King Pup's NYC Blog Dog

Providence took another blow today with the release of the SNIF tag - an unfathomably pointless $300 collar-mounted doohickey which allows dog owners with absolutely nothing else to do the opportunity to go online and blow 5 disinterested minutes checking such things as their pooch’s daily activity level and the names of the owners of other dogs who walked nearby while happening to sport the same doohickey.

The aimless gizmo was apparently released after its makers noticed a gap in the market for social networking dog collars which offer slight amusement for around three buyer’s-remorse-free days before being returned and exchanged for an iPod.

I’ve got a better idea. How about these electronic egg-heads turn their attention to cats instead? I’d like to see something which attaches to cat collars and tracks their movements around the neighborhood. The aggregate results could be plotted onto a Google map for the perusal of dogs who can then assess whether any one particular cat is getting too cocky vis-a-vis his or her territorial locus.

Steps could then be taken to rectify the situation.

Filed under: Dog Science, Dog/Cat Relations, Harebrained Humans, Lassie Grave Spinning by Bob
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I’m referring to the one on the right. Perkins, a randy Jack Russell terrier from Shrewsbury, England, is driving his owners crazy with his incessant howling — so they posted his picture in the local lonely hearts column in the vein hope of finding a dog owner crazy enough to be searching the local lonely hearts column for randy bowtie-wearing Jack Russell terriers. Says owner John Roberts:

“I decided to put a lonely hearts advert in the local paper but then thought I may as well post some pictures on the internet so all the bitches can see what a good looking chap he is.”

I think someone’s been watching too many Snoop Doggy Dog videos to be honest with you.

Are there no off-leash dog parks in England? There’s one not far from me and it’s full of eligible females. All I can say is: there aren’t enough hours in the day. Perkins old chap - you don’t know what you’re missing.

Filed under: Harebrained Humans, Lassie Grave Spinning, Pooch Predicaments, Wackos by Bob
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So far it’s all been pretty civil on the Republican front. The election of controversial hope-and-changeist Barack Obama inspired a noble concession speech from John McCain, countless messages of good will from the right-of-center blogosphere - and an encouraging address from George W. Bush, who is thrilled at the prospect of the first African American President of the United States of America moving into the White House.

Only nobody thought to ask Barney, President Bush’s reticent Scottish Terrier, what he thought about the end of his White House stay - that is until Reuters political reporter Jon Decker extended an inquiring hand. And like any self respecting dog who’d just been told he had but a few weeks left in the velvet lined Presidential Dog Basket - his answer was a resounding “fangs for nothing.”

Barney raised the ceiling 8 years ago by becoming the first Scottish Terrier to crouch on the White House lawn. Since then he’s laid countless eggs on the premises - and I’ve no doubt Dick Cheney has stepped in a few.

My advice to Barney would be: trash the place before you leave. Do a bang-up job like Clinton’s staff did in 2001. I hear they cut telephone cables, drew obscene pictures on the walls with crayons and slashed the drapes with scissors.

But I bet they didn’t poop on the Presidential Chair.

Go for it, Barney. We’ll be ashamed of you if you don’t.

Filed under: Attaboy, Bad Dogs, Celebrity Pups, Dog Jobs, The Lap of Luxury by Bob
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Bisto, an unidentified mix from Milpitas, CA, awoke from his afternoon nap Wednesday to find that much of the sofa on which he was sleeping had apparently disintegrated of its own accord and vanished into thin air.

The questionable phenomenon came to light around 3:30pm when his owner, Wendy McArdle, returned home from work early.

“He was fast asleep when I came in,” the 46 year old legal secretary said, “and I guess he must have known nothing about it because when I woke him up, he looked visibly shocked at what had happened. His ears fluttered as he surveyed the damage, then he looked at me confusedly before peeking over the side of the sofa as if he was looking for the missing pieces. I guess he was as surprised as I was.”

As of Wednesday evening, pigeons were being cited by McCardle as the main suspects. “It wouldn’t be the first time those pigeons have gotten in and caused mischief. When Bisto was a puppy they’d fly through the window and pee in the corner of the living room when I was at work. There must have been at least a dozen of them doing it because they’d leave a big pool. When I asked Bisto if he knew anything about it, he’d jump up onto the window sill and bark at the pigeons outside. I think he was as annoyed about it as I was, to be honest.”

McCardle couldn’t say why the pigeons would tear up her sofa like that but speculated that they may have used the pieces to build a nest.

Filed under: Attaboy, Deluded Humans by Bob
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Razor, a Florida dog who’s been trained in the art of sniffing out cellphones for the Broward Correctional Institution Ft. Lauderdale, amazed staff at the prison yesterday after finding three of the things on top of a box with a hole in it.

The dog, who achieved nothing of note until the age of three, came across the phones in a corner of the recreation yard during her afternoon poop break and immediately set about staring at them silently and intently until her handler came across and said “there’s a good girl then.”

According to prison guard Mike Smithers, the owner of the blue one, he and two colleagues had slipped into the yard for their smoke break a few minutes earlier and had left their phones on the box for safekeeping while they kicked a soccer ball around among themselves.

“She keeps doing that,” said Mike, 32. “She’s supposed to be on the lookout for contraband phones - visitors smuggle them in for inmates in all kinds of clever ways, like inside cakes or disguised as hairbrushes. But Razor, she’s got it into her head that any phones will do. It’s actually kind of annoying, especially when you’re trying to make a call.”

Razor came to the prison a year ago after previously belonging to the old-timers at a nearby nursing home who had trained her to find the TV remote. “It didn’t work out,” said Jason Reynolds, Razor’s handler. “They wanted her to fetch as well as find, but she won’t do that. She just stares until you come and pick it up yourself.”

Nobody at the nursing home was available for comment because they were all looking for the remote.

Filed under: Attaboy, Dog Jobs by Bob
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Frisbee fans worldwide are stunned tonight after reigning Purina Incredible Dog Challenge champion Wallace the pit bull ruined his chances of a second gold medal after swallowing the tip of a spatula.

Wallace, who has amazed Frisbee pundits by steamrolling his way into a sport traditionally dominated by Border Collies, put himself out of action Tuesday morning by wolfing down the end of the kitchen utensil after owner Andrew Yori used it to offer him some cheese.

The piggish pooch was rushed to casualty where he underwent emergency spatula-removal surgery - reportedly one of the most common surgical procedures performed on terriers, the most common being rubber duckie removal.

“It’s classic Wallace,” said Andrew Yori, the dog’s 31-year-old owner from Rochester, Minnesota. “It was like, “Ummm cheese,” then woops! down the hatch.”

Unfortunately for Wallace he’s going to be out of action for a couple of weeks at least - and will most likely be wearing a cone during that time, meaning that even gentle catching practice is out of the question. I suggest he uses that time to develop some self control, because it’s only a matter of time before he swallows an entire damn Frisbee. I’ve seen it happen.

Filed under: Celebrity Pups, Dog Health, Pooch Predicaments by Bob
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Jake LeNoir (pictured), a 28-month old rat terrier from Florida, is furious with his owner tonight after the spoilsporting human broke up a particularly enjoyable fight between him and a shark.

The feisty little pup - who can “handle myself, don’t you worry about that”  - was swimming off New Smyrna beach Monday when the misguided fish decided to try his luck.

“I saw him coming behind me,” Jake told us, “in the reflection off of the goggles of a nearby swimmer. It immediately occurred to me that this joker might be laboring under the delusion of short odds. I was clearly going to enjoy this. So I thinks, ‘go on pal, you have yourself a little bite of Jake, see how it feels to have the upper hand with a rat terrier for all of two seconds.’

“I mean a bite’s nothing to a terrier. We bite ourselves for fun. So this thing wraps its chompers around my torso - it tickled, I’ll give him that - and I’m just starting to map out a little lesson plan for the schmuck. I figure, I’ll drag him down to the seabed by the tail, rub his nose on the coral, twist his dorsal fin, that sort of thing. The whole nine yards, really embarrass him in front of his shark buddies. This is gonna be sweet.

“Then out of nowhere I hears a ‘noooooo!’ from the shore and I looks around. It’s muggins here, splashing his way through the surf and flailing his arms like a double-jointed octopus. Before I get a chance to tell him what an ass he’s being, he’s got me under one arm and is punching the shark - my shark - with the other, calling him a big bully and everything. Then he’s taking me back to shore.

I was soooo humiliated, you have no idea. I looks back at the shark, and he’s laughing, you can see it in his eyes - sharks have very expressive eyes. Worse still, everyone on the beach is laughing as well - the girls, the lifeguards, the kids, the Bison Frise with the pink bow I had my eye on earlier…all laughing it up at Jake here, as I’m doing my best to wriggle out of his grip and get back to the little $#$%! with the fin.

“Then I heard it. Somewhere, someone - and I don’t know who, some kid - shouts ‘Hey Scrappy! Scrappy Doo!’…and I lost it. I’m never talking to this jerk again, I swear. That’s IT.”

The frisky little ankle-biter was reportedly offered a full bag of dried lambs lungs to make up for it - and although he’ll certainly take the treats, that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it, according to sources.

The shark was unavailable for comment Tuesday night as it had a mouth full of license plates.

Filed under: Attaboy, Bad Dogs, Deluded Humans, Lassie Grave Spinning, Pooch Predicaments by Bob
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The movie speaks for itself. Faith the dog was born without her front legs, so without further ado, she walks on two. You go girl!

So what does this tell us? Let me spell it out. It means that dogs are quite capable of walking on two legs all day if we have to. It’s just that we choose not to. Humans are quite capable of walking on four legs too - just walk around the Upper East Side on any Friday or Saturday night for proof. It’s obviously a more stable form of transport. Yet you evolved the tendency to forgo your front legs and walk on the back two for most of the day, for reasons I can only assume have to do with being able to eat an ice cream cone and read a magazine at the same time. What other reason could there be?

The late Mitch Hedberg once observed that “dogs are forever in the push-up position”. He was right - but if I may make a counter-observation…humans are forever in the begging position. I feel slightly embarrassed for you.

Filed under: Attaboy, Dog Health, Pooch Predicaments by Bob
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Stop the press! When us dogs catch tennis balls, we’re actually solving very complicated differential equations. This is news to me! There I was thinking that I was just using my eyes and accumulated sense of judgment to hone in on something that’s round, furry and fun to chew. How wrong it was of me to presume that when I run after balls, I’m merely adjusting my speed and trajectory from moment to moment in response to the change in movement of my target from moment to moment. Nope - I’m actually, without knowing it, whipping out a pocket calculator, pencil and paper and working out the point of intersection between two parabolas. Who’da thunk it?

What this also means of course is that dogs were terrible at catching balls before Sir Issac Newton came on the scene and taught us how to do it in 1687. Coincidentally, this was also the year after which dog ownership really took off. Now I know why - we just weren’t much fun before then.

I guess this revelation is hardly surprising. It’s long been known, for example, that dogs become experts on rocket science when they hear a human yell “bath time.”

Filed under: Attaboy, Dog Science by Bob
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A Cape Cod couple are fuming after their feckless jackass of a dog, Freelance, ruined yet another once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity for his owners, Harold and Marjorie Hilditch yesterday.

The pair were all set to ensure their place in birdwatching history after they spotted a Broad-Billed Hummingbird - a rare species usually found only in Arizona and Mexico - perched confidently atop their yard fence in Hyannis as they enjoyed a game of outdoor Scrabble at around 5pm Tuesday.

“I said to my wife, I said, ‘Say,’ I said, ‘Isn’t that one of those Broad-Billed Hummingbirds, the type you only usually see in Arizona or Mexico?’”, Harold told us, “and she says ‘yes Harold,’ she says, ‘I do believe it is.’ So I said ‘get the camera,’ and she got the camera.”

After a minor disagreement over whose hands were the steadiest, it was decided that Marjorie would take the shot. “I was nervous, yes,” she explained, “but at that point it was pretty much a done deal. That bird was going nowhere. We have one of those newfangled digital doohickeys that sets up the focus and exposure for you, so all I had to do was press the button.”

Which she did - at the exact same moment their nefarious hound decided to make life very difficult for himself over the next two weeks by leaping in front of the camera like a spring-loaded, furry idiot-missile just as the button was pressed - blocking the shot and startling the bird back into the air, its fast-beating wings flapping its metallic green body and vibrant blue throat out of the Hilditch’s lives forever.

“We can’t even take the camera out of its case without that flop-eared mule thinking it’s for his benefit,” Harold told us, “and he makes a show of himself every time without fail. Last month we were trying to take a picture of the car for the classifieds and he kept jumping through the window and putting his front paws on the steering wheel with a cigar in his mouth. In the end, we just decided to keep it.”

Tuesday’s incident marks the seventh time that Freelance has ruined a once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity since pulling a moony in front of the photographer’s camera at the Hilditch’s daughter’s wedding just as she kissed the groom.

The dog was tonight confined to his crate and unable to comment.

Filed under: Attaboy, Bad Dogs, Pooch Predicaments by Bob
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