Welcome to the Team Small Dog International Film Festival featuring Canadian dog training porn and Japanese slaughter of smiley faced dolphins.

Yesterday was the Team Small Dog International Film Festival! If you don't live in my living room, you likely missed this. I am so sorry. Let me recap for you.

The Cove is a documentary about dolphin killing in Japan, starring Ric O'Barry, the man whose phone rings every time a dolphin dies. He trained Flipper, Flipper's real name was Cathy, Flipper Cathy committed suicide, and then ILM built secret hidey rocks so the evil fishermen could be caught in their dolphin murder. Whoa!

I thought Susan Garrett's Touch Me Through the Computer Screen was going to be a porn movie but actually it is about Susan wearing a sporty polo shirt on her porch maybe, not sure, and then it turns into a powerpoint presentation about restrained recalls narrated by Susan in Canadian. Restrained recalls are actually NOT pornographic. Actually, it's possible they don't have porn in Canada. They have mounties. But you will enjoy the Canadian! Sing along!

OK, here's where it gets a little confusing if you are watching both at once. See, a lot of good dog trainers also train dolphins and chickens. Not at the same time. But the methods are the same. Positive reinforcement. This is how we like to train our dogs. Ric O'Barry used to train the dolphins, but then realized actually, we should let them run free.

Swim free. Unless they are chickens. Fly free.

Get this? NOT training recalls. Repeat. Do NOT train the dolphins to come back. Because the army will use them to go get bombs and they will trap them in the cove and sell the trained ones to sea shows in dolphinariums. Yes. That's what I said. Dolphinariums. The spindly ones will get horribly stabbed to death and then fed to Japanese school children to secretly poison them by mercury.

Susan Garret, however, WANTS you to train the recalls. She is a vegan, so she does not eat dolphins. Ever. Or cows. Because really, dolphin slaughter seemed to me about as awful as slaughtering pigs and cattle. And you know who could teach a cow to come back? Susan Garrett. In Canadian. I was supposed to be learning how to do a restrained recall watching her movie, but I got sidetracked by trying to learn Canadian. It's easy. Just keep hitting pause, and repeat what she says. Like she says it. And, you can also learn some Japanese during the Cove the same way. There are subtitles. Watch both movies at the same time, bonus points for Japanese with Canadian accent.

All the dolphin killing got me to thinking about Gustavo's most favorite recall reward, carne asada. I.E., cow. I don't eat cows, but if I wanted a super brilliant recall, I'd have to buy Gustavo a carne asada taco for restrained recalls. My lack of Canadian and lack of taco purchasing may be affecting our relationship. And restrained realls. Which really do sound dirty the more you say it, and you do need a partner, but there are no furry handcuffs involved.

So is it fair to save dolphins, but not cows? Dolphin saving is not exactly PETA but kind of along those line. All the dog ladies hate PETA because PETA is coming after our dogs. Here comes my hate mail. But I am sort of with them on the dolphin killing is sort of like the cow killing is like the pig killing is sort of like chicken killing. That's a whole lotta slaughter going on. You know what I like to slaughter? Dirt and broccoli. PETA approves of this. And I get organic string cheese for the dogs that's from cows that willingly give up their milk from the comfort of their own homes which are far more spacious than mine. I'm sort of with Susan Garrett on the vegan thing, although she is more vegan than me because I enjoy some milk in my coffee and am totally into yogurt. Although I like to spend my hard earned cash on the free range, organic kind.

You can see what I'm getting at here. The cows that don't have the recalls have the most free range milk. And Starbucks? An essential dog agility staple? You KNOW they are not down with the free range cows. Does this basically make me a dolphin killer? I think this is the question both films are asking. Kurt Cobain once told us, "It's ok to eat fish because they don't have any feelings." Soon after, he died. Kurt, neither Japanese nor Canadian, suffered from stomach problems his entire life.

In issues that bounce off of boundaries, cause quandary and flirt with hypocrisy, I always try to ask myself, what would Kurt do? Or, what would he have done. Because like the dolphins, he's gone. And obviously, dolphins aren't fish, so his comments, not so helpful here. He didn't even have a dog.

So there you have it. We give both films all paws up, especially if you watch both at once and can learn 5 new words in both foreign languages by the end. Bonus points if you've saved a dolphin already. Happy watching!