Top dog videos guaranteed to make you smile

Canine video treats going viral this week. 

Who’s your Alpha? As Thanksgiving approaches and dogs across the nation prepare to create total mayhem by getting under foot in the kitchen, and in some cases even snatching the turkey right off the kitchen counter, it’s a good time to share my picks for which canine videos are top dog for laughs.

This week fans of "Lady and the Tramp" are howling over the video of what could possibly be a new canine world record for scarfing-down a plate of spaghetti - 3.98 seconds. The golden retriever completely dominates this German shepherd in spaghetti-eating contest. 

However, there is more to a great dog video than just a quick slurp and burp by a dog. Dog parodies like this one of One Direction show that dogs can put on decent musical performances, too. And then there's Tucker, the white poodle playing piano, who howls to beat the band. A fun experiment is to play that one and crank up the speakers to see how your own dog reacts.

Readers who have videos they think are funnier than these picks can tweet them to the hashtag #TopDog.

However, my top three dog videos that make me thankful for both camera phones and YouTube as well as the canines themselves, begin with “Munchkin the Teddy Bear gets her exercise,” published on YouTube Nov 24, 2014.

Frankly, Munchkin the Shih Tzu may strike Star Wars fans as more of a strolling Ewok as the tiny dog tries to keep up on a treadmill while bundled into what looks like a baby’s teddy bear Halloween costume. 

If you’re a fan of Golden Retrievers and want to see what happens when one is placed in a competition that requires it to ignore a gauntlet of treats from doggie heaven and run straight down a green pathway in order to win, this is your video. It was posted on YouTube in October. 

If this dog were up for a prize involving the most items snagged and gnawed, he would have been a shoe-in.

However, as the tantalizing smells of roasting turkey fill the air, nothing beats a classic. Sloopy the chihuahua’s video was published on YouTube two years ago by Devin Contreras.

It’s even better if you first watch Hank Azaria doing much the same dance in the film The Birdcage as the character Agador Spartacus.

“My chihuahua Sloopy, after our thanksgiving meal started dancing for the plate of turkey on the counter! He kept dancing so I put on some Miami Sound Machine and let him get busy! ENJOY.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Top dog videos guaranteed to make you smile
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2014/1125/Top-dog-videos-guaranteed-to-make-you-smile
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe