Puppies!

Yesterday, all the news was bad. Trump has gotten insufferable (truly, I suffer when I watch him now). The situation in Syria makes me yell at the television, and then there is the dangerous weather that is sweeping across the south. I was up late last night, thinking, what the heck am I going to talk about today? I want to talk about something cute and calm, something that makes people happy. And then I remembered the news from Wednesday night. Puppycam is back up!

Video streaming by Ustream

Puppycam is a streaming video of yes, puppies. Six Shibu Inu Puppies and their mother, Kika. The puppies are based in San Francisco, so the stream is usually offline until mid-morning and runs for twelve hours during the day.

The pups were born on April 14th, so they're about two weeks old, and the litter is three boys and three girls. I like the names, Chozen, Chame, Chikara, Chisaki, Chiyoko, and yes, Charlotte. I don't know if they ran out of cool 'C' Chinese names, or whether someone just liked the name Charlotte, but it does crack me up.

In 2008, when the economy had just crashed, Puppycam began, and people around the world found the video comforting. The amount of people watching at any one time is staggering. There were 8500 people watching last night when I was watching, and apparently during office hours, the viewership jumps way, way up.

I can see the attraction. I know that Julia London and Dee Davis are both dog people, but I am not even a dog person, and I found myself puppy-tempted. Apparently, there is a whole phenom of streaming puppy TV. Who would have thunk it? People now stream beagle puppies, golden doogle puppies. There are kittens and squirrels. There are bird feeds and bear feeds. We now watch our wildlife on video, which is cool, but sort of sad, too.

I will be watching Puppycam off and on today. My family will wonder. I hope you will be watching Puppycam today as well, and finding the 'Zen'.