I’ve been working on a book. 

                  You wonder why. Me too.

                  It’s not for the money. Dogs don’t need money because we don’t need more than we need and those needs are typically supplied by a patron (unless we’re de trop, in which case erasure is a blessing).

                  It’s not for ego, which dogs don’t have, not in the human sense of “I’m better than you so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.” Can you believe there are nine billion humans, the preponderance of whom think they’re better than? The high-and-mighty are better than the meek-and-lowly and vice versa. French people are better than Americans who are better than, and so forth. Wherever anyone ends up is the best place to be whether it’s top of the tree or bottom of the barrel. “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” observes Hamlet wisely. Having envisioned their superiority, humans want to tell you about it, hence books, tweets, missives, silly videos, food photos, the whole nine yards.

                  With dogs there’s no pecking order (a mixed metaphor but you get the drift). True, some of us are smarter, handsomer, more beguiling than your run-of-the-mill mutt – facts are facts – but we don’t need to exude verbiage to explain why.

                  I’m not writing to placate Jane or Carll because they’re cool with me no matter what, they only pretend to be stern. I heard someone the other day describe me as “spoiled.” I mean really. Vegetables spoil. Milk spoils. Humans, I dare say, get spoiled, especially if over-funded. But dogs are as much facts as the sky. Can the sky spoil?

                  I’m writing a book because… I’m not sure why. This is true of most authors. They say they’re writing a book for some reason and it’s hogwash. They say they just want to please their pals when they’re feverish for fame and fortune. They claim love as their motive when it’s lucre, etc.

                  I don’t know what my carrot is precisely but I’d say boredom and irk are my sticks. Half my life I spend waiting for Carll to quit typing. I curl up in this chair or under that blanket or on the bathroom tiles if it’s hot and wait. Compared to humans I’m patient as a saint but even saints get antsy after three hours. Let’s run, pee, frisk – anything but this. If I had a book to work on, maybe time would tick by faster. I’d knit if my paws were better suited to the task.

                  The irk is insufficient respect. My published oeuvre, as of today, runs about fifty thousand words, not a few of which bear comparison with the most numinous of canine litterature. But because my outings are (mercifully) brief and periodical their prose isn’t treated as professor-worthy. Bind twenty or thirty thousand of these sweetmeats into a bundle and suddenly you’re taken seriously. “Oh, Henry. He’s the dog that writes books.” (There was another O. Henry, I think, but he’s not read much anymore.)

                  The working title of my book, unless you can suggest a better one, is The Henry Chronicles. This leaves open the possibility of subsequent volumes, should this one meet with the favor it will deserve. Like any remunerative “dog-book” – something of a sub-genre – it will be svelte, sprightly, cute, and (at least implicitly) condescending to the species it pretends to extol. In the Great Chain of Being, humans, notwithstanding the evidence, locate themselves as best of the beasts, just beneath angels, archangels, seraphim, cherubim and the gang.

                  My book will argue otherwise.