And the Dogs Win by a Cute Wet Nose!

It’s a big day in dog news. The most important development is that in the epic battle for animal supremacy, dogs seem to be taking a decisive lead over their feline competition. A new study says that dogs are now more popular in Britain than cats. One analyst suggests it’s because they’re trendy.

“Dogs are now seen as a fashion accessory, with the likes of Paris Hilton seen carrying hers around, whereas cats are getting less attention. They aren’t seen as a sociable animal and you’re not likely to see a celebrity holding a cat.”

That’s true. It’s not too often that you see an A-lister walking down the red carpet with a cat in their arms. Cat people should mobilize and work on making that happen. It’d be so great if next time ScarJo attended a premiere she was carrying a kitten and it went apeshit — as cats so often do — and clawed her in the face while she was trying to answer a reporter’s question about why on earth she is cavorting around with Sean Penn.

But dogs don’t just make a fashion statement, they’re also now a great tool to keep your parents off your back if they’re pressuring you to provide them with human offspring. Yep, the new thing is to call your dogs grandpuppies.

“A grandpuppy is a canine member of the family that provides unconditional love, diversion, something to talk about, a reason to exercise (dog walking), a source of relaxation and stress relief.”

You just tell your parents you’ve adopted them a grandpuppy, and they respond exactly as if that dog was a human child. They’ll spoil it, and go on and on about to their friends, and they’ll even send it t-shirts, and breath mints, and want to see it and talk to it regularly — like Dolores from Missouri who loves her granddog Gracie:

“Since we live in St. Louis and our grandpuppy lives in Atlanta, we find using Skype a great way to keep up with Gracie — and of course our daughter Maureen, too. It’s fun to see Gracie, a Boxer Terrier mix, on the computer screen since we rarely get to visit with her in person.”

Skyping with a cat just doesn’t have the same allure. So, for now, it seems dogs have a commanding lead in the race to sleep all day and trick humans into feeding them high quality meat.