ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from steve_portigal] Dog Scouts of America honors Milpitas dog Jasper [SFGate] – [For all the talk of game-like motivations online, here's a great offline example] Merit badges for dogs are the latest thing Jasper is the first dog in the Bay Area to earn five merit badges from the Dog Scouts of America, a real organization that has quietly been issuing merit badges to deserving dogs for 11 years. Five merit badges, it turns out, are not very many badges in the Dog Scout world. There are no fewer than 76 badges – Frisbee catching, herding, canoeing and bicycling are all badges (the dog doesn't actually bicycle, he must run alongside the human cyclist, sensibly and without making the typical dog-versus-bicycle fuss). Disaster preparation is another dog merit badge, although some might say that preparing for disaster is what you do before you get a dog. Verdahl, who is going after merit badges the way some kids go after baseball cards, said he is just getting started. The next badge he and Jasper are shooting for, he said, is the badge for fundraising.

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