The Gazette

 The hardest part of getting a pet is knowing that its lifespan is shorter than yours, and one day it will die. Knowing that the longest you'll have with a beloved pet is probably around 15 years can be hard to settle in your mind.  In this week's readings, we saw two different ways of dealing with animal death: excessive grief and satire. The mid-19th century was the general Emo phase of Europe. People like Mary Shelley, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Caspar David Friedrich, and John Keats decided to make every situation into like, an 11 on the intense emotions scale. Lord Byron was the absolute king of Romanticism. How much of a drama queen do you have to be that "Byronic" means "a tragically flawed hero"? He was so dramatic that he asked for his friend Percy Shelley's skull when he died. Shelley declined, because Byron was currently using the skulls of medieval monks as drinking glasses.  Byron's favorite pet, Boatswain Anyways, Byron loved animals. ...

The one thing I swore that would never happen to me happened: I became a dog person. Much like falling in love, I can't pinpoint the exact moment it happened. I just woke up one day thinking "Oh no. I love dogs now."  From the cinematic masterpiece "Clueless" Certainly, the visit from Arrow didn't help. The moment he came up to me with those big blue eyes and soft ears, my heart melted a little. The previous day I had gone hiking with my friend's dog Addy and she was also a complete sweetheart. She doesn't really have a tail, so she wags her whole butt. What could be cuter than that?  It got me thinking about the dogs I've met before. My previous excuse for disliking most dogs is that they are not well trained. I stand by this. In my neighborhood in Cincinnati, people either do not understand or do not care to train their dogs. Most interactions go something like this:  I'm going for a quick walk around the block. I see my neighbor on the por...

 After digging though every country shelter in Utah, I've found what I want in a pet. Now the trick is to sneak it into my dorm... See?! He's polite! Anyways... here's what would make me want to adopt an animal, which is what I'll be including in my representation.  1) BIG EYES!!! The dogs that really made my heart melt had big ole eyes. Bonus points if they added in a cute head tilt. Apparently dogs evolved to have expressive eyebrows, which made it easier to communicate with humans ( source ) and also made them unbelievably cute. Literally tearing up at this image 2) A silly name  Dogs at shelters seem to be named stuff like Max and Bella, which is cute, but can't compare to a cat named Samsung Galaxy. A unique name gives the animal a lot of personality and makes it memorable.  The one time I accept Constructive Criticism Because I think it's funny, here are some highlights from Petfinder: Heavy Machinery, Business Frog, Neuroscientist, French Fry Freddy, Stev...