A Canine View - The Way You Humans Dress

Okay, I’ve got the kid sister under control and can get back to the matters at hand.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about clothes and clothing styles. This most likely the result of my human’s new endeavor to bust into the doggie fashion world by way of a clothing store for canines. I know what you’re thinking, but canine fashion is a thirty five billion, yes, BILLION with a B a year industry. I guess that translates into a whole heck of a lot of shirts, sweaters, boots and silly costumes for us canines. Anyhow, I digress, this is about how YOU, the humans on the planet dress NOT about how you dress us dogs.

As most of you who read this blog regularly know I watch a lot of television and have been exposed to the entire spectrum of pop culture. I’ve watched the classics; from “Leave it to Beaver” to “Happy Days”. I’ve watched the modern from “That’s so Raven” to “CSI Miami” and believe me I notice what you humans are wearing. But, what really caught my attention was the stop at the local gas station with my human a few days ago. I was standing behind the wheel on watch for car thieves while my human went to pay for the fuel when I saw it,,, er him.

A young “twenty-something” male putting fuel in his car at the next pump thingy. Now baby, it’s freaking freezing here in Chicago this week and I dare say the temp that day wasn’t more then 20 degrees! Yet here he stands, gas nozzle in hand, pumping away with at least three inches of skin showing around his lower middle! I might add that those three inches included at least two inches of what you humans call “butt crack”. WOHA!! I did a double take; yep that’s butt crack okay, big as life, bare as a banana peel.

It was then I started taking note of how today’s younger humans wear their clothes. Males I’ve noticed seem to take great pride in showing butt crack by wearing their pants so low on their hips that the crotch is down to their knees and the crack is open for inspection. They top these baggy low riders with several layers of tee- shirts (none of which cover the crack area) and a thing called a hoodie. (Hoodie for you dogs who don’t get out much is a sweatshirt top with a hood on it and nasty words front and back).

Young females also wear their pants, which are mostly those jean things way down low as well but seem to keep the crotch where it belongs. I assume that is because the legs of the pants are fitted so tight to their legs you couldn’t slip a piece of chewing gum in between, They also wear a lot of tee-shirts but most of them are so short that their belly is exposed and to that they add jewelry in the form of a belly button ring??? So, I don’t know exactly the point of that, since I can’t even find my belly button.

These younger generations of humans also do strange things with hats. You know those baseball cap things that humans put sayings on. Seems the younger ones like to wear the bill of the cap pointing anywhere but where it should. I understand from much research that the purpose of the “bill” on the hat is to shade one’s eyes from sun and such. Well that makes sense to me (I own a couple of those hats and it works great). So why do these younger humans wear the bill at the back of their head? Dose it keep their neck from getting sun burned that way? Or, on the side of their head, dose that help keep their ears dry or something? I just don’t get it, a hat goes on your head for one of two things. Keeping your head warm or keeping your head from being exposed to rain, snow, sun whatever the climate is at the time. A hat is a hat, not an earpiece or a neck visor. Humans are just remarkable when it comes to doing things that make no sense what so ever, yet they consider us to be the dumber species. No comment on that right now.

I’ve also noticed that even some older adults have been seen out and about in what appears to be pajama bottoms substituting for pants. Yep, seen it with my own eyes. Humans out in the middle of the day doing their errands wearing blue flannel pj’s with little counting sheep all over them! My human likes to wear her pj’s around the house too, but I dare say she’d never venture even to the mailbox with them on!

When you compare the “butt crack” pants, the short tee-shirts, the pajama bottom clad “thirty something’s” to the way humans dressed a few years back it’s frightening! It seems to me that this digression of human clothing is the equal of us canines starting to wear our collars around our back legs or our harness upside down with our butt sticking out where our head goes. There isn’t a canine on this planet that would be seen out in the front yard strolling along with his collar around his rear legs and his leash dragging the ground! And hey, what if we took to wearing those bandanas’s human’s tie around our necks tied around our tails instead? The human’s would be so freaked out they would rush us to the vet’s office or worse yet have us put down for being “mad dogs”. I wonder if any dog has ever thought about having his human put down for going to the grocery store wearing nothing but flannel pajama bottoms and a short tee-shirt with navel jewelry?

I can’t help but roll on my back and snort with laughter at the very thought of someday in the not so distant future, a night where all Americans gather to watch the President deliver the State of the Union Address in front of a congress whose members are all wearing hoodies over tee-shirts and flannel pj pants with teddy bears all over them. Or worse how about a President who addresses our nation in a business suit and tie but one whose pants are worn low, crotch around the knees and as he makes his way into the chamber the camera cuts to a shot of him, he’s shaking hands, he’s making his way down the aisle and there, in all it’s glory is about three inches of butt crack…  I think it’s time to say, “Mr. President, from a grateful nation…Good night.”