Dogs.  All I ever end up writing about is dogs.  I guess its probably because I have a dog and I ended up doing a major part of my work this semester about dogs.  Not that I’m complaining, dogs are great.  Especially mine.  She does great things and my boyfriend and are are very proud parents.  She does some tricks that we taught her, goes to the bathroom outside most of the time (usually when shes upset, when we rock her world in some way like taking her on vacation we may end up with a mistake), and is generally quite chill.  We both love the fact that she has taken on our laid back lifestyle in a way we never imagined.  She gangsta-leans (see attached picture), plays with her friends, loves to eat all the things we do and even shares my love of clothes (but thankfully not shoes).  She does things that really let us know how smart she is, like hiding her toys when her BFF Ellie come to visit so she wont ruin her bones,  snuggles under the blankets when its cold, slowly edges Matt out of the bed when hes too tired to force her to the end of the bed, and brings us her sweater when shes chilly.  Recently she met Charlie Ewart, a tiny black and white pekinese/shitzu mix.  They played and played and it made me a little sad because Sushi has grown up so quickly.  She tried to show Charlie how to play fetch, didn’t snap when she playfully nipped at her face and calmed down when she got tired.  Part of me would like to get another dog to keep her company, but I worry that we wouldn’t be so lucky the next time around.  Sushi, you are a pretty good dog.

So, I was reading my google newsfeed earlier and came across an interesting story about a man who offered a $15,000 dollar reward for the safe return of his dog, who had been dognapped outside a Toronto cafe.  The dog was with his walker at the time, who had gone to pick up a snack.  Anyway, to make a long story short, he offered the reward and the dognappers took the bait.  The poor guy had to pay out $15,000 to a couple of punks who store his pet.  Here is the link to the Toronto Star story:

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/304502

Happily, Huckleberry and his owner are reunited and no one is reporting on if he actually paid out the money.  I’m hoping the police became involved and arrested these jerks.  I can’t imagine being in his situation.  It got me thinking that I am glad that no one walks my dog besides me and that I never leave her outside anywhere.  I heard a story about a Danforth store (and dog) owner who had his prized pomerian stolen from outside a store.  Does this happen often? There was a lot of backlash about him offering to pay such a huge reward.  The two sides of the debate seemed to focus on dogs as children and how much would you pay to get your child back? I’m guessing in that case, $15,000 would be small peanuts.  Who knows….All I know is that I don’t want to be in that situation ever. 

On a brighter note, while researching dogs to create a web component for this blog for class, I came across Petfinder (http://www.petfinder.com/).  Petfinder is a fantastic site to look at if you are looking for a dog. You can search a huge database of shelters across Canada and the US to find the dog thats perfect for you.  Petfinder allows you to choose the age, size and location of your new pet, as well as gives a rating of things that a future owner should know before they consider getting a particular dog, including if the dog likes cats, dogs or children (because a lot of shelter dogs don’t like certain things).  I think that this is an amazing service and should be everyones first stop when they decide to bring a dog into their lives.