It's hard to look at these gorgeous dogs posing majestically beneath perfect double rainbows, and not contemplate joy, happiness, love, nature, politicians.
Politicians? Yes, politicians.
These photos were taken by University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse, who first posted them on her wide-ranging and conservative-leaning blog, which covers topics from art to sex, politics, dogs, media, economics, and the history of toilet paper.
Althouse took the pictures one evening earlier this week, "when a quick storm passed over the dog park," she says. "The storm was part of the strange, possibly polar-vortex-related weather we're having around here."
Given Althouse's many areas of academic and bloggerly interest, HuffPost asked if she had any ideas about what this cheerful and colorful, yet still somewhat ominous vista could represent, in terms of politics or the law, or, you know, really anything brainy at all.
At first Althouse demurred. "It's summertime and a dog park break with rainbows seems like the complete opposite of law and politics," she said, before pointing us to another blog post she'd written during the spring:
We do love to project ourselves onto dogs, and we see ourselves in them, especially those of us who enjoy ourselves and find personal satisfaction in spending time with dogs. Plenty of us avoid dogs and spend our time looking at something else -- cats, maybe, or clouds -- and in what we look at we see ourselves. Whenever we are drawn to look at something for a long time, it's inherent in the activity that we will get the idea that we are really seeing something about us, the human beings.
"So I guess that applies to politicians and we need to be careful about imagining that they are like us," says Althouse, whose husband keeps a whole blog devoted to dogs; it's called The Puparazzo, and it's completely charming.
"They seem like us, but they are trying to get votes, even as the dogs are trying to get treats," says Althouse. "Beware of the dog/politician."
