You know things are at a sorry pass when….

…the only thing that lifts you from your state of vague malaise is looking at photos of the pets of people you don’t even know.

Condolences to the TBoggs — again

When I was a kid, we always had dogs. I always figured I was a dog person. Oh, later on we always had a cat too, but I was always the kind of person who’d cross the street to pet a dog. I still like dogs, but after 26 years of having cats, I guess you could say I’ve become kind of a crazy cat lady.

I don’t blog about my cats as much as some people do. This is mostly because I have trouble taking photos of Maggie doing something cute, or Jenny being regal. Maybe other people’s cats are just more interesting. I know that John Cole’s cat, Tunch, is about to get his image on Cafe Press swag.

Some bloggers allow us to know their pets so well that they become a part of our lives as much as theirs. I’ve always had a particular fondness for TBogg‘s Thursday Basset Blogging, where weekly updates of the adventures of Satchmo, Beckham, and more recently Fenway, would demonstrate to audiences the perfect confluence of soulful sadness and silliness that is the Basset Hound.

When Satchmo passed away about a year ago, it was a loss to the entire blogging community, as we’d all come to know the ever-patient dog with the sad, sad face. I wrote about Satchmo’s passing here. The Tboggs’ other Basset Hound, Beckham, seemed to be a whippersnapper with years ahead of him, but alas it was not to be.

There’s something about Bassets. A friend of mine had had a Basset many years ago, and when her daughter passed away suddenly a few years ago, she decided it was time to bring another Basset into her life to help her through — and ended up with two of them. As I said — the perfect confluence of soulful and silly.

I don’t know why the loss of pets we’ve never really seen owned by people we don’t know can affect us so deeply. Perhaps it’s because so many of us who blog are pet people, owned by pets with larger-than-life personalities that lend themselves to share in the blogging process. And of course all of us who are pet people know what the TBoggs are going through, because most of us have been there, and if we haven’t, we will.

I know that with Maggie being ten years old now, I’m more patient with her near-constant yowling. I don’t get as irritated with her demands the way I used to. When she comes up on the bed and puts one par under my neck and one over it and spoons me and purrs in my ear, I try to etch it into my brain because I have to realize she won’t be with me forever. It’s part of the bargain we make when we open our hearts to these creatures. And we make that bargain gladly, again and again. But it still hurts like hell when we have to pay up.

And so once again, our thoughts are with the TBoggs tonight. We wish Beckham a speedy passage over the bridge and we wish Fenway a complete recovery.

Yes, Veterans Day….

I don’t know about you, but I need this today:

More dogs welcoming their soldiers home here.

(h/t)

The Dog Issue

So amidst a global economic collapse, a Russian president playing “Mine’s bigger” already, and two disastrous wars, once again the press wants to talk about trivia — in this case, the impending Obama puppy.

It’s understandable that people would find this notion captivating. The very thought of Sasha Obama with a puppy presents potential for Cute Overload of a degree that could cause heads of otherwise normal people to explode from an overdose of adorableness.

Of course it would send a positive message if the Obamas were to adopt a shelter dog, except that if the Obamas showed up at most animal shelters, they’d be unlikely to be allowed to adopt. The Obama family consists of a child barely out of toddlerhood, a child with allergies, and two parents who will have demanding jobs the likes of which none of us can imagine. But as we found out when the Clintons moved to the White House with a cat, there is a perception that “real Americans” have dogs, not cats.

This of course will come as news to the millions of us who have discovered the joys of being house servant to a demanding or bossy feline, but it’s an unfortunate reality.

So it’s important that the Obamas choose the right dog. The snarky, sick-sense-of-humor part of me thinks that a West Highland White Terrier would be the perfect “anti-Barney”:

…except that Westies, while fantastic dogs, are not known for being patient with children. But most terriers have “hair” rather than “fur”, and while this means they need grooming, it also means that they are usually fine for people with allergies.

The allergy problem means that the Retriever breed is out of the question, which is too bad, because there is nothing in the world cuter than a Lab puppy or a Golden puppy — not even Sasha Obama.

The Bichon Frise is also hypo-allergenic, and better with kids than a Westie:

But the Bichon is such a frou-frou dog, however cute it is, and do we really want to listen to the wingnuts talk about the Obama’s gay dog for the next eight years?

No, I think this is the perfect dog for the Obama family:

That, my friends, is an apricot standard poodle, unclipped. Not a “labradoodle”, which is still going to blow at least some of its coat the way a Labrador does, but a standard poodle. If you take a poodle and leave it like this, or just clip the paws and the face, and leave a mustache, and don’t do those silly show clips, the poodle is an awesome dog. They’re smart, affectionate, and have terrific temperaments. They are high-energy without being frenetic, and highly entertaining. And a standard poodle is big enough to be nobody’s frou-frou.

Caturday/Dogurday Blogging

If I were independently wealthy, I would want to do this:

Condolences to TBogg

It’s often seemed as if cats rule the Web, what with Friday Cat Blogging and all. But one intrepid blogger has managed for years to buck the trend, and that is the one, the only, the often imitated but never duplicated TBogg. For years we’ve watched the Thursday Further Adventures of Satchmo and Beckham, and more recently, of the newest addition to Casa la TBogg, Fenway.

But today the TBogg clan has a hole in it where Satchmo used to be. We here at Casa la Brilliant know what that hole is like. We experienced it in 2000 and we will no doubt experience it again now that Maggie the Idiot Cat and Queen Jennifer Who Does Not Suffer Fools Gladly are getting up there in age. It’s part of the bargain we make when we bring pets into our lives, but it’s the part we never want to think about.

So our thoughts to out to the TBogg family today. We’ll miss Satchmo too.