Good Morning!

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Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers
on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum,
so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in
your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.

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Properly trained, a Man can be Dog’s Best Friend.
– Corey Ford

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There’s an old saying “Every dog has his day” that has appeared in various versions for centuries. Hamlet himself refers to it in William Shakespeare’s play, in Act V, scene 1: Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

So I suppose it was inevitable that there would be a Little Pampered Dog Day. And today, April 27, is the day of little pampered dogs.

I came to be a Dog Person rather late in life. I grew up with cats, in fact, I was literally baby-sat by the first two cats I my life, Smoky and Tar Baby. They slept on my feet in the crib.

Once it became abundantly clear that my Mr. Right was a Dog Person, and it would be really hard for him to convert, even for me, and besides, he had two dogs, while I was “between cats,” I was the one who converted.   

But I made some rules:

1. The Two-Dog Rule: the cold noses in the house shall not number more than the warm noses in the house.
2. No Yappy, Ankle-Biting Lap Dogs: this was already one of his rules, so we were in complete agreement on this one.
3. The Dog Do-Do and Vomit Rule: I would only deal with dog shit or vomit when he is either sick or out of town.
4. Bathing the Dog: when the dog needs a B-A-T-H, he or she is Your Dog until after the Water-Fling-Off, at which time the clean canine resumes being Our Dog.

Now most of the poetry I perused is about wonderful dogs, so I can only offer you three poems this morning, and they are not actually about what I would call little pampered dogs, but I hope they will amuse you.

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Dharma

by Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance-
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she
would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

“Dharma” from Sailing Alone Around the Room, © 2002 by Billy Collins – Random House

Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 – ) was dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times. He served a two-term U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003), and has published many poetry collections, including Questions About Angels; The Art of Drowning; and Nine Horses: Poems. It was Questions About Angels, published in 1991, that put him in the literary spotlight. 

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Suppertime

by Francesco Marciuliano

Don’t pretend you don’t know what this look means.
I‘m sitting here by the kitchen door for a reason, madame.
No, I don’t need a pee or a walk or a ball or a pat.
Nothing will satisfy me until I hear the rattle of kibble in my special dish.
Everything leading up to this point has prepared me for proper pleading.
Resistance is futile in the face of my patented puppy dog gaze.

“Suppertime” from I Could Chew on This and Other Poems by Dogs © 2013 by Francesco Marciuliano – Chronicle Books

Francesco Marciuliano (1967 – ) American writer of the syndicated comic strips Sally Forth and Judge Parker. He lives in New York City. Marciuliano is also the author of I Could Pee on This and Other Poems by Cats, and I Knead My Mommy and Other Poems by Kittens.

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Dog Haiku

byUnknown Author 

I love my master
thus I perfume myself
with rotten squirrel

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