A Break from Kale Salad Pictures

There's nothing like reviewing your last few blog posts and realizing that you've forced people to look at multiple pictures of kale salads. While I'm obsessed with them, kale salad obsession is not as common as cat and dog obsession, and since most of you were lured here first by cat hat pictures, I feel bad about the unintentional bait and switch. So, while these are still not cat hat pictures, they're a step up from kale salad, right?

The boy is racing in 24 Hours of Lemons, and since the car name is Balto, they thought that it would be funny to also refer to themselves as Team Idiotarod (iditarod, get it?), and who better to lead the Idiotarod than our boy Mingus? So, although Mingus is no Balto in appearance or demeanor, as a Nordic dog he is close enough. We put his harness on and let him pull the car into BS, the first judging station where the teams convince (and bribe) the judges that the car is indeed worth no more than $500.

Mingus was a crowd pleaser, and as you can see, he is also quite pleased with himself. The funny thing about walking him around is that everyone wants to tell you about your dog.

"Is that a husky? A malamute? No, can't be, he's too small for a malamute!" Followed by, "he's too big for a malamute!" by another person. Followed by, "Is your dog a tervuren wolf?"

That last question really puzzled me because I've never seen a tervuren wolf before, and further Google research shows that Mingus looks nothing like a tervuren wolf.

I just told people that he looks close to a malamute, so that's why we call him one, and that we got him at the pound so he could be a mixture. That answer seemed to satisfy those who really wanted to be right about Mingus's genetic makeup. People are strange.

The other common question was how he got the name Mingus. No, not Charles Mingus. No, not Mingus Among Us. Yes, a GSD that I loved in East Oakland named Mingus. So, you see, my love of GSDs runs deep, and even Mingus has a touch of GSD in him. If I would have known that Mingus was a jazz musician, I would have never named him that because people are constantly singing bits of Mingus songs to me and I become really embarrassed, both for them and for me. Sometimes, I feel like an Idiotarod myself when I have to give the real answer for why he is named Mingus, so oftentimes, I let people draw their own conclusions on why he is named what he is named.

The jury is still out if we'll go back tomorrow to watch more racing. Mingus was tuckered out because he's such a social butterfly that he did not have nearly enough napping time, and I'm unsure if I want to be out in the sun, sans shade, for most of the day again. We'll see how we feel tomorrow.