But even with so many breeds on my wish list (and believe me, there are a lot), I am a mutt-lover. There’s nothing like a good old fashioned mongrel. Some of our daycare’s most awesome dogs are mixed-breeds (see examples here, here, and here).

I’m not going to get on a soapbox about the wonderful world of rescue, nor am I going to preach against supporting puppy mills or backyard breeders. I’m just going to share a video tribute to the wonderful mutts of the world. I made this video for a class, and I hope you enjoy!

(And no, that’s not my voice.)

My sister Elizabeth had to move to Hong Kong about six months ago for work. She had acquired Boudreaux, an adorable black mini dachshund pup, a little over six months before she left (from a sweet dachshund-loving breeder family just outside the city… not from a puppy mill or backyard breeder). Coming from a long line of dachshund lovers (our grandmother bred them for several years), it was no surprise that Elizabeth picked out a weiner dog, despite the decades of rug-wetting and ankle-nipping that the breed has bestowed upon our family. But this little fatty was probably the best doxie we’d had since the legendary Gretchen, who set the bar impossibly high with her nurse-like attentiveness and showers of kisses.

Anyway, after enjoying the first six or eight months of Boudreaux’s puppyhood, Elizabeth found out that she would need to move to Hong Kong for approximately two years. Though she wanted to ship him over right away, she made the responsible decision to wait, because her first several months there were spent traveling constantly. Doxies need attention — lots of attention, as any aficionado of the little long dogs will tell you. So Boudreaux shacked up with our mom to wait out the storm until he could join his mum and pop in China.

Of course, after my mother spent this much time with him, she didn’t want to give him up. By the time Elizabeth came home for Christmas, Boudreaux had his own piece of furniture and had mysteriously become accustomed to sleeping in the bed at night, much to everyone’s puzzlement. But Mom relinquished her rights after Christmas, when Boudreaux was scheduled to head to HK the same day my sister and her husband would be departing from Christmas vacation in America.

Turns out, it’s not easy to transport a dog across the globe. Luckily, Elizabeth managed to find out about Pet Relocation, whose specialty is to… well, relocate pets. Any pets. Even fish. I guess if you really love your fish… who knows, maybe it was the prize from a particularly difficult carnival game.

At any rate, Pet Relocation orchestrated the entire process — complicated vaccination deadlines, airline-regulation crates, and especially a barrage of neurotic emails from my sister. They took care of details you wouldn’t really think about, like freezing a bowl of water so that it lasts throughout the 15-hour flight. Making sure that the boarding facility he’d be attending for a night in his connecting city was cage-free, so Boudreaux could have some time outside the crate. Tweeting updates throughout his journey so Elizabeth could follow his progress (not unlike the amazing Domino’s Pizza Tracker, one of my favorite things on the Internet). And finally, late at night, delivering one Cajun-turned-Chinese weiner to an ecstatic mom, who now feels a little closer to home.

Kudos to Pet Relocation for taking great care of this weiner! Check out Elizabeth’s praise for the pet-moving experts.

Boudreaux models his new camoflage Puppia harness that a certain relative (ahem!) gave him as a going-away present. Psst — Dogs are allowed inside taxis in Hong Kong!

Charlie: 1 c. dry + treats!

Jersey: 1/2 c. dry + 2 tbsp. wet & 1 greenie (am only)

Fritz: 1/2 c. dry + handful raw broccoli, tbsp. diced carrots, & 1 tbsp. canned chicken + 4 crinkle-cut carrots (administer as treats) & 2 squirts fish oil mixed w/ 1 scoop glucos. powder. Add hot H2O if won’t eat.

Wait. What?

We have house food in our facility, but most people opt to pack their own food when they bring their dogs to board. The overnight staff is responsible for preparing each dog’s bowl and making sure everyone eats, even if that means hand-feeding (or any of the numerous tricks we’ve come with to make dogs eat… but I’ll get into that later).

As I’ve mentioned before, a good portion of our clients come from the more progressive areas of town. Nevertheless, when I had my first experiences with dog “food” that was finer than what I had packed for dinner that night, I was a little taken aback.

Two pit bulls receive seasoned chicken breast with rice? I’ll take some of that! A former champion Shih Tzu whose loving father browns batches of ground beef with sauteed carrots and peas? Yes, I’ll take that with a side of my college student Ramen, please. One owner included two cans of Vienna sausages to be added, one per meal, to her hound’s bowl. Well, Vienna sausages can’t be that good for a dog, and they are a particular favorite gas station snack from my childhood… no harm done, right? And don’t even get me started on the toy poodle who required not one, but two Trader Joe’s parmesan meatballs in her bowl. That took some self control, especially around midnight on my shift.

In all seriousness, though, prepping the dogs’ food at night has become a learning experience in and of itself. Growing up, we loved all of our dogs to death — but they spent most of their time outside in the yard, and they were fed good ol’ Purina or Pedigree. I think one particularly lucky dog got packets of Moist ‘n’ Meaty, but that was about as lux as it got. Now, we have pet food stores that will custom-create a diet for your dog. We have brands like Evo and Blue Buffalo, whose claims hearken back to “ancestral diets.” Most of all, and probably for the first time in modern history, we have people willing to cook for their dogs. Owners bring tupperwares pungent with meals fit for a human and treats that can be dipped in ranch for a people-friendly snack. Our Great Pyr, who regularly boards, brings with her a veritable cupboard of the finest doggie dishes, including canned venison and lamb sausage.

And yet, she rarely eats everything in her bowl.

After a while of folding Evo into Natural Balance, whisking in a teaspoon of fish oil, dicing up raw carrots, and garnishing the whole affair with a sprinkle of vitamin powder, it feels almost chef-like. We joke that we feel like sauciers in a fabulous Parisian kitchen, slicing, dicing, whipping, beating, layering, sprinkling.  Of course, when our efforts result in a stubbornly unhungry pup turning her nose up at our hand-prepared gourmet dish, the frustration levels arise. That’s when we get innovative: any of our night staff will have a slew of tricks up their sleeve to lure a dog into finishing off her food.

The good old hot water trick is, of course, a staple: add hot water, mush it around with your hands (a spoon doesn’t quite do the job), and wiggle it around in front of the dog’s face like a juicy t-bone. “Stew! Stewww! Don’t you want this stew?” Hand-feeding is yet another tragically slow process, and one which normally has to take place with the tinier sorts of dogs. One. Kibble. At. A. Time. Cleverly, one attendant began her own trick, one which we gleefully pirated as it’s actually pretty useful — pretending to eat the dog’s food. It never fails to make me laugh to hear odd, grunting noises emanating from a feeding suite, only to discover a night staffer holding the bowl half an inch from her nose and smacking her chops while the dog looks on in envy.

Do I get frustrated with the pampered pooches who snub rosemary-seasoned chicken breasts and whole grain rice, while scads of underfed dogs walk the streets and fill the shelters? Well, yes. But do I also enjoy playing chef while I whip up a casserole of Orijen Large Breed and Merrick Grammy’s Pot Pie? Um, yes. I might even take special ardor in peppering the dish with a dash of crumbled Archetype burgers.

If it’s on the menu.

I’m lucky enough to work in a facility that has absolutely zero breed-specific policies. A pit bull is just as welcome as a dachshund, provided they both pass their temperament tests (and often, it’s the dachshund who has more trouble with this than the pit! I’m allowed to say that because I come from a long line of doxie lovers). Of course, every now and then, we’ll get that one customer. You know the one. She (because it’s almost always an overprotective mom) will raise one tweezed-within-an-inch-of-its-life eyebrow at the framed photo of the owner’s pit bull on the wall and say, “I didn’t realize you allowed aggressive breeds?” She poses it as a question, but stabs it like an accusation, as if to say, “How very crass of you! Haven’t you seen the news?”

But for the most part, we don’t find breedism to be a huge problem. Our facility is in a rather progressive, newly gentrified part of town; the part of town where Priuses (Priusi?) outnumber Chevy Tahoes; where weekend trips to the farmer’s market replace weeknight pilgrimages to Publix; where beards, Macbooks, and microbrewed beers are way cooler than goatees, Blackberries, and shiraz. Conversely, the list of That Which Is Uncool grows as swiftly as backyard-cultivated alfalfa: fast food, opulence, Fox News, and those morons at the dog park who swoop in and scoop up their beloved pup at the first sign of a pit bull, or Rottie, or any of those other fear-inducing breeds.

I’m not sure what the ratio of mutts to purebreds is at our daycare, but we do have a lot of mixed-breeds. For many of our clients, rescuing a dog is about as cool as drinking organic pomegranate juice. And being afraid of certain breeds is, well, just embarrassing. It seems to be a very white-bread, suburban, bourgeoisie thing to raise that plucked eyebrow over a pit bull pup.

Some of our best dogs are mutts. Some of our best dogs are pits. I can think of one pit bull who snuggles with me in the staff bed, one purebred Westie who left a scar on my arm several months ago, and hundreds of dogs that simply can’t be judged based on their breed (or lack thereof).

All of this, of course, in the hopes of something better. That “something better” involves the glamorous-yet-tragically-underpaid world of magazine publishing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m both a writing student and a writer. I’ve completed three internships with magazines based in my (major, but unnamed) city. And as the editorial world isn’t exactly bloated with funding, all of them have been unpaid. I’ve had these bizarre part-time jobs to supplement all of them, but had perhaps the most interesting experiences working at a national music magazine and a doggie daycare at the same time.

You see, it’s fairly easy to go from work to an internship when you’re working at Urban Outfitters and interning with a fashion glossy. Swap out those t-strap sandals for stilettos and you’re good to go. Not so much when you’re heading to a hip, trendy indie music mag after spending the night with thirty dogs. While the office environment at (major, but unnamed) Music Mag was certainly casual, it wasn’t quite as casual as my fur-smattered, saliva-glossed sweatshirt, bleach-stained jeans, malodorous Converses and makeup-free countenance would suggest. Mornings after overnight shifts usually entailed a quick change in the car on the way to the office, blindly swatting at my hair with a brush and attempting to rid my clothes, to no avail, of ever-present dog hair.

Most of my peers were lucky enough to take an unpaid internship without concern of a second job. Comfortably bankrolled by parents, they normally smelled of soap when they arrived at the office, not of animal dander. But I have to admit, after a few months of blustering into the office after a night shift, I became rather acclimated to the martyrdom that is bestowed upon one who “works nights.” After all, I was splitting my days between class, interning, and work. I deserved some props, right?

But the chip on my shoulder was nicely detached when I realized that if one must have a job, it might as well be this. A typical night shift is actually pretty easy, and I had plenty of time to write music reviews, hunt for news stories, and prepare for major interviews after feeding the dogs. After all, where else could I possibly work that would allow me to take care of my internship duties and homework while on the clock? I really settled in to the feeling of sitting down with my laptop to write a story with the ubiquitous soundtrack of barking like a metronome. I also took a liking to sending my web editor news pitches at 3 in the morning. Once the dogs start barking in the middle of the night, there’s nothing else to do but search for scoops. And it truly became a source of humor between my editors and me: “Sorry to bother you at 2 am, but Daisy the boxer started barking right when the news broke about Spandeau Ballet’s reunion. I think she was trying to tell us something. I’ll have a story for you by 6 am.”

Dog hair was my badge of pride–and still is, when I waltz into class stinking to high heaven after a 22-hour shift. The dog thing, as my superiors referred to it, was at first just a way to supplement an unpaid gig. Nearly a year later, I’m still doing it. I still get a kick out of wearing my faded work sweatshirt to class–at art school, no less, among a sea of skinny jeans, neon graphic tees, and pretty dresses. I wouldn’t be surprised if six months from now, I’m doing the exact same thing: slapping foundation on my face and trying to wiggle into a skirt at a stoplight on my way to my “real job” in the morning.

Or, sardonically, “I get paid to pick up poop all day. Disgusting, warm, stinky poops, poops of all different shapes and and sizes, full of various household objects and undigestable matter!”

Or, simply, “I work at a doggie daycare.”

I’m a 22-year old writing student who spends most of my days chasing down unruly boxer puppies, trying to scoop up a mess before a certain Rottweiler does it for me, showing up to my internship covered in golden retriever, praying for a ritzy Chihuahua or Yorkie to eat her owner’s expensive jewelry and “deliver” it to me the next morning, sweeping up the ubiquitous white cotton fluff of a Great Pyrenees, and attempting (in vain) to play tug-of-war with a pit bull. But I also get to spend my paid hours oohing and ahhing over lanky, clumsy, goofy puppies, deciding which dog would be what high school archetypal character (Bette the Bull Mastiff would be the cross-eyed fat girl in band, for sure), and in general being nuzzled, licked, hugged, goosed, and loved by hundreds of dogs. What can I say? I deal with poop for a living, but I also play with dogs, all the while with a neurotic monologue streaming through my hyperactive brain. It’s a dog’s life, I suppose.