….has been a life dream of mine.

Although I don’t drink much beer these days. Maybe I could train Daisy to mix me a Woodford old fashioned instead.

More photos here.

As you can see, I have a strict “no dogs on the bed” policy.

The Ad Council finally takes on a campaign I can get behind: The Shelter Pet Project.

A week or so ago, I put up a morning link about Cody, a pooch in Clearwater, Florida who charmingly greeted convenience store customers donning a BP uniform.

The story made national news, so you can probably guess what happened next. Florida public health bureaucrats marched in to put a stop to the cuteness.* Can’t have a dog roaming around where food is sold. Even though all the food the store sells is pre-packaged.

(*Caveat: Generally speaking, I’m fervently anti-clothes on dogs.)

Meant to post these last night, but ran out of time.

Girdwood, Alaska.

(Shot with a Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR.)

Another gorgeous fall day today, so I took Daisy to the park in Old Town. Harper stayed behind to enjoy a nap without the pesky puppy around. I’m trying to get Daisy a little better at socializing with other dogs. She still spends about half her time playing and half her time cowering behind me in terror. We did see a border collie and a German shepherd catching Frisbees. She seemed very interested. So that’s a start.

Daisy’s getting big.

We had a beautifully autumny weekend here in the Mid-Atlantic. Excellent dog park weather. And yeah, Daisy is getting large. She’s four months old, now. No idea how big she’ll get.

St. Bernard in Bariloche, Argentina.

Because you didn’t get your “Morning Links” today, and because I have browser tabs that need closing . . .

This story made me well up a little.

Georgia probably never had a playful day in her life.

Both pit bulls are among the 22 dogs that the Best Friends Animal Society renamed the Vicktory Dogs after rescuing them from the Bad Newz Kennel in Virginia owned by Michael Vick. More than 70 dogs were taken from Vick’s compound…

“We feel that in the very near future, Cherry may be ready for foster care,” says John Polis, spokesman for Best Friends.

“When we first got him, he would just splay down on his belly. He had just totally shut down. John had to carry him everywhere in the beginning. He’s doing very well now.”

And Georgia is a star on television and in the publicity arena.

She was on Larry King Live Monday night with Garcia and makes the rounds with him to spread the word about the dogs’ recovery from a life of abuse.

“She had experienced fighting her whole life,” Garcia says. “Now she’s going around meeting people all over with us in places like the Beverly Hills Hilton. We hope that sends a very powerful message. She’s gone from rags to riches. These dogs were the victims. All it has taken is patience.”

I’m obviously a dog person. But I’m fine with Vick’s return to the NFL. He did his time. Now let the man earn a living.

Nap time.

Harper is slowly coming around to the new pup. Now I just need to get Daisy to stop eating her own poop.

I have a piece up at the The Daily Beast looking at the cops-shooting-dogs phenomenon.

Snippet:

If dangerous dogs are so common, one would expect to find frequent reports of vicious attacks on meter readers, postal workers, firemen, and delivery workers. But according to a spokesman from the United States Postal Service, serious dog attacks on mail carriers are vanishingly rare. Bites do happen, but postal workers are given training on how to distract dogs with toys, subdue them with voice commands, or, at worst, incapacitate them with Mace. Mail carriers are shown a two-hour video and given instruction on how to recognize and read a dog’s body language, how to differentiate between aggressive charging and playful bounding, and how to tell a truly dangerous dog from a merely territorial one.

Few police departments offer this kind of training, though groups like the ASPCA and the Humane Society say they’d be more than happy to provide it. “New York is the only state I know of that mandates formalized training, and that’s during academy,” says Joseph Pentangelo, the ASPCA’s assistant director for law enforcement, who also served 21 years with the NYPD before retiring in 2001. “There are some individual departments in other parts of the country that avail themselves of our training, but not many. Not enough.”