Dude "inflates" dog as if it were a balloon

Video Link. How does this work? Your theories welcome in the comments. (via Arbroath, thanks Tara McGinley)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: dogs • Funny • odd • pets • video • Weird • WTF

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PhosPhorious

The question isn’t “how does it work?” but rather “what first gave him the idea to blow in his dogs face like that?”
- http://twitter.com/PersonalGenius PersonalGenius
  
  I have that urge all the time. I’m still not sure where it comes from.
- Robert
  
  You’ve obviously never had a pet. All pet owners have this irrepressible urge to blow in their pets’ faces. All of them. Case in point:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4dYE-R-yjU
  - howaboutthisdangit
    
    I gave up on that pretty quickly when I discovered that blowing it my cat’s face would make her sneeze in mine.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      And she might decide to take your face as a souvenir.
Gary61

Well, Dan it’s rather simple – air pressure through the dog’s nose encounters branches and sub-branches in the nasal cavity – and as everyone knows, when you constrict a fluid (gas or liquid), it speeds up – so when that fast, cold air hit’s pooches lil tummy, the legs go flyin.
Case Closed.
sarahnocal

It’s a reflex of the puppy to stretch out when the guy flexes it just the right way.
You can see that he is holding the dog, then changes it’s balance just in such a way that the dog tries to correct and balance itself.
- Robert
  
  I know. I can tell because of the pixels.
GawainLavers

Easy: it’s a “min-pin”: a doberman pinscher hybridized with a rubber plant.
Brainspore

That’s one way to save a step.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  And Jeff Koons lawsuit in 3…2…1…
AA

Clearly, the dog senses the increase in air speed and attempts to lower its drag by aligning itself with the air flow…Animals with similar paleo-yet-still-active-reflexes such as this have been observed in the wild. In fact, Pink Floyd did a whole album about them. Their……flag-ship, was the flying pig.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_%28Pink_Floyd_album%29
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Is it an African rat weiner dog or a European rat weiner dog?
  - oasisob1
    
    It surely isn’t Atlantic swordfish.
  - theophrastvs
    
    But African rat weiner dogs are not migratory.
    
    (that it took me to do that, is a sorry commentary on the rapidly descending age demographic of the boingboing peanut gallery)
    - kernkraftwerks
      
      …but how many could it carry *uninflated?*
      - theophrastvs
        
        it’s a simple question of weight ratios. five boingboing commenters cannot carry a 37 years old liturgy
        
        (egad, it’s been 37 years… (and i’m still a newt))
  - Ipo
    
    Vienna sausage / Wiener Würstchen from the Austrian city Vienna / Wien.
    Weiner sounds similar to whiner and means exactly that.
    Common mistake.
    Now throw another dachshund on the barbie.
    - twianto
      
      Except in Vienna they are called “Frankfurter” exclusively and “Weiner” means exactly nothing in German. Well, technically it _could_ be a word but it just isn’t, for it’s just not used in German. It’s a Jewish name as far as I’m concerned.
      
      Common mistake.
      
      Are we done being pedants yet? ;-)
      - Ipo
        
        Nah. Being under the strong impression that Antinous gives a damn about language I was being more helpful than pedantic.
        
        Pedant mode on:
        
        You don’t speak German?
        Der Weiner, —«, Mz. gl.; die —inn, eine Person, welche weint. Wörterb. »4g,. (R).
        (Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache 5 U bis Z
        Publisher: Braunschweig Schulbuchh. 1811)
        
        Weiner [sl.] [sl.] [man regarded as weak, ineffectual] Schlappschwanz , Waschlappen, Feigling, Schwächling.
        
        Not a common term, but surely not meaningless.
        
        Pedantry continued:
        
        Wiener Würstchen
        Frankfurter Würstchen
        
        They are made from different dead animals.
        
        When being a pedant one should at least be correct.
        
        /pedantry I still like you.
      - JohnMc
        
        So we’ve learned here that I can call someone an “ineffectual man” using either the terms Weiner, Schlappschwanz, Waschlappen, Feigling, or Schwächling? Good to know!
        
        “I’ve had enough of you, you schlappschwanz, you!!” It has a good ring to it.
millie fink

Cute!

I think the dog’s natural reaction to having air blown in its face is to move away from it. In most cases, moving away involves propelling itself with its back legs.
- http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
  
  I’m thinking something similar, but that the dog is trying to get closer to the human’s face, and arching his back to lift his head. Like sticking his face into the windflow across an open car window.
princessalex

I think you missed the mark with the headline. It doesn’t appear that he’s inflating the dog. Just blowing in her face. And, I think the dog senses the air current in her face and thinks she can fly . . . like SuperDog!!! :-)
BDiamond

That depends. What is its carrying capacity?

/edit This was meant as a reply to Antinous.
spacemunky

That guy looks nothing like Jeff Bridges.
Robert

The air enters through the dog’s nostrils, passes through the stomach where the special odor molecules get added, through the intestines (a straight run where any nutrients are extracted and the special odor molecules get concentrated) and right out through the anus.
Rachael Hoffman-Dachelet

Human babies have a startle reflex that, at least in my kids, I could trigger by blowing in their face. They would gasp, hold their breath, and arch their back really hard like that dog is doing. I often used it as a trick to interrupt a tantrum or crying jag when they were little babies. They couldn’t cry while holding their breath. Or maybe it’s the diver reflex? I wonder if there is a similar reflex going on here? When I taught infant swimming classes as a teenager we would blow on the babies faces right before we dunked them under the water and they would do that.
http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski

Not cool. Someone call PeTA!
rattypilgrim

“Inflate like a balloon”? Was I disappointed!
- twianto
  
  Works better with amphibians and reptiles:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McR_s2JXBvI
http://www.batshite.com/royalflush Scott Bartlett

Maybe he trained the dog to extend its legs whenever air is blown in its face.
Alex Bergus

I think the dog is trying to lick him and is stretching out to do this. One of my old dogs would try to lick anyone blowing in its face.
palomeque

Dog inflation has been practiced since the early seventeenth century. See the prologue to the second part of “Don Quixote”: ” …by blowing, he made the dog as

round as a ball…”