I Spit On You, Westminster Dog Show (#6)

Dogs just can’t be dogs anymore.

What happened to the normal dog? The real man’s dog that hikes it’s leg on fire hydrants. Or maybe the beer-drinking pit bull from the 80s. Or the annoyingly cute taco-eating chihuahua from the 90s. They’ve all gone the way of the buffalo.

Normal dogs have been replaced by virtually metrosexual dogs. Dogs who have forgotten what it’s like to be a real dog. Now, it’s all about the right color bows in your fur. The right sassy side-to-side walk. The right rhythmic wag of your tail. The right cornflower blue Gucci collar. The right handler with the right obnoxiously loud sundress. Who’s to blame for this travesty?

The Westminster Dog Show – the Superbowl of dog shows in America.

Dogs were never aware of what could be. Face it. Your dog at home never complains when he doesn’t drink out of a dog dish from Williams & Sonoma. Your dog doesn’t care if his fur isn’t blowed out with a dryer on medium heat and low speed for exactly 22.2 minutes in a clockwise circles no larger than six inches in diameter. Your dog doesn’t require a titanium cage with a built-in warming floor set to precisely 73.5 degrees. And your dog certainly doesn’t mind if you skip the doggie pedicure with metallic pink toenail polish.

My dog was normal just like yours. A couple days ago, I left Animal Planet on, after a particularly riveting story about spiders. Then I heard the announcer, in her best phony accent whispered just for TV, say something about the highlights of the 2004 Westminster Dog Show up next. The herding dogs, the working dogs, the sporting dogs, and if my ears did not deceive me, there was a category for the yippy, “I-could-punt-this-fifty-yards” dogs. Jack barked at the TV several times during the broadcast, and I mostly ignored it.

Later I realized the error of my ways by letting that trash TV poison the mind of my impressionable pup. Jack refused to eat from his three dollar plastic bowl. He knocked it completely upside down and kicked it with his little paws across the room. He stopped walking, and started prancing. He ignored my attempts to persuade him to play with a squeaky bone. Worse, he found two rubber bands, and didn’t stop whimpering until I twisted them around little braids. And oddly enough, my dog is unusually attracted to the rather large woman next door who wears bright red sleeveless dresses daily.

My dog is not normal. He’s Westminster wanna-be. I just cannot be associated with a dog like that. No. Way. Not. Ever. My dog has lost his macho manliness and taken a liking to the more effeminate designer lifestyle known only to overpriced show dogs. He’s only a shell of the dog I once played fetch with in the backyard.

For this, I spit on you, Westminster Dog Show.