DOGMA Magazine

I've been working on a magazine with a group, as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, since the beginning of January. It's very exciting right now because it is DONE! We've been married to the thing for months and honestly, I'm getting tired of looking at it, but it's awesome. The magazine is called Dogma and as you can probably guess it's all about dogs, which I had also mentioned in a previous post.

Our group consisted of five people so there are five feature articles in the magazine, one about dog training and new methods, one about a hunter, author, and photographer who includes his dogs in all of those hobbies, one about a hearing ear dog and her owner, one about dogs feeling emotion the same as humans, and one about feral dogs and how the problem should be handled. The magazine includes some great stories and photos that anyone who loves dogs would love to read and look at.

On April 4th from noon-four in the atrium at the Red River College Exchange District campus there will be a magazine fair. Dogma and all of the super cool magazines that CreComm students have been losing their minds over will be on display. We will all have booths where we will be giving away free stuff and needless to say Dogma's booth will be worth checking out, especially because i'm bringing Diesel! 

So if you read my blog i'm assuming you probably love dogs, or me, but probably dogs...so come check us out! It will be an exciting day for everyone who comes and for Diesel, he will be such a ham I'm sure.

 Our cover

I took this picture of Diesel and used it in the

 magazine for an ad that I made for a kennel. 

Ridiculous right?

Malamutes

If you have been following my blog you're probably aware that I think bad dogs exist because of bad owners. Well, in this case, I don't believe that.

Tragically on Sunday, a little girl was mauled to death by a pair of Alaskan malmutes. I love these dogs. They're gorgeous creatures that are generally really friendly. The little girl knew these dogs—she wasn't attacked because she was a strange kid who was bothering them. She had played with the dogs numerous times and this freak accident happened.

I read this story the other day. It talked about the little girl, the dogs, the neighbour and then underneath the story was a big story explaining why a breeder was worried this would give a bad reputation to the breed. I really hope these beautiful dogs don't get a bad reputation because of this but as a dog owner and someone who has experienced losing someone to a tragedy, I would not want to see that next to this tragic story. I'm sure people look differently at malamutes because of this, don't you? I do.

It's tragic that malamutes MAYBE won't be adopted as often or bought as often, but that hasn't even happened and isn't even guaranteed to happen. Someone lost a child, maybe a sister, a friend, a grandchild. That is the reality of this. I'm a dog lover—obviously—and i'm also a journalism student. We talk a lot about what's ethical, what's wrong, what's right; and I think this is one of those things that could be considered unethical to this family dealing with this loss. Is it bad that the breeder may have said that? No of course not. What breeder of Alaskan malamutes wouldn't worry about the dogs' reputation after something like this? My question is, is that a bad choice in journalism—to put an article of the bad reputation malamutes MIGHT get right under the story about a little girl that was just killed by two of them. 

It is a beautiful breed; and I truly am sad that these beautiful dogs will be looked at differently from now on. These are all my own opinions. 

I hope that little girl rests in peace and that her family and friends eventually find peace.

Sargent & Victor & Me

Once again, this blog post will be for journalism class purposes.

Tuesday evening, we went to a play called Sargent & Victor & Me and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I had very low expectations going into the play and I came out very impressed. The play was a one woman show with eight different characters that were based on real people who live/have some sort of connection to Sargent and Victor.

Debbie Patterson, the actress in the play, has MS and compared the deterioration of her body to the deterioration of the West End of Winnipeg. The set was a food bank and each character in the play interacted with the food bank some how.

I was skeptical of how Debbie Patterson was going to act as eight different characters and not be offensive. To my surprise she did a fantastic job. I think some of the characters — like the Morden's Chocolates guy and the little girl — were kind of unnecessary. I felt they didn't add much to the story and I felt no emotional connection to them and got no important information. I loved the Theresa character. The way the lighting was darker when her character starred to speak really helped her stand out from everyone else. Her story was unbelievable and I really think Debbie Patterson did a great job with that character. I loved when Gillian would tell her stories about Thunder Bay and the water falls. I felt sympathetic for her when she was speaking. I felt sad that she is unable to do those things anymore and I felt sad for her. She spoke those parts beautifully and made me really picture what she was saying.

I didn't like when newscasts were read and Debbie Patterson would go to the back of the stage area and do those strange movements. I felt like they kind of took away from what the news cast was saying because I was paying more attention to what she was doing with her movements than what the reporter was saying.

I thought it was fantastic how she could have me jaw-dropped listening to Theresa and then have me laughing about something Gillian said. I think that was impressive, and maybe it's because i've never been to a play like this, but I found that the acting was very good. Because I haven't been to a play once grade six that was about bats, I can't really compare Sargent & Victor & Me to anything. It definitely exceeded expectations and made me feel many different emotions.

This play taught me about the West End of Winnipeg definitely. I live outside the perimeter so I never go to that end of the city. This play also taught me that you can't compare a written book to theatre because if this were written it would be a completely different story. Debbie Patterson put little extra bits in because it's theatre and it needs to be entertaining, that's the bottom line. If this were a book, I think it would be putting words in people's mouths and taken in a completely different way because it would be pure journalism and no theatre. There would be less of a creative aspect with a book and with a play, your main thing is the creative aspect.

Overall I loved it. I think Debbie Patterson did a great job of telling these stories in a theatrical yet respectful way.