Like it or not, I get to hear Carll’s missive in advance. To Jane he reads only those he thinks she’d particularly enjoy or for which he seeks her permission. He relishes the suspense of her response. I, because I’m infallibly amiable and speak dog, he assumes will applaud his every utterance, however gassy or repetitive. Like many a purblind parent he mistakes consanguinity for congratulations: Love me, love my prose.

I do love Carll (as I define love) and many of his musings but not all. His Henry pieces, while often affectionate to the verge of sappiness, strike me as obtuse, self-laudatory, and ill-informed. He bought me, face it, for material as you might pumpkin to make pie; also, to charm you with our evolving relation, as depicted by himself. Was ever dog so used? Jane, by contrast, cherishes me for myself, not my utility, affection I return with interest.

Jane “gets” me as Carll can’t. That’s because she and I see the world similarly – matter-of-factly, unblurred by hypotheticals. Carll carries on about spirit, saints, humility, meaning, good and evil as if he had a direct line to some invisible Almighty. Jane and I accept existence as we find it. Jane’s world is bigger than mine because she reads newspapers and books. She believes Azerbaijan and Marjorie Taylor Greene are real though she’s never seen them. I accept only the evidence of my senses. If I can smell, taste, hear, feel, or see it, it exists (and my eyesight’s not so hot).

Carll pictures me as more than I am, as some emblem, symbol, sermon, rebus to decode. I’m a dog, for pity sake – there are ninety million of us in America alone – smaller than most, bigger than a few, handsomer than most (gotta say), but also (regrettably) more timid. Carll carries on about being typical of the genus homo – if I hear that “Take him for all in all, he was a man” line from Hamlet again I’ll howl – but he doesn’t really believe it. I think (just between us!) he’s proud of his humility. I’m not humble because I’ve got nothing to be humble about. I’m a dog – period.

Carll is also confused about time, as if yesterday and tomorrow and a lifetime and millennia were real, and thus might be figured out. They are not real: they are ideas: only this moment is real, with its sounds and smells and aches and pains. I act like there’s no tomorrow – or yesterday – and my life’s a blast.

Carll’s lunacies – about spirit, meaning, time – scramble his thinking and sometimes get him down. He reminds me of that nasty German children’s story, Die Geschichte von Hans Guck-in-die Luft (“The Story of Johnny Look-in-the-Air”), where Johnny with his eyes on the stars walks into a river and nearly drowns. I live here and now. It’s all I pay attention to. As a result, I notice a lot more than Carll (if only I could tell you all I smell!) and am rarely blue.

I love Carll not because he’s lovable – whatever that means – but because he’s good to me. He feeds me, walks me, hugs me, plays with me, is really happy to see me, and apologizes when he lets me down. He’s also hilarious, with all his ideas. I don’t even mind listening to his missives. Yeh, they’re kind of boring, but hey.