April 18, 2004

• God I hate people.
• WHAT. THE. F**K. PEOPLE??
• That "torture" picture cracked me up.
• what tracicle said.
• It's a bit messed up, but I guess I don't mind people painting their dogs' nails... ...as long as they clean their dogs' excrement off the pavement! I live in Belgium, dog poo capital of Europe.
• The smell of the polish must be torture for the dogs. My nose isn't a tenth as sensitive and I still get nauseous.
• Sometimes I really thing they should set up things like this as traps. "Oh you want to paint the nails of your dog? I'm sorry you failed the test" and then they would take the dog away and lock the person up. Of course I would be the one to decide what the tests were...
• I find something vaguely disturbing about what they've done to this dog. The ears made to look like hair, the desk and chair, the nail polish -- it's a little too anthropomorphic for my liking. I almost feel like the dog should be wearing a bathing suit top in the photo.
• wow. the idea of a puppy "pawlish" is kinda unsettling, to say the least. (tell me it's a joke... like the Bonzai Kittens?) OTOH, cutting off your dog's tail and ears seems a bit more 'torturous'. BTW, could one of you art majors tell me the name of the painting (maybe it was a photograph) with the goofy-looking dog and the guy posing with high heels and stuff? i think it was from the 1980s.
• I live in Belgium, dog poo capital of Europe. More poo than Paris? Frightening.
• Here's a question for dog show geeks: Do people do this for dog shows, or is this something that would get you disqualified?
• Some of these have to be show dogs. No ordinary person calls their pet something like Bags' Ginger.
• These are the kind of people who, if they have daughters, put them through pageants. Too much time on their hands. Also, ditto on the smell thing. Nail polish is incredibly noxious. I would think this would be a major no-no for any high-end dog show. Not that I know, I'm just sayin'. So, my vote is for 'doggy torture'.
• I'm pretty sure it would get your dog disqualified in a show, but I am not a dog show person, so I may be wrong. The name thing is actually standard AKC naming for any dog with lineage or 'quality' breeding. Typically an AKC registered dog's papers will read their full name as "Darby's Little Angel" where 'Darby' would be the name of one of the dog's parents and the dog may just be called Angel in day to day life. We call our pug Ripley, but on her AKC papers she's "Ripley's Believe It Or Not, We Got A Pug". We 'rescued' Ripley from a horrible retail situation and have no idea who her parents were, so we didn't include a reference to her lineage.
• Some dogs look like they think all the attention is cool, and some look terribly humiliated. Too bad owners can't tell the difference and keep forcing stuff on a dog that hates it. I own a Kelpie (or does the Kelpie own me?) and think that doing that to my dog would be totally stupid. Some people have too much time on their hands.
• i put these on my kitty Hotsy. mainly to keep him from scratching everything but also because they look hip. heh.
• babywannasofa - that first photo you linked to is NOT a dog. clearly that's some kind of muppet. sidedish - how hard is it to put those on your kitty? my cat is well-behaved and lets me clip his claws without complaining. he actually likes it and will purr the entire time. my wife's kitty is the problem - he's taken to scratching at the bed at night, waking us up. i now sleep with a spray bottle next to the bed. he will let me clip his nails, but only if i sort of squat on top of him and squeeze him between my knees to keep him from running away, at which point he seems to give up and let me clip him, with nothing more than minor struggle to escape. finally i think "dog show names" are really sort of dumb. i keep thinking if i did get a registered dog i'd name it "zeke" or some such, and that would be the ENTIRE NAME. of course i also feel that (a) nobody should pay for a pet (unless you're paying the $ to a shelter), given how many are left in rescue centers each year, and (b) "purebred" is just a nice way of saying "inbred". mutts are generally healthier and have better dispositions. all of the best dogs i've ever known were mutts. i've met some nice purebreeds too, but too many of them have minor to sever health problems - probably more of them than a breeder would ever let on to the average customer. even my dad's chocolate lab, who checked out fine as a puppy, has some hip problems at the ripe old age of 2.5 years. and clearly these dog nail polish people are going after the wierdos who think that their dogs are actually children. ugh. pets and kids are two different categories, each fine on their own, but you shouldn't treat one like the other. it demeans both.
• Can anyone pin down the song in the Flash intro? I swear I've heard it before somewhere. I just looked through all my Mr. Scruff, but I guess it's not him.
• hey clf: you should definitely try the softclaw thingies. hotsy used to wriggle and whine until i discovered i could plop him on the kitchen counter to press the thingies onto his claws. he's so distracted by being somewhere new he totally ignores what i'm doing. then i carry him around and show him things in the apartment at human eye-level(one of his fave pastimes) until the softclaws set, it takes about 3 minutes or so. hotsy doesn't seem to mind them at all! two big thumbs up from sidedish and hotsy! well, at least if hotsy HAD an opposible thumb he'd hoist it. heh.