Their Dogs

The paranoid’s dog learns to utter a soft bark, almost a cough, to announce itself before entering a room.

A wolf put its nose under a human’s arm by the fire. The human’s arm went up in reflex, then down, where he was petting the wolf before he could stop himself. There were no words for how the wolf made him feel. Literally, there weren’t really words. The wolf’s mouth hung open an inch, and his tongue lolled, and the human knew what it meant, and he mimicked the open V made by the angle of the wolf’s head. Dogs taught humans to smile.

The ADHD fellow’s dog is the most patient beast. He hints to his human for many minutes before the human is ready to look up, though he will pet him the while. Then the human will know it’s time for the dog to go out, and he will turn back to what he’s doing as if he will quickly finish it, and will deal very shortly with a couple of things that have just come up. The dog will not actually start feeling hop until the human stands decisively, and then the dog must watch human put on outside garments and check for the proper equipment in pockets and have a drink of water. Then there’s something new on the screen. Then the human follows the leading dog out into the hall, stepping back to switch off the lights. The dog looks back frequently. There is a bathroom that the human often goes into for some period of time just before a walk. Sometimes the human spends time brushing teeth. Then the human remembers something else back in the room. Then the human puts on another garment. Then the human runs up and down the stairs again for whatever reason, and then the dog is almost ready to go out.

Murray, why do you wrinkle your brow?

The homeless man’s dog is the luckiest of all dogs. Master is always present. Master spares no extent to make dog happy, though dog scarcely notices anything but Master. Rich dogs rightly envy them.

Purse dogs learn to get by on secondary affection, half-power pets and scritches while the mind is on another task, but still guaranteed by constant proximity.

"Ding ding--PSYCH!" --Pavlov, being a jerk.

Annie Warbucks’s Sandy might seem expensive to feed, but he’s worth his weight in human lives. He’ll probably scout out his own food while securing a supply for you as well. His power lies in his ability to walk a tightrope between being amazing (a dog who can fake snoring to fool a Nazi) and losing his canine identity as another hairy comedic second lead. As far as I know, Harold Gray only took us into Sandy’s thoughts one time, and then in a narratorial voice describing his thoughts without trying to mimic them. Considering how long Sandy trod the panels as a major player, this restraint is almost superhuman. In today’s strips, he’d have thought balloons, hobbies, and multiple internet accounts.

I will never forgive the creators of one of my favorite shows for their treatment of the protagonist’s dog.

After the last war, some former military androids got together and discussed whether they had a purpose, and they decided to use the tech available to them to build something of the wreckage of the world. As they sat on boxes in a ring, one of them felt a nose on its arm and looked down to see a military canoid looking up at it. He patted its cranial receptor to indicate acceptance and, to amplify the message, mirrored its expression.