Dibs

Fifty years ago, animals with the wrong numbers of heads or legs would have been taxidermed and turned into sideshow exhibits. But now one such creature appears on daytime talk shows. Does that mean we’re more kindhearted — or that we still love gawking at sideshow freaks but we just can’t admit that’s what we’re doing? In 2003, the Stringfellow family acquired a little brown puppy with only one front leg. They named her Faith. Soon afterward, Faith’s withered remaining front leg was amputated. The Stringfellows taught her to walk, hop, and stand on her hind legs — then they turned her into a brand, self-publishing a book called With a Little Faith through Xlibris and establishing a “Faith the Biped Dog” Web site. Now they’ve taken their freaky creature on the road. Oklahoma English professor Jude Stringfellow has appeared with Faith on Oprah and Montel, pimping the pooch as proof that disabilities can be overcome. (For aesthetic reasons, it’s just lucky that Faith is a female dog.) The Web site includes zany photographs (Faith in a tiny T-shirt! Faith outfitted with white feathered wings for Christmas!) and commentary from Stringfellow, who remembers how her son found the puppy: “The mother dog was actually trying to terminate Faith’s life when Reuben lifted her weak body out from under the mother dog; he brought her home to me knowing I had a heart like a marshmellow.” So many authors out there yearn for a chance to appear on Oprah, because it tends to make authors rich. But now the secret is revealed: Don’t be a literary genius. Just get involved with something that makes people go, “Eeeeuw!” — and tell them they’re being inspired. It worked for James Frey.