Remember the William Wegman dogs?

These dogs were popular on Sesame Street several decades ago.

Question 1: What is the breed of these dogs?

Question 2: Do you find it peculiar that they have human-looking hands?

Question 3: Would you eat bread made by dogs? What if they agreed to wear gloves and those hair net thingies?

Question 4: Is this a PETA-approved activity? Why or why not? Defend your answer in 25 words or less.

Wish I could get my dog to bake bread...

Here's another cute one...

Father's Day

We spent Father's Day in Dixon with our daughter-in-law, Tara, grandson, Khale, and Tara's parents, Stan and Becky. We had lunch at the Senior Center. They have a Hog Roast a couple times a year in order to raise money for their Meals on Wheels program. Let me tell you, that was the best hog I ever tasted! And the rest of the food wasn't bad, either.

Khale with his favorite dog, Coco

Khale gave Grandpa Fran and Grandpa Stan each a card with a special fill-in-the-blank note he had completed at school. The last line is: "My Grandfather is as handsome as..." and Khale completed the sentence with "the handsomest man on earth." Fran was feeling pretty good about himself until he read the same line on Grandpa Stan's card. His read: "My Grandfather is as handsome as...God himself!" How do you top that? Score one for Stan!

Coco, the miniature pinscher in the photo above, had a near-death experience recently. She wandered out into the highway in front of Tara's house and four cars passed over her before someone could stop and scoop her up from the highway. (Good thing she only remembered the first two points of the "stop, drop and roll" fire safety commands.) Tara and Khale rushed her to the vet's and they observed her for a few days for swelling, since she took a blow to her head. It was during the time when she was back home and, shall we say, a little medicated, that Tara painted her nails.

Anyway, it was a great day. Thanks, Tara and Khale, for always making us smile!

Bootsie and Murphy and What You Don't Know about Your Friends

Bootsie was our first dog. She was a Boston Bull and she moved with us from the house pictured here (in Overland, MO) to our house in Florissant. We had a fenced in back yard, but a big dog jumped the fence and, well, you know what happened. Bootsie was five or six years old by then, had never had puppies, and the vet said that delivering the pups would be a big risk to her. We all decided that we wanted Bootsie to be safe. So the vet aborted the puppies. The sad thing was that Bootsie died on the operating table. We were so upset. I remember mom telling us when we came home from school that day. I walked down to the end of the street and sat on the curb, crying for a long time. Funny, as I'm telling the story, it's the first time I've wondered why I left the house to go cry on the curb.

I was relating this story to my good college friend and comedy partner, Kris, and she disclosed that she, too, had a Boston Bull Terrier when she was a child. We have known each other now for close to 40 years, have laughed and cried together, been roommates for a time, even did some amateur detective work to bring to justice the man who slammed his car into the side of my car and fled. Once we took a trip to Riverside, California to visit Kris's mom and dad. I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time and nearly drown in it as Kris stood on the shore laughing at me. We have both always been dog lovers and when we graduated from college, we shared a little apartment in Abilene, TX with her beautiful Irish Setter, Shawn. And yet, we were amazed to find out that we did not know that we both had Boston Bulls as our first family pet. Here's a picture of Kris with her dog, Murphy. Cute, huh? I'm thinking it's Eastertime and Kris is going to have to fight Murphy off from her basket with that big lollipop in her hand.