Column failures bring out the Talking Dogs

Some days are more difficult than others when it comes to writing a column. This one, for instance, is our third attempt for the day and it’s already 40 minutes past deadline. We have no idea what to write now, having spent the bulk of the day chasing moonbeams.

So we’re not surprised when Aie, or talking dog, bounded around the coer and looked at us with some conce, which is why a dog is better than a cat, if not the noblest creature of them all. If a cat had seen us wearing the same long face it would’ve killed us and had us rendered into kibble.

“What’s wrong?” asked Aie.

“Pick one,” we replied, as Jasper skidded around the coer so’s not to miss out on a chance for a pig ear or elk antler or any number of other barbaric treats they favor. “One of our columns fell through after a couple of hours of research; the next fell through because we were unable to meet the editor’s insistence to be ‘nice’ in tone about another subject. And, even more unreasonably, ‘no gloating.’”

Aie shook her head sadly. “I’ve seen you try to do ‘nice’ before. Always ends in spectacular failure.”

“What’s wrong with goats?” asked Jasper. Aie grabbed one of Jasper’s rear legs in her jaws and dragged him out of The Ba.

When she retued, she said, somewhat icily now (a pit mix can do a cold “icy”), “Oh, I get it. You try to do a couple of your ‘interesting’ columns and only when you fail, out come the Talking Dogs. Is that it?”

She kind of had us there. We do tend to drag them out in moments of terrifying desperation, such as now, when pressmen are standing menacingly around our desk wondering how long we’re going to take to finish so they can start printing the paper.

“No!” we lied to Aie, as Jasper began sneaking back into the picture. “No, we always care what you think.”

“This Trump guy is starting to make a lot of sense,” said Jasper.

“We were talking to Aie,” we said. But Aie, not buying our feeble lie about our Talking Dogs being worthy of a substantive column, had galloped off to unleash her battery of swear words and violent threats at the UPS guy.

Jasper pressed on: “Trump is big on dogs,” said Jasper.

“How so?” we asked against our better judgment.

“You see the TV ad he’s ruing showing Hillary barking like a dog?” he asked.

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“No,” we said.

“You follow Trump on Twitter?” asked Jasper the Twittering Dog.

“No,” we said.

“He tweeted that a reporter came to his office ‘begging for money like a dog.’ He said that when Mark Cuban’s show failed, the network ‘threw him off television like a dog.’ He said actress Kristen Stewart ‘cheated like a dog’ on her beau Robert Pattinson.”

“Well, she kinda did,” we said, but he prattled on. “He said Gle Beck got ‘fired like a dog’ by Fox and that Chuck Todd ‘will be fired like a dog from CBS’s ‘Meet the Press.’ He said Marco Rubio ‘sweated like a dog’ and Mitt Romney ‘choked like a dog.’”

“I think he met all those things in the bad way,” we told Jasper, who cocked his head in that way that people find so adorable, before he heard a siren and started braying like a Trump.

Contact Tim Grobaty at 562-714-2116, [email protected].