Back in the day...

Back when I was a young Strategy Dog at the Pets.com editorial department (my first summer job after unceremoniously leaving that sham of a seeing eye dog school) I engineered a pretty intense thirty-second spot for a liver&chicken biscuit collection. Shit was way overstocked, and to make matters worse, the targeted Midwestern baby-makers weren’t biting, So naturally, the pets.com brass were getting antsy—worried they wouldn’t have enough warehouse space to stock the shipment of early seventies-style black brass Spanish conquistador dog collars coming in on the first of the month. My boss, Alan, the resident dinosaur/senior copywriter, was pitching absolute shit to the creative director. His idea of a slam-dunk was a dialogue parodying Air Bud basketball playing dog theme fused with the bon vivant sensibilities of a 3pm ABC daytime drama birthing scene. Everything was getting crazy. The cable affiliates were calling in and making a lot of noise, bitches in the media department were losing their minds—spending entire workdays cross-armed and smoking outside the building’s main entrance. Even the normally intrepid cat toy models were starting in with the Jungian knee jerk cutting escapades. The place was like the 7th inning stretch on 10-cent beer night.

In a last ditch effort, the grown-ups in charge tapped me to try and save the day. They were desperate and figured what the fuck? How bad could I be in comparison to Alan’s milquetoast attempts at career survival? So I came up with the big idea that launched my short—yet distinguished—advertising career.