Labs and Blogs

As I began looking for my third and final blog in this blogging blogs exercise, I decided I wanted to do something fun. I tried searching plain old "funny blogs." Most of the numerous "funny blogs" I looked at had some humor in them, but nothing extravagant that I would be willing to write about. So began the thought process, all over again.

During my thought process, my mom called. As we were ending our conversation she said, "Gunner misses you." Gunner is our 5 year-old yellow lab. Then it clicked. I could search blogs about labs. I might find out things to teach Gunner. My dad trained him as a champion hunting dog, but is always looking for new tricks and suggestions. What a great idea!

There are more blogs on labs than I had anticipated there would be. As I had suspected, there were several blogs dedicated to training tips on what age is appropriate to begin which techniques. To be honest, after looking at about seven different blogs, I was ready for a new blog topic to search. Then, I stumbled across a very different kind of blog. In fact, it was so cute I could not, NOT write about it.

The blog I found was about Timber, The Trail Running Lab. What made this blog so unique was that the author was none other than Timber himself! Call my corny, but I thought it was pretty clever.

Timber is a female running coach from Leveen, Arizona. Her nickname is the Big Yellow Bus and she enjoys trail running, hiking, camping and of course, eating. All of her favorite movies, books and music deal with dogs in some way. I enjoyed that one of her favorite songs was, "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

The last time the blog was updated was Sept. 2006, so not very current, but I guess not too long ago. Her most recent posts was about how her mom and dad got new mountain bikes and she stays home to take mega naps while they ride. She also included a link as to where the mountain bikes came from. Who would have thought a dog couldn't do PR for a mountain bike shop?

Timber has a lot of pictures of herself out on the trails; with captions under each explaining what she was doing or feeling at the time the photo was taken. To go along with the pictures Timber has displayed is a listing of all the races she is scheduled to participate in. The blog is nothing short of a self-expression blog that Rebecca Blood discusses in her book. Timber is letting her audience in on the details of her racing in the trails and what it is like from her canine point of view.

As I read through some of the older posts in the blog I noticed an obvious pattern in them being a form or recap of the races Timber had been partaking in. She also talks about how busy her mom is with a new job and the mountain bike races. Its neat how ultimately Timber's mom is realizing the hectic life she is leading through apologizing on the blog she made for her dog.
Timber talks about visiting her uncle, Koda, who by darned, is also a yellow lab. Koda scares Timber sometimes and they end up barking at each other a lot. Timber hopes they can someday work through their differences. So cute.

In one post, Timber describes the 90 degree heat she ran in and how her mom kept nagging on her to drink her water. Timber taunts her mother by not doing it right away and finds it humorous. The more I read, the more I love how unique this blog is. Timber also writes about taking her mom's socks and running away. The voice in this blog is almost as if it is coming from the dog. The way the words, "She then has to chase me all around. She now tries to ignore me when I do this, but before you know it....there she is saying...give...give...give...finally I drop the sock and the game is over," make me forget for a spilt second that Timber is not actually writing this! Don't call me crazy either. I'm not the only one that thinks that. There are several comments on the blog talking to Timber and commenting her on her races and giving her advice on how to outsmart her mom and dad in the "taking the sock games."

This blog is very basic, but as I've said from the beginning, is very unique. Not a lot of people would think to make a blog for their dog, let alone adding several posts and pictures to spice the place up. One feature I haven't seen in other blogs was a picture of Timber with the words "Big Yellow Bus" printed over her head. It was posing as some form of logo for the blog and was placed at the beginning of every post. Little things like that act as a big feature to how personal the blog is.

My guessing is that Timber's "mom" created this blog as a form of keeping in touch. Whether it is with family, friends, or fellow runners, this blog keeps them up to date on how their racing, biking, or daily lives are going. It also lets them look at pictures of Timber, who seems to be an only child, just as they would look at pictures of children on any keeping in touch blog.

After taking my time to view this blog, reading the posts I find myself a little jealous of how creative some people can be. I don't know if I would have ever thought, or maybe even wanted to make a blog for Gunner. All in all though, it was a cute idea and I think it fit the requirements for this exercise. It really does prove that there are literally blogs out there for everything.