Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

For the businesses that are still living in the 20th (or 19th ) centuries, California Governor Jerry Brown‘s 7-year-old Pembroke Welsh corgi, Sutter, has a lesson: Get on the Web! (If you REALLY want to get depressed about American businesses, you can look at the “Dumbest Moments in Business” for 2011, including one that I can personally relate to, people leaving off the final “t” of Warren Buffett’s last name 173 times since the launch of “Warren ‘Buffet’ Watch” in March! One company that employed me left the final “t” off MY last name on my 5-year certificate. They were a little “slow” to learn, so I left them after six. )

Sutter Brown, First Dog (first of the MANY dogs to be found at the State Capitol! ), has his own Web site with his biography next to those of the Governor and First Lady Anne Gust Brown. A political animal, his religious affiliation is Zen Jesuit, and his political party is Whig.

The dog belonged to Brown’s sister, Kathleen, a Goldman Sachs executive who moved from San Francisco to Chicago last year, and the governor had been reluctant to adopt him. Brown’s longtime pet, a black Lab named Dharma, died last year — and by comparison, the governor said, Sutter resembled “half a rat.”

“I don’t like small dogs as a general rule,” Brown said.

I understand, Governor Brown. We have always had large dogs, from labrador mixes to a Rottweiler. But through a convoluted series of events, we wound up with our current small dog, a “rescue” named Lucky (apparently part Chihuahua and part corgi), who was already named when we got him.

Small dogs can “grow” on you.

I thought that I was fortunate (I was!) when I could take the Rottweiler puppy to work at Netscape! Governor Brown’s corgi has the run of an area of gubernatorial offices called “the horseshoe” at the state capitol. The capitol press corps has posted Twitter updates on Sutter since the new administration took office.

I suppose that, in a state like California, it is a good way for the press to “stay positive.”

Even some Republicans like him! 😉 Bob Dutton, a Republican dog-lover from Rancho Cucamonga, is so fond of Sutter that he carried the canine to a GOP caucus meeting last month.

“He’s a cute little guy,” Dutton said. “These are not real pleasant times for anybody. Sutter kind of makes you feel like it will be all right.”

And THAT, my friends, is perhaps the most POSITIVE statement that I have heard from Sacramento is a long time!

Of COURSE, Sutter has a Facebook page. (How else could folks track his “social graph?” ) He also has an UNOFFICIAL Twitter account. Sutter even helps the Governor stay in shape with his pushups!

Check out Sutter’s video here. Of course, I “LIKED” him on Facebook and added him to Cheshire Cat Photo’s Facebook page favorites!

-Bill at

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