So here goes. My LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.

Yes, I’m feeling fine, but you never know. A speeding car. A lump. A hunter’s goof (oops, sorry). Beats me why guns are permitted anywhere – slaughter as sport? But this is how human minds function – commence with a conclusion, then reason backward to a premise. To wit: Conclusion: various prepubescent adults enjoymessing with muskets. Premise: these muskets are needed for self-defense OR the right to said muskets – now discharging at a rate of ten rounds per second – is guaranteed by a document dated long before such weaponry existed (1787). You can’t make this stuff up. These humans would be laugh-out-loud hilarious if they weren’t duck-for-cover dangerous.

You may wonder why a dog needs a last will and testament. Do we own anything? Legally, I’m told not even my tongue, pelt or paws are mine. All of me belongs to Jane and Carll. Didn’t the thirteenth amendment to the US Constitution (1865) outlaw slavery, you might ask? For people, yes. But all other mammals – or birds or fish – remain chattel – rhymes with cattle. I could be eaten if Jane and Carll ran short. In Asia, dogs are eaten: strike Asia from my travel plans.

I’m making this will and testament because Jane says to in her books. I was devouring one of her bestsellers recently – I mean, really devouring – only to learn that to die intestate may beget all manner of mischief. Intestate sounds disgusting, as if I lacked a certain body part, which I do (thank you, Carll), but no reason to call attention. Also, my book – The Henry Chronicles, vols. 1, 2, 3 etc. – should emerge as a posthumous bestseller (many authors foresee this), so even though my literary rights are debatable, might as well document my desires, just in case.

I leave my DOG TOYS (they must be mine – whose else?) to… any successor dog they might amuse or, barring that – for they’re pretty ratty – to the dumpster, so we might mingle in the common dust.

My DISHES should be dropped off in the doggy good will box at our local pet store. Ditto my LEASHES (arrrgh…), CAGES, CUSHIONS, COLLARS, and Apple GPS LOCATOR. The locator may be worth a few bucks, so save it for my successor if any. BRUSHES, COMBS, CLIPPERS should have been deep-sixed long since, a colossal nuisance.

My LITERARY RIGHTS I’d bequeath to the ASPCA, but Carll’s hairs (did I spell that right?) might have a different opinion, which would preempt. I like those hairs, love them, but the injustice! I wrote the frigging book – Carll was my stenographer. It’d be like awarding Saint Matthew perpetual rights to the Sermon on the Mount, when he – or whoever – was just taking notes.

I professly PROHIBIT any and all extraordinary measures to keep me breathing past my pretty prime. I’ve seen three-legged dogs being wheeled in carts and cancer-crippled pooch-lives painfully and expensively prolonged. No, thanks! Vets, I’m guessing, like human docs, make their margin from end-of-life care – sends the kids through college, buys the bungalow in Boca – but no. We dogs were born to die, sounds heavenly to me, an endless doze, happy days when they come. Humans, too, only they seem not to have heard.

My most precious legacy is intangible: memories. Of morning licks and whirling welcomes and wild shining chases after uncatchable squirrels in the midday sun. And of cuddles with Jane and Carll after dinner dishes have been removed. And my smile – with its adorable pink tongue and big brown eyes and metronomic tail-wag (presto con fuoco). Don’t forget my smile.