Animal Insting

Dogs aren't allowed to go to antique malls, so that's why I didn't go with them.  Service dogs are allowed to go in places like antique malls, but regular dogs aren't.  I think this is probably because people are afraid that dogs might break things with their tails, or else they might chew up the antiques or pee on them.

Here's a picture of the inside of the antique mall.  You can see that it is totally crammed full of stuff, so it's hard to see everything because some things are in front of other things.  Also lots of things are breakable, so if you are not careful, you could break something, and then you would have to pay for it, and most of the stuff is pretty expensive, which is why Mom didn't buy anything when she was there except one old beat-up silver cup that was only $5, and it's mostly black with tarnish, and she can't get the tarnish to come off.  Which is probably why the cup only cost $5.

Anyway, at the antique mall, there are usually lots of pictures and stuff with dogs, so I asked Mom to take some photos that I could use in my blog.  It would have been better if she had actually bought some of the paintings and brought them home with her, but she said she couldn't afford any of them.  She said if she didn't have to be always spending her money on vet bills, she might have more money to spend on artwork.  This seemed like kind of a mean thing for her to say because it's not our fault if we get sick, and Mom could actually save a whole bunch of money by just not making us get our shots and heartworm pills and stuff like that.  But sometimes there's just no arguing with Mom.

So anyway, at the antique mall, Mom just took pictures rather than buying pictures because that was cheaper.  Here's a picture from the days of Queen Victoria, and it's called Found.  It shows a collie who has found a lost lamb and now he's barking about his find, probably to let his dad, the shepherd, know that the lamb isn't lost anymore.  Remember how I told you that the Victorians liked to make animal pictures that told a story?  Well, this is one of them.  Mom says it must have been a very popular picture because lots of copies of it are in antique shops.

Here's another Victorian picture, and it's called Guarding.  This dog is watching over the little girl while she sleeps.  The colors in this picture are kind of weird, if you ask me, but the idea of the brave and faithful dog guarding the little girl is very nice.


Mom was happy to find our old friend Nipper at the antique mall.  This Nipper is a bank, so he has a slot in his back where you can put your pennies.  He doesn't have a Victrola to listen to, but maybe he is listening to that strange head thing next to him.

I think these puppies are really cute.  They would be fun to play with, if they were real.  And this painting would have looked good on our wall, if Mom had bought it for us, which she didn't.

My favorite painting that Mom took a picture of is this one, because the dog is black-and-white like me.  This makes him very handsome.  Except that Mom had to take the picture from kind of a funny angle, so the dog's head looks a little bit warped.  I think it's funny that his eyes are so round because it makes him look very surprised.  It's like he was just taking a nap out there in front of his doghouse, and then something woke him up, and he said "Huh? What was that?"

This picture is not a dog at all, but a monkey.  There are monkeys in Africa, where my distant basenji cousins live.  And there are also monkeys in Asia and South America, but there aren't any monkeys in Missouri, except at the zoo.  I don't know where this monkey is from.  I think he might be a pet monkey.  Mom says we cannot have a monkey at our house because certain dogs might want to eat a monkey, if we had one.

And last of all, Mom took this picture of a really neat dog toy.  Except Mom says it is not a dog toy.  She  says it is a doll named "Raggedy Anne."  But I still think it would make a good dog toy because it would be lots of fun to tear it up and unstuff it.  And it would also be fun to pull all those red yarns out of its head.  I wish Mom had bought us this dog toy, but she didn't.  And Mom says that the fact that I want to tear up this nice doll is exactly the reason why dogs are not allowed to go to antique malls!