Merry Christmas from the Singing Dogs [VIDEOS]

Merry Christmas everyone! We all hope you are having a nice vacation (hopefully you are on vacation) and enjoying time with family, friends, and of course your pets.

The Singing Dogs love Christmas time as they get to hear and sing to their favorite Christmas songs. Here are some Christmas songs that we've recorded that I am sure all of you will enjoy.

O Christmas Tree

Silent Night

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

We hope you enjoyed all of our Christmas music videos. If you have a Christmas song request or enjoyed our videos please leave a comment below and let us know. Cody and Sierra love hearing from our fans.

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

“My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music

Cody and Sierra decided that they wanted to do a song from the much loved and well known musical “The Sound of Music.” Checkout our version of “My Favorite Things” which happens to be one of the Singing Dogs favorite songs.

My Favorite Things

Let us know if you liked this version of My Favorite Things below. The Singing Dogs love to hear feedback and comments from fans! 🙂

I personally think our version is pretty good but I still manage to laugh (yeah… mess-up) when I am playing since having two dogs sing along to your saxophone playing is pretty entertaining even if you are used to it. I just hope Julie Andrews likes this version since she is best known for singing My Favorite Things and playing the part of Maria.

I don't think we will be invited to be on any future productions of The Sound of Music but it still is fun to post videos of the dogs ‘talent.' Some of you probably watched the NBC's live production of The Sound of Music on TV a couple days ago. Sierra actually wanted to try out for Liesl, the oldest daughter in the Von Trapp family, but I wasn't so sure that the producers of the show would let a singing dog on a live national TV musical production. Although that would be really cool. Also I don't recall there being any roles for dogs in the Sound of Music. Perhaps Sierra could be in a production of Annie since there is a dog in that musical.

Anyway, if you saw the Sound of Music Live on TV with Carrie Underwood, what did you think of it? Did you enjoy it or not like it? Also, let us know what your favorite things are? Do you have any favorite songs? We'd be happy to know.

Happy Halloween from the Singing Dogs

Cody and Sierra, the Singing Dogs, just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. Instead of us spending money on dog costumes, which we know the dogs would not like, we got out the outfits Anderson Cooper gave us when we were on his show. The dogs seemed lukewarm about putting them on.

Actually Sierra hide under the table and wouldn't come when we got Cody's nice tuxedo on. He wasn't about it either and looked at us like, “Are you serious?” What Cody doesn't know is that the outfit was custom made for him and he should be happy.

Ironically even though Sierra didn't want to put on the dog outfit it seems like she likes getting her picture take. Sometime she even poses for the camera. Kind of funny because when she was a puppy she didn't like getting her picture taken.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween? Planning on doing anything spooky or scary? Let us know below.

If your Dog’s Gained Weight, Does that Mean You’ve Gained Weight?

Fairly recently we took Cody and Sierra to the Veterinarian to get a checkup, some shots, and they each got their nails clipped. (Sierra wasn't happy about that!)

As most people know everytime you go to the Vet they weigh your dog. Well to our surprise each of our Singing Dogs has gained roughly 2 pounds since the last Vet visit. While this doesn't sound like a lot for humans, for medium sized dogs this is a fairly large weight gain. While I mulled over their weight gain I thought, “If they've gained weight, does that mean I've gained weight?”

Since hearing your dog's gained weight is almost an insult that you've gained weight, I started questioning the scale at the Vet. Could it be they don't calibrate it or it has not been calibrated properly? Maybe it's just old? What if it wasn't zeroed? The scale must be broken! 🙂

While I think it's the weight scale and not all those extra treats we give the dogs, the reality started to set in a little bit. Honestly we probably don't spend enough time playing and exercising with our dogs. The food we buy is generally healthy but we could be doing a better job for the dogs and ourselves.

So if your dog's gained weight, does that make you feel like you've gained weight? What are going to do to change it?

Handbrake Video Compression Software

Instead of doing a post about Cody or Sierra today or anything dog related, I thought we'd share a cool tool we use called HandBrake which is video compression software.

Some of you might be wondering “Why do I need Handbrake?” Well, do you ever get annoyed with how long it takes to upload videos online? Handbrake helps compress videos down so they are smaller and more manageable to upload and share with the world. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the larger something is the longer it takes to move, even in the digital landscape known as the internet.

What's great about Handbrake is that it is 100% free open source software. It's available on several different desktop operating systems which includes Macs, Windows, and Linux Ubuntu which is pretty cool.

For all of the Singing Dogs videos we use Handbrake to compress large high definition 1080p (HD) video files for uploading onto our Youtube channel. (Subscribe if you haven't already!) Typically Handbrake will cut the video file in half, sometimes less, and the dogs and I don't notice any difference in quality from the compressed Handbrake video and the original. It saves a lot of time and bandwidth when are uploading videos, which is good because Verizon sucks in Baltimore. (They refused to bring Verizon FiOS here but for some reason they keep advertising it on TV in the area!) A normal video file for us that might take 1 hour to upload, once we compress it with Handbrake, might only take 20-30 minutes. Cutting down that much for uploading is a huge benefit for us!

We are not sure how Handbrake's video compression works, but it is totally awesome. Also it's cool that is it open source and free since we use it all the time. I would post a link to page to donate to the Handbrake project but I don't see anywhere on the website to do so. They do have ads on the website which any users of Hanbrake, like ourselves, should be clicking on to support the project. 🙂

In addition to video compression Handbrake is really useful for converting video files into MP4s which we do a lot for the Singing Dogs. Most of the time we need to convert from other video formats and Handbrake does it at the same time when it compresses the Singing Dogs videos. Handbrake can be used just for as a video converter tool if that is all you need it for.

Anyway, if you are interested in downloading Handbrake and giving it a test drive, download it here: http://handbrake.fr/

Lazy Singing Dog

We haven't uploaded a new video for awhile, but I think this one is pretty good. Sierra does a great rendition of a Jazz Classic while being a Lazy Singing Dog. What do you think?

I like how Sierra is so expressive with her voice, even when lying down and relaxing. Shows just how musically inclined my girl is. Even if she isn't always on key, I still think she has pretty good singing chops. It's not like she attended music school or anything, you know. Sierra is a completely self taught singer.

By the way, instead of me telling people what the sing is I thought it would be fun if people took a guess. Does anyone know what the song I am playing on my saxophone is in the video? Brownie points to anyone that leaves a comment below and knows what the song is.