It’s your birthday, you can bark if you want to

This is Lazlo the Labradoodle and his famly. Lazlo is the one upside-down.

So. You’re another year older. Another year wiser. Think of all the people you’ve met, all the places you’ve seen. All the lampposts you’ve peed on. It’s been a long, productive year scurrying about beneath everyone’s knees. It’s time to celebrate in the way befitting a dog of your stature: tossing back a few with your best pals at the local watering hole.

Since acquiring a friend of the canine persuasion, Jenny and I have made it our goal to seek out all the dog-friendly venues in the area. None is more friendly than Brooklyn’s Mission Dolores, paws down.

We stopped by last week after a productive trip to Film Biz Recycling (also dog-friendly) to refuel for our jaunt back to Cobble Hill. We found a welcoming crowd, equal parts tattoed Brooklynites, equal parts dog.

The black blur is Lucy the French Bulldog, the light blur is Jupe.

Quite a crowded house for a Sunday afternoon, we grabbed the only seats left in the joint… To find that we were crashing a dog birthday. Little Lazlo, a friendly miniature of Chewbacca was celebrating his 3rd year on four feet. A big lack lab mix and a hound dog were in attendance. Lucy the French bulldog and Chloe, a rambunctious, deaf white pit bull were also roaming around.

This was probably my first dog birthday party since making it to middle school, so it had been a while. From what I can tell there are a few important differences between a dog birthday and a human one, a few of which I’d like to share with out canine readers:

1. You share your presents. Listen, if someone gives you a big rawhide, it’s gonna get passed around. Unless you’re a ferocious resource hoarder — and in that case, bad dog! Bad!

2. You will not play Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Of course, for you, losing and then having someone (wearing a blindfold) pin an appendage on random parts of your body does not sound like a very fun game.

Your owners will not trust you with chocolate cake. Or with utensils.

3. The cake is never chocolate. Nor does it ever contain chocolate ice cream. Wait until humans aren’t looking, have gone asleep, or are on vacation to snatch some chocolate. They appreciate the inconvenience this causes them.

4. On the other hand, much like human parties, people will inexplicably place in front of you gifts stuffed in bags or wrapped in shiny paper, and then expect you to open it yourself. At which point you look at the gift wistfully and think, maybe this time there’s a set of opposable thumbs inside.

This is the dog equivalent of "Telephone"

5. You don’t have to worry about looking cool. In a party full of guests sniffing each others’ butts and nipping each others heels, no one’s judging. You can hang out with whoever you want — even if they’re not guests and are crashing your party to steal your squid-shaped toys.

Of course, that last one is pretty much just universally true about being a dog. We felt comfortable enough with the place and the party to let Jupe off his leash to roam around for a little while — he made some friends, had a great old time. And, somehow we wound up with a huge rawhide bone that was about twice the size of Jupe’s head.