He was just a little pup when Ernie and I took him in. Old Blue barked for joy whenever we gave him a post to chew on. We didn’t know what to do with him at first; his energy and limitless possibilities were too much for us. I made header images and had him try them on one after the other. Ernie told him stories about real life. As he grew bigger we were forced to get him a bigger hosting plan, since Old Blue didn’t fit into the old one anymore. He howled when we told jokes. Not sure if he liked them or not!
He used to run out and fetch us readers from the google swamp. Sometimes visitors talked to him, and Old Blue really liked it when they scratched him behind the comments. He growled if one of those spammers got too close, though! I took him for walks in the park over by Technorati Town every chance I got.
It doesn’t take long for a critter like Old Blue to grow old. He was starting to get gray around the edges, and his pages loaded a little slower in the morning than they used to. But he still ran out the door every day, looking for adventure. He loved it when Gerri, RT or Captain Picard stopped by to play.
One night, I came home to find him lying on his side, panting. Drool was running out of his mouth. I knew right away what had happened. A pack of 35 spammers lured him in and laid the boots to him. They left their telltale comment marks all over him.
I called the vet right away. Ernie and I hauled the beast down there, only to find out there was no cure. Once the infection set in, there was no way to stop the comments from spreading. We tried blocking the users, but the virus just mutated to a new address. It was heartbreaking. We took him home to live out his remining days in comment moderated comfort. I even let him sleep on the bed.
We gave him posts, and he pinged them, but we knew he was just trying to make us happy. Another spammer came banging on the door, and he couldn’t even get up to growl. He just let out a little whine. We didn’t know what to do. His spirit had been broken, and things just weren’t the same.
I checked in on him one morning while he was sleeping. I pulled Old Blue’s stats up and saw he’d sank even lower. There was barely any traffic, only a couple Google hits per hour. Old Blue was in a coma.
I talked it over with Ernie. We decided we had to pull the plug. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Finally, I worked up the courage and logged on. I pushed the ‘Delete Dog‘ icon, and a popup window appeared. “Are You Sure You Want to Delete Dog?” it asked. “We cannot undo this action. All your dog’s comments and posts will be permanently removed from the server.” My fingers shook on the mouse as I clicked ‘yes’. It was over.
Looking back, I can see that picking any old stray for a companion blog was a bad idea. I should have researched, and looked into different pedigrees. Maybe if we had paid a little more to start with, we would have gotten a pet with a tougher immune system. Thank God we never took a Blogger dog home!
If you read this Hari, I used my Graphire Tablet to draw the pic.