In honor, I give you Homer Simpson buying illegal fireworks:

My shih tzu likes to swim in shallow water- I’ve never tried her in a deeper pool. This one sure loves to swim- how cute!

I couldn’t stop laughing at this one from I can haz cheezburger. It’s extremely funny to me that with dogs, you can always tell who’s responsible for the mess, because they always hang their heads and look guilty. With cats, not so much. My cats always look indignant that I would EVER suspect them of tearing anything up. “Not me,” they seem to say.

This is pretty much always the question when we go out of town. My dog Kitty I don’t worry about too much since she’s young and doesn’t get too excited about anything. My dog Tiny, on the other hand, I don’t think he should ever be boarded. He doesn’t deal well at all with being crated and he has serious abandonment issues.

Luckily, this time I had people to help out so none of my dogs had to be boarded. My friend Kathy came by and fed, watered, and let Tiny out while Kitty went to visit at my mom and dad’s house. They now have 4 shih tzus- the two older dogs Indiana and Molly and now the puppies, Duke and Duchess. When I came to pick Kitty up it was as if I had walked into a doggy daycare, I was mobbed by dogs on all sides.

Mom and dad told me that Kitty had a great time and spent some time making the other dogs jealous, showing them her rawhide, but not letting them sniff it or play with it. Duchess took over one of Kitty’s toys and we decided to leave it there for her, since Kitty doesn’t play with it all that much anyway.

All in all, it worked out really well. What do you do with your animals when you go out of town?

This picture of my friend Sonia’s kitty Ozzie could be a picture of any of my cats. (Except Sonia’s a far better photographer than I am.) What a beautifully lazy life cats have.

Our dog Kitty is a major hit with all the men in my family. My 15 year old, who will tell you he hates tiny dogs, carries Kitty around in his arms like she’s a baby. Is there anything cuter than a big man and a little dog? I don’t think so. The problem with shih tzus is that they’re addictive. My mom, who I would have bet my life savings that she’d never have more than two dogs, just picked up another two puppies. They’re adorable and fun.

Tell me, Animal Shak-ers, what sort of pets are you addicted to?

I love me some bun-buns. This is so strange, yet fabulous all at once.

A young child, thinking he was giving a small puppy a bath, instead flushed the puppy down the toilet. Miraculously, the puppy survived, and was found in a sewage pipe. This, friends, is why you should always supervise your young children around animals. The puppy is lucky to be alive. So’s the kid, ha, if it was my kid. Of course, my kid would have been supervised.

For the full story and picture source, click here. Warning- graphic pictures of the puppy inside the sewage pipe.

Because there’s nothing worse than a stressed dog.

This, from the UK: a man in a park witnessed some boys kicking a fawn to death. You have to wonder what causes people to perpetrate this kind of cruelty on an animal that cannot defend itself. The gentle hippie inside of me wonders if these youths were not abused themselves and were just acting out. The realist in me says there’s no excuse.

What do you think? Do people harm defenseless animals for a reason, or are they just cruel people? What do you think should happen to these kids if they’re caught?