dogs

This is a peculiar item to come across on the pet food aisle. My first thought was "Those poor dingoes!" ;)

From the Press Enterprise Daily News Digest blog comes this story of wildlife on a field trip in the suburbs — “Bear cub takes tries out a Ventura hot tub before returning to the wild”.

The story caught my eye especially because of this hilarious moment:

Resident Stephen Schafer says he looked outside at about 3 a.m. and thought “there is a really big poodle in my backyard.”

Then he made a realization.

“Hey, that’s not a poodle.”

While this might seem an unlikely occurrence to the uninitiated, if we were to let our standard poodle Pharaoh go ungroomed for a while, he would definitely become more sheepdog like. Which, in the middle of the night, could definitely pass for a bear cub.

Here he is, groomed:

Check out the Standard Poodle group on Flickr for lots of other examples. :)

A dog-tricks trainer was on a recent Ninja Warrior podcast. Here’s his awesome poodle looking on:

One of my favorite photographers over on Flickr, The Pack, has a nifty post in the Standard Poodles photo group simultaneously displaying the artistic rule of thirds as well as why poodles shouldn’t be taken lightly. ;)

I’m going to “bend” the rules a bit and post more than two images so that I can illustrate the Rule of Thirds better. My intent was to crop my original to take advantage of the Rule….

An excellent illustration.

The rule of thirds, according to Wikipedia:

The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in photography.

The rule states that an image can be divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. The four points formed by the intersections of these lines can be used to align features in the photograph. Proponents of this technique claim that aligning a photograph with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the photo than simply centering the feature would.

Whatever your opinion of the Iditarod race (and there is controversy), you have to marvel at the hardiness of the poodle, along with the other more traditional mushers.

One day, John Suter went along for a snowmobile ride and was amazed that his miniature poodle could keep up with the snowmobile, at a reasonable speed. He decided to race standard poodles in the 1976 Chugiak Sled Dog Race. The poodles enjoyed running so much that they competed in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race in 1988 thru 1991. The poodles finished all four Iditarod Races, towards the middle of the pack. John and his poodles, also ran the John Beargrease 500 mile sled dog race in Duluth, Minnesota. Today, he enjoys spending time with his poodles, by going out on hiking trips.

http://home.gci.net/~poodlesleddog/