Stray Hawkeye

The shiba inu puppy cam is back with a new litter of fuzzy little balls of cute:

Online TV Shows by UstreamIf that doesn’t make you smile and melt a little, you need help.

If the embedded video doesn’t work, try here.

Via Cute Overload and BoingBoing. Previously featured on Stray Hawkeye with the previous litter here.

The end result of Pavlov’s diabolical plan to make everyone drool while Christmas shopping.

Live webcam of puppies playing.  Too cute to not post.

Ever wonder what it would look like if Cruella de Vil had a thing for chairs instead of coats?  Here you go.

The rest of the piece isn’t that great, but I like this part:

DALMATIANS

“Hey, look, the truck’s stopping.”

“Did they take us to the park this time?”

“No—it’s a fire. Another horrible fire.”

“What the hell is wrong with these people?”

So, walking home from work today, I saw a man walking his dog.  This struck me as a little odd, because he was walking across a crosswalk downtown, and it occurred to me that I never see anyone walking their dog downtown.  This obviously isn’t really odd enough to merit a post here.  But, then I noticed that the dog had a perfectly defined red circle around it’s eye:

Yep, I saw some random guy was walking the Target dog around downtown today.  The dog’s not really a puppy any more, he’s a full grown dog.  (okay, so there’s probably several of them, but this one was a full grown dog)  The really wierd part was that not only did he have the Target logo on the side of his face, it was absolutely perfect.  Not smudged or anything.  Filled in over the eyelid and all.  At first I thought it was a tattoo.  Then it occurred to me that dogs have hair, and that would probably cover up a tattoo, or at least make it look fuzzy.  Plus, where would one go to tattoo a dog’s eye with a corporate logo?

Okay, I know the answer to that one, Uptown.

Is it wierd that I’m more star struck seeing the Target dog than I would be seeing pretty much any movie or TV star or Top 40 recording artist?

The other odd part was that you can generally pick out the people that work at the Target Headquarters pretty easily.  They all have their ID badges hanging out, but much more so, they’re fashionable.  The rest of us, well, we’re Minnesotans, we’re just trying to stay warm.  Or cool.  Depending on the season.  Mostly warm.  This guy didn’t look Target HQ at all.  He looked like a little more of a LA/NY trendy bohemian corporate look.  I have no idea what that means, but it’s how he looked, and that’s not Target headquarters.  No Target ID badge flopping around.  (No entourage either, just a guy and a dog, but again, we’ve covered that I’m disproportionately star struck here.  But still, seems like you’d send 2 people out with that dog.  At least 2.)

All this leads me to wonder… is the Target dog a consultant?  Have we resorted to outsourcing our corporate logos incarnate?  How many of these perfectly tattooed/painted canine PR minions are there out there?  Just waiting to infiltrate our gift cards, to star in our commercials, to smile and run away?

(actually the war paint on this dog looked better than the one in the clip above)

It just now occurs to me, perhaps the dog is from the same consulting agency that did the Spuds Mackenzie spots for Bud Light back in the 80’s:

Same breed.  All white except a patch over the left eye.  I wonder if the red eye patch is like a nicotine patch for recovering doggie alcoholics?

Hmmmm.

PS – No negative comments about Target now, they don’t like that.  I love Target.  Don’t you love Target?  We all love Target.  (Please don’t sue me Target.  Please?)

Interesting article on how Russia’s changing economy has affected the behavior of the stray dog population there:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121123197068805001.html

Bonus points for identifying the obscure cultural reference in the title of this post (aside from the parallel of stray dogs and stray hawkeyes of course :) )