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  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword [Mo Rocca]

  Introduction

  1. Here’s the Beef [Bonnie Thomas Abbott]

  2. How to Tell the Difference Between Your Mother and Your Dog [Henry Alford]

  3. Two Pooch or Not to Pooch? [Jon Bowen]

  4. I Done Them Wrong: How I Wrecked My Daughter’s Self-Esteem and My Dog’s Sex Life [Cathy Crimmins]

  5. The Dog Mumbler [Merrill Markoe]

  6. How to Change Your Adopted Dog’s Name to the Name You Want in under Six Months [Brian Frazer]

  7. All the Bags and Dante and Me [Pam Houston]

  8. How You Can Help Your Dog Enjoy a Visit to the Vet [Michael J. Rosen and Mark Allen Svede]

  9. Better Than You [Jon Glaser]

  10. Lucas [Haven Kimmel]

  11. Ball and Chain [William Wegman]

  12. Dog of the Day [Laurie Notaro]

  13. Home on the Mange [Neal Pollack]

  14. Dog Whores [Margaret Cho]

  15. A Catwoman in Dogland [Kathe Koja]

  16. Kirby [Al Franken]

  17. A Second Act [Alice Elliott Dark]

  18. Littermate [Marga Gomez]

  19. Dog Mad [Lee Harrington]

  20. Confessions of an Amateur Pickup Artist [David Malley]

  21. Pillow Talk [Gregory Edmont]

  22. The Seven-Month Itch [Nancy Cohen]

  23. Play Dead, My Darling [Jeff Ward]

  24. Where the Dogs Are [Dan Zevin]

  25. A Plea for Canine Acceptance [Phil Austin]

  26. The Good Place: A Play in One Act [Roy Blount Jr.]

  27. Untitled [Gary Baseman]

  28. This Dog’s Life [J. P. Lacrampe]

  29. Why I Write About Dogs [Susan Conant]

  30. What My Dog Has Eaten Lately [Bonnie Jo Campbell]

  31. Canine Films Currently in Production [Brian Frazer]

  32. Strange Bedfellows [Kinky Friedman]

  33. Doggy Love [Scott Bradfield]

  34. How to Raise and Train Your Mini-Berger-with-Cheese-Doodle [Georgia Getz]

  35. Something Extremely Important [Merrill Markoe]

  36. 13 Questions [Susan Miller]

  37. By Fifteen Minutes [Melissa Holbrook Pierson]

  38. Joni Mitchell Never Lies [Marc Spitz]

  39. Carolina’s in Heat and I’m Not [Abigail Thomas]

  40. Bone Alone [Rob McKenzie]

  41. Part Pooch, or: More Than an Act [David Smilow]

  42. Do You Take This Norwegian Elkhound? [Alysia Gray Painter]

  43. Becky Has Two Daddies [Robert Masello]

  44. Can We Interest You in a Piece of Cheese? [Alison Pace]

  45. One-on-One with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog [Catie Lazarus]

  46. A Gentleman’s Ideal Companion [Dave Barry]

  47. Excerpts from Great Books in the Canine Canon [Francis Heaney]

  48. One Step Out of the Dog House [Frank Gannon]

  49. Seven Days of Finny [Ann Brashares]

  50. Newman [Thomas Cooney]

  51. Dogma [Neva Chonin]

  52. Let the Heeling Begin [Bill Scheft]

  53. Recently Retired Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan Warns His New Puppy Against “Irrational Exuberance” [Michael Ward]

  54. Kill Jerry [Anthony Head]

  55. The Dinner Party: A Screen Treatment [Erica Schoenberger and Melissa Webb Wright]

  56. She Who Must Be Obeyed [Tom Gliatto]

  57. Our Twelfth Labor [Ben Brashares]

  58. Pyr Pressure [Franz Lidz]

  59. Tool: Retractable Dog Leash $10.95–$39.95 [Jeff Steinbrink]

  60. A Dog for All Seasons [Patrick F. McManus]

  61. How to Housebreak Your Dog [Mark Newgarden]

  62. Canine Einstein? [John Warner]

  63. Seven Protective Popeyes [George Singleton]

  64. An Open Letter from Miss Ruby to Her Problem Owner [J. F. Englert]

  65. Pet Quality [Andi Zeisler]

  66. No Wonder They Call Me a Bitch [Ann Hodgman]

  67. Leave Some for Me, Fido [Rebecca Rose Jacobs]

  68. Dog Is My Co-Dependent [Meghan Daum]

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  Acknowledgments

  About the Contributors

  Katrina Mutts [Patrick McDonnell]

  About the Editors

  “Brevities” [Dan Liebert]

  Copyright

  We dedicate this book to our mothers,

  who are somewhere laughing.

  Foreword

  MY SINGLE GREATEST qualification for introducing this collection may be that I’ve never had a dog. Stephen Crane was never a soldier and wrote The Red Badge of Courage. Likewise, I can be dispassionate and more critical of the cult of sentimentality surrounding “man’s best friend.” I see things that besotted dog owners cannot see through their slobber-covered glasses.

  My friend Catherine, an otherwise self-possessed woman and accomplished filmmaker, used to call me regularly with updates on Jock, her Flat-Coated Retriever: “Jock had his first swim!” “Jock had his first playdate!” “Jock fetched his first ball!” (The retriever part took a while to kick in.) She and her husband, Grant, created a whole history for Jock: He moved from rural North Carolina to Paris, where he wrote beat poetry until he ran out of money. Then he trained to become a hairdresser and ended up running a wildly successful salon in the sixth arrondissement, before moving to Washington, D.C., to become Catherine and Grant’s dog. (Huh?)

  This kind of anthropomorphization may seem harmless. But as a rational observer of dogs I am concerned that we’re bringing dogs down to the level of humans. Dogs are dogs—nothing less. In my book describing the vital role dogs have played in White House decision-making, I recounted how dogs saved us from nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban missile crisis. They’ll probably end up saving Social Security. (I also believe we should unloose a Newfie on Kim Jong-il. A good face-licking would soften him up and he’d give up his nuclear weaponry in a Pyongyang minute.)

  So enjoy this book. Let dogs make you laugh. Then let them get back to the business of running this country.

  —MO ROCCA

  Introduction

  “A DOG WALKS into a bar…”

  Cats are enigmatic. Horses have a noble air. Pigs are gregarious. But dogs are by nature funny—they make us laugh. As any comedian will tell you, timing is everything, and have there ever been creatures with better timing than dogs? They always seem to be there at just the right moment, or just the wrong moment, depending upon whom the joke is on. A pot roast left unguarded. An open bedroom door. An ill-timed squat. How quickly tragedy turns into comedy with a dog. A comedy of manners, fish out of water, parody, slapstick—all genres of humor are fair game with a dog.

  If indeed timing is everything, then the time seems right to bring out this collection of canine-inspired humor—we could all use a little laughter. And a book of wit and humor seemed like an excellent follow-up to our first book, Dog Is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World’s Oldest Friendship, an anthology of essays that explored the bonds between human and canine. As founders and editors of The Bark, we take our role of reporting on canine culture seriously, but not so seriously that we can’t poke fun at the dog world we’ve chronicled and helped create over the last decade. Admit it, even the most devoted dog lover will occasionally pause and think, This is crazy! Or, at least, uncommonly funny.

  “A Democrat, a Republican, and a dog are waiting in line to vote…”

  Do animals smile? Do they laugh? Both science and literature have taken on these age-old questions, and evidence shows that, indeed, animals do have a sense of humor. In a paper titled “Do Dogs Laugh? A Cross-Cultural Approach to Body Symbol
ism,” noted anthropologist Mary Douglas sets out to prove that we can divide human from animal along the fault line of laughter. She cites Konrad Lorenz’s Man Meets Dog and Thomas Mann’s A Man and His Dog to show how the panting, slightly opened jaws of man’s best friend “look like a human smile” and can give “a stronger impression of laughing.” (We have daily evidence of this as we sort through the many submissions to our ongoing “Smiling Dog” contest, a Bark reader favorite.) Scientists such as Dr. Jaak Panksepp have also shown that rats respond with laughter-like sounds when tickled, and cite studies performed by Patricia Simonet, which note that the breathy exhalations of dogs at play are evidence of a level of joy biologically similar to laughter. It seems that dogs do have a sense of humor, or at the very least, playfulness. This may explain why your dog can make you look like a fool several times a day.

  “Two dogs are sitting in a vet’s office. One says to the other…”

  When we began planning this anthology, we thought we’d include a few older pieces, but were surprised to discover how much our sense of humor has changed with regard to dogs. In many of the venerable examples of dog-related humor—over the past century—the dog was the butt of the joke; even worse, humor was found in cruel treatment inflicted upon dogs. Is this any way to treat a trusted friend? It’s an indication of how far we have come that we no longer find amusement in their suffering or laugh at inhumane acts perpetrated upon them. As with all cherished friends, we prefer to laugh with our dogs, rather than at them.

  Thus, we were inspired to start fresh, to look for what is funny in today’s dog world. We also gathered work from a variety of sources—acclaimed humorists (Merle Markoe, Roy Blount Jr., Kinky Friedman), popular performing comedians (Al Franken, Margaret Cho, Marga Gomez), noted literary authors (Haven Kimmel, Pam Houston, Alice Elliott Dark), and accomplished behind-the-scenes comedy writers whose work has provided the backbone for the likes of The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and Saturday Night Live. We made it a point to include a number of younger authors who have a certain generational edge to their work, as well as writers who have often appeared in Bark magazine (Lee Harrington, Alysia Gray Painter, Greg Edmont). We also tapped into noted “fidosopher” Michael J. Rosen’s wellspring of humor. In the end, we assembled nearly 70 pieces ranging from personal essays and parodies to satires and aphorisms. Like the dogs we love, no two are alike. We’re very pleased with the mix.

  Despite the mirth-provoking stories included in this book, we realize that far too many dogs face an uncertain—and definitely not amusing—future. In the fall of 2005, following Hurricane Katrina, we ran a special section in the magazine covering the storm and its aftermath, not only for dogs and their families but also for Gulf Coast humane and animal rescue organizations. The magnitude of the disaster was almost too much to take in, and it inspired us to look for a long-term way to help with the rebuilding efforts, which are ongoing as we write this, nearly two years later. With the support of our publisher and contributors, we have made a commitment to donate all royalties from the sale of this book to these organizations. Your purchase of the book assists with this effort.

  We hope the pieces herein bring a smile or chuckle, or even a guffaw. In sharing a laugh, you’re also helping some hounds find a way home.

  —CAMERON WOO AND CLAUDIA KAWCZYNSKA

  Here’s the Beef

  [Bonnie Thomas Abbott]

  “BOYS AND GIRLS, Howls N’ Growls proudly presents, direct from a sold-out month at Hollywood’s Rin-Tin-Tin-Pan Alley, put your paws together and give a real Chagrin Falls welcome to…Gracie!” [wild woofing]

  Thank you. Thank you. [wild barks and woofing continues] Wow! [yips] OK, OK. Down, boys and girls. Sit. Siiiiiiit.

  How about those Browns? [rhythmic woofing] It sure is cold here in Cleveland. Any of you have electric blankets at home? [yelps] Man, I love that thing. You just melt into the coverlet. Good-bye stiff hips! And under the covers…that’s even better than sex. Well, almost better. But how would I know? Thanks a lot, Mom! [yelps from the females in the crowd] Hey, do you ever leak a little gas in bed and next thing you know, Mom is waving her magazine around, “Jeeze, Gracie.” Just when I drop off to sleep again, “For crying out loud, Gracie!” Now Mom’s waving the magazine around so hard, the dust bunnies are diving under the bed [ripple of howls] and those scratch-and-sniff perfume pages are stinking up the bedroom. I mean, when Mom does it, do I say anything? No, I just politely ignore it, like I didn’t notice. And who’s got the real nose for noticing, for crying out loud! But let me do it a third time and she’s suddenly, “All right, that’s it! Get off the bed!” [light-hearted snarling]

  What do we do when this happens? Everybody?

  [“SULK!” the audience howls]

  That’s right! Sulk. Slink over to the quote-unquote dog bed, turn your back, and let out the Big Sigh. Oh, you all know it works every time. Give it ten minutes, tops, and either she’s patting the coverlet to invite you back or…she’s asleep and won’t know the difference anyway! [yelps and howls] Then it’s fart away all you please. She’ll never hear you over her own snoring! [wild woofing and tail wagging]

  You know another thing that bugs me? Mom goes away for the day and leaves the television on “to keep me company.” And what channel does she leave it on?

  [“ANIMAL PLANET!” the audience snarls]

  That’s it! Now, first of all, how am I supposed to sleep with the television blaring the whole damn day? Second, Animal Planet? Do I give a damn about anteaters in Moombazwi or hippos in…who knows where the hell hippos live? And those animal cruelty police shows! She can’t guess how upsetting that is? [snarling] I know you know! That’s good for a year of visits to the therapist. If you’re going to ruin a day’s worth of napping at least leave the TV on the Food Channel. How about that Paula Deen? What’s better than a breaded and deep-fried pork chop? [nose whistling] Nothing? How about a breaded and deep fried pork chop dropped on the kitchen floor! [wild howling and tail wagging] Now that’s some haute cuisine!

  You know what I really hate? Pedicures. [snarling] The other day Mom took me to this new place—I thought we were going shopping for biscuits at the mega-pet-mart store—and the next thing I know I’m getting my (bleep) toenails trimmed. “Boy, that was fast,” says Mom when the woman returns me to the reception area. “Oh, I just threw her up on the table and clipped all eighteen before she even had time to count to three,” the woman says. [audience flattens ears] How would she like it if the manicurist at her salon just threw her into the pedicure chair and slapped on some pearlescent purple polish even before she had time to fish the twenty out of her pocketbook? [yap, yap, yap]

  Mom used to have a Cocker Spaniel—this is before I arrived in her lap—who hated nail clipping so much that she would nibble them off herself. “So ladylike,” Mom always says. If I’ve heard that story once, I’ve heard it a hundred times. That and how the Spaniel was so afraid of a bath that she hid under the bed and one time her collar got caught in the box springs and how she screamed her head off while, one by one, the whole family tried to squeeze under the bed until the daughter managed to unbuckle her collar. [gleeful yips]

  The last time Mom went away for the weekend—by the way, a little discussion about whether I might like to go along would be a nice touch—I get taken home by that bottle-blond bipedal sister of mine: Mom’s Other Daughter. [knowing groans] What a weekend! When Mom’s Other Daughter is in the kitchen and the cooking smells are getting to me, she goes, “Get out from underfoot—go watch television.” So I follow her into the living room. “Not on the furniture!” [more knowing groans] OK, so I find a place on the rug and what does she turn on? [anticipatory groans]

  [“ANIMAL PLANET,” the audience barks out] And it’s a (bleep) animal cruelty police show! [groans and howls]

  By now I’m so bummed out, I need a nap. So I go into a bedroom and even before I lift one paw from the carpet, she’s screaming, “Not on the bed!
” Whatta you gonna do? [collective sighs of resignation]

  Anyway, she goes back to her cooking and when I show up at the dinner table, as is customary for family members to do, she announces, like it’s some Supreme Court ruling, “Dogs are fed when we’re done. And we don’t allow begging.” [hackles go up across the room] Begging! Begging is standing on the street next to an open guitar case. [woofs of approval]

  The whole weekend goes like that. At least we went for walks every few hours. But I was having such a case of anxiety that I couldn’t go. “You’d better do your business or else,” she tells me. Um, no pressure there, huh? Or else what, Miss Talk-to-Your-Cell-Phone-the-Whole-Time? Don’t you hate that! [snarling] It’s my walk too, after all. Would it kill her to show some interest in my sensory experiences? Maybe I’d like to stop to say hello and make some new friends in your neighborhood. [approving woofs again]

  There was one front yard where I spotted a tennis ball in the grass. [ears go up across the audience] Do you ever do that? Go in somebody else’s yard when there’s no one around, mess with their heads and just kind of “borrow” one of their toys? [tails twitch]

  Then the next time they go outside, it’s like, “Hey, where the (bleep) is my rubber bone?” [wicked little yaps] Now that, boys and girls, is a walk well taken! [triumphant snorts]

  Finally Mom shows up to take me home and there’s all this, “Were we a good girl? Did we miss Mommy?” [knowing pants] And Not-My-Natural-Sister gushes, “Oh she really enjoyed her little vacation, taking nice walks, smelling new smells, leftover roast lamb.”

  And did I forget to show my appreciation? Of course not: I left a little hostess gift on the bedroom Persian carpet. [barking]

  Not everything ticks me off. How about the Biscuit Buffet at what Mom calls the Doggie Depot? Now it may not be so great for you shorties out there—trust me, on top of that table there’s more kinds of cookies than…fleas on a porch sofa. They should have a sign: if you’re this tall, you can graze. OK, if one of you shorties runs up and doesn’t get all yippy with me, maybe [isolated high-pitched yaps], just maybe, a carob pinwheel or two just might “accidentally” fall off the table. [chorus of yips] But you’ve got to be fast. Otherwise, there’s all the decision making, the paper sack to fill, waiting in the check-out line, getting in the car, waiting in the car until Mom dashes into a store for milk, before…before you get to eat the goddamned biscuits! [howls] And all the cool toys, right down there where you can pick out ones you’d actually want. (Tell me, who wants a friggin’ green pepper that squeaks? Now, a TV remote that squeaks and actually changes the channels—that’s worth a few bucks.) Maybe Mom or Dad just took you shopping for a new collar and toys weren’t part of the plan, but remember, boys and girls, what Colin Powell told President Bush, “If you get spit on it, somebody’s going to have to pay for it.” [barks of approval]