Top dog videos guaranteed to make you smile

Canine video treats going viral this week. 

Who’s your Alpha? As Thanksgiving approaches and dogs across the nation prepare to create total mayhem by getting under foot in the kitchen, and in some cases even snatching the turkey right off the kitchen counter, it’s a good time to share my picks for which canine videos are top dog for laughs.

This week fans of "Lady and the Tramp" are howling over the video of what could possibly be a new canine world record for scarfing-down a plate of spaghetti - 3.98 seconds. The golden retriever completely dominates this German shepherd in spaghetti-eating contest. 

However, there is more to a great dog video than just a quick slurp and burp by a dog. Dog parodies like this one of One Direction show that dogs can put on decent musical performances, too. And then there's Tucker, the white poodle playing piano, who howls to beat the band. A fun experiment is to play that one and crank up the speakers to see how your own dog reacts.

Readers who have videos they think are funnier than these picks can tweet them to the hashtag #TopDog.

However, my top three dog videos that make me thankful for both camera phones and YouTube as well as the canines themselves, begin with “Munchkin the Teddy Bear gets her exercise,” published on YouTube Nov 24, 2014.

Frankly, Munchkin the Shih Tzu may strike Star Wars fans as more of a strolling Ewok as the tiny dog tries to keep up on a treadmill while bundled into what looks like a baby’s teddy bear Halloween costume. 

If you’re a fan of Golden Retrievers and want to see what happens when one is placed in a competition that requires it to ignore a gauntlet of treats from doggie heaven and run straight down a green pathway in order to win, this is your video. It was posted on YouTube in October. 

If this dog were up for a prize involving the most items snagged and gnawed, he would have been a shoe-in.

However, as the tantalizing smells of roasting turkey fill the air, nothing beats a classic. Sloopy the chihuahua’s video was published on YouTube two years ago by Devin Contreras.

It’s even better if you first watch Hank Azaria doing much the same dance in the film The Birdcage as the character Agador Spartacus.

“My chihuahua Sloopy, after our thanksgiving meal started dancing for the plate of turkey on the counter! He kept dancing so I put on some Miami Sound Machine and let him get busy! ENJOY.”