Here's the poop. Those wiseguys at King Pup take me for a spin every lunchtime and in return I agree to
cast a beady eye over the latest dog related developments and churn out a few words for the perusal of any dog enthusiasts in
earshot. It is I feel a quite satisfactory arrangement for the time being and one that I fully intend to maintain until such a time
as they've had enough of me, or I become blog-tired and decide to let sleeping blogs lie - whichever comes sooner.
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There sure are a lot of robots taking the form of dogs these days. Perhaps it’s because robots represent an innate desire in humans to remake themselves in their ideal form, and that ideal form happens to be canine shaped.
Or maybe it’s just because balancing on four legs requires fewer equations than balancing on two. Who knows what goes through the minds of the white-coated eggheads who come up with these silicon-chip-stuffed doohickeys. You’d think they’d at least be putting some of their research grants into developing robot girlfriends for themselves.
I interrupted my feline roommate Waffles’ morning workout to ask him if he ever wonders why they’ve never announced the creation of robot cats and he replied: “Because if they ever did, you’d damn well wish you’d never been born, pal”.
I don’t see how that answers the question, but on the other hand I see his point.
One thing which really gets under my whiskers is the tendency for humans to expend large amounts of effort conducting elaborate “studies” into animal behavior, without it ever occurring to them that all they have to do is ask us what they want to know.
Take this latest study into the relationship between dogs and cats, carried out by “experts” at the renowned Tel Aviv University. They spent months interviewing humans who own both animals, as well as poring over hundreds of hours of voyeuristic videotape featuring canine/feline interaction.
The result? A bunch of egg-headed hooey about body language and tail wagging. Folks - I live with a very feisty kitty named Waffles and the two of us get along just swell, despite him having an annoyingly saucy swagger and that all-round cock-eyed look which most cats seem to have.
Our secret is simple. Early in the relationship we scribed a legally binding covenant to which we both refer and appeal to every day. It’s a lengthy document and I’m not about to reproduce it in full here today…but I will give you a cursory glance at its essence, after which I presume most of you will be mentally equipped to go off and forge your own bespoke versions:
All hissing, growling, spitting, moaning or ululating strictly prohibited. Both parties must agree to express their grievances to each other by means of plain and unambiguous English and must assent to the concept of “taking turns” while speaking.
No teeth or claws may be used under any circumstances whatsoever. To half of this end, both parties must agree to periodic visits to the vet’s office for a demilitarizing claw-clip and will only be allowed back into the apartment subject to the passing of a test consisting of the party in question scraping his paws down a blackboard.
Dogs do not eat cat food and cats do not eat dog food and that’s that. Exceptions will not be made for Bob’s Pedigree Choice Cuts Beef & Barley or Waffles’ Friskies Sea Food Favorites.
Waffles agrees not to “paddle” in the communal water bowl used by both parties.
Bob agrees not to tape Waffles’ cat flap shut when Waffles is outside and a thunderstorm commences. Waffles agrees that should this ever happen again, it is not serious enough to warrant a call to the 9th Precinct (apologies once again to Detective O’Keeffe)
Waffles is barred from reading any book by or watching any TV show featuring Cesar Millan. Furthermore he is forbidden from utilizing anything that he has learned from the celebrity dog trainer before this ban was enforced.
Bob agrees that Waffles does not look or sound remotely like Benny, Choo-Choo or any other character off of “Top Cat.” Waffles agrees that Bob’s nose does not look like he chased parked cars in his youth.
And so on. Remember that such an agreement is always going to be a “document in progress” and will be added to as new situations, disagreements or confrontations arise, such as the time last week when I unwittingly sleep-pooped in Waffles’ litter tray. But rest assured that while the likes of Tel Aviv University are spending millions on tail-wagging and back-arching simulations, pragmatic cats and dogs all over the world are forging their own armistice without the help of highbrow academics whose research grants would probably be put to better use by getting themselves nicer haircuts.
Nero, a greedy Doberman-Great Dane crossbreed, had a close call recently after he swallowed an entire Nokia cellphone in one of those momentary lapses of reason known as “24/7″ to us dogs.
Not about to let Ozzie the rubber duckie swallowing hound hog the limelight for too long, this precipitant pooch wasted no time in abducting the succulent looking thingamajig from his owner’s hand and persuaded it to take up residence in his gut - leaving nothing behind with which a frantic human might call an emergency vet, for instance.
It is of course, a blessing of our trend toward ever-shrinking technology that dog-gadget-swallowing incidents have become less and less serious over the years. It’s a historical fact, for instance, that when my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather Melvin swallowed an entire rotary phone in 1979, Southwestern Bell charged him line rental for the 3 weeks it took him to cough it back up.
Pants of relief were heard all over America today with the news that a dog-draft will not be enforced after all. Rumors had been circulating that the Pentagon was considering the idea of compulsory service for dogs in order to take some of the pressure off of our already overstretched military - the most persistent rumors being that the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was working on a new bark-activated helicopter and that over a million camouflage-green dog baskets had been ordered from Petco.
Now it seems that the agency was in fact working on a battalion of robot dogs instead - presumably because they’ve had a think about it and realized (quite rightly) that soldiers who instantly roll over for anyone who promises tummy rubs are about as much use as chocolate frying pans.
So here you have it. This new robot “dog” - which looks like a cross between a tarantula and Bruce Willis - moves along at a rip-roaring 4mph (almost as fast as the average pug), climbs slopes up to 35 degrees steep (almost as impressive as this bulldog) and can walk across rubble while carrying a 340lb load (suckers!).
The funniest part of this demonstration video comes at around 0:35 when we’re supposed to be impressed at the sight of the droid retaining its footing after some jackass kicks it from the side. Let me tell you pal - you try and knock me over like this and not only will I stay upright, I’ll bite you in the freaking groin.
This is Snuppy, the world’s first cloned dog - soon available at Wal-Mart, Target and participating branches of Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Snuppy was “cloned from adult cells by somatic nuclear cell transfer.” I have no idea what that means, but I should imagine the other dog has to stay very, very still while they’re doing it.
I for one think this is a very worrying development and we should be doing more to think about the consequences of such a new technology. Like for instance, would existing laws be sufficient to cover the inevitable canine copyright issues which are sure to arise, or are we going to have to draft a whole new set? Terrifying.
However it quickly became apparent that my excitement was much a-poo about nothing as the new doohickey does not, despite our numerous pawtitions and letters of appeal, have a desperately needed poop-scooping attachment.
The occasional, unavoidable indoor mishap is perhaps the greatest source of shame that the sophisticated urbane dog can suffer. The dread upon hearing the key in the door - the sound of exploratory sniffing - the “Oh God, not again” - the cursing and tongue-clicking - and sitting there mortified with ears a-flop, unable to make eye contact for the whole evening…horrible, just horrible. The thought of a smell activated poop-scooping automaton on constant standby, ready to spring into action and erase our discomfiture just as quickly as it was expelled…well perhaps it was too good to be true.
Alas, the new model does naught but sweep up dog hair. Who cares about dog hair?
Dog delinquency is on the up and it’s time to stop making excuses. Since the start of this year a total of 497 cases of muggings, stick-ups, burglaries, assaults and aggravated misdemeanors have been reported in which the prime suspect has been a pooch.
For too long now the prominent spokesdogs among us have sought to downplay the epidemic by blaming the victim:
“She had it coming, she kept treats in her purse”
“He made like he threw the ball, but there was no ball”
“What was he supposed to do when she kept slapping her thighs like that?”
Well, enough is enough. As dogs we are headed for outright anarchy unless something is done to reinstill the kind of canine values that once had half the nation huddled around their TV sets for the latest episode of Lassie. I for one will not sit back in my basket and do nothing as the thugs among us pick at the threads of the finely woven, yet fragile relationship between man and dog…a relationship nurtured over centuries of devoted sheep-herding, sled-pulling, game-retrieving, factory-guarding, bomb-sniffing and slipper-fetching.
Which is why I felt sick to my stomach this morning to hear of yet another purse-snatching, this time in Spartanburg, S.C. An innocent woman on her way to church brutally robbed by the kind of nefarious hound that no doubt has Lassie spinning in her grave.
Shillelaghs were on standby in Belfast, Ireland yesterday as members of the public mistook a stray dog for a lion and panicked. Police have not yet said whether Guinness was a factor, but it is believed to be one line of inquiry.
I for one have no trouble believing that such a mistake could be made - after all, dogs are many times smaller than lions, have different faces and aren’t cats. Who can blame anyone for erring on the side of caution?
This suspiciously cute little fluffy Frankenhound is one of the latest in the current craze of cut ‘n’ paste dog breeding - the art of finding two names that go together to make a catchy hybrid word and then spawning them by the truckload. Labradoodle. Cockapoo. Cockadoodle. Pugglecock. Schnauzador. Havanoodle (don’t mind if I do).
You get the general idea. But do we really need all of these newcomers? What’s really fascinating me though is that it seems like no matter which two breeds they fuse, they all end up looking the same - mops with eyes. Can we stop calling them dogs? They’re walking pom-poms.
Look at the picture of me at the top of the sidebar to your right. Now that’s a dog. Observe my wrinkles. Admire my glorious jowls, hanging there like empty raincoats. If I had a dollar for every time a human has grabbed those jowls and pulled them repeatedly off of my gums while saying “yes…dat’s right…look at these”, I’d have almost $45. It’ll be a sad day when they breed the slobber out of my kind - and I can only imagine what kind of hideously fluffy Boxapoo will be the result.
An intrepid UK pooch named Ozzie managed to ruffle a few feathers down at his local quack’s vet’s office after inhaling an entire rubber duckie, managing to prove that he’d make both the world’s worst gun dog and the world’s best rubber duckie smuggler - in one short gulp. Says the Leamington Spa Courier:
The seven-month-old pooch was play fighting with another dog over the bath toy, but when he began losing he preferred swallowing the plastic prize to giving it up.
Attaboy Ozzie! Because if there’s anything worse than swallowing an entire waterfowl-themed plastic whatnot in the course of protecting it from a rival dog, it’s not swallowing an entire waterfowl-themed plastic whatnot in the course of protecting it from a rival dog.
Ozzie obviously saw what he had to do and the duck, who can’t have seen it coming, was paddling down the hound’s intestines quicker than you can say a word which rhymes with duck and which doesn’t appear in the title of this post.
Luckily the buoyant trinket was removed before it managed to bob any further into Ozzie’s digestive sequence - and was back among the disarray of his other toys within no time, leaving Ozzie with nothing worse than a few stitches and an excellent poster for his kennel… as well as a great story to tell his litter’s litters.
