For the past four years I have known Teddy and Bailey, hypoalergenic friends of man. Teddy is an old white-haired lapdog of aristocratic make and pretensions, who is quite offended over the small, yammering brown people living next door. These folks, he has confided in me, his muse, he suspects of being regicides, perhaps even hungering for his soft flesh. Teddy looks very much like Robert E. Lee and carries himself with a fitting dignity. Teddy likes to sit with men while they drink and smoke and speak of unfathomable human things.

Teddy barks at the servant class when they appear before his Manor.

When I eat at the kitchen counter, Teddy sits and awaits scraps. He is not good at catching meat in his under-sized mouth and it often lands on his head and sticks there, reqiring me to ahnd feed him that piece.

Bailey is a very athletic golden-doodle who is endlessly optimistic, can curl her very long legs up into a ball to prove that she too is qualified for lapdog. She is Teddy’s consort and adores any man of the servant class who will throw her a ball or other such thing to fetch. Bailey will play fetch until she expires if permitted to. Teddy still likes to bring down the hammer of the patriarchy on Bailey, but she is so tall, he just manages to hump her leg and then looks up at any men present as to say, “A ladder would be nice.”

Teddy is my constant writing companion in the common areas of his manor house, liking to think that he supports the arts. The Chief Servant, Mister Saffrono, says to me, as we stand drinking beer with Teddy between us, looking out at the pouring rain, “James, dogs know, they know that you are a good house guest—dogs know.”

Bailey constantly looks at me with maximum expectation that I will do something great and that then everything will be better forever! In fact, she looks at every human like this, sure that they will bring about some great thing, like a treat for instance.

Bailey sits a quiver to my left as Teddy sits to my right as I eat standing. Any scrap tossed to the left is snapped up and inhaled. One does not hand feed Bailey if one is spiritually attached to to the idea of having fingertips.

Bailey barks at the servant class when they approach Teddy’s manor.

Comes the new edition, three years ago, Teddy 3.0. Oliver, known as Ollie, is about as well-behaved as a true, born, pure white aristocrat can be expected to comport himself among beige to dusky hued serving apes of rude make. Oliver stands by Teddy, his patron, who he occasionally snarls at, barking that I’m too slow with the meat scraps, that I can be replaced, that his every desire is to be attended by the servant staff with utmost haste!

Oliver can dance for an entire minute or more on his two hind legs, working his white fore-paws in a shimmering shoe-shine. He gets angry when Mescaline and I spar by the pool, where he suns himself and barks, that we are out of line and both fools.

Oliver barks a lot at the servant staff when they approach the manor he is promised to inherit from his dottish, slow and obsolete Uncle Teddy.

As have other members of the French Nobility in ages past, Oliver has a dark side. We would occasionally, while watching fights in the den, hear Oliver down the stairs in the basement gym, growling, snarling and slapping what sounded like the heavy bag. I was quite impressed. On my various trips to the gym, I would see a stuffed rabbit, a blonde rabbit with long hair, simply lying there. I did not think this rabbit belonged to the servant staff, whose youngest member was 21.

One day, I heard the slapping, the growling, and went down to the gym, and there was Oliver, holding the rabbit by one ear in his tiny mouth agleam with white teeth, and humping her with an endowment that most men would be jealous of, let alone a 20-pound dog. Oliver is literally a life support system for a penis. The slapping sound was him failing to achieve penetration of the bunny vagina, which some trickster of a puritan stogie-like had sewed close, and slapping his hammer of the patriarchy against the concrete floor.

“Do you mind, sculler,” says Oliver’s eyes as he glares at me over the glazed eyes of the rabbit, and I beat a hasty retreat up to the den to continue watching the fights with Mister Saffrono, who opines, “I know, James, it is disturbing. He never even takes the bitch out to dinner, just rapes her and keeps her locked up in the basement. Personally, I’m having a hard time being offended, maybe jealousy is setting in?”

Yes, one must keep his eye on the servant staff. One never knows when they might rise.

I hope, some week, to complete writing a children’s book based on the time when I showed up and the regular servant staff immediately abandoned their duties and flew to an all inclusive resort, leaving these three puppers at the mercy of a rude fellow who throws good beef—cold mind you—to the Regal Class rather then gently braise it and serving it upon vessels of silver and gold.