Technically, this one could be about Dexter. It just also happens to have Solo in it. Sorry for the music, but between L Word and Clerks 2, I’ve got Jackson 5 on the brain.
If you have issues with the Blip TV Player, this video should be up on my YouTube page later today.
On February 9th, Bullies from across North America will be congregating in Long Beach, California, for the 4th annual ‘Beautiful Bullies‘ competition. For the first time ever, Frenchies have been welcomed into the competition.
Do you think they realize how totally and utterly Frenchies are going to dominate this competition? Go team Frenchie! If you’re in the area, stop by and check it out.
I’m spending this coming weekend in lovely Wiarton, Ontario, where I’ll be anxiously awaiting the predictions of Wiarton Willie. Will it be six more weeks of winter, or an early spring? We’ll have to wait for Saturday to find out.
Willie’s weather prognostication career has been sadly marred by scandal. In 1999, the long lived original Willie was found dead, and festival organizers were unable to find a replacement in time for the weather prediction. Instead, they marked Groundhog Day by revealing “Willie” in a coffin. He had been dressed in a tuxedo, had coins over his eyes, and a carrot between his paws.
A scandal ensued when it transpired that the real Willie had in fact decomposed, and the body in the coffin was that of an older, stuffed groundhog. The Associated Press was obliged to issue a retraction on its wires.
There are numerous other weather predicting groundhogs across North America, although Willie is the only albino.
Wikipedia lists:
If you can’t make it Wiarton, or to any of the other February 2cnd groundhog day celebrations, you can check out the live WillieCam – http://www.wiartonwilliecam.com/
They’ll be broadcasting Willie’s predictions live on Saturday morning, bright and early at 7:00 am eastern standard time. Sean and I will be there with the dogs, so if you are planning on attending, drop us a line!
Side note: a friend of ours on the upper east coast of the USA has suffered a family emergency. Due to this, they are placing several lovely teenage French Bulldog puppies, and a few retired show girls. If you are interested in learning more about these avail-a-bullies, please email her directly.
The AKC just released their annual registration figures for 2007. The list contains all of the usual popular breeds, with one exception – for the first time since 1935, the Bulldog has entered the top ten most popular breeds list. Bulldogs are most popular in Los Angeles, where they are second only to Labs.
This popularity has made Bulldogs one of the most commonly used dog breeds in wire transfer (or ‘phantom puppy’) scams – this is the scam where ‘breeders’ offer cheap or free puppies, with the prospective owner just paying for the shipping. Fees are to be paid by wire transfer, and once the scammer has collected fees from a handful of people, they disappear, leaving the victims with no puppy, and out the shipping fees they’ve wired. You can learn more about phantom puppy scams here –
http://www.akc.org/news/index.cfm?article_id=3220
http://www.scambusters.org/puppyscams.html
French Bulldogs have exploded in popularity, more so this year than any other. Many of us remember when Frenchies were so little known as to be almost a rare breed – this year, San Francisco and Los Angeles include the French Bulldog in their Top 10 lists.
The increase in popularity of Frenchies is staggering in such a short period of time – they’ve increased +404%, second only to Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, at +406%. This means we can look forward to more puppy mills pumping Frenchies into pet stores, more backyard breeders tossing untested dogs together to make quick buck puppies, and more cheap imports flooding the market and swamping rescue.
We can only hope that this surge in popularity is the crescendo, and that Frenchies can now slip quietly back into obscurity, becoming once again the dog most people assume is a Boston, a deformed eared pug, or a Pot Bellied pig on a leash.
Email Woes
I’ve been going through my semi-semi annual bout of frantic filing, desk re-organizing, correspondence answering and cord sorting out (where the heck do all of those electrical cords and chargers come from that end up buried in my desk drawers? Are they multiplying on their own?). This has all put me rather behind on my email answering, especially since everyone and their brother seems to have decided to contact me about Mae.
If you’ve emailed me, be patient – I should get caught up by Friday.
Puppy Photos
Some new photos of my dapper little brindle man, Dexter. I tried to take some proper body shots, but he’s still at the ‘stop, you’re freaking me out’ stage of table stacking, and shots taken of him on the table show a cowering wreck who looks nothing like the pup I see standing on the floor, at ease. There are a few body shots in here, but in the best one Penelope decided to turn her head and block out Dexter’s. So, if you can ignore the fact that he’s headless, you get a pretty good look at his body.
All of the photos are here —
http://flickr.com/photos
Solo is rapidly developing into the world’s cutest puppy.
Don’t believe me? Check out this photo. Super cute, yes? Almost…. eerily cute?
Yup, it’s true – he has super powers. Eerie, evil, super cute puppy powers. Be afraid.
All the rest of the pix are here –
http://flickr.com/photos/frenchbulldogs/sets/72157603710340910/
Separated at birth:
Knut the infamous abandoned polar bear cub born at the Berlin Zoo – and now apparently named Flocke or Snowflake…
… and our own Solo puppy.
Not only do they look alike, but both –
* have moms who are uninterested in raising them (altho’ Solo’s didn’t try to chomp on his head)
* had to be bottle fed
* had siblings who died
* are extreme examples of cute-i-tude
I rest my case.
Solo is almost at two pounds, finally. He hit a sort of plateau when he was sick a week ago, but he’s been making up for lost time the last few days. He’s gone from eating just under an ounce per feeding to an ounce and a half and change – and this morning, he ate a full two ounces. Time to re-try the pablum!
Sailor just adores him – well, she adores licking him, at any rate. Tessa has given him a few cursory sniffs, but remains steadfast in her adherence to her “I don’t babysit the great grandkids” policy. Can’t say I blame her – she did her time in the puppy trenches.
Here are some photos of Solo at three weeks —
http://www.flickr.com/photos
There are a few in there of Dexter, as well
Solo also has his very first video, mainly consisting of his being adorable and fuzzy.
You can find it on YouTube, or embedded after the cut.