Bouncing, leaping and woofing

Stolen from Lisa's post:

Dear Dogs and Cats,

The dishes with the paw print are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food. Please note, placing a paw print in the middle of my plate and food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.

The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Beating me to the bottom is not the object. Tripping me doesn't help because I fall faster than you can run.

I cannot buy anything bigger than a king sized bed. I am very sorry about this. Do not think I will continue sleeping on the couch to ensure your comfort. Dogs and cats can actually curl up in a ball when they sleep. It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other stretched out to the fullest extent possible. I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out the other end to maximize space is nothing but sarcasm.

For the last time, there is not a secret exit from the bathroom. If by some miracle I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, meow, try to turn the knob or get your paw under the edge and try to pull the door open. I must exit through the same door I entered. Also, I have been using the bathroom for years--canine or feline attendance is not mandatory.

The proper order is kiss me, then go smell the other dog or cat's behind. I cannot stress this enough!

To pacify you, my dear pets, I have posted the following message on our front door:

All Non-Pet Owners Who Visit & Like to Complain About Our Pets

1. They live here. You don't.
2. If you don't want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. (That's why they call it "fur"niture.)
3. I like my pets a lot better than I like most people.
4. To you, it's an animal. To me, he/she is an adopted son/daughter who is short, hairy, walks on all fours and doesn't speak clearly.

This, you see, is what dogs and cats do. This is why they are lovable and generally great.

You know what dogs don't do? Prance around for no good reason. They don't skip around in nice circles, nor do they behave better than children. They certainly don't bugger about with jumping over silly primary-coloured fences...For those of you not in the UK, I'm talking about the annual Crufts dog show, which makes for utterly surreal television. Oh, hell. I've written about this before, two years ago. In an incredible explosion of ego, I'm just going to quote myself:

I’m not really sure where to start. I don’t understand it. Any of it. Why would you train your dog to lie perfectly still for ten minutes? Why would you want your dog to run around a set of poles? Why would you want a dog to go fetch a toy, give it to you, then run behind your legs and sit down? What? What? Why? Worst of all was the part where the owners run around with their dogs, and the judges then decide which is the best dog, by seeing which conforms the most to the breed specifications. Breed specifications? What. The. Hell. How do you define what a dog is supposed to look like? It’s like saying that Charlize Theron is the perfect female, and that we should have competitions where the woman who looks most like her is deemed ‘best woman’. It doesn’t make sense. How could you possibly choose a dog to base the specifications upon? Or maybe it’s a combination of features that look good, in which case that’s totally subjective. Abu? Whatchamagoobob?

[Andrew makes flabbergasted noises for a few more minutes, until he regains the ability to speak.]

Dogs are for loving and being generally happy, bouncy and cool. This is why dogs are good. This is also why dogs are Better Than Cats. Some dogs also have many applications in work, such as sheepdogs, tracker dogs and sniffer dogs. These are the things dogs do. They do not have to lie still for ten minutes for absoloutely no good reason. No. That’s weird. It’s demeaning. What you want from a dog is for it to do doggy-like stuff that it enjoys.

I see there was a little anti-feline bias in there I like cats, really I do. It's just that, as the old saying goes: "Dogs see God in their owner. Cats see God in a mirror."

It's not like I think there's anything terribly wrong with the show - as far as I can tell, the dogs are treated well enough - I just can't understand what would make you decide to enter.