folo

Too cool — our friends at dogblog announce:

Website Rover411.com sponsored a "My Dog Looks Like Obama or McCain" contest, and the winners have been announced: a Boxer and a Maltese. Photos of both winning dogs and their look-alike politicians, as well as pix of the runner-up dogs in each category, are available at the site.

Okay, before you go look, can you guess who’s the Boxer and who’s the Maltese? Thought you could . . .

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Aw, it’s too far from Saturday to risk forgetting I have this, so here ya go:

(h/t Andrew Sullivan)

I love that moment of “Okay, I’m out, now what?!” (Hope that wasn’t cement s/he landed on, though.)

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Good lord, the things you can run into, backtracking other blogs’ links to folo. TW, over at State Street Posts, liked this morning’s BAD RAP post and, in the process of saying so (thank you, TW), led me to an update on last week’s Saddy Animals post (which apparently wasn’t well-attended — perhaps I was too cryptic?).

Anyhow, you’re missing a mind-bender/binder if you don’t start at the second link above and come forward to today at State Street. That is, unless you’re not intrigued by personages that Hunter S.Thompson might have had trouble believing as real . . .

UPDATE: Okay, just to be sure: here.

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I don’t know but won’t be surprised if, when the whole history of folo is known, today’s edition will still shine as the Best Saddy Animals Ever . . .

Okay, I’m possibly the only foloer who’d never heard of Michael Vick before he was revealed as a dog-torturer and -murderer last year (to this day I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup). When that awful story broke, I followed it mostly via headlines, not interested in him and not wanting to think more than I had to about what he’d done. I assumed the dogs rescued from his kennel all had to be put down.

Well, no. Of the nearly 50 pit bulls found in Vick’s fighting-dog pack, one — that’s ONE — turned out to be so psychologically-ruined she had to be destroyed.

The rehabilitation of the others is the work of a couple of Oakland, CA, commercial artists named Tim Racer and Donna Reynolds, who consider the American pit bull terrier the country’s most misunderstood breed. In 1999, they founded Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pit Bulls, BAD RAP, to counter the pit bull’s scary image. Here‘s an illustrated LAT story about them (h/t al-Scooter).

It’s a fine read, but as always, pictures beat out words, and we’re in big luck in that department. A site called The Daily Puppy (h/t riddenword) has three photo-galleries with voiceovers by Reynolds, showing-and-telling

Meeting the Vick Dogs: Reynolds, Racer, and their colleagues are introduced to and initially evaluate the victims’ conditions;

The Doggy Underground Railroad: two intrepid folks drive thirteen pit bulls from Virginia to California, dodging jurisdictions where the breed is banned; and finally

Certified AWWWW Material: where these much-happier-fellas are now (enjoying life with normal families, answering to boss cats an’ like that). Look at those grins!

A Daily Puppy commenter said, “I’m blown away by the extremes of what people do. Thank goodness we’re not all bad and that some are angels.”

Robert Durell/Los Angeles Times

Amen.

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Thanks to duckweedpond for this double entry in our animal blogging file. The first part comes from Chris Fromm at FacingSouth, where they also weekly blog dogs. His post is the haunting Remembering the dogs of Birmingham, which includes a photo that will make you cringe — but it celebrates the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who’s now 86 and about to receive the honor of having Birmingham’s airport named after him. Here’s why:

A prominent civil rights leader and one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Shuttlesworth invited the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to his segregated city of Birmingham, Ala. back in 1963 for what he called “Project C.”

The “C” stood for “confrontation.”

With the city’s police chief, Eugene “Bull” Connor, using the Klan to carry out terrorism against African Americans, Shuttlesworth sought to force the local powers-that-be into a fresh accounting of segregation’s true costs. The confrontations that eventually occurred between police officers and nonviolent civil rights marchers — including high school students taking part in Shuttlesworth’s Children’s Crusade — brought to the entire world images of police dogs attacking marchers.

The public was outraged.

The shocking scenes of peaceful, frightened protesters being menaced by snarling, biting animals — like the Associated Press photo above by Bill Hudson, of an attack on Birmingham protest observer Walter Gadsden on May 3, 1963 — showed in a visceral way the brutality at the heart of white supremacy. They also ultimately helped create the political atmosphere necessary to pass meaningful civil rights legislation.

So with a bravo to both Rev. Shuttlesworth and the airport board for honoring him, let’s turn to some lighter fare . . . a guy with a knack of lullabying puppies to sleep:

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Since Lotus is flooding the site with pet photos, I decided I had to toss up one of my own. This photo is courtesy of Dr. X’s Free Associations, which tells us it offers psychology, vintage photos, and more.

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Yesterday, Kind Lady wrote that Jackson of the once-Booneville Three was on his way home to the Delta with the new woman in his life, and that it’d been mutual love-at-first-sight. She works in a one-person office, and Jackson will be going to work with her every day (so there ya go: his permanent assignment turns out to be office management). Now Kind Lady writes:

I have heard from Jackson’s new mom. They had a wonderful night last night. They are bonding like peas and carrots and she is very happy with that little rascal.

Missy went home with her new mom this afternoon. Missy will be living down the block from my mom with a widow lady as an only pet. This lady has experience with Shih Tzus and she thought Missy was about the prettiest thing this side of Mars. Don’t tell Jeff the Wonder Dog, but I just about have to agree with that one.

Mr. Zippy is doing great, the biggest problem is keeping him resting quietly as he is beginning to feel his oats. No fights between Jeff and the Zipster so far.

As soon as Zip finishes up with recovery from heartworms, he’ll be off to join the household of Kind Lady’s daughter. So one wootie-wootie-woot for the four-footed Three, and another for the two-footed Three — Mr. and Mrs. Kycol and Kind Lady!

UPDATE: A-HA. Just in from Kind Lady: “My hubby is getting hooked on Zippy, and since he gets along with Jeff the Wonder Dog, we’ll see if our daughter is able to wrest him away! Haha.”

I knew it.

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For our Saturday animal goody, I commend to your attention the video on NYT’s front page right now (or if it’s changed by the time you read this, the one here, complete with story and still photos): inmates in a women’s prison training Golden and Lab puppies to be service dogs for Iraq-war veterans.

Beautiful.

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Jackson

Missy

Zippy

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Jackson

Missy

Zippy

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