Don’t take my absence from these pages personally. I like you as well as I do most humans, which isn’t much. But I’ve been busy – preparing a lecture series for UCU (Universal Cynology University, as you probably know) on Dog/Human (Mis)Understanding, which will be doubly translated – from Dog to Human (via my amanuensis), then from Human to Dog, when the attendees return to their kennels abodes. I’d supply sign-up info but it’s already sold out, popular interest attributable more to gossipy curiosity, I fear, than sober scholarship. You remember Dr. Johnson’s crack: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” Waste of good snoozing time, if you ask me, but Carll assures me if I want to eat I’ve gotta perform, because I’m part of “the team.” Whenever anyone mentions your involuntary involvement with a “team,” CAVE CANUM, it means they’re wanting something for nothing. CAVE CANUM, as you also no doubt know, is the famous motto from the Pompeii building designated “House of the Tragic Poet.” It’s accompanied by a much-reproduced sketch of the chained dog of whom the visitor should beware. If another of Carll’s “team members,” can dredge up the image from the Internet, maybe we can use it to illustrate today’s ruminations. (This first paragraph is getting long.)

My syllabus is shaping up. I’m thinking of bundling the group – FROM an UNCANNY CANINE UNDERSTANDER – acronym FUCU – accompanied by a cutesy cartoon of a professorial me. You’d be amazed how humans are seduced by such sentimental dreck. It’s one of the topics I’ll be covering. Others include:

· Love (a human delusion)

· God (a human mistake, unless spelled in reverse)

· Winning (another human absurdity)

· Food

· Language

· AI

· Foreign Relations

· Carnal Relations

· Parenting

· Time Management

· Stress Management

· Litterature

· This guy Carll labels The Nameless One

Theses may emerge from our explorations (rhymes with feces) but don’t count on it.

If you think we’re undertaking this assignment from the goodness of our hearts, get real. Once we assemble a batch, we’re gonna start sneaking them into the “feeds” of English-speaking dog-owning social media users, who number some seventy or eighty million, Carll figures from some tiresome calculation. If one percent of them subscribe to me for free and one percent of those succumb and pay $80 a year for me – a conservative estimate, Carll insists – we’ll have “free cash flow” (as if cash flow were ever free) of… oh, I can’t remember, some big number, with which we’ll be able to expand our TEAM and therefore our reach. So this dog isn’t just a dog he’s a STALKING HORSE. Which makes me a modern version of a Cynocephalus, that is, the dog-headed horse familiar to medieval mythographers though, I confess, not to me until now. The Cynocephalus, we read, is “symbolic of liminality, the untamed, or moral inversion” – sounds kind of fun. (Note to self: consider adding “Mythtakes” to the topic line-up.)

Carll figures the novelty of a polymathic canine might carve a lucrative “lane” in the online cram. Every communicator needs their lane these days: you can’t just be you, you’ve got to be “you” in quotes. The talking dog lane is overcrowded: no muscling in on Scooby-Doo, Astro, Huckleberry Hound, Snoopy, Clifford and the rest; they’ve got a lock on the sugar-for-breakfast set. But what about a dog with a vocabulary – and subordinated clauses – and maybe manicured clawses (you gotta dream)? Don’t the proud possessors of such prodigies need their online home? (Prospectus in preparation.)