cool-dog-sunglass-dogs

Friends, it’s been a great week for dogs-in-sunglasses news.  Our future’s so bright, dogs’ gotta wear shades.  First, this week saw the release– well, not the release, but BestWeekEver discovered the trailer, for the direct-to-DVD film, Cool Dog.  I’ve got the trailer for that below, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but OMG DOG PLAYING PIANO DOG PLAYING PIANO!!!  Oh, Cool Dog, you make Harry Connick Jr. look like Josh Groban.

In other news, the Associated Press has discovered new documents exposing the original White Dog:

Newly discovered documents have revealed a bizarre footnote to the history of the Second World War: a Finnish mutt whose imitation of the Hitler salute enraged the Nazis so deeply that they started an obsessive campaign against the dog’s owner.

PLAY HEEM OFF, MEIN KEYBOARD CAT, OFF TO ZEE CONZENTRAZION KAMPZ!

HItler-dog“Just months before the Nazis launched their attack on the Soviet Union, they had nothing better to do than to obsess about this dog,” Hillenbrand said.

The dog, Jackie, was a mutt owned by Tor Borg, a businessman from the Finnish city of Tampere. Borg’s wife Josefine, a German citizen known for her anti-Nazi sentiments, dubbed the dog Hitler because of the strange way it raised its paw high in the air like Germans greeting the Fuehrer with a cry of “Heil Hitler!”

On January 29, 1941, German Vice Consul Willy Erkelenz in Helsinki wrote that “a witness, who does not want to be named, said … he saw and heard how Borg’s dog reacted to the command ‘Hitler’ by raising its paw.”

Borg was ordered to the German embassy in Helsinki and questioned about his dog’s unusual greeting habits.

He denied ever calling the dog by the German dictator’s name, but admitted that his wife called the dog Hitler. He tried to play down the accusations, saying the paw-raising had only happened a few times in 1933 — shortly after Hitler came to power. [AP]

My favorite part of this, other than the pre-internet Hitler meme, is definitely the intense Gestapo interrogation.  “Nein nein, mein führer, zee dog zalute vonce or tvice, but only to celebrate zee anniverzary uff Krystallnacht. Ve name za dog ‘Hitler’ as tribute.  He vear sunglasses because za Führer ist so cool!”