Happy Howl-O-Ween!  We’re going to have a little fun here, to kick off the Halloween festivities. Believe it or not, Aria Hounds start prepping for their favorite holiday when they’re still in the whelping box. Aria Hounds “Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts.”  How do we do that?  Well, be patient… there’s more to come on that later!  If you hang in there to the end of this post, it’s story time. I will thrill and chill you with a terrifying tale called: “Pizza, Puppies, and The Zombie Apocalypse.”  (Otherwise known as “The Day Chelle was Sorta Weird and Scared The Pizza Delivery Guy.”)

Hey, you work with what you got. 😀

At the stroke of midnight tonight, we’ll have a “Happy Howl-O-Ween” Coloring page to share, featuring Freckles, Bandit, Two-Spot, Oreo and Minnie – some of our current batch of puppy cuties as coloring-page models, along with their Uncle Barnabas, the undisputed Aria King of Halloween. (He JUST celebrated his 9th birthday, and celebrated by living it up with his adoring puppy minions!  Free to print out that coloring page, have fun with it, share it to any borzoi lovers you like and color the heck out of it and share it around (as long as you give artist credit (-me! 😉 -Chelle). We’d love to see how people decide to color these in, so send us your pictures and we’ll share our favorites on Facebook! Show off your coloring by sending them to info@ariaborzoi.com

And finally, tomorrow on the big day, we’ll be talking about the tricky part of the Trick or Treats – The Treats that are dangerous for our pets, and the Tricks you can use to keep them safe while you have a HOWLIN’ good time! Stay tuned for a list and a handy list of hotlines and a countdown of the scariest things your dog can eat on Halloween.  

And now, for our story…

“Pizza, Puppies, and The Zombie Apocalypse”

It was a hot day in late July when the pizza guy got the call. Somewhere, hidden by a tangle of trees, wild bamboo, and a maze of dusty roads that seemed to wind in to themselves for an eternity, someone had issued a cry for help.  

They needed… a PIZZA!    (Dun… dun… DUNNNN!) 

It was a terrifying, harrowing journey, as his trusty Honda Civic coughed along the twisty road.  Neither his GPS or Google Maps seemed adequate to the task of finding the place, but eventually his car carried him up the hill to where the lonely house – surrounded by a formidable, spiky iron fence – stood all alone.  A grey, stone, beast-like statue grimaced at him, as he rumbled up to park his car in the abandoned driveway.  

As his driver’s side door creaked open, several lanky, gaunt and savage looking monsters appeared on the hill to leer down at him. They eyed him, licking their chops in anticipation.  

Was it the pizza they hungered for, or his very SOUL?  

 

 Gathering his courage, he reached in to retrieve the pouch that held his precious cargo.  Who knew what horrors he must face to deliver it to it’s rightful owner? Would he be safe?  What would become of him?  Searching for answers, he turned to the gate, and discovered a note.  

“Come on in. Shut the gate behind you.  The dog is friendly.  Knock LOUD.”  Frowning at the cryptic message, he did as the note commanded, scratching his head as he approached the house, noticing the door was slightly ajar.  Of course, he thought, It’d be good to have a dog, with all those scary monsters up on the hill.  It was then, that he heard the first groan.

At first, he was certain it was the wind.  Of course, it was the wind!  he told himself.  There are no real zombies in Texas, in July, in the real world.  That’d just be ridic-

That was when he heard the chainsaw, and the answering scream.  

He froze in his tracks, his hand an inch away from the door.  It sounded like HELL had come to live in that stylish Weatherford acreage!  The Zombie Apocalypse had begun, in Texas, in July, in the real world.  And just when he could take no more, two things happened at once…

The door was nosed open by the biggest, hairiest black BEAST of a dog he’d ever seen… AND… The opening bars of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” began to play, just as a chubby lady, dressed in shorts and a tank top with the “Poop” emoji, danced out from the hallway, then froze in place, to stare at him in shock.  

She grinned, cheeks flushing with embarrassment.  “I thought the door was latched.  Sorry about that,” she yelled, turning down the music and gesturing him in as the huge dog tried to snuffle his pizza carrier.  Oddly enough, the music quit, but the Zombie Apocalypse sound effects continued.  She turned those down, too.   “Sorry about the noise, too. The puppies are the right age to desensitize to scary noises, so… Zombie Apocalypse it is. Barnabas, don’t be a dork. He’s not gonna give you any pizza. Leave the guy alone.”

His eyes followed the woman’s gesture, and across the room, in a wire pen, a litter of adorable puppies bumbled around, biting, tumbling and falling all over each other.  Feeling a nudge to his ribs, he looked down, and the enormous monster dog was tilting his head to the side, grinning, and trying to be cute… as if he were just some regular old lapdog, and not a fearsome beast that could reach a man’s armpit with his nose, without having to raise his front feet off the floor.  

Soon after, the pizza guy fled – with dog drool on his pants, and a decent tip in his pocket.  All in a day’s work when you’re saving the world… one pizza at a time!

 

• C.T. (Chelle) Griffith, hound hugger, pizza guy terrorizer and very bad dancer.