Any Dog can Paint

Many of you probably think that painting is a highly specialized skill. I am here to tell you that it isn't. In fact, it is so easy that even dogs can paint. Actually, any dog can paint.

Certainly some dogs are better at painting than others. Some are good at some aspects of painting, and not so good at others. For example, dachshunds are very good at baseboards, but are absolutely useless for doing crown mouldings.

You may wonder why I use dogs for painting, rather than cats. There are several reasons for this. First, cats have more dignity than dogs, and would not lower themselves to be a painter. Second, cats are smarter than dogs, and therefore are better at management. Third, cats like to sleep a lot, which is not conducive to getting a lot of work done in a day. But I digress.

How much skill does it take to paint? Apparently not much, since dogs can do it. All you really need to be able to do is dip your brush into a bucket and then swoosh it around. Repeat several hundred times and you've painted a house.

Extensive research showed us that home owners want cheap paint jobs. We also learned that labor makes up the largest part of a painting contractor's expenses. So we set out to keep our labor costs as low as possible.

Since the skill level is so low, it only made sense to us to look for the least skilled entities we could find. And that would be dogs. We tested our theory on several neighborhood dogs.

The first we tested was a Beagle named Tim. Tim was very excitable, even more than the typical beagle. He turned out to be the fastest dog painter we've seen. We then tested a cocker spaniel named Tippy. Tippy's ears kept getting in the way, but after we taped them together, she proved to be an adequate painter. Our final test was with a Rottweiler named Brutus. He seemed more interested in chewing on the sofa than painting. We promised him a piece of raw meat and he then got into the spirit of things. While his cut in lines were a little crooked, we attributed it to his nerves.

But I am belaboring my point, which is this-- any dog can paint.

Captain Otto

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