Well, once again I am thinking about dogs. It may be that I am in a Dog Period of Life.

This is Shep, my friend Leslie’s dog–and as you can see, he’s an aspiring writer. I was over at her house one day, working on my novel on her wonderful screened porch. (This was back in the fall, when screened porches could be used for things other than storage.) Leslie was over on the other couch, working on her novel, and our friend Nancy was on still a third couch, doing hers…and then, as happens when so many people are working together all claiming words for themselves out of thin air, I started noticing something.

Leslie and Nancy were typing furiously away, and I was…not.

It was clear to me what was happening. Arlo Guthrie had explained this phenomenon once in one of his concerts, when he was talking about going away on a retreat to write with Pete Seeger. He and Pete Seeger were in a little cabin together, and Pete was writing away fast and furious, writing song after song, and Arlo was coming up with nothing, just nada. And then Arlo realized that all the ideas, you see, were coming in through the cabin’s front door, and they were landing on Pete’s paper before they could even make their way to Arlo.

I don’t know what Arlo did to rectify the situation, but in my case, I did what any sane person would do: I suggested lunch.

We went into the kitchen and made a feast of chicken salad, carrot soup, homemade bread Nancy had brought, chocolate, huge pots of Darjeeling tea. We talked and laughed and told funny stories and traded recipes, all the things we always do.

And when I looked out on the porch, this picture that you see before you is what I saw: Shep, who had been sleeping next to my feet the whole time, had taken over my novel for me.

I particularly like the way his paw is poised on the keys, and how he’s staring off at the doorway, watching the ideas float in–clearly now just for him, just for my novel which even a dog could see was needed them desperately.

When I came back, all he’d actually typed was lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll, but I knew it was a message to me: A dog can be a writer’s best friend.