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Readers, you’ve outdone yourselves. We asked for pet photos, and did we ever receive. With more than 200 submissions, it was incredibly difficult to choose the absolute best. Let’s just say there was a lot of agonizing, debating and consideration. Here are your 2016 winners, and check our Facebook page for more fluffy and adorable entries. Best Action Shot Continue reading
Pets are kind of like practice kids for some of us or, for people like me, they are straight up in lieu of bearing children — just please don’t call them fur-babies; that’s gross. But just like real children, pets sometimes get caught in the fray of a break-up. When my ex-fiancé and I split, I kept Smudge, the dachshund mix I owned before we got together, and he kept Lily, the pit-Dalmatian puppy we got as a couple. I was possibly more heartbroken over losing the dog than I was over canceling the wedding. Continue reading
“Here kitty, kitty. Come put on this rosary and sit next to this golden chalice like you’re taking communion.” So it goes for BooBoo, a 17-pound Eugene tabby whose dress-up antics have earned him five million views on the website Pretty 52 and his own greeting card Etsy shop (79 sales and counting!). Continue reading
Chihuahuas weigh an average of 4 to 6 pounds — that’s about the size of a large bunny. The puppies tip the scale at only a few ounces, and yet, Chihuahuas are all canine, descendants of Canis lupus, just like huskies, malamutes and Irish wolfhounds. The diminutive stature of Chihuahuas makes it easy to forget that they’re real dogs, not pocket pets or fashion accessories. Continue reading
Seventeen-year-old Courtney Scott stands by the arena at a well-maintained stable in Goshen, a few miles southeast of Eugene. She’s on crutches, her left leg in a cast due to stress fractures from dancing, but her eyes sparkle as she waits for her horse to be brought out for her to ride. The crutches make her weekly ride a little more challenging, but Scott doesn’t care. Continue reading
We live in a very pet-friendly area with many restaurants that allow customers to dine with their dogs … or cats. When I first got my dog a little more than a year ago, she was an 8-week-old rescue puppy with a boxer face and blue heeler paws, and I never wanted to leave her home alone. So she went everywhere with me. Continue reading
I own a tiny grey alpaca named Shimmer. I bought her for $250 two winters ago and she hasn’t stopped costing me money since. I’m building a small fiber business, selling Oregon yarn and hand knits online. I’m about wool. One year into my ambitious little alpaca fiber program, I thought Shimmer would be 1) pregnant by now 2) friendlier to me and 3) well … friendlier to me. Continue reading
Star Trek Beyond soared into theaters last weekend under the weight of 50 years of expectations. Some were notably lower after the mess that was 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness. Some can never be met; those belong to the old guard who would rather the movies be more like (one of) the series. When Justin Lin was announced as Beyond’s director, there was a certain amount of groaning online: “It’s just going to be Fast and Furious in space!” Continue reading
A fun game: Listen to “Weird Al” Yankovic and take him deadly serious. Forget that he’s built a career lifting popular tunes from artists like Michael Jackson or Pharrell Williams. In 1988, Weird Al lampooned Jackson’s “Bad” with “Fat,” and on Yankovic’s 2014 release Mandatory Fun, he borrowed Pharrell’s “Happy” and made it “Tacky.” Continue reading
Bright young talents conquer Broadway with hip new streetwise music: Seven decades before Hamilton, 25-year-old composer Leonard Bernstein and his upstart young (average age 27) drinking buddies — singer-songwriter-comedians Betty Comden and Adolph Green and choreographer Jerome Robbins — blitzed wartime Broadway with On the Town. Continue reading