Tag Archives: dogs

SICK AS A ????!!!!!

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I spent the week after the festival, sick as a dog with a respiratory flu.  But let’s back it up a bit….sick as a dog? Where did that come from?  Why does a dog become a simile for illness?  Why such a desultory description of such a kind, benign, helpful creature?  I did a swift search on Google, only to find the source of this comparison is unclear.  So, I call and end to the negative profiling of dogs as sick!  Free the dogs!  Let’s find something more accurate.

Sick as a monkey?  Maybe, but I have no drawing of monkeys.

Let’s try something that I have more drawings of.  Sick as a cat?

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If you’ve ever dealt with a sick cat, you know they can be quite unpleasant. Yes, sick as a cat is a definite contender.

How about sick a crow?

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In all honesty, I don’t know enough about crows to have an opinion.

As sick as a winged horse?  Naw, that’s pretty incredulous.

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My brother and I have this inside, family joke about bears throwing up.  Specifically, strawberry ice cream.  TMI about the Baldwin family?

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Not quite.  Just a little modification and I think I have it.  Sick as a giant stuffed Teddy Bear!  Put the onus on something in animate.

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And let’s get the dogs out of this unsavory simile.

january2finish
January 2nd

 

 

When in Doubt….

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Draw a cat!  Cats are fun to draw, and certainly people pleasing art.  It’s a win/win!

However, why not dogs?

When I was working in the LaGuardia Airport branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift Shop, we had a display of cat items.  Notepads, notecard, notebooks, everything of note.  A customer came in, said she hated cats, why not a set of dog items.  We didn’t have a set of dog items.

This past Christmas, I was selling pajamas with a golden retriever in the pattern.  A woman looked at them, and said no, she had a dachshund.  As if the dachshund would get jealous!

For most cat lovers, a cat is a cat is a cat. But dog lovers are loyal to breeds, I think.  Unless someone wants to do pictures of all the various breeds of dogs, well, the market for dog items is qualified by the customer’s preference.

So, here’s a sketch of “String Theory, According to Cats”.

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