• They say dogs can smell fear. So if you come across a strange dog, you need to act like you are not afraid of it and hope that dogs do not smell pretense.

• Here is what I imagine Heaven to be like: I won’t have to remember the gender of your dog or cat, and you won’t chide me for using the wrong pronoun to refer to it.

• One more dog-related thought.  As a boy, I was a big fan of Charles Schulz.  I copied his drawing style and was greatly influenced by his sense of humor and timing.  I didn’t pay much attention to Peanuts as I grew older, which is sad because I missed gems like this:

This strip, from December 17, 1999, is one of the last ones Schulz drew before he died from colon cancer on February 12, 2000 — when dogs still used typewriters.

• If Charles Schulz is too intellectual for you, here is some You Tube dog humor that you may enjoy more.  Long live net neutrality.

• For years, daytime talk shows and evening newscasts have made it a point to feature victory stories — ordinary people overcoming overwhelming odds to achieve amazing things.  These stories are apparently meant to inspire us or, more cynically, end the program on a hopeful note so that we are more likely to tune in next time.  The universal appeal of victory stories makes me wonder: has evolution led our bodies to produce not only endorphins but also empathins, chemicals that stimulate our brains’ reward and action centers when we see others in trouble?  Research is warranted.

• Sponges have no nervous system and no feelings.  As if this weren’t misfortune enough, every day around the globe, we subject these poor creatures to even greater humiliation — we make them wipe the crumbs off our dishes and wash the scum off our floors with their own limp and soggy bodies.  Stop the torture now!  (Empathins indeed.)

• In his novel Boy’s Life (1991), mystery-horror author Robert McCammon wrote:

The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us.  We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good.  Things happen to us.  Loved ones die.  People get in wrecks and get crippled.  People lose their way, for one reason or another.

I used to subscribe to this notion, that the wondrous naïvety of one’s brightly-colored,  irresponsible youth is more essential than that gray cynicism that settles in after years of hacking one’s way through the thickets of life.  But McCammon is wrong asserting that what is born within us is our essence — a blank slate is not more essential than the wisdom and experience inscribed on it.  Experiences, good and bad, do not cause us to lose our way but help prepare us for the ways ahead:

When we are young,
  we have barely begun
    to grasp our essence.

Who we become 
  is what we learn from
    our hardest lessons.

• I went out for lunch by myself the other day.  When I was finished, I decided to be a smart-ass and asked the server for separate checks.  She returned to the table and, with a smile, handed me one check, then placed a second check at the seat across from me.  I was curious to see how she played the game, so I reached across the table and flipped over the second check — it was blank.  Then I looked at mine and found a $5 shared-plate charge.

• Some stories — like the one you just read — seem too good to be true.  If they’re not true, they’re usually not too good.  But I don’t let that stop me.