Dogging It

Welcome the new faces of my work.

Toiling in obscurity for this many years has its perks. I can, for instance, still run errands unrecognized and unmobbed. Yet it also has its downsides—I must, for instance, still run my own errands.

All in all, though, I live quite the satisfactory life—for a writer. I have not yet been forced to tear the pages out of my books for kindling, or for dinner, or for other less poetic purposes. No one in my family has disowned me over my career choice, such as it is. And they’ve had ample opportunity to do so; I have stuck with writing for longer than any one of us spent in public school.

Sure, I’ve had some breaks in my time.

I got paid for a column for the first time thirteen years ago, with an actual check that now that I think about it I hope I cashed. I still write that column for that paper, even though it pays the exact same rate as it did thirteen years ago. The point is, they still pay! To many writers, that would be making the Big Time.

But I aspire higher than that. I aim to match at least as Big a Time as my dogs have made.

I am so serious about this.

My first dog, Wally, got his picture in a Huffington Post piece about nonprofits helping pets affected by Hurricane Harvey. Was he paw-sonally involved in any way? No! But he lent his goofy grin to a good cause, which I certainly never have done.

My guy, Wally (right), with his pal Rio (left), two of the bestest boys the world has ever known. Good job, you two. (Photo by Rio’s human, Jen Reeder.)

Then my latest dog, Ryzhik, featured in a Forbes article about dog allergies. Look at his photo. He is a reluctant celebrity—but in the limelight nonetheless.

And me? I also have allergies! But is that why I made Forbes along with him? No! Since I have the cognitive ability to purchase Benadryl while running those errands I still have to run for myself, my suffering is not worthy of Forbes. I am the mere spokes-human.

The reluctant face of dog allergy awareness.

I’ll own it: I’ve been grumpy at times about my dogs achieving greater click-through rates than I have. I work hard every day not to be entirely distracted by their cuteness and their insistence on living in the present moment but not at a laptop. It’s not just or fair that they wind up on the website editions of renowned publications and I can’t even land a Pulitzer.

That’s been the wrong way to think of it all along.

The right way to think of it is that I am not competing with my dogs for clicks. The right way to think of it is that I have two live-in marketing assets to boost my career the same way a bustier boosts sales of old-school Harlequin romance novels, back when men were men and not gargoyles or minotaurs or whatever else people are into these days besides us (and who can blame them).

Seems as though the smart play here is to plaster my dogs’ mugs on everything I do.

Hawkeye’s latest glamour shot.

People may let a lifetime of creative effort scroll right by on their feed, but the good ones cannot ignore a handsome dog—they simply must show him some algorithmic love. Readers will be sliding into my their DMs (dog messages) all day long.

My entire career, grad school and all, may wind up with me writing captions for dog portraits with high view counts.

Will I be any less of a writer by leaning on my dogs?

I may not care! I’ll still be more widely (if incidentally) read than Jesus was in his own lifetime, owing to global population differentials and literacy rates and his lack of access to dog photographs.

Hawkeye, fulfilling his contractual obligations at work.

Here’s how I see it these days: If parents of humans can live out their lifelong Olympic dreams through their children, then it is way less psychologically harmful or complicated for me to put my dogs to work on fulfilling my own aspirations.

Ryzhik encapsulates the work ethic around here.

Plus, they’ll demand less than literary agents—and I’ve already landed them, no query letter needed. They won’t demand 15% of my income (which, let’s be real, they already get). For going into business with me, they might demand only 15% more of my time.

I will give to them gladly every second I win back by never running my own errands again.

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You cannot say no to this face.

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