My Dogs Worship False Idols
I’ve been doing my semi annual “clean every damn thing in the house” ritual, for lo these last 48 hours. I’m pretty thorough about it, too – everything gets taken off shelves and dusted, from books to knick knacks.
Today, that involved cleaning and dusting all the crap stuff on my downstairs bookshelves, including the fugly “where the hell did I pick that up?” wooden folk art ram that usually sits on the top shelf. Here’s a close up of the ram, in his normal place atop the book shelf:
When bad collectibles happen to good people.
OK, sorta creepy, but nothing too out of the ordinary. As usual, when I dust I take everything down, and put it wherever I can find space. In this case, I stuck the ram on the window sill, next to the TV. I then forgot all about it, until Sean walked downstairs and asked me “What the hell Tula and Delilah were doing”.
What they were doing, apparently, was worshiping at the altar of their new personal God, the wooden ram.
"What was that, Lord Ram? Kill the humans in their sleep?"
You have to put this in context, OK? Tula and Delilah did not move from underneath the windowsill for a good twenty minutes. Occasionally, Delilah would get a little overly enthusiastic and try to climb up closer to the windowsill, in which case Tula would lay a beating on her, and then they’d both go back to their previous poses of attentive worship.
Delilah gets closer to God
Twenty minutes. My dogs can’t stay focused on a steak for twenty minutes, let alone a wooden statue. It was starting to get a little bit creepy, so we put Lord Ram back up on top of the book shelf.
Didn’t help.
Oh Sky Ram, we still love you...
After about two hours of this, Tula had pretty much lost most of her interest. Not Delilah, though. She remained faithful – so faithful, in fact, that I felt compelled to break out the video camera.
It could be worse, I suppose. We could have had to break it to her that there’s no Santa Claus. Nah, she’d never believe that. My dogs KNOW there’s a Santa, and that they’re all on the ‘nice’ list, no matter how naughty they’ve been all year!
There are Dogs.. and There are French Bulldogs
I found this cartoon over on Medium Large. Pretty accurate, for most dogs at least.
French Bulldogs, though? As anyone who owns one can attest, French Bulldogs operate on a whole new level altogether.
Click either cartoon for a full sized version, and Happy Holidays!
The Island Of Misfit Toys & Happy Hannukah!
I was flipping through TV late last night, mulling over some site design issues and basically operating in the sort of zoned out state I’m usually in when in front of the television. I drive Sean insane, because ten minutes of TV watching is about as much as I can take, before I have to get up and either grab a book, or look something up on the internet. Short attention spans, they’re not conducive to extended periods of sitting in one place.
In the middle of my flip – a – thon, I suddenly stumbled over what is perhaps the most disturbing kid’s Christmas special of all time – Rudolph. Done in claymation, this ‘timeless’ children’s classic teaches us all valuable lessons about life, love and understanding.
Lessons like:
– people (or reindeer) with disabilities should never be given jobs
– children (or toys) that are ‘strange’ or different should be shunned
– Santa can be kind of a dick
The French Bulldog Village, the rescue and placement group I so frequently give shout outs to, is rapidly turning into the Island of Misfit French Bulldogs. The halt, the lame, the not so very pretty, the ‘might bite kids if they take his toys’, the ‘one part Frenchie, ten parts God only knows’ dogs – those are the dogs that rely on FBV to get them whole, get them homes and get them loved.
Operating on the principle that ugly dogs (and bad dogs) need love too, the French Bulldog Village is busily being overwhelmed with the dogs that no one else wants. The hard to place dogs, the dogs with issues. The dogs that take extra time, money and care to re hab.
I guess I just have a soft spot for the less than perfect French Bulldogs – the Frenchies with tongues that loll, ears that flop, and bodies that contain as much Basset Hound as they do Bulldog. Thankfully, French Bulldog Village founder Charlotte Creeley (and all the FBV elves, who labor tirelessly and drive endlessly to pick up the dogs no one else wants) has a fondness for them, as well. If she didn’t – if FBV didn’t – where would they all end up?
That’s something I don’t like to think about, as is the question of what will happen to them all if FBV can’t meet their 2009 fund raising goals.
To that end, why not help us to spread some French Bulldog love?
If you have a web page, a blog, a FaceBook account, or even a (gasp) MySpace page, why not add our nifty new French Bulldog Village “Featured K Kid” Widget to it? It’s as simple as adding a YouTube video or any other copy/paste widget, and there’s even built in easy add options for most of the popular social networking systems.
There’s a larger, 300 X 250 widget (you can see it at the bottom of this page), or a more narrow, taller, 160 X 300 widget (good for sidebars on blogs). I’m working on an interactive banner, in standard 460 X 80 size.
The content is automatically updated with a new K Kid and new K Kid Slideshow on a semi monthly basis, and there are easy ‘one click’ donation buttons.
Spread some love, and help support needy French Bulldogs and French Bulldog mixes!
Here are the links:
Larger sized widget:
http://seed.sproutbuilder.com/iQBrgBW7EPJ9wSXg
Narrow, side bar friendly widget:
http://seed.sproutbuilder.com/MgAasx3oEA_OQSr6
By the way, Happy Hannukah to one and all!
As the ever excellent “Lassie Get Help” points out, this is a great time to remember the concept of tzedakah – embodied by “justice (tzedek), law (mishpat), kindness (chesed) and compassion (rachamim). Are these not the very core concepts that rescue seeks to honor?
Justice, for the victoms of abuse and neglect.
Law, for those who harm them
Kindness, towards those who’ve experienced little of it
Compassion, towards those who deserve it
Exercise some tezedakah this season, and sponsor a K Kid. The world is never anything but brightened by doing a mitzvah.