Murphy the guest blogger.

Hi everyone. Murphy here. Since the boss is busy working a ton of overtime right now, I'm guest-writing. This is going to be a short advice column to other dogs.

1. You know that adage about how if it's on the floor it's ours? Well humans have a similar adage: If it's on the counter, it's not ours. That means that we really should not take things down off of it, be it food, oven mitts, or that nice fun to shred paper towel roll.

2. The recycling bin is not a toy box. Really. Even if things down at the bottom smell like food we should not dig them out, especially if it means flipping everything else out onto the floor. My human sure gets cheesed about stuff like that. Yours might, too.

3. Beds. If they buy us one, that means that they expect us to stay off of theirs. So that being the case, if we do decide to take a forbidden nap on their beds when they're gone, we should probably not insult them by blatantly leaving one of our toys up on that bed as proof...and especially not a chewed-up soup can from that recycling bin. Trust me on that last bit.

4. Sharing our toys with the humans is fun for all, but when your human is all dressed for work, tagging him or her with a muddy flat basketball isn't going to be well received. Likewise, when one of them is trying to nap on the couch or their bed, shoving a wet stuffed animal into their face is, in all practicality, not a good idea.

5. Barking like a fool when people come up the driveway or the UPS man stops is good. Barking like a fool at cats or deer in the yard will be unappreciated though, especially if your human is trying to sleep or taking a shower.

6. When your human threatens to sell you to a chinese restaurant or "trade you for a goldfish and then flush the goldfish", you might want to stop doing whatever it is that you've been doing. This is a sure sign that they're getting frustrated. This is a great time to just walk up to them, lay your head in their lap, and nuzzle or lick them. A sincere display of affection for them melts their heart every time and makes all of the above right again. They're so predictable that it's almost too easy.