Sad Dog Films

I have never had a dog, or any pet in fact. I like dogs. I will happily see a dog and think 'oh, that is a cute dog.' If somebody has a dog I am mildly interested, but not as interested as I would be if they had a miniature, talking dragon. I have friends (and my mum) who will go crazy whenever they see a dog. They will immediately feel a strong emotional connection to the dog and want to pet it. When I watch adverts with my mum if there is a dog she will say 'Aww what a lovely little dog,' but when I once pointed out an adorable baby in an advert she said 'Nah, I don't really like babies.' Great, thanks Mum.

So at Christmas I saw Marley and Me, which is supposedly a really sad film. I saw it with a grown man (and former dog owner) who cried. I also watched it in the company of the most pitiful dog I had ever met, who was blind in both eyes, had strange growths behind his ears, and whined whenever he wasn't lying down. The main thing I got out of Marley and Me was that being a newspaper columnist looks like a fun job, and that Eric Dane played the exact same character he did in Grey's Anatomy. Given the hype about how sad the film was, I was expecting Marley to die saving one of the children from drowning. When (spoilers!) the dog died- and I don't mean to sound callous- it was kind of an anticlimax. Marley was old, he had a good life. Dogs aren't immortal.

Recently I watched My Dog Skip, which was more interesting because it was a coming-of-age story set in the American South with 15-year-old Frankie Muniz managing to play a convincing 9-year-old. I did cry a bit at the end of that one, mostly because (spoilers!) I thought Skip was going to die when the evil alcohol smugglers, or whoever they were, hit him with a spade, but then he actually died of old age when Frankie Muniz was off at university. Also, to be honest, Skip was a nicer dog than Marley.

I cried when Simba's dad died though. And Nemo's mum. Not Bambi's mum, though. I once painted a picture when I was three which is either 'Father Christmas Walking Through The Woods' or 'The Death Of Bambi's Mother'. I'm not sure if the big red splodge is Father Christmas or the blood of a fallen doe. I'm probably a terrible person.