“Roll Over Fido … Play Drunk”

From an area whose national pastime is seeing who can eat the most pot brownies comes “a beer for your best friend.”

In Amsterdam (shocker), some deranged pet shop owner – is there any other kind? – decided that it would be a great idea to start brewing beer for her Weimaraners. Using beef extract and malt, she developed “Kwispelbier,” a nonalcoholic blend, and got a local brewery to create and bottle it. It hit the shelves at $2 a bottle last week, targeting the ever-elusive beer-swilling dog demographic with money in their paws that is itching to get spent.

Don’t these people have anything better to do besides trying to decide what they want to be called and trying to get Heidi to shut the frick up? Grolsch isn’t good enough for these people?

All nonalcoholic beers have some measurable quantity of alcohol in them; in the United States, any beer with less than 0.5% alcohol content can be sold as “nonalcoholic.” This point was driven home years ago when I waited tables at a seafood restaurant and did a double-take as I got my drink order from the bar. A ‘neck and his unfortunate “boy” were proudly bellying up to the bar, the baby daddy gripping a PBR like someone was going to steal it from him and his 8-year-old kid draining a Coors Cutter like he just found his way out of the Great Knightdale Desert (*cue scene of Rusty shotgunning a beer as Clark talks in “Family Vacation”*). It was one of those things that happens that you simply can’t find the words for, so you just shake your head and move on and pretend it never happened.

Anyway, dog beer brings up all sorts of questions I’m not prepared to address –- Taking into consideration dog years, is one of their beers like seven for humans? Where does a dog happy hour take place and when? If a dog gets drunk, throws up, then eats his vomit, will he retain his buzz? –- so I’m going to pretend it is not happening …

and avoid any Spots who look like they have beer goggles on and figure any leg will do in a storm.