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Excitable Boy
Dogs are the only animals I can think of that, when they get excited, you still want to be around them. You know, they're just so incredibly happy that you're there and you get the sense that anything you said would just be totally cool with your dog. And not just totally cool, but the greatest idea in the history of the entire universe. Sure, sometimes they get excited and they hump your leg or pee on the floor, but at least they don't climb the walls or try to eat you.
When you really think about it, any time any other kind of animal gets excited, our reaction is to either calm it down or kill it. Unless it's in a cage or something. Except for dogs, we don't trust animals to get excited.
We like our animals calm. Really I don't know why there's not some over-the-counter sedatives we can buy for whatever kind of pet we have. Seriously, think about it. Have you ever seen someone working with monkeys or elephants or horses? They're always petting them and saying "It's ok, Bobo, calm down, boy." But with dogs we're all "Good boy!!! Fetch!!!"
Dogs are trustworthy and loyal, and I don't know anyone who's got a problem with dogs unless it's some irrational phobia thing.
Planet of The Dogs
I've often thought a good sequel, or even a companion series, to Planet of The Apes would have been Planet of The Dogs. I think the original encounters between Taylor and the talking dogs would have gone differently, too, given their obsession with sniffing each other's ass.
Zira: Amazing! You're human, and yet you speak!
Taylor: Yes, where I come from, we....WHOA!
And with the help of Zira and Cornelius, a pair of sympathetic researchers, Taylor escapes from the lab where they'd been spraying perfume in his eyes (let's not talk about what dog perfume smells like) and made to wear one of those cone things on his neck. He has to elude the dog police, who of course don't carry guns but rolled-up newspapers. And finally he and his human girlfriend ("Duchess", Zira's pet human, who wears a frilly pink sweater and a studded collar) disappear into "The Forbidden Zone".
In the next movie, Planet of The Dogs II: Taylor! Go Boy! Get Help!, Taylor and Duchess find an underground society of cats that worship a giant fire hydrant, and have to elude General Urko and hsi army of Rottweillers.
Dog culture of course is different than ours because dogs do a lot of things that we just don't do. I don't need to go into what those things are, but suffice to say that in their homes the dogs would have two dining rooms, one for before and one for after.
Super-Dogs
Even Superman had a dog. In the comics anyway, his dad had tested out the rocket ship by putting his dog in it. I know some animal rights folks might think that's cruel, but in the end it all worked out ok. The dog's name is Krypto, which is kind of cool and all, but when you think about it, it's actually kind of dorky since he was from Krypton. It's like me naming my dog Eartho.
Believe it or not, even Batman had a dog in the comic books. His name was Ace the Bat-Hound. I swear I am not making that up. He even tied a mask around it's face so that regular folks wouldn't recognize it as the same dog that lived with Bruce Wayne. And hopefully they would just think it a coincidence that both dogs were named Ace.
Batman doesn't seem like much of a dog-person, though. I mean, most of what Batman does in the comics is just figure stuff out, and dogs aren't real well-known for their deductive reasoning.
Krypto I can understand, sort of. A super-powered dog for a super-powered guy, it seems natural. Except that most of the time the dog would have to pretend to be Not-Super, I mean, unless Clark Kent decided to keep the dog a secret. And I don't know anyone who can keep even a regular dog secret.
I wonder, did Krypto chase cars, or did he just use his heat vision on them? Did he chase planes? Did he have super-breath? Because I've often thought that super-breath was kind of a stupid power even for a guy to have, and actually kind of gross if you think about it. But knowing what we know about how dogs live and what they eat, super breath is a really really gross power for a dog to have.
Imagine if Clark Kent went out of town (as I'm sure he often does) and Jimmy Oleson or even Batman came by to water the plants or something, and Krypto started humping his leg. Clark would come home and find him pinned to the floor, both legs broken, half-starved. Maybe he's thought of this and he calls Supergirl or someone else with powers.
Krypto even wore a cape. That was so you could tell it was a super-dog and not some stray. Seeing the dog fly through the air wouldn't be enough to do that, apparently.
(from The Mailbag June 4)
...I didn't know Batman had a dog, and what did you mean that dogs have no reason? don't you think their as smart as us?
My family had a dog when I was little, and even though no one trained her too she used to keep my sister from crawling near the stairs. So I think that was totally smart, for a dog. On the other hand, if a person was there and they didn't keep a baby from crawling on the stairs, we would think they were crazy or retarded. So yes, I think dogs are smart. But they don't make fire or use hammers.
As for Batman's dog, I looked it up on the internet and the dog was only in a couple stories back in the mid-50's (so don't ask me how I remembered all that except that I've read every comic published from 1938 to 1982). But I was thinking today about a guy I knew a long time ago who told me that an iq test they used to give dogs to see how smart they are was to tie something on their heads and see how long it took them to get it off, and I don't know whether that was true or just something he did after blowing pot-smoke in his dog's face. But if it's true, and Batman's dog had a thing tied around his head all the time, what does that tell you?
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