Last week there was a lot of growling and grumbling from the humans, I often ignore many of their strange noises unless they're making important words like cookie, cheese or car-ride.  But I couldn't help but listen when they were talking about dogs getting sick.  Turns out that some of the dogs that had gone overnight camping at the special dog-only camps, were coming back sick; sick as dogs.  I guess that's where the phrase comes from.  I wasn't worried at all about getting sick myself -- mother said she was worried about the dog flew, which I know I can't get because I do not know how to fly. Bea had to go on an airplane to come to our den, so she flew, but she never got sick. 

Big Mike, one of our regular visitors, goes to day camp a lot.  On Thursday, he was Sad Mike and kept snorting and sneezing, and didn't even try once to get a treat off the counter.  Mother took some red syrup and some black and white pictures of his chest.  "Mike's got pneumonia,  but I think we caught it early.  We'll get him some antibiotics and he should be feeling better in no time." mother advised.
Vocal Vonnie took some of the goo out of Mike's nose and sent it off in a tube.  We found out today that Mike must not have flown because he did not have the flew, instead it was something I'd never heard of, called Mike-o-plasma.  Go figure, Mike would get something named after himself.  Lucky for Mike, the bug is treated easily with Antie Biotics and as expected Big Mike was back to stealing-treats-off-the-counter Mike by today.
Mother's worried because more dogs might get sick from the Mike-o-plasma disease, and there's no poke she can give to prevent it.  She says camping dogs, or dog park dogs, and those dogs that have to go to school should all still get the flew shot, even if they don't plan on flying, better to be safe than sorry -- or sick as a dog!