Greta Kaplan, CPDT, CDBC
First, we love TWAAW because it is very funny. Food Lady is just a funny writer and her great photos really give her lots of opportunities for humor.
Second, we love TWAAW because there are lots of great photos of dogs being dogs. Food Lady does not hide the fact that Piper is, well, a bitch. We love Mad Teeth ™. We love the bizarre lip configurations when dogs shake off. We love the photos of the Woofs interacting with strange dogs, too.
Third, we love TWAAW for a reason that is a little harder to describe. There are lots of great dog photos (though fantastic quality photos of dogs out just doing their doggie thing are rarer), and there are lots of great writers who tell us truthful things about dogs, and there are lots of people who are very funny about their dogs… but almost no one is all three.
Food Lady often puts words or thoughts in her dogs’ mouths (or heads). And sometimes these are not thoughts a dog’s lemon-sized brain could generate. But these are usually obvious; Food Lady knows, and lets us know, that she’s joking.
One great example is in the entry called Conversations with the Dogs (Sept. 19, 2008). Food Lady asks Tweed what is the matter. Tweed says: “I see dead people.” We can be pretty sure that no one really thinks Tweed is seeing dead people… though he does look a bit spooked for some no-doubt legitimate canine reason. Because Tweed’s expression does look like a dog might look if he could see dead people, and because we all know that Food Lady isn’t silly enough to think Tweed is actually seeing dead people, we can enjoy the wonderful humor of this piece without being bothered by fussing about misleading anthropomorphism.
And people who are reading the entry without having any concerns whatever about whether Food Lady is anthropomorphizing will still realize that she is making up a fun story, not seriously attributing a human and psychic act to Tweed.
I guess I love this because so much of what is written about dogs out there is, well, wrong. And sometimes damaging. As a professional dog behavior consultant who constantly deals with the fallout of faulty and damaging beliefs, and who rarely finds dog humor funny simply because it tends to contain these damaging beliefs (about which I am now highly sensitized), it is a tremendous relief to be able to laugh at dog humor that doesn’t promulgate harmful beliefs. Yeah.
Go Food Lady!
Introduced to TWAAW by Christine, I have also fallen in love with it. And Nick, my husband who is not necessarily a “dog person,” has learned to enjoy it as well, since I insist on reading to him the most amusing sections of an entry…which very rarely make much sense without me dragging him over to look at the accompanying photos, in which case he reads the rest of the entry himself.
I definitely appreciate having a lighthearted dog blog to de-stress after some tense training sessions.
We love reading TWAAW because we know how hard it is living with a herding bitch!
-Ripley, Xander, Sawyer and Score
and Inara-Queen Bitch
Awww, thanks! I’m glad to see I am amusing you as much as I amuse myself. What a kind review of 3waaw 🙂
IIRC, Tweed was at the tail end of a”shake” in the “I see dead people” photo. Probably when I was editing photos, I looked at his expression and thought ‘he looks like he has seen a ghost!’ – and then it all comes tumbling down from there.
Piper would also like you to know that she isn’t really that much of a bitch. And you’d better believe that, or she’ll kill you.
Thanks again!
TFL
Aww, come one guys: you like it because it’s about three herding dogs, and hey, we are partial to herding dogs ($#@%! lot of work that they are!!).
TWWAW never fails to make me laugh! As Greta says, the photos of dogs being dogs are priceless and are often studies in dog body language. I believe my dogs want to go live with The Food Lady…at least they told me to mention that they’re very photogenic! 😉
YEH TWAAW!!
and yeh herding bitches. Not that i have a little black dog that resembles those comment… 😉