The Dog

Guest Reviewer: Aran

Variations: Scooby Doo, Lady, the Tramp.
Habitat: In front of the fire, wherever there's a stick, Italian restaurants.
Favourite food: Pedigree chum, spaghetti, snails.

Hello, I'm going to review the best animal ever. Better even than bumblebees. As everyone knows, Dogs are man's best friend, and are as a result great. They can beat any animal in the bestness stakes from cats to orangutangs.

A medieval scene depicting a plethora
of rapscallious hounds

First Impressions:

What's not to like? Fuzziness, happy faces and waggy tails. The love of all things squeaky.

Okay, so they don't miaow and a Great Dane stool usually stands taller than a six year old child, but these cannot detract from the overall greatness of the dog.

Behaviour:

Dogs may be playful (until they get old), but they're fiercely protective of their homes - great news for both families and saddo loners alike. They've also mastered the art of chasing things. Favourites include sticks, rabbits and cats. Another astounding skill of the dog is to make you do things for them, usually involving food. Anything a cat can convince you to give to them, the dog pulls it off with more sincerity. Just try to eat your food with those big sad eyes staring up at you.

A dog.

On the downside, dogs left home alone may decide to eat the contents of your entire house. Feeling cross? Again - look at the sad eyes. Like a curse. Back onto the upside, dogs have magical blood pressure lowering powers, which makes them great.

If you don't have dogs in your part of the world, just imagine a furry child with a tail. Adorable aren't they?

The official Animal Reviews canines, Flossie and Baz

Good Pet/Bad pet:

Good pet of course. All people love all dogs, with the possible exception of Scrappy Doo.

There's always fun to be had with a dog and endless hours can be whiled away with effective use of a stick or fluffy toy (or both if you're rich). And the blood pressure thing can really come in handy.

Celebrity Owner:

The following people have a dog. Only people with an allergy won't have one but even some people might.

• The Osbournes
• Tony Hart (possibly)
• Rolf Harris
• Jimmy Page

Verdict:

+ Fuzzy
+ Stupid
+ Loyal
+ Reduced salt

- Food stealers

Overall Dog Score: 9.6/10

A tricky one. You've certainly captured the essence of dog in your review, and although we agree in principle that dogs are excellent, surely not all of them are worth such a staggering 9.6/10? Collies, for example. They're rubbish. And thinking about it, so are pretty much all the small ones.

We'd be very interested to hear what other people think about this. We really can't decide on a score. What's fair for a species of such variable quality?

- Theo and Max

Hello, great site and excellent reviews!

Unfortunately I feel I must disagree with the 9.6 rating, as I feel the review has overlooked some of the dog's less redeeming factors:

• Breath - Nasty no matter what. Mints? No effect whatsoever.
• Slobber - Gets everywhere, you go to drink your coffee and it's magically converted to Cappuccino, but no, thats not milk froth, that's dog slobber.
• Dignity - Next to none. Examples: Wearing a collar? Pulled around on a leash? Retrieving sticks?
• No self support - Cats, crocs, jellyfish - you name it, they can support themselves. When was the last time you saw a crocodile panting and performing tricks just for some food?

Taking these features in to account I think the dog should be docked at least 1/2 a point for each and another one just for being a silly animal, giving a more realistic score of 7.5.

A good pet, but not perfect.

Cheers,
Chris.

I have to agree that I wasn't entirely happy about the dog review.

I don't think that all the different breeds of dog can be criticized in one review called "dog." To encompass all dogs into one review and give them an overall rating of 9.6 would be like giving a poodle a 9.6 rating. I can imagine a Labrador getting a 9.6, but a poodle would recieve as close to a zero as can possibly be imagined. Just averaging these two dogs would bring the overall rating down quite a bit. And I haven't even mentioned the Chiuhuahua yet.

The dog should be split up into seperate reviews. I think this is probably the only animal that should be. I'm not going to complain if someone does a sloth review on only one particular type of sloth. This is only because dogs are very well known to everybody and one might be reading the dog review, thinking of a poodle the whole time, and see a 9.6 rating, and have cause for complaint.

It will probably never happen. I'm just saying that it might.

Mike

Orlando, FL, USA

The dog review mentions that dogs have "mastered the art of chasing things". Surely mastery of that art would also involve catching these "things"?

Dogs chase endlessly - cats, cars and sticks. They only ever catch the sticks. Sticks don't move. Not quite what the word "mastery" brings to mind.

Nathan

I feel an angle that was left unexplored in the otherwise excellent dog review was the revelatory insight that this animal can give into the character of its owner. But not every dog can do this. There is a certain, special breed of dog which throughout the ages has helped us to glimpse the true nature of some of history's greatest individuals.

Take Arthur Schopenhauer for example, that towering figure of German philosophy, whose investigations into the nature of 'will' were to become vastly influential on the work of Nietzsche. A massive figure bestriding the nineteenth century philosophical landscape, Schopenhauer was the bearer of great and burdensome revelations concerning the workings of the human soul...

...and also the owner of a large poodle.

Called "Atma" which means "world spirit".

So not only was the notoriously glum Schoperhauer the owner of a proposterously camp animal, but he also gave it a name that would make most of today's "alternative types" blush with its Gaia-istic overtones. How our perception of the man changes when we note the nature of his pet.

The same can be said of John Steinbeck, a notorious womaniser, drinker, bar brawler, darts player, rugger ace and occasional club bouncer, who wrote books showing off about how hard life was in the United States at the beginning of the last century. He too was the owner of a large poodle, this time called "Charley". So once again, the individual's hard exterior is pierced to reveal a gooey, poodle-loving centre.

Poodles, the unearthers of true human nature - we salute you.

Other famous poodle owners include Che Guevara, Axl Rose and The Rock.

Regards,

Jay Elwes