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Super Tuesday has come and gone and the presidential candidates have moved into a race for delegates in the states that have yet to vote. Lots of humans have weighed in about who they think will be the best person to lead our country, but one question remains: who gets the animal vote?
Much has already been made of the Obamas' plan to get their daughters a dog when they make it to the White House, but cats are dominating the Obama pet blogosphere lately. First of all, and I'm sure anyone familiar with the LOLCats craze will agree, it had to happen: Yes We Can Has (Cheezburgers.) This one's for Dana in Wisconsin:
(Via Boinkology)
Cats For Obama is on the stump as well (and in a similar vein, don't miss I Can Has Nomination or Lolbama.)
Also check out Dogs for Obama on Flickr, where Honey's for Hillary, while Chili hearts Huckabee.
Nope, Westminster is over, and while our buddy David Frei and Uno the Westminster-winning beagle make the rounds of the morning talk shows, I’m thinking of that other beauty pageant, the presidential primary races.
My thought for the morning: What do the pet-food recall and Barak Obama have in common?
Give up?
The Internet....
The fact that we’re people, not demographics, is why some of us can enjoy the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and still rescue and foster pets. Because life is not as black-and-white as some believe — it’s about shades of gray. Or maybe, about a man with a Kansan mom, a Kenyan dad who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii and has the middle name that any consultant would have sworn was as deadly as last spring’s pet food.
As they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic embarassment of the Clinton campaign, somebody ought to be paying attention. We’re not “demographics”; we’re people. Miss that point? Well, here’s your hat, there’s the door. The “good ol’ days” are over, and thank heavens for that.
The poodles aren’t winning any more at Westminster. As Uno the everyman beagle would say, “Ahhhhhhh-rooooooooooooo.”
Commenter Emily was less than enthused with the encroachment of politics on one of her favorite pet sites:
I for one vote for being actually non-partisan rather than requiring Hillary supporters to sit through this kind of stuff which even Obama supporter Dogged Blog described as “She had a nice gloss of non-partisanship all over it, but yo, Gina, I’m so onto you. She’s an Obama fangirl, just like me.”
That was how I read it too, but with less joy that one of my fav non-political blogs is now starting to join in the Obama fangrrl squee parade.
Christie Keith wrote in support of the Pet Connection post and shared her own beliefs about how politics and animal welfare intersect.
I believe mandatory spay/neuter harms animals and the people who love them. I believe it's designed to impede pet ownership in furtherance of an anti-pet agenda, not to reduce the number of animals killed in shelters. That's why I fight it.
I believe that the way to change things is through free expression, speech, persuasion, and education, not legislation.
I believe that the only way to shut down puppy mills is to dry up the market, because there's no just way to legislate them out of business without trampling on people's freedoms, and in the end, harming the human/animal bond.
But I believe that as a liberal, and as a dog lover, and as the opponent of the mass commercial production of puppies, and someone who is against the sale of puppies and kittens in pet stores.
And I don't find any of those things a contradiction.
The Baltimore Sun Mutts blog kept tabs on the current candidates' pets.
The undisputed winner in the pets-at-home category is John McCain, who has 22 pets; the loser is Barack Obama, who has none, but who -- it should be pointed out -- has promised his children that, win or lose, once the campaign is over, they will get one.
So what he lacks in pets, he makes up for in being responsible enough to know that amid a run for the country's highest office is not a good time to bring a pet into one's young family.
His opponent in the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton,
