Author Archives: jame4357

“She’s starting to smell a little ‘doggy’.”

It’s hard to describe what goes through my mind whenever I hear one or the other of my humans utter that word. ‘Doggy’. There is a tone with which this proclamation is made that suggests, no, screams, disdain. It’s as though I’ve been caught red-pawed in the commission of some sort of olfactory felony. I smell ‘doggy’. Imagine that.

Would it be better if I smelled a little ‘catty’? Or maybe ‘ratty’, or ‘squirrelly’? How about ‘fishy’? “Gee, Hon, Kaya’s starting to smell like a flounder.” Perfect.
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I received an angry letter the other day from someone calling himself Rocket J. Squirrel demanding to know why we, meaning dogs, I guess, are so committed to the persecution of him and the others of his species. Why, he asks, do we feel the need to chase, bark at, and, in the occasional but tragic instance, to catch and kill us? What, he wants to know, have squirrels ever done to harm dogs?

Reading this I was taken aback. I mean, everyone knows squirrels can’t read, let alone write. Still, the issue is an interesting one and whoever this person is, he deserves an answer.
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I got a note from Phoebe that has me more than a little upset.  She’s about five years old, a Border Collie mix, and was thrilled to hear her family was moving to New Zealand.  She wasn’t sure why, something about this country going to the dogs, which hardly seems like a good reason for any of my guys to want to leave, but hey, she’s got those Border Collie genes and New Zealand must look like heaven what with all the sheep down there.
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