Preparation comes in many forms. Your mother just thinks laterally. :p

What happened to good ol fashoned liver snaps?

That picture's great. You can almost hear Bert speak.

"Tranquilisers? Huh? No, I haven't seen them. Hidden them? Would I do such a thing?"

Exactly, Miss Row. Hehe.

SJ - Bert is a real dumbass. He'd be all, "Fire? Huh? Where's my breakfast?".

Luke - that's precisely how he'd talk! we only seem to have dumb dogs in our family.

Btw, apologies to M & M who've already heard this bloody story.

In the past I've had people accuse me of using them as test audiences for blog entries ;)

Shauns: But the question is whether you dope your test audience up with tranquilizers if the Canberran-area Slim Shady fails to laugh.

Oh that photo is GOLD!

I love it when dogs smile. They look so stupid.

Hee.

can your mother send me some of those tranquilisers? Not that I have any pets... I want to use them on my mother! You have no idea how much she stressed and panicked during the bushfires... either that or if someone has a spare 2x4 lying around i can always whack her over the head :P

and bert is soooooo cute. Looks like he is pulling one of them stupid smiles that people pull when they don't really want their photo taken :P

I've always been too polite to say this, but that Bert has the cold dead eyes of a killer.

Either that or he's saying "I *am* smiling! Hurry up and take the photo! Have you taken it yet?"

Ha! I love stupid doggy smiles. :)

Mattay's right though, he does have that Hannibal Lector look in his eyes.

Noooooooooo! He's not evil!

Sounds like English mums and Aussie mums share a common gene.

But mel, they would be dog tranquilisers. Who knows how they would work on humans? Your mum might take one and suddenly have this urge to turn round and round and round in circles before lying down on a hairy blanket.

That is the most cheesy dog grin I have ever seen. It's great. He looks like people do when they try and take pictures of themselves.

Whenever I'm having a bad moment at work today, I'm going to cruise over to your site and gaze at Bert for a bit. Mind?

He looks like a squirmy sort of dog, actually. The ones that don't like being picked up.

Let me just add myself to the list of people who consider that to be a really good photo of Bert. I had no idea that some dogs actually try smiling for photos. (Though I did once know of a dog who was so stupid that he tried to cock both hind legs up at the same time to pee. It didn't work very well.)

oh oh oh while we're sharing puppy photos that's conan - i sold him yesterday.... he's got a lot of love but he ain't much in the brains department

Talking of cerebrally-challenged dogs, it's apparently the case that dogs have smaller brains than wolves, theoretically because they don't need to be as clever to survive when domesticated. (Pussycats, on the other hand, are barely domesticated at all, so presumably don't have shrunken brains.)

Is the dog's teeth really black?

p.s. testing out the remember thingy, you can delete this bit ;)

you can't see his bloody teeth in the picture. it's mostly gums, as i recall.

he's a MUTT!

Testing Remember Info one more time...

RI should know work, people. You may need to delete your old cookie if you had one for this site.

Works for me, delete cookies with gay abandon!

Bert looks happy about this, though. He sort of looks like he is into mixing his substances--like a dog who might want a martini with his tranquilizers...like a dog who hopes the fire comes by soon so that he can have a little fun...

Hope when the fires are gone...and if the tranquilizers remain unused...Bert will get a little chance to unwind now and again.

Bert's little helper? Nice. The life of a hound is always stressful!

Bert is a cutie! And he DOES look like he has mixed his substances. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

hey! my remember info works now. kickarse.

Am I the only one who thinks Bert looks postively malicious and frightening in this picture? He appears to be saying...

"Come closer my pretty...closer...yesss...*SNAP*"

now you people are giving me a complex about b-dog. the more i stare at the pic the more it is freaking me out and i feel i should delete the picture or something. aRRrrGGh, shut up, brain!

Me: AHHHHH!

Roommate: What!??!

Me: nothing...

Roommate: Are you looking at that freaky dog picture on that aussy chick's site again!? What did I tell you about that!? One of these days you're going to give yourself a coronary...

What's all this 'looks menacing' stuff? Don't you all recognise that expression? Haven't you seen Wallace and Gromit?

And I don't mean he looks like Gromit.

Rory makes a good point there.

The thing that struck me as really scary is that if you compare that picture of Bert with a typical picture of George W Bush (the ones where he looks like he's just been taken by surprise, perhaps as if someone's just stuck a piece of Texas desert vegetation up somewhere we can't see from that angle), Bert looks far more intelligent.

WOW, nearly fell off me seat then :) what a crazy looking dog!

I've thought this before: Why does this dog appear not to have any teeth?

He's cute. It's a cute picture.

REMEMBER MEEEE!!!!

This picture gets creepier every time I look at it.

aaargh! so stop looking at it then!

Shauny, this is quite an incredible picture of a dog with more personality than found in many humans. Wow. Amazing little fella. What is Bert's email address? I would like to start an online discussion with him. Oh, and maybe he could also get a blog? I hear ferrets have blogs here in New York, why not Bert, a blogging dog?
Really incredible shot. Wow.

I like how his nose is pink around the edges from always sticking it in where it doesn't belong. (Or maybe where it does.) But he looks just a little too aware. The sort of dog you would have to send to the other room before getting undressed, because he's watching you, he knows you're naked, he knows he's naked, he knows you know you're both naked, and he's thinking, "There, now that we're both naked, let's go outside and howl and chase stuff. Cars, for instance." And he might just convince you. So, as I say, you would have to send him to the other room. And hope he hasn't figured out door handles.

He looks like Fozzie Bear from the Muppet Show. I think it's that look of stage-fright in his eyes combined with the big, cheesy grin that does it. Bless. Here are some pictures to prove it:
http://www.cobweb.nl/wcoumans/fozpic.htm

A blogger called "Shauny the Moggy",
in her bid for a coveted Bloggie,
gyrated her tush,
and set fire to her bush,
and then tranquillised poor Bert the doggie.

This dog should have his own TV show. He's more expressive than most of the people I know....

There are a lot of chickens. She'd have a tough time packing them all. Probably a lot tougher time than she'd have getting the tranquillized dog into the car.