Sunday, May 20

Weekend Bostonblogging: Do Dah Day.

Yesterday was Do Dah Day here in Birmingham, which is the social event of the year for the area's canines. It's a big outdoor festival that spreads across two parks in the Southside area, and it benefits Jefferson County's animal shelters; it is an event that Jenna and I make it a point not to miss.


One of the first dogs we met on our way to Rhodes Park was this English bulldog, who wore a Georgia T-shirt and answered to Dooley. According to his owner, Dooley descends from the Uga IV lineage.


Each year the event kicks off with a parade down Highland Avenue. One of the highlights of the parade is people dressing up their dogs in various costumes; some people without dogs choose to save the costumes for themselves.


Here's more from the parade, and you can't really tell from this picture but with a little extra decoration, it's pretty easy to make one of the Geek Squad Volkswagens, with their black fenders, white hoods, and big round headlights, look like a Boston terrier. (An actual Boston terrier was helpfully provided at the passenger's-side window for comparison.)


Looking toward the main stage in Caldwell Park.


We saw this little guy walking by as we were sitting in the grass in front of my friend Tom's townhouse. I've only seen one or two other Bostons that had as much white on its face as Jenna does, and this was easily the smallest. They said he was eight weeks old, which would be just a little bit younger than Jenna was when I first got her.


Jenna loves monkey grass, and that was naturally where she decided to kick back at the end of the day when she got tired.

Photos from previous years here, here, and here.

1 comment:

april glaspie said...

When I was nine, I took my collie Sandy to a similar affair in a park in Memphis, to celebrate his Gentleman's Cs graduation from obedience school. My dog was an underachiever in academe, but I figure the fault was mine. My heart wasn't in the effort to transform a dog so smart he made lassie look like a short bus hound into Robo-Pup.

Anyway, mindless adults had scheduled the affair for high summer, so it was something like 92 in the shade, and the atmosphere was as surreal as the bat tower unveiling in The Bushwhacked Piano, with lots of tater salad and absolutely no Blappeople. (Memphis, 1961, right.)

My boy was dehydrating like a bad hangover in his luxurious tri-color coat, so I got him water in large CoCola cups and sought out meager shade. As the hellish afternoon wore on, we were harrassed contually by an obnoxios basset, not on a gd leash. Eventually, the nipping and snarling of this canine Limbaugh over our water got to be too much, and my boy bit back. Result: a foreshadowing Mike Tyson moment, with half a basset ear flap (account for those suckers, you evil evolutionists) bleeding in the dust.

The basset’s previously absentee harpy owner materialized with event officials, the bitch (the allegedly human one) insisting that Sandy was obviously rabid and should be sent to doggie Guantanamo and that her mutt was a show dog that was now hideously scarred for life. Nothing like an angry mob of so-called grown-ups berating a little kid and his faithful companion.

My dad showed up at the height of the mass hysteria, picked up the gruesome severed appendage, shoved it into a cup of ice, and told the idiot to get her offensive animal to a vet before he called the cops.

After that, we skipped these society affairs.