Is cute also in the eye of the beholder?

Today's post is brought to you by my completely awesome friend Vanessa...who doesn't post here nearly as often as I beg her to...

I came across dailypuppy.com through Stumble Upon, and took a little bit of time to indulge in cute puppies because I luurrve me some puppies. Basically, the site features several pictures of a new puppy every day (wasn't sure if you could work that out from the URL), and puppies get rated, kind of HotOrNot style, on a 1-11 biscuit-point scale. And then there are always comments. A lot of comments. Which is interesting to me, because on a site where there's no actual dialog or discussion to be had, where it's just straight-forward observation of cuteness, are you really adding anything valuable when a puppy has already recieved 100+ comments and all you're weighing in with is something like "nanny nanny boo boo! He's so cute!" I don't know. Not my community, not my world, I guess.

Anyway, if you look through the site you will indeed find so much cuteness. Some are cute in conventional ways, like Becky the Border Collie:





Others, like Chelsie the Pug/Chihuahua, are cute in their own way but maybe aren't everyone's type:







As I scrolled through the archives I saw many puppies that I thought were very very cute and also many puppies that were alright but not quite my thing. But I didn't see any puppy that was particularly objectionable, because how could a puppy, even an especially odd-looking puppy, be objectionable? That's just a basic tenet of puppydom that, looking back, I took for granted.

Until I saw Blade, the Siberian Husky.
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Damn, right?!?

Did that make you scream a little? I might have. This isn't even the primary image Blade's parents chose for his profile, the main one is of him laying in what might otherwise be a patch of peaceable meadow, appearing to seethe volcanic, but as-yet-subterranean rage. You might be fooled into thinking that this picture is just a case of bad angle or lighting, but no, the other pictures are just as bad. That's actually how this pup looks. (He does manage to look fairly adorable in his sleepy-time shot, though. The rest are consistently disturbing.)

Now, I know what this boils down to is just unfortunate facial markings combined with creepy eye coloring, and I am sure that wee Blade is actually a delightful, loveable, happy puppy. But seriously?? Can he really be called "cute?" Nearly all of the commenters seemed to think so. Or so they said. And I love dogs. I'm sure I could love this dog. But... just...

yikes.




Don't take his ball. Don't ever take his ball.