Things I Learned: Different dogs have different nipples.

This drawing caused a huge discussion about how many nipples a dog has. It turns out the answer was between six and ten.

Featured Breed: Shar Pei

The Shar Pei is better known as "that wrinkly dog". They originate in China, as do most the breeds I seem to write about, so either it's a co-incidence or China had a monopoly on dogs. You decide.
They were originally breed as guard dogs, but are now primarily used to advertise irons and beauty-creams.
Apparently it grows out of it's wrinkles as it "grows in to it's skin," if you can wait that long. I don't know why you'd want it to though. It being wrinkly is what it has going for it. Otherwise it's just another dog with a silly name. Though I do wonder if the wrinkles obscure it's vision at all. Wrinkles wrinkles wrinkles.

Featured Breed: Boston Terrier

I've put this post off for a while, because since deciding to write it it has become apparent that Boston Terriers are boring. They are described as ranging from "eager to please" to "stubborn", so basically there's not much to say about them. Some do this, others do that. The most interesting thing I found about them is all the pictures on The Boston Terrier Club of America seem to be about a million years old.
I mean admittedly they have funny faces, and are fun to draw (A++ would draw again), but they're nothing to write home about. Let alone writing to your internet blog read by literally couples of people.
I don't know much about Boston either.

Featured Breed: Great Dane

As the name suggests this is a Danish breed. Or at least I think it is. The word "Danish" appears 6 times in the article on Wikipedia I didn't read. However the word "mystery" does not appear at all. So why is it that Scooby Doo is a Great Dane? Surely this was decided for a reason rather than being entirely arbitrary? I had assumed that for whatever reason that this was an assumed trait of the breed, much like how Collies are known to rescue people, and St. Bernards like to drink whiskey.
Scooby Doo is a cartoon with possibly the second stupidest name next to Spongebob Squarepants. He was invented by a guy called Iwao Takamoto, who looks like an absolute badass. He also designed Astro from the Jetsons, who let's assume was a Great Dane as well. I don't think it's ever specified. Maybe whatever breed his is doesn't exist yet. Like a Laser Hound or something.
For some time (how long I don't know since I did even less research than usual today. I think it's going well anyway though, ay?) the Great Dane was thought to be the world's tallest dog. Now it's second to the Irish Wolfhound. Which must suck for them. I was always the tallest in my class, but then when I moved to a new school I wasn't the tallest of anything. Shit sucks, man.

Stupid Ugly Dog

Featured Breed: Whippet

Whippet: Real good.

Pink Whippet

Featured Breed: Boxer

Pixel Boxer

I don't know anything about these dogs really, but as with many things this doesn't stop me from disliking them.
From my experience there is an archetypal Boxer owner, which is a chavy kid hanging around McDonalds with a dozen other chavy kids. The boxer itself will be straining at a lead and barking at any and every thing that passes by.
They look like miserable, stupid creatures anyway. Though I will concede some of them do have a kinda badass look about them, but that depends on how bad ass the owner is. A genuine badass can get away with it. A 14 year old chavs can not.
This is irrelevant anyway since mostly they just look sad. Probably because a whole 38.5% of them are dying of various forms of cancer.

Featured Breed: Newfoundland

Newfoundland

This dog is pretty awesome. They're huge (it's big boned, okay?) and black, and they're considered to be the strongest breed of dog. They have partially webbed paws which make them good swimmers (or at least to the extent a dog can be considered good at swimming), and due to this and their strength they're legendarily know for rescuing people from the sea. Apparently there was one called Bilbo who was employed as a lifeguard in Cornwall. They're like the dolphins of the dog world.
Legendary seems like a good choice of words because they just have a quality about them, or at least from the pictures I've seen. It's something about the eyes. They look like they know something you don't. A wise look.
Here's a poem about one, because I ran out of stuff to say.

Featured Breed: Akita Inu

Akita Puppy

The Akita Inu, as you might be able to guess from the name, is a Japanese breed. It's also one of the oldest breeds of dog, with DNA analysis showing it to be ancient.
Neither of these things could be considered it's key feature though. If you were to describe the Akita Inu in one word it would have to be something like "huge" or "giganormous". They stand at an around 64cm tall.
They're apparently very intelligent dogs, and intelligent dogs will get bored and decide to destroy things. I can't blame them. If I were a huge dog I would chew the shit out of everything. If you looked like you could kill a man by sitting on them, you would throw your weight around too.

Things I Learned: 'Cooking With Dog' exists.

That seems like enough information on it's own, right?
Watch it here.
It's a youtube 'channel' narrated by a dog named Francis who tells you how to make Japanese dishes. Essentially it is a cookery show by this woman, and there is a dog sat there every time. It's bizarre, but cute.

Things I Learned: You can reanimate a fucking dog head.

I learned today that some Russian guy with the impressive moniker of Sergey Bryukhonenko surgically removed a dog's head and kept it alive with some blood pumpy apparatus. You can see the (possibly faked) video here (though it is important to note that the actual experiment was well documented). I would advise descretion though, as it's fairly fucking creepy.

Featured Breed: Golden Retriever

In the 1800s great improvements were being made in weapons technology, and with better guns we needed better dogs to find the stuff we'd killed. Step up Golden Retrievers who were developed (seems like weird wording to me, but that's what it said on Wikipedia) in Scotland to scout out dead birds and drag them back to your horse, so you could eat it, or hang it on a rack, or whatever these horrible haughty people do with the stuff they slayed.
I can't bring myself to say much more on the subject, since I'm a little sad they didn't work in mines.

Featured Breed: Schipperke

The Schipperke

Today I decided to do research using more for a source than Wikipedia. I started with the website for The Schipperke Club of America (admittedly linked from Wikipedia). The website describes the Schipperke as so:
"The Schipperke is an agile, active watchdog and hunter of vermin. In appearance he is a small, thickset, cobby, black, tailless dog, with a fox-like face."
Which is funny, as you will see that my in my drawing and in most the fucking Google Images results they have tails. So the website dedicated to the breed is wrong. Either that or lying. My good buddy Wikipedia backed me up here, stating simply "The Schipperke dogs are born with tails."
The Schipperke Club in the UK even has a picture of a bloody cream coloured one, so that's another lie in that description.
I thought these dogs looked awesome. I mean, they were bred in the 1880s as boat dogs, to catch vermin and nip at the horses towing the barges, and any animal that fucks with horses is good by me.
But you are judged by the company you keep, and The Schipperke Club of America are liars!

Featured Breed: Welsh Corgi

Big Corgi

Corgis are a herding breed. I can't think what it is they herd. Frogs or tiny sheep or something. They are very popular among the royal family. Or they have been, I can't see Harry walking one. He'd probably have a Staffy or something that can bark at people as he goose steps to parties, or fire them out of his helicopter. Was Harry the one in the military? I don't really care. I've heard a few American girls say hey have crushes on the princes, but I think if you admitted that here people would think you a bit dim.
As it's no secret by now I don't really do any research besides skim reading Wikipedia he's a choice quote from Wikipedia on the appearance of Corgis.

"Like most herding breeds, Pembrokes are active, intelligent and athletic dogs..."

Nice one Wikipedia.

Small Corgi

Things I Learned: Dogs are fat.

Featured Breed: Chow Chow

The Chow

These dogs have a really funny face in sticking out slightly from a big old ball of fluff. I notice in the URL of that picture that they are apparently a nonsporting dog breed, which is a shame. I don't see why they can't play nice.
The Chow is thought to be one of the oldest recognizable dog breeds, which is funny, because I'd never heard of them. Ancient Chinese sculptures of Lions were based on them, since at the time in ancient China they had only ever heard descriptions of Lions. This is their main claim to fame apparently, and even that sounds made up.
I've not much to say here, so I resorted to asking other people.



Doc says:
You know anything about Chow Chow dogs?
Jaws says:
no

Featured Breed: Pomeranian

The Pom

Pomeranians are small furry dogs, assumedly named for their resemblance to a pom pom. In fact, they are also known by that name, or just 'Pom' for short. Come to think of it, which came first? Maybe pom poms got their name from the dog. This is something I'm sure I could find out, but I shalln't bother.
According to Wikipedia Pomeranians are "typically very friendly, playful and active." Which I am going to take as meaning they are mental, and jump around a lot. Just looking at them makes me think "that is gonna be one hyperactive dog."
On a side note, I love how non-encylopedic the sections of Wikipedia concerning dog behaviour are. Apparently Pomeranians are "very protective of their owners and love to be around them." Wikipedia is known for being made by a team of beurocratic OCD sufferers who insist that everything is verified, sourced, and non-biased (supposedly) but they're happy to attribute human emotions and behaviours to dogs. (Another example would be the statement that Poodles are "creative about finding mischief.")
I can't really think of much else to say about them other than they are fun to draw.
Oh! Ai Kago, J-Pop singer and Guinness Book of World Records breaking hula hoop player, owns a Pomeranian. This is one of the many interesting and useful facts you learn from my blog, yo.

Featured Breed: Poodle

A friend of the family has a Poodle. It's mental. It jumps like three times it's height whenever someone comes in to the house and it barks at anything and is vicious. It has some scary teeth on it. It's a little black bastard, and you just see a black blur hopping around with gnashing teeth. It once went to attack a horse, and as it got closer it realised how big the horse was, and stopped. It rolled under it's hoofs and almost got trampled. It's really mental.
I am convinced that all poodles are like this. Although I'm told they're really smart, but I don't believe it.
The picture I drew for this is titled "King of the Jungle" which is a really clever joke, and the idea of colouring it pink is really original too.

Featured Breed: Rough Collie

I saw a fat collie today. It was awesome. Lassie was a rough collie I think. Jaws tells me that Lassie was actually a female, and I figure this is because they didn't want to show dog balls on TV. I also remember being told that in the old black and white films they used to slather little Timmy's face in vanilla ice cream so the dog would lick him.
Collies are very intelligent dogs and easy to train. They are so easy to train there are now ABC Dog Shows. The "ABC" standing for "Anything But Collies".
I did zero research for this article.

Fat Collie

Things I Learned: The dog's bollocks.

Jaws told me she thought I was the bee's knees today, so I reciprocated by telling her I thought she was the dog's bollocks. She did not believe this was a good thing, so after feeling lucky with Google I found a short definition here. I suspect my American audience might find this interesting.

"Excellent - the absolute apex. In other contexts the word bollocks (meaning testicles) has a negative connotation. For example:

- 'that's bollocks' -> 'that's rubbish'
- 'give him a bollocking' -> 'chastise him'
- 'He dropped a bollock' -> 'he made a mistake'

The reasons why the 'dog's bollocks' are considered to be the top of the tree aren't clear. It may be linked to an associated phrase - 'stand out like a dog's balls', i.e. 'outstanding', although I can find no evidence to indicate that phrase as being earlier than the 'dog's bollocks'. Dogs do enjoy licking their genitals of course but again, there's no evidence that links the coining of this phrase to that. It is most likely that this is just a nonsense phrase, coined because it sounds good. In that, it would join a long list of earlier nonsense phrases, e.g. 'the cat's pyjamas', 'the bee's knees' etc."

Things I Learned: Dogs have bones.

Let me share with you a short exchange of text messages.

"Me: Do you have any interesting facts about dog skeletons?"

"AQA: A dog tail has a bone. A dog's body consists of 319 bones. If a dog's tail is docked or absent at birth, there are fewer bones in the skeleton."

There you are. Dogs have bones, and if some are missing there will be less of them. This is one of the many interesting and useful facts you learn from my blog, yo.