dog

My Neighbour’s Chihuahua Thinks He’s a Wolf…

~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 19 Comments

Dogs have been man’s best friend for thousands of years and, as time has gone on, our four-legged companions have had many roles in human society.

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Recently, a lot of dogs have become smaller to adapt to urban living conditions.

One of these small dogs lives down the road from me.

He is called Harold.

Visually, Harold is nothing short of angelic – he a sentient ball of fur, suspended a few inches above the ground by four stubby and extremely fluffy legs.

However, Harold cannot fathom the fact that he is a small dog.

His mind is completely out of sync with his body.

Although he is physically small in stature, I think that on some level, Harold whole-heartedly believes that he is a wolf.

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As a result, he cannot comprehend why he is not treated with the same sense of reverence and awe as his fearsome and majestic ancestor.

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Being called ‘cute’ and ‘adorable’ does not sit well with Harold.

In fact, it makes him very angry.

He therefore feels a constant and unstoppable urge to establish himself and remind anyone or anything that strays into his immediate vicinity that he is a force to be reckoned with.

img_0420.pngHarold’s has a severe case of  ‘small dog syndrome’.

He is under the impression that, if he yaps with enough frequency and intensity, he will eventually be able to transform his deluded perception of himself into reality and convince everyone that he is, in fact, a big dog.

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How I Learned The Truth About Santa Claus.

~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 18 Comments

When I was younger, my main ambition in life was to own a dog.

Unfortunately, my parents were reluctant to buy one because they both worked long hours and thought that looking after a dog would be impractical.

When I was seven, I decided to take matters into my own hands and actively wrote to Santa asking for a dog.

At the time, I thought that I was being really crafty .

I thought that I had devised a cunning plan to outwit my parents by going behind their backs in order to obtain what they had previously denied me.6 As a child, I had a very intense and vivid imagination and invested heavily in fantasies and delusions.

As a result, I had complete faith in Santa’s ability to provide, not only free 24-hour delivery of a live animal, but also a complimentary kennel construction and installation service.

I was therefore slightly disappointed when all that I received on Christmas Day was a DVD of Disney’s ‘101 Dalmatians’.

At this point, any sensible child would have learned to monitor their expectations and set their sights a bit lower.

Not me.

In fact, the following year, I decided to up the ante.1The prospect of having a magical flying unicorn excited me – not only would it be an efficient mode of transport but it could also act as a symbol of my inherent coolness which I could use to improve my social status on the playground.

Christmas day arrived and I rushed downstairs, only to find a distinctly non-unicorn sized package waiting for me under the tree.

Attached to the package was the following note:2Inside the package was a ‘My Little Pony’.

I’m not going to lie – the ‘My Little Pony’ was a MASSIVE downgrade from a magical flying unicorn.

I told my Dad that I ‘ho-ho-hoped Santa was very disappointed with himself’ but apparently this was ‘slightly out of tune with the spirit of Christmas’ so I brushed the hair of my ‘My Little Pony’ and tried very hard to look as if look like the process of doing so filled me with festive merriment.

Over the course of the following year, I discovered the Harry Potter books.

My favourite Harry Potter book was ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban’, mostly because I was borderline obsessed with Buckbeak the Hippogriff.

As a far as I was concerned, a hippogriff was a cooler, edgier version of a magical flying unicorn.

I decided that I wanted to go to Hogwarts and buy Buckbeak off Hagrid.

My dad once told me that if you want to get anywhere in life you have to learn to work your contacts so, that year, I wrote a letter to Santa asking him for a letter to Hogwarts.3At the time, I thought that relying on a fictional character to help me escape into a fictional world was a completely legitimate, logistically-sound plan.

However, on Christmas day, I was once again disappointed when I received a copy of ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ along with a note that explained that all I needed to go to Hogwarts was my ‘imagination’.

By this point, I was getting quite frustrated with Santa.

However, despite repeated disappointments over the course of several years, I still fervently believed that he was real.

In fact, my brother, who was two years younger than me, discovered the truth about Santa before I did.
4Evidently, I thought that Santa was having some sort of confidence crisis and that my pep talk would provide him with the self-esteem boost to cement his place in concrete reality.

I was quite upset when I didn’t receive a reply.

I saw it as a personal rejection.

After all, I had made the effort to write a letter to Santa and, even if  he wasn’t real, the least he could do was write back to me to confirm his lack of existence.

I obviously couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that this lack of existence may have somewhat impaired his ability to reply to me – in fact, in order for him to reply to me he would have had to sent me a message from an alternate fictional dimension, something that would have essentially involved defying the laws of existence.

Nowadays, I have a better understanding of the boundaries between fiction and reality.

That being said, a small part of me still kind of believes Santa Claus is real.

However, I know that if he does exist, he is probably struggling to update his business model in order to remain competitive in an overly saturated, technologically-advanced modern market.

christmas-delivery.pngIf you enjoyed this post, feel free to check out some of my other posts. For more blog posts and drawings, you can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

I Wish That Anything In Life Could Excite Me As Much As Squirrels Excite My Dogs.

~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 9 Comments

Autumn is an exciting time of year for my dogs, mostly because there is a significant increase in the number of squirrels running around in the park.

When my dogs encounter a squirrel, they experience a level of excitement beyond that which humans can cognitively process.

I could win the lottery, be offered a free luxury round-the-world cruise and discover the secret to eternal youth, all within the space of a single hour, and still not come close to scraping the surface of the excitement that my dogs experience when they see a squirrel.

Upon seeing a squirrel, my dogs become so excited that they are no longer completely in control of their bodies.

All they can do is run around, barking manically, their movements and actions controlled by the all-consuming power of their base instincts.

At this time of year, the squirrels are collecting food in preparation for winter which means that they spend a lot of time running around on the ground.

This puts them in direct visual range of my dogs.

Normally, my dogs can barely cope with the presence of one squirrel.

Seeing multiple squirrels sends their brains into overdrive and their squirrel radars switch to high alert.

This means that pretty much everything in the park has the potential to be a squirrel.

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The Dog – A Loyal, Faithful, Devoted Companion That Will Almost Definitely Ditch You To Chase a Squirrel or Dive Head First Into a Bog.

~ Joanne Sarginson ~ 23 Comments

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post about my dog, Jessie.

Since then my parents have decided to acquire another dog.

When I say ‘decided to acquire’, I mean that I pressured them until their willpower broke.

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My family’s second dog is called Bailey.

Like Jessie, Bailey is a Labradoodle which means that, genetically, he is a mix of Labrador  and a Poodle but, physically, he looks like he is the descendant of a large teddy bear and Rowlf from The Muppets.

Bailey is 18 months old which means that he is now the size of an adult dog but still has all the raw enthusiasm of a puppy.

As a result, he carries himself with the grace and sophistication of a bulldozer being operated by a person who is not very graceful and sophisticated.

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Bailey’s main ambition in life is to catch a squirrel.

Unfortunately, his current technique of barking loudly and running directly at the squirrel in the hope that it will not see him coming has produced a success rate of 0%.

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In addition, his chances of catching a squirrel are not improved by the fact that sometimes the ‘squirrels’ he chases are not actually squirrels and are instead just generic small moving objects that happen to have strayed into his visual range.

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In fact, Bailey’s general lack of bodily coordination means that he often finds it difficult to catch anything at all, including inanimate objects, as his absurd levels of enthusiasm often significantly impair the accuracy of his attempts.

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Aside from squirrel chasing, Bailey’s other hobbies include pulling on the lead and howling.

When out on a walk, Bailey operates under the delusion that he is a member of a professional dog sled team but, since he is the only one on the team, he has to pull extra hard to compensate.

When inside the house, Bailey enjoys testing both the dexterity of his vocal chords and limits of my sanity by engaging in regular bouts of howling.

The howl is a noise that was designed to allow wolves to communicate over long distances.

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However, unlike wolves, most dogs no longer inhabit vast expanses of wilderness.

When this powerful form of communication is released within the confines of an enclosed residential space, it becomes amplified by the walls, creating what can only be described as a greenhouse effect of concentrated, ear-splitting sound.

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Dogs are well-known for their loyalty, a trait that has been documented in many films and books.

However, I think that there is a difference between the loyalty displayed by iconic dogs such as Lassie and Bailey’s tendency to cling to you with the adhesive qualities of a solid PVA glue.

Bailey tries his upmost to ensure that he is included in the majority of my daily activities.

EATING:

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WORKING:

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SLEEPING:

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Because of their loyalty, dogs are commonly referred to as man’s best friend, a title which they have held for hundreds of years.

You would presume that such a long-lasting relationship would be founded on a strong connection, a cross-species link, operating outside of verbal communication, that enables us to understand each other.

However, since we have had Bailey, I have begun to doubt the dog’s ability to understand humans at all.

This is because Bailey has an ongoing tendency to misinterpret the pretty much all of things that I say to him.

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