I ran into this video a few years ago, and every once in awhile I look it up again, just to see if it’s as absurd as I remember. There’s something profoundly strange and disturbing about this, particularly since those back-up poodle exercisers look just like my OJ.
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Tina Turner poodle
and now he’s ready for the summer, but he looks a lot like a sheep. I left the ‘fleece’ in the picture just because it’s fun to see how much wool comes off! No sweeping required, it all sticks together; I just pick it all up and and stuff it into a bag. OJ looks less like a poodle, but he’s a lot cooler.
You know how the magazines chase celebrities and shoot pictures of them without their makeup or in slobby clothes so they can say, “Ooh, look how nasty s/he looks when s/he’s not working! S/he’s falling apart!” Most of us don’t look our best 24 hours a day. We may have to run out for milk without our most presentable ensemble on. At home, we aren’t always gorgeous. We wear our sweats, go without our make-up, and don’t worry about projecting a stunning, glamorous image. Image is a false picture of reality. No one is perfect all the time.
Take OJ. A few days ago I showed you a photo of him looking all glamorous in a Continental clip. He knows he looks good. He prances with all the poodle panache of a champion in the ring at Westminster. He looks classy. If we’re out for a walk, Japanese tourists ask to take photos with him. Strangers stop on the street to comment on how amazing he looks. People in parking lots stop us to tell us what a beautiful dog he is. Yup. A standard poodle in the flesh is impressive. Very much like meeting a celebrity.
But at home, all that “classy poodle” image stuff goes out the window. OJ is just a dog. Well. Not quite a dog, but you know what I mean.
yeah- he's just that sexy
BEFORE:
AFTER:
One of the things about Paris is the number of tourist gimmicks around. Guys with rings of Eiffel Tower souvenirs ready to sell, Guys with shell games on the go, Artists ready to paint your portrait or cut your silhouette, Kids pretending to be deaf and mute and wanting you to make a donation, Musicians playing with their hats at their feet, People holding photos of their family and just begging. Everyone has an angle to fit the stereotype: Eiffel Tour, beret, scarf. (Never mind we only saw 4 people in berets the whole time we were in France).
When I groomed ‘Scruffy Mutt OJ’ after his couple of weeks in the kennel and transformed him into ‘Continental OJ’ with some semblance of poodle panache, it occured to me that he could garner me some money in Paris. If I took him out walking in the park at the Eiffel Tower, I’m sure I could get at least 2 Euro (and maybe more) from tourists who wanted to pose with him with the Tower in the background. 200 Euro a day, say, for letting people stand beside him and snap a photo with their own camera. What a great stereotype! I might be able to pay for our trip that way. Too bad I didn’t think of it before we went!
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(PS. Just an FYI- this is technically a “Historically Correct Continental” which has a much short jacket and topknot than you see in the big hair show cuts. This is the serviceable version, and closer to the origins as a hunting cut for the water retrievers to go into the water to get the ducks, with the hair covering the joints, but the back shaved to make swimming easier. In OJ’s case, the shaved parts are done with a 15 blade, rather than a 30 or 40 so it’s not bare skin. As well, since I’m not a pro groomer and I rarely play with this clip, I never seem to get the shape of the jacket quite right! Getting closer, but still not quite perfect…)
And for fun- here’s OJ being a “French Poodle” for Hallowe’en a few years ago…
Oh you are a cute fluffy face.
why is blood dripping from you when you pee?
Are you and your brother trying to ensure
I never get my leather couch?
$1000 in dental last month.
Will I spend several hundred
in tests and surgery this month?
I’m sure the vet does not need a new couch!
Please be healthy
fluffy face
(and other parts as well).
Meet Dusty.
Dusty is not an incorrigible counter surfer. He is not a pantry raider with a death wish. He is not a giant cream goofus.
Dusty is a cat.
Oh, I know. From the photo he looks like a dog. I’m sure his canine parents and his breeder thought he was a dog. I’m sure when I’m walking him down the street on a leash that people think he’s a dog.
It’s a lie.
Dogs are adoring. They follow their masters and want to be picked up. They come when they’re called. They’re cuddly and happy.
Not cats. Cats climb to the highest points of sofas. They refuse to be picked up. They ignore you if you want their attention. They have their own agenda. They force you to do what they want. They take off and don’t come when you call them.
That’s Dusty.
Well. That’s Dusty most of the time. He does have one canine habit. It’s a good thing he does, because it is the secret to controlling him. Dusty has what we call BOD. Ball Obsession Disorder. We can get him to do almost anything if we produce a ball as bait. He has a very impressive repertoire of tricks that he will do if you will throw a ball after he does what you ask.
Sometimes BOD saves his life. Every couple of years Dusty managed to break out of the house and took off running. The only fool proof way we discovered to get him back was with a ball. While he is tearing down the sidewalk at full speed, a ball thrown past him will exert a powerful force. You can watch the magic power break through his desire for freedom as he swerves helplessly to follow the ball.
He grabs it, and then he must return it. He needs it to be thrown again. He’ll drop it on the sidewalk just out of reach so you can’t grab him, but now you have him anyway. You throw toward the house, in successive throws and returns until you’re throwing it through the front door, and he is compelled to follow it in. Shut the door and he wags his tail as he takes his ball and collapses on his pillow.
Then he curls up and becomes a cat again.
Further misadventures of Kimelle’s Optimum Jive aka OJ the standard poodle.
OJ loves packages. He loves zip-locked bags. Apparently opening a zip lock bag for him is like opening Christmas presents to a four year old. He doesn’t care what is inside the bags, it’s the opening that he likes. 50 little bags on a ring, each neatly labeled and stuffed with entirely inedible little circular Girl Guide badges? Oh those are a wonderful prize. He happily opened every single bag and scattered a couple hundred little badges all over the family room, so I would have the pleasure of sorting them all again. He’s helpful that way.
How about those expensive, heavy duty ziplock bags made for miniature toiletries while travelling through customs? Even empty, because of their deluxe nature I suppose, opening them brings him joy. He is careful to ensure all our toiletry bags have adequate drainage and ventilation.
If, however, the bags happen to contain food, OJ is in paradise. He routinely opens up my purse to check for treats. He can open zippers on the purse, and on the cosmetic bag within. (I prefer this to the times before he bothered to open zippers when he’d chew through several layers of lining ). He likes those little foil packages of hand-wipes. He doesn’t eat them, but he likes to open them. I presume that’s more about ventilation. He has eaten countess granola bars stored in my purse for emergency snack. (Mine, not his). Yeah, yeah. I should put my purse up where he can’t get it. I know. He’s sneaky. He distracts me. He pretends he’s not interested, and then wham- purse raid.
He showed amazing skill opening little packages of sesame seed snaps last year. I came across a good dozen empty wrappers in a tidy pile beside their box between his pillow and the couch. He’d managed to smuggle the box out of the pantry and individually opened each package before devouring the treats within. You wouldn’t find many dogs taking the time to do that, but poodles have class.
We took him to the vet after that one, actually. He looked a little green when I found him. The x-ray showed his lower digestive tract was rather packed with seeds, but with a little time tidy tubes of sesame seeds were duly deposited in the back yard. They didn’t attract nearly as much attention as the pile of raisins and dried cranberries I’d cleaned up the year before. Ants love fruit that has traveled through a dog digestive tract, apparently.
I do live in fear that OJ will commit suicide by stolen food. It is far to easy to imagine. He almost did it this year. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.
Further Misadventures of Kimelle’s Optimum Jive aka OJ the standard poodle.
As previously mentioned, counter-surfing requires stealth, balance, and ingenuity. OJ leaves us baffled on a regular basis. We have no idea how he does the things he does. I have heard it said that poodles are so intelligent that they are frequently the ones who train their owners. The dog books say unintelligent people should probably avoid owning poodles. My husband and I have university degrees and respectable IQs. You’d think we’d be able to keep up with a dog.
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OJ loves soup. His favorite is Campbell’s Butternut squash soup. This is how I know.
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Last year there was a sale on Campbell Gardennay soups. I had considered purchasing them several times in the past, but had thought they were too expensive. At three for six dollars, I was finally willing to try them. I purchased three different soups: Summer Asparagus with Sweet Basil, Fire Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato, and Butternut Squash. I put the three tetra-bricks into my pantry on the pullout wire drawer. I already had two generic soups in tetra bricks in that drawer and I added the three Gardennay soups behind them. I was particularly keen to try the Butternut squash, since that’s my favorite Tim Hortons soup.
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A couple days later, I came into the living room to discover a strange silver rectangle on the living room floor. It looked like a chunk of metal. What was it? I leaned over to investigate. OJ jumped off the couch and sauntered nonchalantly down the hall.
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I picked up the weird silver thing and turned it over to study it with confusion. Formerly it had been a Gardennay tetra-brick. Now it was a perfectly flat, absolutely clean silver rectangle. There were no chew marks. You would swear he’d taken a pair of scissors and cut the box open down the seams. There was no so
up anywhere. Floors, couch and dog pillow were all clean. Of course it was my Butternut Squash soup. Damn freakishly talented counter-surfing dog.
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I went out shopping later, and bought another three soups. This time I bought two Butternut Squash boxes, muttering at OJ the whole time. At home, I tucked the soups in the pantry, setting the two Butternut Squash boxes at the very back of the drawer. Whoever took this soup out was going to have to pull out the drawer. OJ can’t open the door to the pantry, thank heavens. He can’t pull out the drawer. I cooked up a pot of Butternut Squash the next day. It was excellent. I ate it all, and did not leave the pot unattended. I savoured the idea of the second box waiting for another day. OJ lay covertly on the couch, plotting while he pretended to be sleeping.
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It wasn’t even a week later that I walked into the living room to see a familiar silver rectangle sitting reverently on a dog pillow. The pantry drawer was closed. I pulled out the drawer. The soups were all present and accounted for. All but one.
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Some people have drug sniffing dogs. Some people even have cancer sniffing dogs. I have a Campbell Butternut Squash Soup sniffing dog—-that can apparently use scissors.
Shawn L. Bird 
Friendship! – LOL June 1, 2012
Tags: humour, poodle
First things first!
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