Category Archives: Fang & Claw

Open Letter to a Puppy, Chapter XIII: The New Dog Days of Summer

My scintillations,

This letter comes apropos of nothing, which may be the point.

Every time I write, it seems, it carries a certain sense of (melo?)drama: Jadie’s birthday, Charlie’s adoption, your first swim.

There is nothing dramatic here. Save, of course, for everything.

For here, under the historic Western Heat Dome, where dog days have baked September into the new August, you have somehow sidled into doghood.

How did that happen? When did that happen? And I want specific dates.

Make no mistake: You are not even teens in our years, and that is occasionally obvious. Say, when a Barkbox shows up. Or you see a leash. Or when I microwave popcorn; YOU AIN’T GETTING ANY — DEAL WITH IT.

But you have lowered your bark, slowed your gate, begun to see this as your home, one you’d die to defend if I were in it and in peril. Or at least so I’d like to think.

But what do you think of monotony? I imagine that for most days and nights, life may seem to churn, over and over. Boring, perhaps (and I’m looking at you girl). Maybe without point. Maybe without purpose. Beware that deception! Boredom means you are free of hunger and most likely pain.

More vitally, being is purpose. Never forget the reason you are here in the first place: Nothing short of being the conscious representative for your patch of the cosmos, and all the duties implied therein.

In other words, keep doing what you’re doing. Which appears to be enjoying our one go-round on the Great Carousel.

You know what? Move over, would ya?

Of Mice and Toby


John Steinbeck’s dog ate the first version of Of Mice and Men

Every teacher has rolled their eyes at the “my dog ate my homework” excuse, but it really happened to one of America’s most revered authors. In 1936, John Steinbeck’s dog Toby, an Irish setter, turned the first draft of Of Mice and Men into a snack. In a letter dated May 27 of that year, the future Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner wrote that he “was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically.”

Steinbeck estimated that Toby making “confetti” of the manuscript would set him back by about two months, but it may have been worth it: Steinbeck’s short, tragic tale of two migrant workers eking out a humble existence in California during the Depression is among the author’s most moving and accomplished works, which is saying something for the man responsible for both East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck, a lifelong dog-lover, later wrote a travelogue featuring his poodle called Travels with Charley.