and just take over. They are very territorial, they think everywhere is their turf.

I agree with Benjamin Franklin, the turkey should be our national bird. He thought they were a lot better than the Eagle who he said is lazy and not brave because the eagles will wait until other birds catch a fish and then swoop down and take it from them. They also back down when smaller birds challenge them.

I wish we still had all the turkeys but the turkey population almost vanished, for a couple of years, we didn’t see many at all; we don’t know what happened to them. Maybe it is because Maria on the corner that used to feed them got real sick and couldn’t feed them anymore. I’m not sure who their natural predators are, we certainly have enough dangerous critters here including alligators.

It is certainly a mystery but they were gradually coming back, we had several showing up before Thanksgiving, and then—Boom! They were gone again. I have a theory about this, I’ll share it with you, but first, I want to tell you about another mystery.

At our Solivita library we only shelve books that are 10 years old or younger. The ones we don’t shelve are stored upstairs in the administration building. Later they are donated either to the veterans or to the Polk County Corrections Department. A few weeks ago, twenty cartons of these books were stolen after they were placed in a locked room.

How in the heck can 20 cartons of books go missing from an over 55 community. How many of us have the stamina to carry off 2 cartons of books, let alone 20. I have a theory about this too.

You know I did very well when I attended the Canine Comprehensive College when I studied doggie detectiving.

Here’s what I think after diagnosing these two cases. I think the turkeys are smart, they knew that Thanksgiving was coming up, so they went into hiding until that holiday passed. They are reemerging now, so I this this makes my diagnosis very valid.

Further, stolen library books have to be an inside job. I haven’t figured out who carried out this heist, but I’m looking for insiders who seem to be dealing these books on the second-hand market.  When this mystery is resolved, we will all be able to rest easy. We need to get these criminals off of our Solivita streets.