Always a fan of the half-baked analogy, I thought I’d muse a bit on David Carr’s New York Times article describing his experiences blogging. He describes a blog as a “large yellow Labrador: friendly, fun, not all that bright, but constantly demanding your attention.”

Having once owned a dog (and hope to again) I thought I’d filter blogging through the eyes of a dog owner and see if the analogy holds up.

MyDogLog.

Your dog must be regularly groomed. Make sure it isn’t covered with fleas (spam comments). Flea prevention technology generally works, (Akismet) but constant checking and grooming is necessary to keep your dog generally free of parasites. You don’t want your furry friend covered with bugs when you take it for a walk.

Your dog must be fed daily (writing posts). You can feed it table scraps (copy text from other blogs), or run of the mill dry food (post about what you did that day), but in order to raise a healthy dog, you really have to get some home-grown, organic stuff (original, meaty content). It’s a pain, but you want a healthy, happy dog, don’t you?

Eventually, you’ll want to take your dog for a long walk, and hopefully meet some other dogs. Good places are dog parks where other dogs congregate (Technorati, Techmeme). Make sure you have a good leash (about page with disclosures). It’s a good way to keep your dog from fighting with other dogs (flame war).

Potential conflict aside, it’s fun to let your dog check out other canines. If another dog is interesting to yours, you can let them do the requisite rear-end sniff (trackback).

What’s the point of having your dog meet other dogs? Well, in the wild, dogs travel in packs, ordered by rank (links coming in). There are alpha male dogs (Techcrunch, Scoble). My dog will never the top dog, but somewhere in the middle would be something to sniff at.

Some owners might keep their dogs mostly locked up, never interacting with other dogs (no comments), but I don’t really think that’s a healthy life for a dog, which is an inherently social animal. Maybe some dog owners would be better off with a cat.

Warning: the potential for turmoil with a dog is real. If you haven’t trained your pet, groomed, fed, and bought them a leash, they might go nuts and attack people, or possibly even turn on you. Please be a responsible dog owner. You don’t want to be one of those folks whose dog goes ballistic and mauls some kid. You as the owner will bear all the responsibility, and people might ask “Why was that person ever a dog-owner in the first place?”. As said before, some people might be better off with a cat.

Pick up your dog’s trash. Your dog might doggie-do where you least expect it (factual mistakes). Do the right thing and pick up the poop (correct mistakes) before it offends someone.

Anyhow, I don’t think obsessing over your dog’s popularity is the best way to care for it. Just feeding your dog healthy food and keeping it well-groomed is likely the best way to keep your dog happy and healthy. By doing this, its tail grows longer and longer (long tail), which from what I’ve been told, enhances its smell and attractiveness to other dogs, especially strays.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that there are millions of dogs out there, and your dog is obvious your favorite. I find this worth remembering whenever I consider making a living from showcasing my dog. It’s possible, but do I really think this dog could be a contender for Best in Show? I’d probably be better off getting into dog grooming, doggie day-care, or serving up healthy dog food.

Note: I wanted to include something about leg-humping but that seemed to be barking up the wrong tree.

For some other musings on blog analogies, check out Ebiquity.

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