When I feel bullied by my blog, our relationship often benefits from a bit of distance, not necessarily from the blog itself but from a particular issue. That was the case with the Is My Dog Boring Me contest. It was a cat — a cat! — who reminded me to trust my instincts. Mr. Breeze, a.k.a. Kittehboi, wrote: “Dude, just pick one on da merits of da photo,” which is what I had planned to do before all I got all angsty. Except it wasn’t one photo, but two, that won me over. And what can I do if they happen to be my “furr-ends,” as Mr. Breeze put it, too?

Without further ado, then, here are the two additional winners of Am I Boring My Dog,  two super bloggers (and people) who took the time to match stories with photos:

Roxanne Hawn of Champion of My Heart came up with a wonderfully surreal image to accompany her story of how the Chinese Crested lost its hair.

Chinese Crested — Initially bred as companion/guard dogs for chickens inside the chicken coop itself, the Chinese Crested (a toy-sized breed) once sported a full, bright red “comb” (its crest) and a full body of hair. BUT the loose chicken feathers stuck to the dogs, which became difficult. Through careful breeding and no small amount of elbow rubbing inside smaller coops, the Chinese Crested became the nearly naked breed we know today.

(Note the Chinese Crested in the lower right corner)

Don’t let the dog’s size fool you. The Chinese Crested is a well-worn protector of both fowl and unusually large heads of broccoli upon which they snack.

Kim Clune of This One Wild Life started out with the image (I think) and cleverly came up with a story to accompany it.

Note the mud-moving nose

Landseer Newfoundland – Once bred to be adept at dragging overthrown fisherman from freezing waters to the safety of dry shores, this water dog is actually notorious for discovering land masses of any kind – at any time.

As the Christopher Columbus of the dog world, the mission of the Landseer Newfoundland is not only to discover fresh, new dirt, but to thieve it too. Muddy bits of newly discovered and consumed earth are often bubbling from their giant lips while muddy globs are carefully wedged between their toes, often smuggled (and smudged) back to their homeland with misguided pride. Famous (or infamous) for colonizing couches wearing continents of residue, the Landseer Newfoundland is often chastised (in this house) for foraging the spoils of foreign, indigenous lands and tracking these ill-gotten “treasures” across their cushiony quarters. For that, they will historically have mud on their face.

Congratulations to you both!