Gonzai Gallery

I learned something new on Twitter yesterday/this morning. Apparently, if your avatar on the internet is of a dog (oh, hey Digby, Mosely, and a couple dogs I happened to photograph at dogshows) you are a flaming racist. Obviously, I don't subscribe to this theory - I've always thought a dog avatar meant you loved your pet/thought the pic was amusing. Like Avenue Q says, we're all a little bit racist and that does apply to me and everyone else, but how liking your own pets makes you (the Charleston terrorist, for example) baffles me. I'm not sure if I'm more upset that having Mosely as my avatar on Twitter brands me a racist, or that dogs as a whole are now seen as a sign of racism.

WTF, people?

...and Disqus appears to have eaten it. Nine times out of ten, I write a long post anywhere, I copy it before I post it. This time, I didn't. And my nice long ranty post disappeared into 'moderation'. (I was posting to 'The Lost Battalion', the open thread on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog over at the Atlantic. Hence the 'Horde' from the other day, commenters there refer to ourselves as the Horde.) I've been posting several times a day there and never once did one of my posts get flagged or marked for moderation. But this one went to the moderator for review. I posted another half dozen comments afterwards and those all posted no problem. I have no idea what happened here, and TNC won't be back until tomorrow afternoon to approve it. Nuts.

Anyway, the upshot was me ranting about the Westminster Dog Show being won by the Pekingnese, Malachy. Pekes cannot run, can barely walk, cannot mate, cannot give birth, can barely breath and are prone to all manner of health issues. As are English Bulldogs, French Bulldogs and several other breeds that have various physical deformations preventing them from doing the basic things in life. Why? Because dumb humans thought 'oh, this will look cute' and bred all these deformities into the animals, then wonder why they're so chronically ill/crippled. It infuriates me, the horrible things people have done to dogs in the name of amusement.

OK, so I'm a day behind on the Westminster Show and it was impossible to not know which dog won. But I'm quite fond of Working & Sporting dogs, loved seeing those groups, and I swear I've met the handler of the BiS Deerhound and quite possibly Hickory herself before. There can't have been that many deerhounds I've run across, and Hickory's based less than an hour from where I usually go to see shows, so I probably have met Hickory before. I love watching her trot along, she looks like she's barely putting in effort but boy does she cover ground.

Now, how to catch up on television missed for the show when I also have Farpoint this weekend...

Yes, I finally finished watching the Westminster Kennel Club show last night. I was mostly very pleased, since the Non-Sporting judge didn't pick a poodle (a miracle if there ever was one) and several of my favorite breeds won their groups. I've always liked whippets and dobermans, and I'm very fond of Brittany spaniels. How could you not love that face? The doberman's call name is CJ, and everytime the announcers mentioned it, my CJ started searching for whoever it was that called her. Meanwhile, I also liked Sadie's reaction to winning ('pay attention to me, Daddy, RIGHT NOW!') and the Lakeland Terrier that wasn't about to let the judge handle his family jewels.

Now I have to try to catch up with everything I didn't watch this week. Meep.

Yep, it's Independence Cluster weekend. I went today and went wild with the camera. For the second show in a row, not very well. I've got this awesome camera which takes incredible pics anywhere but at a dog show. At a dog show, half the pics are out of focus and another quarter are bizarrely tinted. Yes, I did change the setting to 'Dogs & Kids' and I use both hands, but still the blurry. The tinting could probably be fixed by using a flash but that tends to bother the dogs, so I don't use it unless absolutely necessary.

I will probably post some of the better shots from time to time though. They're cute :)

Like this little guy.