It's Leo's birthday!!!!!

April 15.  Well, well.  GUESS whose birthday it is today.  Leonardo da Vinci’s!!!!!!  The painter, sculptor, inventor, scientist, architect – and all around smart guy, was born in 1452.  Just a few years BEFORE my human.  Leo was famous for MANY works of art – including the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa.  Most people know that.  But what you may NOT know, is that Leo was reportedly an animal lover – and an early animal rights kinda guy.  It was said that he would go to markets, buy caged birds, and release them.  Supposedly, he had many cats and dogs in his household.  He did a few drawings of dogs, including a dog that looked like a whippet,  and a detailed series of sketches of a dog’s foot.  Art people think it is the foot of a deerhound. Beats me – but it sure looks like some kind of dog.  And then there is the “little white dog” – which appears in two paintings that were done in the school of Andrea del Verrocchio.  Verrocchio was Leo’s teacher – and they THINK Leo might have painted the dog in those paintings.  They say the little white dog is a Bolognese.  Who knows – maybe it’s an early PON!   All I know is I BET I know why the Mona Lisa is smiling.  She just watched that little white dog do something bad.  In which case,  I’m SURE he was a PON.

In the news, there was a large earthquake in Japan.  Several people were killed and homes collapsed.  I wonder if people were watching their dogs before it happened.  Did you know that as far back as ancient Greece, there are stories of dogs becoming agitated before an earthquake occurs?  Some theorize that we dogs can actually HEAR high frequency sounds, which help us to predict that an earthquake is coming.  The jury is still out whether this is true.  My human notes that we pace and pant EVERY time it is MEALTIME – so we would not be the best earthquake forecasters.  She would think there was a quake coming every day.  Several times a day.

It’s Friday.  Time to start scheduling my human’s activities for the weekend.  Fetch.  Walks.  Fetch.  Snacks.  Fetch.  Snacks. Maybe a bit of training to make HER feel good.  Fetch.  Lunch.  Fetch.  Walk.  You get the picture.

Happy Friday!!  And happy birthday Leo!

©  Linda Wozniak