Dear Dog Diary:

Who doesn't love a parade? Especially one that celebrates springtime in the Columbia River Gorge? T here we were Saturday, on the Dog Diary-mobile, pulled by our mom (part time beast of burden.) That's me, Dude, in front and my little cherry bro, Doodle right behind.

The NW Cherry Festival has a huge parade every year in The Dalles, OR. We just couldn't resist riding our land board down the streets, far from the ocean, in this old school wild western town, famous for its spot on the Oregon Trail. This is Lewis & Clark country. In today's world, this county is well known for growing remarkable cherries. 

So we cherried out our parade rig and surfed on down the street, along the Historic Columbia River Highway.

We were riding near some pretty heavy hitters - Ronald McDonald in a huge shoe-mobile was on our tail.... and in front of our nose was Mr. Peanut and his giant peanut-shaped motorhome. There were real Indians in the parade, real cowboys, fire trucks, Mariachi bands, the Cherry Pit Queens and a hundred other crazy, creative cherry floats.

It was just Doodle and I. Our basset brother Elvis can't do parades any more. Doggie retirement suits him. But we miss his basset stateliness in moments like these.

I am a pirate dog. I was sporting a load of pirate booty - colorful cherries. (For the purists among you, those are not real cherries - which in real life are poisonous to dogs.) But hey, we were riding in a Cherry Festival parade. Just sayin' - no cherry - no parade. So we loaded the booty on principle - not purism.

Pirate dogs are blind. But you knew that.

A million kids at the parade asked me how I went blind - it was glaucoma. Totally treatable in humans but not so much in dogs. Turns out, the basset in me also gave me two genetic defects- one was bad eyes and the other was a dwarf leg. Not that it stops me from surfing or kicking butt in parades.

The eyes felt SO MUCH better once they left my body and went to heaven. Glaucoma is so painful - it is high blood pressure in the eye - not like cataracts or other eye problems where you just lose vision. We used the human eye drops- the kind my grandma Ayers uses - but when your eyes fill up with fluid and your eye drain doesn't work, there's not a lot a little eye drop can do.

And really it was no biggie. Going blind didn't slow me down one bit. 

We made a new logo for the parade and we're trying out the new name Dog Diary.org - hope you like it. A parade announcer called it a dog dairy. Whassup with that? Are today's humans just not up to speed with what a dog diary is? I get it that "diary" is old school. That's the idea. We like old school. And the inside scoop. Dog thoughts. But you knew that, Diary.

Doodle got all wound up about parade horses going by..... very cool old school Mexican riders in the most amazing outfits. With gorgeous flashy horses that ran up the streets - and passed us in the parade! Hence Doodle's barking.

We took home a ribbon - 2nd place! Warrrroooooooo! Something to howl about. THANK YOU NW Cherry Festival, The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce and all of you amazing humans that were there to cheer us on. We LOVE small towns! Here, in the wild west of eastern Oregon - horses, surf dogs and huge shoes run wild and free. Just the way we like it.

See ya on the water,

Dude