Saturday Thises and Thatses

Look what came in my Pei Mail yesterday:

This is Master. He's a Collie Pei. I don't think he's a designer dog. More likely a love child. But if they all came out like this I'd have to endorse this hybrid. Is he gorgeous or what? It's probably just as well that he's way down in Dallas, because we just don't have room for another doggy bed in this place, or the green papers to support another one in the style to which we've become accustomed and Blog Mom can't stop looking at his photo. He's Pet of the Week in yesterday's Dallas Voice and available for adoption at .the Dallas Animal Services Adoption Center. If you're anywhere near Dallas and are lacking for a Shar Pei and/or a Collie, you really can't go wrong here. I'm sure he'll herd your sheep, rescue Timmy from the well and....

Oh, this is a bit humiliatling. After wittily listing a couple of things that Collies do I can't really come up with anything that we Shar Pei do. We are champions at being housebroken. You won't find a breed in the world that can beat us for that. I'm not sure that qualifies as an activity, though. We are wonderful companions. It's hard to explain why we're so good at that, because being good companions is really a major schtick for the whole canine population. All's I can say is that having one of us around is kind of like having an attentive, but not overly demanding, human around most of the time. That is not exactly an activity on the order of well rescuing or sheep herding either, though. We have a strong prey drive (except for Franklin) but it doesn't really come to anything. We don't track anything much or run vermin to ground.  We certainly don't retrieve. We will encourage YOU to retrieve. Does that count for anything? We must do something.... I know! We grunt! We are not the only grunting breed, but I think we can hold our own with any of them. In fact, I think that for those big doggy shows they have they should open up a new category. The Grunting Group. Right now we're in Non-Sporting Group which only serves to highlight what could be construed by the unenglightened as our lack of function. Anyhoo, someone's going to get a great dog with Master, but I recommend changing the name. Calling your dog Master has just got to set up the wrong dynamic for the whole relationship.

 And having nothing to do with any of the above, I was leaving a comment on Corbin's blog the other day and this was my squiggly word.

Doggem! I'm telling you - there some kind of secret code thing going on here. Any code breaking dogs around?