Saturday was the annual Santa Barbara Dog Parade. It’s the best day of the year for dog lovers and Santa Barbara is a dog-loving town. Imagine if you will, over 1,800 dogs of all shapes and sizes marching down State Street (the main down town drag). Some of the dogs and indeed some of the owners are in costumes. It’s a hoot.
I was in the very first parade with Casey who passed three years ago. Casey was a veteran of five or six dog parades until she was too old to make the hike. Our latest dog is Olive, a black female chow chow, just like Casey. Olive is just shy of two years old and is a cute little fuzzy ball of energy. This was her first dog parade and we couldn’t wait to show her off.
My wife made a simple costume for Olive. She strung fluorescent yellow and orange pipe cleaners into a big sun burst and put them around her face. The dark black dog with the bright colors looked great. She was soooo cute. Out of the 1,800+ dogs there, only five were pictured in the local paper and Olive was one of them. I know it’s silly and, in fact, mundane and pointless but Mrs. H and I are so proud of our little pooch.
Since we’re a Jewish family (us, not Olive), we didn’t know about that book until after we named her. Mrs. H thought that her nose looked like a black olive. We really did think that it was a unique name.
It does suck about the News-Press making you subscribe. We’re not subscribers either but I was sent the on-line version of the article by a friend. I will send it to anyone who asked in the thread if your email is in profile or to anyone who emails me. (hajario@yahoo.com)
It gets even better. A friend of a friend is a professional dog photographer whose work gets into dog calandars and posters and such. He wants to photograph Olive! My wife’s friends are teasing her by calling Olive “Jon-Benet.”