Bath Day Post-Bath Photo Shoot

For Cam, it was only one treat-bribed picture. For Reilly, it was all treats or no cooperation.

An always-devoted Camille sits with "Mimi" while "Mimi" chats with a friend.

Is Cam helping "Mimi" at the computer? ;-)

She's trying to escape a picture.

Cam got a treat as a reward for this photo.

Sleepy Sunday, A Rare Time That Reilly Cooperates For Photos, And Uncooperative-For-Bathtime Camille

As "Momma" has written, she stays home with the girls as opposed to going to church. After all, she feels more welcome by them than she does by any church—and she can even get Reilly to cooperate for pictures for churchgoing "Mom-Mom" and "Auntie Michelle". She can also get Reilly to cooperate for photos when she tells Reilly that she wants to show everybody how pretty she is.

As for when uncooperative-for-bathtime Camille has to take a bath, like she had to do today, Reilly can lead Camille into trouble. For example, as "Momma" was typing and "Mom-Mom" took Cam outside to give her a post-bath trim, Ri decided to burst out the back door to go each mulch and get Cam to join her—never mind that Cam had already tried to bite "Mom-Mom" and "Mimi" at least twice while she was getting brushed and trimmed, especially when she was getting trimmed.

Incidentally, "Momma" wonders how she herself's ever going to be able to give Reilly baths—she used to do so when Reilly was smaller and could be given baths in the sink, though "Mom-Mom" didn't allow her to do it. At least when "Mom-Mom" wasn't home, "Momma" wasn't allowed to bathe her—and now "Mom-Mom" doesn't allow "Momma" to help with bathing Reilly. Meanwhile, Reilly has become much-more cooperative with baths than she had been when she was a young puppy.

Forgive the blurriness. Here, I was laughing at Reilly's cuteness (as I recall) and moved the phone.

I had to hold up a ball-shaped peach and my finger to get her to look up for at least two of the pictures.

This one doesn't act so cute when she's biting "Mimi" and "Mom-Mom".

National Dog Day, Women's Equality Day, And Two Canine Girls Whom Bless Their Human Family

Without women and dogs—let alone the two canine girls known as "Reilly Rosalita" and "Camille Dominique"—men would have no helpmates, counterbalances, or best friends. After all, for example (with examples of the examples):

1. While dogs are "man's best friend[s]," for men to be without human best friends was not good.
2. Some of the best dogs have been female dogs, and some of the best dog breeders have been women—one case in point is that Reilly was bred by Joyce Fleming.
3. Dogs can be counterbalances to their humans and help make their humans better people, and many women whom are the women behind their men have canine best friends to help them be strong women—both for their men and in general. On the perhaps-unsurprising flip side, meanwhile, quite a few wives and husbands actually end up preferring to be around their dogs more than, respectively, their husbands and their wives.
4. Dogs can protect women and children from abusive men. Who knows, by the way, whether Derek McCune wasn't actually abusing his son—since he abused the well-intentioned dog to death? Another example of a protective dog is a Dogster.com member's female Husky, meanwhile.

In the meantime, Reilly and Camille wish everybody a happy Fluffy Friday, National Dog Day, and Women's Equality Day.

"Do Doggies Pray?", "However Doggies Pray", "However Puppies Pray"....

I'm pretty sure that puppies, including adult puppies ("dogs") like Reilly, pray. I've, for example, asked Reilly and Camille to pray however puppies can pray. I also have a minhag katan leli of taking some anointing oil and modifying the "Birkat HaKohanim" with "Yevarekakh Yehovah v'yishmerekakh"—Reilly is, after all, a girl, and a bark-mitzvah whom seems to get the purpose of being anointed as she lets me anoint her, waits patiently as I pray the blessing, and sniffs in the air as the scent of the oil goes up to Heaven.

An Upcoming Coffee-Table Picture Book Of Reilly & Camille Planned

"Momma"/"Auntie" Nicole plans to work on and somehow publish a coffee-table picture book that focuses on Reilly and Camille. After all, the pictures would have plenty of captions—not to mention other information, including anecdotes such as how jealous Reilly looked like she was trying to bite Camille's face (yesterday, as of August 22, 2016) and that Reilly barked a rabbit out of "Mom-Mom"'s garden (or probably further into it) today (as of August 22, 2016) and at a running-down-the-neighborhood Doberman—two times when she actually should have barked! 

Sunday Morning Antics, Including Dog-Safe Foods & A Provided Clean-Up Opportunity

While "Auntie Michelle" and "Mom-Mom" attend church, the pagan 😉 decides to stay home (The long story short is that "Momma" tends not to feel welcome at churches, and Reilly and Camille have gotten used to me staying home on Sundays—which I used to use to catch up on sleep, and now use to have some time to myself while I'm home with Ri and Cam.). As usual, the "greeting committee" came upstairs to jump on my bed and greet me before I had to go downstairs to watch the house and the just-headed-downstairs greeting committee. In between greeting time and heading-downstairs time, the girls began their morning antics.

With a once-again-blocked-hamper, I had to temporarily pile my should-be-in-the-hamper clothes on the floor. With the opportunity that the laundry pile provided, Reilly took the opportunity to chew, play tug-of-war with, and give to Camille a pair of underwear 🤦🙄😊. To be fair, though, the tug-of-war did get me laughing. After that, Reilly decided to lay by my under-the-bed mattress for belly rubs as Camille chewed her new-found not-supposed-to-be-a-toy chewtoy. Then I got them read to go downstairs—after all, I had to get my shoes on without stepping on Reilly!

After I came downstairs and Cam licked my feet like she hadn't just seen me a few minutes ago, I made myself a breakfast sandwich with hard-boiled eggs which briefly dropped on the floor—and with the Cutco knife dropping with it off of the plate. Since a few hard-boilekd egg pieces dropped, I let Reilly and Camille clean up those hard-boiled egg pieces—after I removed the Cutco knife! I also let Reilly lick the crumbs off of my plate, and I would have let Cam have some had I been able to convince her to go get some crumbs despite that Ri attempted to block her from getting any crumbs—Cam just walked away and let Reilly lick the plate clean.

By the way, bread is not dangerous for dogs; I toasted the cheese first and am pretty sure that Reilly didn't get any cheese, and Reilly and Camille got some of the hard-boiled egg for which they'd been watchingly begging me. 

Tu B'Av & All Different Kinds Of Love, Including Puppy Love

In short, Tu B'Av is the Rabbinic Valentine's Day, which comes after Tisha B'Av (the fast of the fifth month, after Tzom HaChodesh Tammuz—not, as it formerly was, for the "god" [dybuk] Tammuz), and before Yom Kippur and Asara b'Tevet). The rabbis decided that after two months with fasts and before Yom Kippur, a yom l'simcha was needed—including for, I suppose, pets and their feeling-much-better-after-breaking-the-fast owners—of course, making pets fast would be wrong.

As on Valentine's Day, the theme on Tu B'Av is ahavah (love)—of which there are different kinds, with three words for the main kinds in Biblical Hebrew, including "ahavah". Puppies—including adult puppies (dogs) like Reilly and Camille—show ahavah, including for each other and for their masters—and masters' families!

Reilly and Camille, yesh lahen ahavah l'echad achar—after all, e.g., to clean out each other's ears takes ahavah rabah v'g'dolah.

So does playing as roughly as Reilly and Camille do! 

So does napping together and (and as demonstrated with close ups included) inadvertently forming a heart shape and sleeping side by side!

Ying & Yang—i.e., Reilly and Camille. For Example...

1. Both are indeed color contrasts—Reilly is an Offwhite Apricot Maltipoo with angel-wing markings, and Camille is a Apricot Maltipoo with fox-like markings and some white hairs.
2. Reilly is the balance of introverted "Momma", and Camille is the balance of extroverted "Mimi".
3. Reilly is a "Polar Bear Face", and Camille is a "Teddy Bear Face".
4. Cam is more of a foodie and water drinker than Ri.
5. Reilly is bigger than Camille, whom can jump higher due to her small size.
6. Cam usually leads the trouble of going upstairs when she's not supposed to do so, and she won't stay on the bed during naptime. Reilly, on the other hand, usually leads the trouble of barking (as she did while I typed)  and bursting out the back door to eat mulch, poop, and sticks.
7. Reilly is a Patrilineal Maltese (Patrilinealtese?) and a Matrilineal MaltiJew (and you can definitely see what I did there in terms of the talking about the Matrilineal Poo[dle]), whereas Camille is a Patrilineal Maltipoo and a Matrilineal Toy Poodle. Thus, she's a MaltiJew on her dad's side. Meanwhile, Reilly's "Momma" identifies more with her Jewish heritage (and Reilly was even named in a shiyum shel haminhag Ashkenazi), whereas Camille's "Mimi" identifies with her more-remote French heritage (Incidentally, at the reunion, I found that the DeBoys are of Jewish heritage, anyway—not to mention that "Mimi" inadvertently named Camille Dominique after Great-Great-Granddad's paternal grandmother!)
8.  Cam dreads the sound of recycling and garbage trucks, whereas Reilly dreads the sound of a neighbor's macho Corvette.

By the way, blogging about Reilly and Camille provides useful writing practice—if only "Momma"/"Auntie Nicole" could become a full-time writer and stay home with her "kalvbat" and maybe babysit Cam during the day as well as become an analyst-commentator in addition to an author!

Originally On LinkedIn:

One of the common sentiments that I read and hear people express is that the journalism field—from the "mainstream media" to the "right-wing blogs"—are increasingly becoming unprofessional and more driven by celebrity status and entertainment than actual journalism. I myself can see this, even when I read the conspiracy theories about—for example—Seth Rich and Justice Antonin Scalia being murdered by, respectively, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama operatives. There are also commentators and analysts whom are driven more by celebrity status and entertainment that professionalism, and even commentators and analysts have a responsibility to be as objective and driven by the truth as possible—and one example whom I (and others) see as preferring to be a celebrity and showmaster is Sean Hannity, whom would rather promote particularly-Anti-Semitic and criminal businessman Donald Trump than call out Donald Trump's instances of racism (including the racism directed at President Obama, whom he claims was born in Kenya), ableism (including at Sergei Kovaleski), xenophobia (including at Mexico-born-and-naturalized-American Jorge Ramos), misogyny (including at Megyn Kelly, and at his daughter Ivanka and ex wife Ivanka—one of whom he stated that he would date were she not his daughter, and the other one whom he raped and later extorted into retracting her testimony in "Trump v. Trump"), and Anti Semitism (including at Julia Ioffe, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and even his own in-law son, Jared Kushner).

Other fields are just as increasingly unprofessional as the journalism field—among them are the academia, medical, and even law-enforcement and criminal-justice fields, with those like notorious Anti Semites such as the took-a-long-time-to-fire Joy Karenga, nurses whom take sexually-explicit pictures of unconscious patients, and the late Lieutenant Joe Gliniewicz and the should-be-under-investigation-for-perjury-and-evidence-tampering Jose Baez.

The unprofessionalism in all fields, meanwhile, is sadly a symptom of the morally- and ethically-declining American culture—with comorbid symptoms such as a declining work ethic and abuses of LinkedIn, which will become a de-facto social-networking site unless Microsoft and LinkedIn work to restore LinkedIn to its original purpose in the same way that, for example, Fox News had to fire Roger Ailes and restructure the Fox News hierarchy in order to start rebalancing and rectifying the unfairness in which the "fair and balanced" news channel has increasingly engaged.

Incidentally, the same United States that is returning to the production and consumption of organic foods, a balance of modern and ancient medicine, and the use of natural and organic hygiene and house-cleaning products is more willing to restore and maintain its physical health than its moral, ethical, and professional health—as has been since in cases such as the class-action-lawsuit case against the "non-GMO" Naked Juice, which actually fraudulently marketed their GMO-laden products as never having had GMOS in them.