Dogs News

Thanks so much to our pretty new pal 'Penelope' for writing in:

Hi Joey and Rowdy!  I love reading your blog, and enjoyed meeting you at the doxie meetup last weekend!
I just wanted to send you an article about the new Tim Burton movie coming out called 'Frankenweenie'.  It looks like so much fun! Finally, a Disney movie about us Dachshunds!  Here's the link.

And our friends 'Max' and 'Basil' write:

Hey Joey and Rowdy! I'm sure you'll be interested in seeing this new Tim Burton stop-motion animated movie.  Looks like it comes out October 5.

Thanks guys for sending the links and everything, we were excited to watch the trailer.  Now, we hate to be the bearer of bad news, but is that a Dachshund?  When we have to ask ourselves such a question, it's usually not.  Is this movie about a weenie dog in name only? 
We did a little bit of research on the subject and found the original Tim Burton Frankenweenie movie played by a real dog was in fact, a Bull Terrier, although he has a Dachshund for a neighbor.  You can watch the whole 30-minute short at youtube.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Mr. Burton discussed the name of the film: 

Frankenweenie, though a stitched-together hodgepodge and scientific abomination, is ultimately still a cute little bugger. The goofy name itself was chosen to suggest something harmless. “It’s like a small pet name, a hot-dog kind of thing,” Burton says.

Mr. Burton goes on to say that Frankenweenie has similarities to a dog he had as a child:

As outlandish as Frankenweenie was, it also had roots in a real-life pet dog Burton had while growing up in Burbank. “It’s such an unconditional relationship,” Burton recalls. “A lot of kids have that experience – I certainly had that experience with a first pet. You’ll probably never have it again in your life in that way, it’s so pure and memorable.”
“His name was Pepe — we lived in a Spanish neighborhood,” Burton recalls. “Our dog had this thing called distemper, and wasn’t supposed to live more than a couple of years. He lived much longer than that, which kind of fed into this Frankenstein mythology as well.”
What kind of dog was Pepe? “It was a mix, kind of a mutt, with a bit of terrier, and a bit of something else,” Burton says. “I don’t know what it was. It was kind of a mixture.”

So, that's the unfortunate Long and Short of it All - a major movie about a dog with "weenie" in the title isn't about a Dachshund.  What are the odds?  Not to fear though, we will have our day.