Stylish Blogger Award?!

Tail Waggin gave me-- wait for it-- a Stylish Blogger Award. Clearly this person has never met me; I wear clothing so old it's gone in and out of fashion several times. I guess she means my blog is stylish. There too, not sure I see it, but I'll take what I can get!

So the rules of this award are 1) to share seven things about myself and/or Our Best Friend and 2) to pass this award on to 15 other bloggers. Now, I regret to say I used up everybody I know in the Memetastic Award (yes, I know that's only five people, and yes, I know that makes me pathetic). So I'm afraid the Stylish Blogger Award buck stops here. Besides, every single blog I visit has the logo on its widget bar, I think everyone's gotten it at least twice, and so I don't feel particularly guilty not passing it along AGAIN. I hope I will be forgiven.

Here are six things you may or may not care to know about Our Best Friend, and one about me:

1. When I drop kids off at their homes during carpool, he stands perfectly still in the back of the van, whimpering as he watches them go into the house. I think he can't stand seeing kids on the other side of the glass where he can't protect them.
2. When we first got OBF, he wouldn't come on the beds no matter how much the kids coaxed him. Now he leaps up every night for a ten-to-twenty-minute cuddle, then goes off to sleep on the floor. He still will not come on my bed without express permission.
3. In contradistinction to # 2, he appropriated the Middle Child's bed as his own during the day, yet will not sleep with the children at night. He still sneaks onto the couch in the middle of the night when everyone's asleep, even though he knows he's not allowed.
4. I bought him diet food a few months ago, as he's getting a little chunky. He refused to eat it. When we tried mixing it with his regular kibble, he spit the pieces he didn't like onto the floor. We could tell he was only spitting out the diet stuff because of the size and shape.
5. When he goes nose-to-nose with little dogs, his tail wags gently, and he has the most tender, goofy look you've ever seen on a dog's face.
6. He can turn in a circle, beg, and play dead (although "play dead" looks more like "beg lying on your side" than "dead").
7. My next dog will be small, female, and non-shedding.

That's about as interesting as it gets. Except for the time OBF almost ate the Morkie....

Lies I Tell You-- Lies!

I awoke this morning to an unexpected delight in my inbox-- a blog "award" from Rescued Insanity. The term award deserves quotation marks; it's not so much an award as a blog chain letter. I have to provide my readers with four lies and one truth about myself, and they have to figure out which is which. Then I have to pass this award on to five other bloggers, who probably won't thank me for it.


So let's see how well people know me. Which of the following statements is true?

1. I excelled in math and science in high school, and made a dramatic shift to arts in university.
2. I dye my hair this colour.
3. I am a fitness fanatic and work out daily.
4. If it wasn't for the dog park, I'd be blogging from behind barred windows and locked doors.
5. I am about to launch a reality competition on the Food Network called "Feed My Kids-- Please."

Now to name five bloggers to take up this challenge:

1. Back Alley Soapbox (because it's sure to be amusing)
2. Peggy's Pet Place (because someone who writes about dieting knows brutal honesty and the art of the cover-up)
3. According to Gus (because I want to learn a little more about them before they show up on my doorstep in four or five months!)
4. Kid Lit Reader (because she can't lie to save her life)
5. Back Seat View (because her blog is so honest, yet I think she can come up with some whoppers, and pictures to illustrate them!)

And one bonus blogger: The VSL Poltroon, because my own brother better not try to lie to me.

Well, there you go, and I hope the people listed are still speaking to me after this. Please excuse the interruption in our regularly scheduled programming, which will resume tomorrow (or maybe the next day).

The Pet Blogger Challenge

I'm a pretty decent writer, but a lousy business person and networker. For quite a while now, I've been trying to find other personal blogs about dogs, or even pets in general, so I could exchange links and acquire new readers. I thought it would be easy, but my poor networking skills translated into bad blog-finding skills. I found blogs that had been abandoned in 2008 after a single post; blogs that were pictures but no text; and glossy, intimidating blogs put together by magazines or non-profit organizations that were slick and professional and not likely to exchange links with the likes of me.

Finally, I typed the simple words "dog blog" into the WordPress search bar and found what I was looking for. And the first thing I found was the pet blogger challenge. Of course, typical of my professional luck in general and my blogging luck in particular, the entry date for the challenge has passed. I'm filling out the questionnaire anyway; what have I got to lose?

1. When did you begin your blog?

I started my blog at www.ourdogpark.blogspot.com on June 22, 2010. I then migrated it to www.thebarkpark.wordpress.com sometime in November or December. Right now I maintain the blog at both URLs. (I have since discovered that ourdogpark.wordpress.com is available too, and grabbed it, but can't figure out how to move the blog to the new URL. Of course, what I really want is thedogpark.worpress.com, but it's taken. And the last post there was 2007. Figures.)

2. What was your original purpose for starting a blog?

Blogging serves a double purpose for me: to entertain and to alleviate writer's block. I had not written in years; meanwhile, in the process of fostering abandoned dogs, we had come to own a large, anxiety-ridden, German shepherd/husky/malamute/Australian shepherd/you-name-it cross, who is both a nuisance and a delight. Our experiences with him, and our life at the dog park, provided a blocked writer with the necessary starting place for a blog.

3. Is your current purpose the same? If not, what’s different? If so, how do you feel you’ve met your goals?

I still struggle to write. Sometimes the posts just flow, and sometimes they sit in the draft folder and take ages to see the computer backlight. Although technically it's a blog about dogs and the dog park, I've also blogged about feral cats and our fostering experiences.

The underlying theme of "Our Dog Park" is what our experiences with animals and other pet owners show us about human nature. Part of the goal has always been to tell some funny stories, and reach people who do not own dogs or pets of any kind. If one of my non-animal-loving friends says she enjoyed a post, I feel my writing succeeded. The trick is getting people to read it in the first place, without assuming, "Oh, this won't interest me, I'm not a dog person."

4. Do you blog on a schedule or as the spirit moves you? If the former, how often — and what techniques do you use to stick to it? If the latter, do you worry about… well, whatever you might worry about (e.g. losing traffic, losing momentum)?

I wish I blogged on a regular schedule! We live in a harsh northern clime, so the poor dog (and we along with him) has been languishing indoors most of the time. Generally I write when I feel I have something to write about, but I know that irregular and infrequent posting is the kiss of death for a blog. If you don't post regularly, people will stop checking you out. So I try to find something to write about at least once a week. I don't always succeed.

5. Are you generating income from your blog? If so, how (e.g. sponsor ads, affiliate relationships, spokesperson opportunities)? If not currently, do you hope to in the future — and how?

Money? First you need traffic.... Without enough followers, it's hard attract sponsors or make money. I found AdSense on Blogger too complicated to deal with, and not worth the time for the limited number of hits I generated.
The pipe dream is that one day all these disparate posts will fall into a coherent whole, and I can publish them in book form. (There's no law against dreaming, right?)

6. What do you like most about blogging in general and your blog in particular (bragging is good!)?

I enjoy knowing that whatever I choose to write is available for anyone to read; they just have to be "lucky" enough to stumble upon it. My readers give me lots of positive feedback, though not necessarily in the comment boxes. And I think that what I do is a little bit different from other blogs about animals; I write about dogs, but about people too, and how our similarities often trump our differences. My favourite post is Unfinished Business, which is really about friendship, and how compartmentalized our lives can be.

7. What do you like least?

I had hoped to have a bigger readership by now... Blogging can be like shouting in the wind. Site stats tell you you've had readers, but when they don't leave comments, you don't know if they liked what you wrote or not, or if they'll be back. I wouldn't mind making some money from this, either.

8. How do you see your blog changing or growing in 2011?

I hope to write more posts, attract more readers, generate more comments, and have more fun!