You love your dog and your dog loves you. That’s a given. But let’s face it. Dogs sleep a lot. And that repetitive ball tossing that endlessly fascinates most pups (Frankie, as always, excepted) ? Big yawn for humans.

We all need a bit of mental stimulation. Thus this latest contest.

The Background

The idea for this challenge had its seed in the fact that the winner of the my recent Mommy Bus contest was a breed I’d never heard of: A Biewer.

The Biewer who launched another contest

This in turn led my pal Mel of MelsPetPals to comment that she hadn’t heard of Biewers either, adding that Animal Planet’s “Dogs 101” had also introduced her to two other previously unfamiliar breeds: the Leonberger and Kooikerhonje.

But it was  a blog by Dr. V on Pawcurious, On Breed and Health and What We Love Best, that spurred me to action. I completely agree with Dr. V that there’s no inherent conflict between the rescue and good breeder communities, and thought I might find a way to bring the groups together: The creation of virtual breeds, with the goal of amusement and prize winning.

The Challenge

Define a breed that’s unfamiliar to you, based on its name alone.

For example:

The Spinone Italiano. This sleek, short-haired dog,  first observed in the area around Milan, likes to chase after Ferraris and wear fashionable collars. It is related to the Jack Russell Terrier (thus the spinning behavior) and to the Gelato Hound, which has a somewhat sweeter temperament.

Note: In actuality, the Spinone Italiano is a hunting dog believed to be an ancestor of the Wirehaired Pointing Griffon — another actual breed that could be defined in a similarly whimsical fashion, with apologies to all griffons (and dragons).

I believe the Leonberger and Kooikerhonje cry out for definitions too.

Alternatively:

Do a takeoff on a well known breed, again detailing its characteristics based on name alone.

For example:

The Lasso Abso, a compact, well-muscled dog that frequents gyms and weight rooms in the ranch country of Wyoming.

Get the gist? The sillier and the pun-nier the better.

These breeds can never end up in puppy mills or shelters. They’re never overbred. And you don’t have to spay and neuter them. There’s something for both rescuers and breeders to love.

The prize

A signed and inscribed (to you or to the recipient of your choice) copy of Am I Boring My Dog. Of course.

The rules

Enter as often as you like, on the Facebook page of WillMyDogHateMe or in this comments section. The winner will be chosen by me, completely subjectively: Whoever makes me laugh the most. Photoshopped pictures accompanying entries are welcome. And anyone around the world can enter — even Australians! It just might take a bit longer for the book to reach you.

The contest starts today, December 9 at 7 a.m.MT and ends Monday December 13 at 11:59p.m. MT

Good luck!

30 thoughts on “Contest: Is Your Dog Boring You?”

  1. This will be hard for me because after all these years writing about dogs … I know a lot of the breeds (even the obscure ones). So, I might have to try the second option. I came up with an idea while walking Lilly this morning, but I’ll have to eek out some time to be mucho funny.

  2. I can’t wait to see what folks come up with–let the punning begin.

    I also never heard of the Biewer. But I wasn’t surprised to find he is also known as the beer dog. Biewer’s yeast is the secret ingredient in great Czech Pilsners with villagers guarding the dogs from competitors. The floppy ears are crucial for proper yeast development.

  3. Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog: Once a mutt, having graduated from Harvard, this dog now consorts only with purebreds, especially at high tea.

  4. Giant Schnauzer: Possessed of great olfactory size and prowess, this dog is able to detect the odor of limburger cheese from the next county.

  5. Here is my entry into your contest

    Plott Hound: How to put it delicately? Its name derives from a certain distinct sound made when the results of its elimination makes contact with a hard surface.

  6. Keeshond: This breed excels at finding objects that you may or may not want found. With the directness of speech associated to the Netherlands area, they originally were named “Keysfound” but due to language translation issues and their being a dog, the AKC incorrectly listed the breed as Keeshond (pronounced: Keys Hound).

  7. 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.

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

    (P.S. I emailed you a photo to go along with my entry. It’s badly photoshopped. The chick photo is borrowed from Frugal Kiwi’s latest hatch.)

    1. Thanks for your illustrated entry! I’m trying to figure out how to post the picture — which is a lot of fun! — but it won’t work in the comments section. Maybe I’ll try Facebook.

        1. You are a wise and tech savvy woman, Kim Clune! Which online host would you recommend? I don’t have an account with any yet (shhhhh)

          1. You can upload it to your own blog space through WordPress. Note the link from the media library dashboard and use that in this tag – which you can add to Roxanne’s original comment:

            Just remove the first space between the < and the i

          2. Yup there’s no way to link to images from my computer in my comment system. I would have to insert Roxanne’s picture into a blog post — which I will tomorrow when I announce winners and do a general round up of the fun. Your picture, as you can see, did not come through either, but at least people can link to it.

          3. Tried it on my own post as an experiment, but your theme doesn’t seem to allow the img tag. You can add a link though, like I did in my entry below.

  8. Never being one to color within the lines, I will fictionalize first and then post again when I’ve decided on my factual unknown breed.

    Snicker Poodle: This dog is quite fond of snacks and often turns into a diva if it doesn’t have one. Adolescent dogs tend to be class clowns at daycare and puppy kindergarten. As adult dogs they often do inappropriate tricks at parties, such as running around the house with your most expensive underwear on their head.

  9. goodness, i’m so glad i popped by. have been a bit too hot and sweaty to blog or read blogs lately. but, i’ve read your post and feel duty bound to represent the great southern land. besides the deadline is tomorrow, so i still have time!

    The New Guinea Singing Dog.

    In Papua New Guinea, dogs that bark too much end up in the cooking pot. Such careful scientific selection over the centuries has led to a unique breed that sings instead of barking. Everyone agrees that it’s much more pleasant to listen to dogs a capella than dogs that yap. The NGSD is the source of a favourite local proverb – “it ain’t over till the fat dog sings”.

    Hmmm…:p

    have a great Sunday! xox

    p.s. with apologies to anyone living in PNG.

  10. (With the help of the list of dogs on your next post) The Hygen Hound is a dog with obsessive compulsive disorder, who spends his every spare moment cleaning first himself then his surroundings. He is very popular with house proud people because he never treads mud in the house. He is also very useful to follow on a country walk, because when you come to a muddy area he will always find a way to get through with dry, or at least clean, feet. In fact, don’t follow the friend who insists that there is much less mud on this side of the puddle. The dog knows best.

  11. A fictionalized account of an authentic breed…

    Landseer Newfoundland – Once bred to be notoriously 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 breed 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.

    (If the image above doesn’t appear, here’s the link.

  12. Labradoodle – This breed is unusually bright and easy to train. “Ruh Roh Raggie” is rarely heard from this breed since it sees such conversation as silly and a characteristic of the “lesser breeds”. It’s intelligence is so widely known that you will often find him working alongside human lab technicians in a medical lab researching canine diseases.
    However, there is one genetic tendency in this breed that can be considered somewhat odd (and embarrassing) – it doodles in it’s off time. What does he doodle? Why bras of course!

  13. Same as Roxanne, not too many breeds that are unknown to me. So fictionalized Labrador Retriever.

    When first named, the rather lengthy Abracadabra Labrador Retriever was quite a mouthful, so the tribal folks of AbraLabra Land gradually shortened the name to what we have today: Labrador Retriever.

    AbraLabra Land is a mountainous region, so this compact nimble dog is prized for mountain goat like abilities in scaling the sides of mountains where tribes live in their close knit labrammunties. You have heard the saying it takes a village to raise a child? Well, the labs are primary caretakers for tribal children, who even as toddlers have an uncanny penchant for making a break for the hills. Enter Abracdabra Labradors to the rescue, to bring retrieve the errant ones back into the fold.

    hahahaha sheer silliness LOL

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