More Great Doggie Costumes!

Yes, we are now just over two weeks away from Halloween, so those costumes for the kiddies and their canine friends have become a pressing issue. I mentioned last week the best reasons for outfitting the dog (increasing the sugar take, upping the odds on your kids winning the contest at the mall, etc.), and linked a couple of good sites for pre-made costumes.

This week, I’ll share some wonderful photos of dogs in costume, of which the above is just one. They are to be found at the excellent Dog Guide blog, and many of them are imaginative enough to have you laughing out loud. These aren’t all poodles, of course, but they’re good costume ideas for those handy with a needle and thread. It’s not hard to squint your eyes just a bit and imagine your proud and meticulously groomed poodle in these costumes, knowing that even if other entrants in the costume contest sport similar costumes on their various mutts, your dog’s ever so superior breeding will shine forth to make the effect even more laughable.

Of course, my all-time favorite poodle costume was one I’d made originally for my 3-year old grandson, who didn’t stay that size for very long. The next year I simply cut two front leg holes in it and put it on the Pood, which actually managed to triple grandson’s booty that year because the neighbors were so delighted. It was your basic dinosaur costume (Simplicity, if I recall) stuffed with crumpled newspapers to give it a nice round shape. So do go on over to Hounds of Halloween 2008! 45 Incredible Costumed Canines and tickle your funny bone!

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Fun For Kids: Poodle Stuff

If your poodle family has poodle kids - or if you’re a grandma like me, and are too old to be embarrassed by childish things - then you’ll have a great deal of fun with a simple game from Yuckles called Mr. Poodle Head. Yes, there’s a fine black poodle head, and all sorts of nifty accessories to drag and drop into place. Various ears, eyes, noses, bow ties, mustaches, hats and sill mouths can turn Mr. Poodle Head into something a lot funnier than Mr. Potato Head! I foresee many hours of fun with this one.

And now that it’s officially October, you might want to consider what costume you’d like to have for your poodle while you’re outfitting the kids. A well-dressed poodle carrying one of those plastic Jack-o-Lantern goody containers can significantly expand your children’s take for the night of door-to-door begging. Most costumes come in small, medium and large, and some suppliers offer patterns if you sew as well as tiny tea size costumes.

In addition to the pictured pirate costume, Yuckles also offers the standard superheroes (Batman, Superman, Spiderman and Wonder Woman), the full range of Star Wars character costumes (Yoda is the best, just for the ears!), your basic princess and ballerina and harem girl costumes for lady dogs (or male dogs in drag), and a few pun-ny costumes like “Watch Dog,” “Hot Dog” and “Lucky Dog.”

If your offspring are female, do consider the standard 1950s style Poodle Skirt with crinolines, sweater and scarf. That way all the poodle needs is a nice mask and matching scarf, those passing out treats will be delighted!

Filed under Holidays, Humor, Poodle Accessories, Poodle Wear, Poodles, Showing Off | Comments (3)

An Enclosure Full of Trouble

When my beautiful Kenya was a pup, she was so full of rambunctious-ness that we’d often spend hours just watching her find things to play with, then shred into teeny tiny confetti-sized pieces. Here’s a video of poodle puppies - three black and three white - who are six times the shredders Kenya was!

Happy 4th of July to all, and don’t forget to let your poodle enjoy those fireworks too… just don’t let them bite the rockets as they go off!

Filed under Humor, Poodle Love, Poodle Personality, Poodles, Showing Off | Comment (0)

Workout Video for Poodles

…and Poodle People

For all you poodle people out there who are committed to physical fitness and energetic workouts, here’s the perfect workout video for you AND your poodles! It features Mariko Takahashi in a parody of Susan Powter’s first fitness video. It was created by Nagi Noda for Panasonic, one of 10 films made for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. Enjoy, and try not to choke while you’re laughing!

Filed under Health, Humor, Poodle Skills, Poodle Videos, Showing Off | Comment (1)

April Fools Poodle Hoax-Hoax

A story circulating in the international news and in the blogosphere recently reported that Japanese women had been scammed into purchasing sheep that were being sold as poodles. Come on, they couldn’t see the hooves or hear the ‘Baaaaa’? If I were Japanese, I’d have been very insulted.

Of course, the story of the hoax turned out to be a hoax. From Snopes on their ‘Urban Legends’ page…

The notion that anyone who had ever seen a dog (which is most everyone) could be fooled by sheep proffered as poodles is as implausible (if not more so) as the idea that anyone could really mistake a rat for a dog. (The claim that “sheep are rare in Japan and most people do not know what they look like” is just silly: even schoolchildren who have never seen live sheep learn to identify them from pictures and drawings and can recognize them as something distinctly different than dogs. Certainly the creatures’ bleating instead of barking and having hooves in place of paws are some basic, easily recognized clues.) And in this case the tale is not something that supposedly happened to the indefinite “some tourist” in “a foreign country,” but to thousands of Japanese in their homeland, people who were reportedly shelling out the equivalent of $1600 per sheep-dog before anyone caught on to the scam and blew the whistle.

No, the swindle story never made the news in Japan, which should have alerted gullible net-noobs to something amiss. Besides, the least bit of fact checking would have demonstrated that the company supposedly perpetrating the scam - ‘Poodles As Pets’ - doesn’t exist in Japan.

The hoax hoax was promoted when radio personality Paul Harvey broadcast the story on his For What It’s Worth program, reporting that “Thousands of women paid many thousands of dollars for miniature white poodles which are now growing up and turning out to be furniture-eating-sheep.”

Hahahaha!!! Oh, my. Looks like there are some newscasters out there who needed a classroom poodle in school to teach them that there is indeed a difference between a dog and a sheep. The Japanese already knew better!

Filed under April Fools, Humor, Poodle Crossbreeds, Poodle Lore | Comment (1)