Ree Drummond, has cultivated the blog seed she planted back in, oh, 2006, into a major brand. You know it: The Pioneer Woman. It has grown from stories and pictures of her family’s enormous ranch in Oklahoma to include a TV cooking show, a product line at Wal-Mart, re-purposed buildings in small Pawhuska: The Merchantile and an in progress boarding house. She has done very well. I forgot to mention the cookbooks and her pets, primarily Charlie, a basset hound who was the subject of one of her books.

Charlie did what dogs do when they get old – he passed away. Unfortunately, he was one of the faces of The Pioneer Woman brand. She got another basset, Henry, and wrote how much like Charlie he was. On March 7th, she wrote an entry in the section known as Confessions and addressed the issue of Henry being just like Charlie and maybe the family should just accept it and call him Charlie. She was voted down. Thank Heavens. One would hate to think of the successful Charlie being nothing more than an advertising cog in the Pioneer Woman brand.

I don’t want to infringe on any copyright protected material, so I will not quote the entry, nor show a screen shot, but I would refer you once more to Old Man Henry (Charlie) on her blog. And maybe we should wonder what would happen should anything happen to Marlboro Man.