BEST

What defines an Advocate pet edition model? It is not necessarily impeccable breeding or a pretty mug but, rather, a personality a certain je ne sais quoi that jumps off the page. Our 2011 model pet search garnered piles of adorable photos and amusing anecdotes. These finalists are the non-human neighborhood residents that most captured our hearts.

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ZAZU and Amy Pink puppy power

The dog is pink. That’s the first thing you notice. Though she is loud in hue (except when camouflaged inside her handmade fluorescent flowery basket), the Maltese, whose natural color is white, is quiet as a mouse. She cooperates, without so much as a whimper or woof, as her owner dresses her in a teensy pink doggie skirt and applies bling-y clips to pink puppy “hair”.

“Look at you; you’re just beautiful, Zazu,” Amy Marks beams.

Marks admits to being an utter stage mom.

“She needs an agent. Doesn’t she? She’s so cute I just can’t stand it!”

About once a week, Marks dyes Zazu’s coat with Kool-Aid.

“I got her when she was just 3 weeks old, and the ride home was the only time I have ever seen her white,” says Marks, whose tall rubber boots match the color of her pet.

The dress-up games bring unabashed joy to Marks and amusement to observers

(and Zazu, tail always dancing, seems to relish the attention), but the relationship between Marks and her dog runs deep. There was a time when Marks suffered from an incapacitating anxiety that kept her at home. She tried medication fto deal with the problem, but when she adopted this fluffy kindred-spirit, something profound happened: Marks began to heal.

Eventually, she and her dog began to venture out of their Lake Highlands home, and their favorite hangout became Savvy Consignment store, where Marks met her good friend Rhonda Arnold.

“Now Zazu is the store mascot,” Arnold says. “Everybody wants to hold her and play with her.”

Hoping to spread Zazu’s therapeutic effect, Marks regularly takes Zazu to visit ailing residents at C.C. Young and other retirement, nursing or hospice-care facilities. In fact, Marks takes the dog everywhere she goes.

“I sneak her in the movies. I don’t go anywhere without her,” Marks says. What if it’s a place that doesn’t allow dogs?

“Then we don’t go there.”

Dot

Saturday, at INFOMART

Silent Dance Contest and Best 50’s Costume Contest

TV-censoring terrier

There are disturbing things on TV these days — hollering car salesmen, real housewives, feuding bachelorettes and caught-on-camera car chases. It’s enough to make a viewer want to yell.

Or bark like crazy.

Max, a 10-year-old, TV-watching West Highland white terrier, doesn’t take the madness lying down. His people parents David and Gayle Copeland say he has taken on the role of house censor, barking and sprinting from room to room whenever he senses onair inappropriateness.

“He starts barking as soon as something he has deemed unacceptable begins. Sometimes, because he remembers commercials, he starts in even before the objectionable part is reached,” Gayle says.

So what does Max find objectionable?

“Any form of violence or potential violence, such as someone carrying a gun or knife; anything that is physically impossible; people acting silly; fire, explosions or anything flying through the air …”

Oh, and Flo, from the Progressive Insurance commercial, really gets him worked up. t he Lake Highlands couple bought m ax from a breeder when he was just a pup. Unlike his champion-pedigree father before him, m ax was slightly big, by breed standards, for showing, but what he lacks in physical perfection, he makes up for in smarts, his owners say.

“He’s hated her perky voice since he first heard it,” Gayle says.

Indeed, m ax is quite strategic in his protest of poor taste on t V. When he’s in another room and hears something he doesn’t like, he runs, barking fiercely, into the room with the t V. e ven if the human capable of operating the remote changes the channel on one set, m ax might race into the other room, because, David says, “He understands that the same thing might be showing simultaneously on other sets.” max’s usual modus operandi is to watch tV in a mirror until the bad stuff starts, after which he will whirl around, tail wagging wildly, to bark at the actual tV, not the reflection.

“I’ve had a lot of dogs,” David says, “but never one anywhere near as smart as this one.”

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Jazz

English Labrador and Jacques

Model citizen, canine

Jazz is a majestic English Labrador, large and strong with a shimmering coat as black as night. With a regal gait, she follows her master along mountain trails or urban sidewalks, exhibiting unequivocal loyalty.

In the name of practicing his profession, photography, owner Jacques Manaugh sometimes dresses Jazz in decidedly undignified gear, but she doesn’t let it get to her. She is just happy to be there, even if her part does entail donning a pig nose or a turkey costume.

“She is my best friend, my loyal companion and, simply put, a good dog,” Manaugh says. And her irrepressible willingness to please makes her a good test model.

“Jazz is just like her name: smooth and easygoing,” her owner says. “She is always eager to do whatever I want her to do. She just likes to hang with me.”

Indeed, Manaugh, a Lake Highlands native, has a constant companion in Jazz — from a hiking trip in the Arkansas mountains to a Vickery Park pub where Jazz is a regular on the patio and everybody knows her name.

“She even smiles,” Manaugh says.

Really?

“I swear,” he insists. “She gets this weird smile on her face and looks like she’s laughing.”

Even in the absence of a canine grin, her eyes exude fascination with her human friends, and her infectious contentedness lights up the room.

“With her looks and personality, Jazz attracts attention wherever she goes and puts a smile on your face when you see her,” Manaugh says. “Everyone who meets her falls in love.”