Heart of Dogness

Welcome Bo Obama

Sasha and Malia finally get their dog. Congrats to all involved. More to come after I wake up.

The Short, Sweet Life of "The Dooze"

ESPN.com Page 2 columnist Bill Simmons, aka "The Sports Guy", has a wonderful appreciation of his Golden Retriever, Daisy, aka "The Dooze", here.

Anybody who's loved a dog knows they always die too soon, but The Dooze died way too soon. This sweet story tells why.

Barack Obama reads Heart of Dogness, maybe

We've mentioned the Great Obama Dog Search before on Heart of Dogness. In a fit of raging pomposity, we even called for the Obamas to go for a reascue dog. This is the Editorial We, incidentally. People tell me I'm something Royal, but it's not a We. Now the Chicago Tribune reports that the Obamas are considering a rescue puppy. Although that annoying Wayne Pacell guy from HSUS may think otherwise, this idea could only have come from Heart of Dogness. Dang, we got influence here. Update: This quote from Obama's press conference yesteday proves it! (I finally found the full quote in Dana Milbank's Washington Post column): "Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic; there are a number of breeds that are hypoallergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog, but, obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me. So whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household." I pointed out in my pompous bit, linked to above, that as Americans, we're all mutts. I think this pretty much clinches it. Barack Obama reads Heart of Dogness. Tell all your friends. Update 2: Jake and Tycho do a Public-Service Announcement for adopting shelter dogs. Gus and JoJo cried when they saw this.

Old Dogs Are the Best Dogs

You don't have to take my word for it. Check out this story and slide show in today's Washington Post. Don't be put off by the ad video that starts the slide show. The dog pix are worth the brief wait.

A poodle for Obama

In a down-to-the-wire, heart-stopping photo finish, the American Kennel Club announced last week that the Poodle had eked out a narrow victory over the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier in its evidently-unnamed poll of American voters. Here's video of the press conference.

Update: See what Misty the Alpha Poodle has to say about this.

The Obamas are currently dogless, but Barack has promised Malia and Sasha that after the campaign he'll get a dog. So AKC asked America to vote on which of five hypoallergenic breeds (the kids have allergies) the family should get: Poodle, Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier, Bichon Frise, Miniature Schnauzer, or the Don-King-lookalike Chinese Crested. Forty-two thousand voted, and they picked the poodle.

Herewith, a guide to poodles:

Standard Poodle	This is the original, developed in Germany to retrieve waterfowl and poorly hit golf balls. The funny-looking haircuts often inflicted on Poodles are said to be derived from a functional clip that was intended to leave insulating hair over the joints while the rest of the coat was shorn to reduce drag. This story fails, however, to account for either ribbons or rhinestone collars. Poodles are available in many colors, including black, blue, white, cream, red, apricot, silver and brown, and can be special-ordered in snazzy combinations of these colors. The deep candy-flake finishes popular in the 1960s are now considered a fault and will result in disqualification in the show ring. John Steinbeck wrote his wonderful Travels With Charley about a cross-country trip he took with a Standard Poodle whose name escapes me. Shockingly, the book appears to be out of print except in this Library of America collection.
Substandard Poodle	Sadly, there are poodles that just don't make the grade. You know the type: raggedy, shiftless shirkers out for a quick buck and lookin' for the next thing smokin'. They'll chase any tail, even their own. They'll hang back under the awning while the decent, hardworking types who came to this country looking for a better life are on the corner chivvying the straw bosses for a day's work. If you tell one of these dogs Jesus saves, he'll hit Him up for a loan. If I had a poodle, this would probably be it.
French Poodle	France also claims to be the place of origin for the poodle, which some may think is like claiming to be where herpes began. This poodle thinks it's both logical and romantic, blithely ignoring two basic principles: You can't be both; and if you think you're either, you're not. Sits in sidewalk cafes drinking charred coffee by day and wine by night, pretending to read incomprehensible philosophers while scoping for impressionable American dogs to hit on. Smokes French cigarettes made of used tires and occasionally sips noxious disinfectants like cassis and Campari.
Miniature Poodle	Just like a Standard Poodle, but smaller, flightier, and much more likely to faint. Not available with opera windows or whitewall tires. The Mini-Poo once set the standard for small, pointless dogs, but it has since been far surpassed. See below.
Toy Poodle	Developed for those intimidated by the gravitas of the Miniature Poodle, the Toy Poodle features a bark like Satan's dentist's drill and pointy little teeth that can find your ankle no matter how thickly and expensively shod. The barking of this dog has been known to set up a harmonic vibration that can shatter windows, masonry structures, and in at least one documented case, an entire planet.
Teacup Poodle	The Teacup Poodle is a further tinyfication of the Toy Poodle, intended for use by adults as a napkin or moist towelette, or by children as a handy way to dispose of unwanted vegetables. Also favored by those who, for whatever reason, feel a need to keep a dog secreted about their persons at all times. The Teacup Poodle is frequently accessorized with sweet and sour, barbecue, or new zesty ranch dipping sauce.

In Development: Shotglass Poodle, Eyedropper Poodle

Mutts are finally chic

Besides at my house, that is. USA Today had a story on August 18 called "Mutt-i-grees Club: Where mongrel is the new pedigree". Mutt-i-grees Club is a project of the Pet Savers Foundation. My big sister sent me this story, which pretty much proves that those stories that my whole family hates me are exaggerated.

New material coming soon. Honest.

Nearly 1,000 dogs rescued in West Virginia

On August 24, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, local officials and representatives of the Humane Society of the United States rescued nearly 1,000 dogs from the Whispering Oaks Kennel, an industrial puppy mill that had operated for almost two decades.

The raid was prompted by neighbors' complaints about pollution in a nearby stream. Shouldn't be any surprise that anyone too self-absorbed to care about the cruelty they inflict on animals is also too self-absorbed to care about the slop they pass on to others.

"In Dog We Trust" in Time

My good friend Andrea called my attention to this article in TIME. "In Dog We Trust" is about Barack Obama's biggest post-election decision: what kind of dog to get.

Although I try not to let my politics intrude on this blog, I would like to weigh in on the side of mutts in this matter. As Americans, we're pretty much all mutts. No matter how far back you can trace your family in this country, it's a sure bet that there's more than one name Auntie Macassar quietly pruned from the family tree. And that you're swimming in a bigger gene pool than you know.

Hybrid vigor's what America's all about. Helping the least fortunate among us is what we do, at any rate when nobody's trying to scare us into cowering in our basements with the family silver. So come on, Barack, get a shelter dog, the more undefinable, the better.

Correction: In my story on Bruno a while back, I mistakenly identified him as an American Bulldog. I'm now informed that he's an Old English Bulldog. This, it turns out, is an example of what I'm talking about above: nothing about Bruno's dress, behavior or speech indicated that he was foreign-born, and I'm proud to say that I just took him for one of us. In a larger sense, we're all one of us. No word on whether Bruno's a Naturalized American Bulldog.

"Pill-Popping Pets" in today's New York Times

Prozac for Fido? Eli Lilly's Reconcile is essentially beef-flavored chewable Prozac. Novartis's Clomicalm for dogs is chemically identical to its Anafranil for humans. This story in today's New York Times Magazine details how Americans are spending millions of dollars on psychiatric pharamceuticals for their pets, and how the major drug companies are salivating at the prospect of all those new patients.

"Surveys by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association found that 77 percent of dog owners and 52 percent of cat owners gave their animals some sort of medication in 2006, both up at least 25 percentage points from 2004."

I'm a little ambivalent about this. In the abstract, it feels like we're projecting human problems and human solutions onto non-human subjects who can't tell us to buzz off. But before I climb onto that high horse, I'm reminded that we've given Gus alprazolam, which is the generic of Xanax, as part of our ongoing effort to get him to stop chewing his tail, his leg, and whatever other body part he may target for assassination. I'm also reminded of the National Geographic story "Animal Minds", in which researchers say that human intelligence appears to have evolved from animal intelligence.

I'm going to try to keep an open mind on this.

"Sit, Stay, Love" in the New York Times

"Sit, Stay, Love" by Erica Goode in today's New York Times, begins with Leona Helmsley's $8 billion bequest to a charitable trust for the care and welfare of dogs, and then discusses humans' relationship with dogs. Turns out we're NOT all crabbed and infantile, incapable of relationships with other humans. Most of us, yes, but not quite all. Who knew?