It Just Gets Stranger dog Duncan gets post all about him
It Just Gets Stranger dog mascot Duncan got a post of his own the other night.
It Just Gets Stranger dog mascot Duncan got a blog post all about him the other day. True, it was because he was sick, but still.
“Good Parents,” written on Thursday by Mormon lawyer and dog dad Eli McCann, tells an eventful tale of Duncan’s throwing up in the middle of the night, and Eli and his husband Skylar’s frantic attempts to figure out what was wrong.
Written in the usual hyperbolic style of Stranger posts since the blog began, it ends on a bright note as Eli muses on how pet parenting is good practice for future hypothetical kids.
Duncan was found on the streets of Salt Lake City in 2017, and he’s a 17-pound Cavalier King Charles Spaniel/Poodle mix, or Cavoodle. He’s scared of everything, obsessed with playing fetch, and he loves watching TV (especially animal shows).
But he’s not the only animal heavily featured on Stranger – a similar-looking Stranger dog named Ollie belongs to Eli’s friend Matt and often makes guest appearances, and there’s also the semi-mythical evil rooster the Queen of Colors.
“It really is crazy to me,” McCann told in Dog O’Day in an email. “I never thought I would be writing this thing for anyone other than my immediate family.”
Since starting Stranger in 2007 while in college at BYU, the readership has grown to where there’s now a podcast (Strangerville), and the site’s most famous post, “Snuggie Texts,” has more than 20 million pageviews as of 2019.
Readers have followed Eli through lighthearted tales of law school, embarrassing travel stories, prank emails, coming out, training for triathalons, depression, awkward first dates, flashbacks from his childhood, living on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for an entire year, becoming a TV critic and the problems of home ownership.
The blog has spawned a spinoff satirical mom blog, and a good handful of catchphrases. (Some of these include “Twice up the barrel, once down the side,” “NOT THAT WE KNOW WHAT [FILL IN THE BLANK] IS, CATHY!!!” and “the United States of God Bless America.”)
In more serious tones, he’s also been known to write about religion, society and politics.
“I want people to feel connected through stories. I think the best advocacy and therapy is done through good storytelling,” McCann told us. We very much agree with this statement.
“I hope this has been a community that has improved on personal levels and has found comfort through sharing stories together.”
By that standard, the blog has definitely been a success. Twice up the barrel, once down the side.
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More Stranger doggo pictures can be found by following on Facebook at It Just Gets Stranger and Instagram at @ItJustGetsStranger. Eli can be followed on Twitter, too, at @EliMcCann.
Dog O’Day can be found on Facebook at Daily Dog and on Instagram at @DogODayFS (that’s also our Twitter handle, if the account ever gets fixed. (Not in that sense, but you know what we mean.)