{"id":13534,"date":"2015-05-16T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-16T08:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=13534"},"modified":"2015-05-15T15:12:30","modified_gmt":"2015-05-15T15:12:30","slug":"flawed-dogs-the-year-end-leftovers-at-the-piddleton-last-chance-dog-pound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2015\/05\/16\/flawed-dogs-the-year-end-leftovers-at-the-piddleton-last-chance-dog-pound\/","title":{"rendered":"Flawed Dogs – The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Last-Chance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dog Pound"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Berkeley Breathed<\/strong> (Little, Brown & Co.)
\nISBN: 978-0-316-71359-7<\/p>\n

After an all-too-brief and glittering career as a syndicated strip cartoonist and socio-political commentator (so often the very same hallowed function) Berkeley Breathed retired his deadline-crushing Bloom County<\/strong> and Outland <\/strong>strips to become a writer and illustrator of children’s books.<\/p>\n

He lost none of his perception, wit or imagination, and actually got better as a sequential artist. He never completely abandoned his entrancing cast of characters and always maintained the gently excoriating, crusading passion and inherent bittersweet invective which underscored those earlier narratives.<\/p>\n

An adventurous – if accident-prone – man with a big heart and love of animals, in 2003 Breathed crafted a stunningly moving, achingly heartbreaking and darkly hilarious painted hardback picture-book which presented itself as a brochure of no-hope pooches (and their former owners) being offered one final chance to escape the needle at a Podunk animal shelter deep in the wilds of Vermont\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The Piddleton \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Last-Chance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dog Pound<\/em> is the place other institutions send all the dogs who have failed to find homes anywhere else, but even it has space limitations. The tireless organiser of the annual push to re-home all these one-of-a-kind, misunderstood mutts is Miss Heidy Str\u00c3\u00bcdleberg<\/em>; a former President of the American Kennel Club and prominent dog show judge who had a close encounter with a three-legged Dachshund that changed her life forever.<\/p>\n

Rejecting that unforgiving and artificially idealised society, she resolved to strike a blow against a world that shuns the flawed and only has time for perfection. And here you can see in all their homely glory a host of uniquely lovable last-chancers like Bipsie<\/em>, Noodles<\/em>, Titus<\/em> and Sam the Lion<\/em>, all accompanied by pictorial examples of how they achieved their current sorry states with pungently potent verses of doggerel describing their meagre blandishments\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The success of this book led to notional sequel\/prequel Flawed Dogs: The Shocking Raid on Westminster<\/strong> and Heidy’s tale will be seen as a forthcoming major motion picture\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Less a story than a crushingly captivating cartoon catechism for canine deliverance, delivered in sharp and lyrical rhyme, this is a book to trigger consciences and promote (considered) dog adoption which will make a grown man howl and children sit up and beg. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll think hard before going online and adopting a pet that needs a home\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 2003 Berkeley Breathed. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co.) ISBN: 978-0-316-71359-7 After an all-too-brief and glittering career as a syndicated strip cartoonist and socio-political commentator (so often the very same hallowed function) Berkeley Breathed retired his deadline-crushing Bloom County and Outland strips to become a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He lost none of his perception, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Flawed Dogs – The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Last-Chance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dog Pound”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[81,90,125,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-books","category-cartooning-classics","category-humour","category-kids-all-ages"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-3wi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}