Dog Dryer

Available at thedogdryer.com.

There needs to be a human version of this.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Aug 29, 2019 - Comments (4)
Category: Inventions, Pets, Dogs

Shoo: The Deterrer of Pooping Dogs

Thirteen-year-old Noah De La Paz of California has invented a device to stop dogs from pooping on the lawn of his family’s house. It uses a camera and image-detection software. When a dog is identified, his device emits a high-pitched sound to encourage the dog to move on. Although still in the prototype stage, Noah hopes to eventually bring his invention to market.

I can see some potential problems with his invention. Such as that it doesn't seem to differentiate between pooping and non-pooping dogs. But even so, it sure would beat the currently most popular method of preventing unwanted poopers, which is to put up angry, threatening signs on your lawn.

More info: Spectrum News

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jul 11, 2019 - Comments (4)
Category: Inventions, Excrement, Dogs

How to housebreak your dog

Ernie Bushmiller is best known as the creator of the Nancy comic strip, which was known for being very wholesome. But it turns out that his most popular and frequently reproduced cartoon, by a wide margin, was a slightly off-color one that he drew in 1961, and which was included that year in the Duch Treat Club Yearbook. He titled it "How to housebreak your dog."

The Comics Journal details the many lives of this cartoon, noting:

Posted By: Alex - Sat Jul 06, 2019 - Comments (3)
Category: Comics, Dogs, 1960s

Hot Dog Boogie

Posted By: Paul - Wed Jun 19, 2019 - Comments (2)
Category: Music, Dogs, 1950s

Glitter Balls

Here's the latest viral horror doing the rounds. It's not clear how many people are bejeweling their dogs in this way. But pictures of the phenomenon are out there. So, I guess, someone must have done it.

The glitter is said to be edible, and it's applied with corn syrup. So it's not harmful for the dogs.

More details: rare.us



(Thanks to Jenny Beatty for alerting us to this!)

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 27, 2019 - Comments (2)
Category: Fashion, Dogs

Canadian Prime Minister Consults Ghost Dogs

Article:

William Lyon MacKenzie King (1874-1950), Canada’s 10th and longest serving Prime Minister was a devoted dog owner in life and in death.While active in politics King had an achingly dull public image, which was certainly at odds with the goings-on in his private life. What the Canadian populace wasn’t aware of was his séances, his consultations with spiritual mediums, table-rapping sessions, tea-leaf readings and communing with the spirits of the likes of former PM Wilfrid Laurier, his long-deceased mother, and of course his dear ghost dog, Pat. That he owned and frequently used both a Ouija board and a crystal ball was published in Time Magazine in 1953, news that shocked the nation. Rampant rumours circulated about King’s oddities, some true, most false. That King had Pat stuffed by a taxidermist so that the little dog would always be by his side turned out to be untrue. King’s detailed diary entries, published after his death in 1950 revealed that King consulted the dead Pats during these séance sessions in manners of international political policy, conscription, and Liberal Party Leadership.

King, obsessed with death and the afterlife, often expressed his wish to communicate with the living after he died, just as he hoped to be reunited forever in the spirit world with his three Pats; “we shall all be together in the Beyond,” he wrote, “of that I am perfectly sure”.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Jan 30, 2019 - Comments (2)
Category: Communications, Eccentrics, Government, Officials, New Age, Paranormal, Dogs, Twentieth Century

Follies of the Madmen #397

I detect the influence of A Charlie Brown Christmas on this unlikely morality play.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Nov 24, 2018 - Comments (2)
Category: Business, Advertising, Hygiene, Excrement, Dogs, 1960s

Tilda Swinton’s Dog Opera

Posted By: Paul - Sun Oct 28, 2018 - Comments (4)
Category: Music, Dogs

Hero Dog of the Year

In 1954, Ken-L Ration Dog Food began awarding a prize to the "Hero Dog of the Year." Sponsorship switched to Kibbles 'n' Bits at some point.

Here is a list of some winners.

The latest year I can find when the award was given was 2004.

The American Humane Society seems to have taken over, or rebooted the award.


In any case, the award gives us a chance here at WU to carry forward one of our earliest missions: proving that cows are the most evil and deadly creature on the planet.







Article behind NYT paywall, alas.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 30, 2018 - Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Dogs, 1950s, 1980s

Black Knight, Freeman of London

Dominating the staircase is a big painting of Lady Violet Munnings riding a grey hunter, superbly assured against a finely painted sky and moorland setting. Lady Violet’s Pekingese, Black Knight, who was made a Freeman of the City of London (such are the benefits of dining with the influential), wrote a memoir that he called Diary of a Freeman. Actually I think he dictated it to Lady Violet, who was his devoted slave in all things. After he died she had him stuffed, and continued to carry him to the village on errands. He now reposes on a favourite cushion in a glass case beneath Munnings’s portrait of him, in a cubby hole off the main staircase. He remains extremely popular with regular visitors.

The artist.



Here is Black Knight's account of his life.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Jun 24, 2018 - Comments (2)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Art, Books, Dogs, Twentieth Century