March 3, 2008

Good God, doesn't this website update itself? Doesn't it understand that I have far more important things to do? Things like...rip all of the doors off my kitchen cabinets for paint tests, download 438 French language podcasts, and check out what's going on at Daily Puppy?

Actually, I'd better quit doing that last one. It's about to send me into another pointless, frothing rage.

I started going over to the Daily Puppy site sometime before Edina died last spring. And for the first few months after she died, I couldn't bear to visit the site -- especially when the puppy du jour was a Rottweiler or Rottweiler mix. But after a while, the pain faded. I stopped going to the back door three or four times a day to let Edina in (I still do it three or four times a week, but usually catch myself before I put my hand on the doorknob) and I stopped tearing up every time I even thought about getting a new dog. In fact, I started to really want a new dog. The house seemed sort of empty without a dog, after all this time.

And then I met my sister Deb's teacup Yorkie, George, who was about the most charming and adorable thing to ever come into my sight-line, and I was smitten. I wanted another dog, and I wanted it now!

Bobby wasn't sold on the idea, to say the least. In fact, it wouldn't be far off to say that he likes the reduction in the pet population around here -- it's a lot easier to travel when we don't have to make arrangements for the boarding of a big dog, and he really likes that.

So I almost-resigned myself to the idea of just looking at other people's puppies every day.

But there's something about it that's really getting on my nerves lately.

No, it isn't the fact that I don't have a puppy of my own. And it isn't the overly-cutesy language used by the owners to describe some of the puppies (if I can handle the cutesy-talk at Cute Overload, I can handle the amateur efforts at Daily Puppy.) And it isn't the fact that some of these puppies are, quite honestly, so cute that they can make my teeth ache.

It's the fact that the owners are making crap up, and doing it so calmly that everyone acts like it's normal.

To the owners of the dogs displayed on Daily Puppy, let me say something very clearly: you do not own a "goldendoodle." There is no such thing as a "goldendoodle." Nor is there any such thing as a "spoodle", a "schnoodle", a "labradoodle", or any other "--oodle". What you have is what is more properly known as a mixed breed, or a mutt. Wonderful dogs in every way, but...mutts. Not a new and exciting breed. You either have the offspring resulting from an accident, or (worse) from someone claiming to be a breeder who has sold you a bill of goods about your dog, and probably made you pay through the nose for the privilege.

There's no such thing as a "puggle", either, and saying it several times is not going to persuade me or anyone else otherwise.

Don't believe me? Check out the official site of the American Kennel Club -- stodgy and traditional they may be, but they know dogs and dog-breeding better than you or I do, and they don't recognize these labels.

And why in the world can't you just be happy with your dog? Why do you have to slap a fancy-sounding label on the poor thing? Why can't you just say, "She's a mixed-breed" and let it go? Or if you must, say that she's half poodle (amazing how many promiscuous poodles there are out there) and half labrador or whatever, and just count yourself lucky to have a dog that cute -- don't just make something up.

Maybe it's the paint fumes that are making me cranky about this. Maybe it's the fact that I can't even get to my own stove right now, and there's no point in going to the grocery store because I can't get to the refrigerator, either. But I'm really annoyed at how many people will calmly, and without the slightest hint of either irony or awareness, claim to be the proud "parents" of some new breed of dog.

"Schnoodle", indeed...