Dogsdogsdogsdogsgods!

Get ready to weep.

I'm actually a bit terrified by this alien cuteness.

A few weekends ago was the annual Doggie Doo Parade on Tappan Square. Any dog who's any dog knows that this is the place to see and be seen, so it's the time to go all out and look your best.

Meet Esmeralda Fifi of the many hammocks. (Dog names in this post may be educated guesses.) She'd launch a thousand dog kayaks. I love her aristocratic paw.

Dog Leg profile number two:

Meet 'Pez' - you couldn't make that one up! It's as if the leg is torn between flying away and leading a free leggy life of its own, or hanging around and supporting its body through this difficult attention-overload situation.

The leg calmed down when Pez realised it was actually quite nice to be stroked by ten people at once.

I walked ooop and dooon and ooop and dooon (I'm taking a Chaucer class, and that Middle English just gets everywhere, doesn't it?) and roooond in soooocles for an unknown time period, bumping into as much fur as possible.

Events included:

'Canine Capers':
12:00 - Doggie Idol (Best Singing Dog) - wish I'd woken up this early;
12:30 - Dance Your Tail Off (Best Dancing Dog);
1:00 - Best Bunch (Costume Contest for 2 or More Dogs) - I witnessed the dogs dressed as hot dogs (they were sadly not sausage dogs) with the owners as ketchup, mustard and the little girl as a box of chips;
1:45 - Oberlin's Got Talent (Best Trick) - to be honest, there were many similar roll-overs under different extravagant names; and
2:15 - Coolest Canine (Costume Contest for 1 Dog)

Taken from the website. Last year's winner, I think. You can see that standards are high.

This was the 'arena'. Quite the crowd, eh?

3:15 - Pooch Parade forms up
3:30 - Pooch Parade begins - a little ambitious, if you ask me - over 400 dogs and only 15 minutes to sniff their new companions? Hmm. I sense delays.

So many students walked past me going, 'this is the best day ever, this is a dream, this is a dream, oh god, I miss my dog!' It was especially hard seeing the dogs up for adoption, because I would give them a home like that if I could!

Meet Paris, the blind poodle. She follows you around by smelling you! What a dream. And she needs a home! We can supply it! Oberlin, dogs in dorms please!!

This is a puppy playing with a kitten. He then started humping the kitten, at which point his owner pulled him back - surprisingly un-embarrassed - and he happily humped their leg instead. The kitten was unfazed.

Meet Ariel, the dictator of the paddling pool. She lay down in it and wouldn't budge. Apparently, she used to hate water (a kind of Ariel in reverse?) but then one time she slipped in by accident and has loved it ever since. I think the licky spaniel is very tactfully suggesting that: You're just about wet enough, aren't you? It's my turn now. I have a longer coat anyway! Goodness, the injustice of it all. Who's in charge here? I demand that a democratic paddling procedure is put in place immediately.

Gertrude and Delilah investigate a multicoloured hand.

I also love how owners look like their dogs. Here's quite a good example. But I've seen better.

Happy, happy and happy. This photo reminds me of something that happened to me over the summer. I was walking in the woods and bumped into three vastly different dogs and their owner. I asked what their names were, and this is what he said: 'Meet Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn (a short, orange, extremely fluffy thing), and this here is Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth and Home (a larger, big-eyed and kind of droopy mongrel), and this (a sheepdog-esque, slightly shy cutie)....is Daisy.' Best dog intro ever.

Talking of dog legs, that leads me nicely into my next post. Meet my good friend:

Shorty. Now, let me just say, legs can be deceiving. We will have epic adventures in a blog post coming to you soon.