Dogpile and my pal Arfie

Every year you read about certain words that creep into the lexicon and become official dictionary words. The latest version of one such book (see below) came out last September. I've already discussed in the past the way animal behavior fascinates me, but I have to confess, words fascinate me too. So...

You can find these new words in

Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English, Preview Edition
Barbara Ann Kipfer
Editor

and learn all about these new words BUT follow along in my normal state of digression as I'm eventually going to be getting to the point of this post!

So google made it in and it doesn't even matter WHAT search engine you use, we still say google. We don't say yahoo, no that means something completely different, although it saddens me that one of the definitions is not what you yell when your dog does something really really cool or you're zipping down a roller coaster or something....

But given my vocation as a dog trainer/behaviorist, eventually I was turned onto dogpile. The dictionary definition of dogpile is:

When many people post unfriendly responses in short order to a single posting, they are sometimes said to "dogpile" or "dogpile on" the person to whom they're responding. For example, when a religious missionary posts a simplistic appeal to alt.atheism, he can expect to be dogpiled.

Which I certainly hope doesn't happen to any of my blog posts!

For my purposes though, Dogpile.com is a very useful search engine (it's tagline is All The Best Search Engines piled into one) AND it has this really cute dog named Arfie to represent it as a widget or a gadget or whatever the heck they call him. Years ago you could buy computer software that would allow a dog or cat to zip around your desktop..now we have Arfie, a free downloadable widget/gadget dog that plays fetch (whether you want to play with him or not, my kind of dog!) on the desktop and is available at a moment's notice to google, oops, I mean search something on the internet for you and fetch you the info.

I downloaded Arfie yesterday and I move him around the desktop of my computer and when I'm on the phone or idling I watch him and play fetch. The best part about Arfie other than his obvious search and rescue skills in finding me useful info on the information highway is that I do not have to sweep up any stray fallen shedding hairs. You should try him. He might give your real canines a run for the money! He even has a share option in the corner of his little patch of green!