The problem with posting a criticism of other dogs' writing is that suddenly you feel compelled to produce the Great Canine Novel the next time you log on. Hence my silence yesterday. I figured this 30-posts-in-30days thing was shot, but lo and behold, mom stepped in and decided to post yesterday, not only saving the streak but proving that she remains completely unaware of my net activities. (That Sanchica thingie is kind of cute...I mean, if all my evolutionary complexity has to be reduced to some silly three-step icon assemblage, I suppose it's as good as I could hope for.) Anyhow, her post seemed like the kind of fortuitous continuity which ancient peoples took as a holy miracle...and so I resolve to get "back on the horse" (we dogs have our own canocentric metaphors for these concepts, but I'm trying to use language that my human readers will understand. Apologies to any horses out there reading in the audience).

So, tomorrow is a human election. We dogs see most politics as an unnecessary activity--humans creating unnecessary problems for themselves and then arguing unnecessarily about how to solve them. (Plus I can't figure out this election for dogcatcher that I keep hearing people not endorse candidates for. Sheesh, here's something I have a vested interest in, but does anyone call me asking for my vote? Do I get flooded with campaign literature? Who is this shadowy dogcatcher? And why are dogs being thrown? I'm hoping to have this all cleared up by 2008...) I have yet to read about a war that made the slightest bit of sense to me--I totally understand biting a guy who takes your bone, but how that ends up involving weapons systems, secret detention centers, and millions of other dogs who haven't SEEN your bone, is way beyond me. And in the case of this Iraq war, there doesn't even seem to have been a bone that anybody was fighting over. Still, I have to confess that, at the beginning of the Iraq war, I did feel a quick twinge of ugly satisfaction.

You see, the Muslim religion claims that dogs are unclean. And for obvious reasons, I have a problem with that. I mean, humans have to bathe practically every day just to be presentable, and I can roll in a compost heap and be back to my pristine white-velvet-covered self within minutes...and I'm unclean? I'm sorry, but which species would it be that spends billions of dollars body wash, deodorant, perfume, exfoliators, and bath gel (products tested on millions of innocent and VERY clean thank you animals, by the way)? Which species pees in its own house?

Anyhow, so I admit to initially being slightly satisfied by the attempt to crush fundamentalist doghater regimes. But then I stopped, and realized that I was looking at it all wrong. Why do Muslims think dogs are unclean? It's obvious; because they have never actually had a pet! What the Muslim world needs isn't regime change and violence: it's an emergency shipment of puppies. A puppy for every Sunni, Shiite, Turk, and Kurd. The army should stop mucking around with high-tech weapons systems, and get into the business of adorable puppy procurement. You wouldn't need a draft--we dogs have a very finely honed sense of civic responsibility. Explain the stakes, and I guarantee you that dogs from the Brooklyn dog park to the Santa Barbara dog park will jump, sit, stay, scratch, and beg for the opportunity. An international coalition: German Shepherd puppies, Chihuahua puppies, Shih Tzu puppies. Milkbone instead of Halliburton takes on the rebuilding process. Abu Greib turned into a huge doggie daycare. Instead of an army of our nation's finest, an army of our nation's cutest, friendliest, and furriest. Instead of "cut and run": "cut and GO FOR A WALK!!!"

Call your congressman. Dogs For Peace!