Of dogs and pandas


I've had enough downers tonight, and I'd normally be more cheerful, except I'm going to watch the State of the Union speech. But on Jim Capozzola's blog, he mention his dog's infatuation with a panda.

The Rittenhouse Review: MILDRED, MY VERY CONFUSED BULLDOG For the Love of a Panda Cub

Most readers are familiar with, to say nothing of having grown fond of, my English bulldog Mildred (officially, Chadwin VII’s Mildred Pierce).

Mildred is “fixed.”

Daddy likes it that way.

Mildred is also a virgin.

Daddy likes it that way.

And so does Mildred. Although she is the most gentle and loving dog I ever have known, when the boys get too curious “back there,” watch out! She’s having none of that.

Daddy likes it that way.

I like this because it’s saving me some $50,000 a year that I might otherwise be paying to a protective and sheltering convent school in Switzerland or Croatia or something.

Virtuous as she is, sometimes even Mildred will tip her hand, her affections most recently aimed at Mei Sheng, the new panda cub at the San Diego Zoo.

Mildred, who in the past I have described as “part dog, part cat, part rabbit, part monkey, part pig, part seal, part hippo, part bear (especially polar bear), part tick, and part human,” is quite smitten with Mei Sheng. (Yes, “smitten.” Mildred has a tendency to slip into 19th-century vernacular.)

And Mildred likes the little guys. There is, or at least there was, a Jack Russell terrier (Ugh. Totally unacceptable to Daddy.) at a framing shop on 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., that she was once hell-bent on . . . I don’t know what and I don’t want to know what.

Why her affections are, at this moment anyway, directed toward a panda rather than a more suitable suitor I do not know.

But then, why she keeps hopping on my PC looking for pictures of Mei Sheng, this despite her lack of opposable thumbs (and a credit card, if you catch my drift), making a simple keyboard a major challenge, also remains a mystery.


Jim, I understand. You see, about five months ago, me and Mrs. Datanerd adopted Sophie, a Pappillon/King Charles Spaniel mix from the DC Animal Shelter. One night a month or so after we got her, we were cleaning up in my den and one of Mrs. D.'s stuffed animals fell on the floor. A panda. Sophie is fixed, although she's never confided in me whether she is a virgin or not. But she proceeded to mount the stuffed panda, and start going to town on it. I am a protective daddy, and this was very disturbing for me. She continues to do this every time the panda gets within her range. Can I get the name of the boarding school in Switzerland?

Popular posts from this blog

New post-convention poll Results look good to me. Now, we have to keep them coming. Further down in the article, there is discussion of how Kerry is gaining ground as a person who understands the needs of people, and a person of character. Key problem is going to be keeping these issues in front of voters, when the Kerry campaign will have a finite amount of cash to campaign on. Bush won't have a finite amount until the Republican convention at the end of August. Other people are going to have to step up and start hammering the Bush administration. Kerry Leads Bush in Post-Convention Poll (washingtonpost.com) : The new poll shows Kerry now claims the support of 50 percent of all registered voters, compared with 44 percent for Bush, with independent candidate Ralph Nader at 2 percent. On the eve of the convention, Bush led Kerry 48 percent to 46 percent. Among those most likely to vote, the race is tighter: Kerry holds a 2-point advantage over Bush in the current po...
Read more
Sometimes headlines just write themselves Like this one from the Washington Post today: Ex-FEMA Head Starts Disaster Planning Firm Michael Brown certainly has shown he can plan a disaster. Look at how awful Hurricane Katrina was. For preventing or fixing things afterwards, he's not so good.
Read more
Reading List It is a good thing to be married to a librarian. Our local system has a web-accessable catalog where I can put a book on hold. Depending on how many people are waiting for the book, in a few days to a few months, my wife comes home with the book I've requested. I was reading "A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market" by John Allen Paulos. It is the kind of book that makes mathematics of investing accessable to non-mathematical types (and some of us mathematical folks as well), even as he tells the story of his failed love affair with Worldcom stock. Of course, I set this aside as soon as I got in "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth" by Joe Conason. This book takes all of the distortions of the right-wing media, the Bush-Cheney administration, and the Republican "conventional wisdom", and proceeds to refute them, citing facts chapter and verse. I think this book is great. But I've g...
Read more