All I care about is escaping from this ghost. And eating mud. And then, if given the opportunity, rolling in the remaining mud that I did not eat.

Not the trying-to-get-rid-of-it part (that wiry monstrosity is the opposite of dreams where I lope joyfully through thickets of tall grass), but the part where I foolishly left my contact information inside the thing.

“Is the crate made of steel?” I have no idea. It’s metal? I can’t bite through it?

“Is it absolutely unused?” J wrestled me into it once. Then I yelped rape for five minutes and he never tried again.

“We may be interested, but we’re not getting our puppy from the breeder until September. Could you wait until then and then we can bring her to try it?”

Try it? Try it? Listen. It’s a crate. It’s made of metal. It’s unused. It’s going for a third of what Ms. P paid for it in the store. All this was covered in the post. Your inbred designer cot-death pre-order pup is going to hate it, because it’s constructed of six interlaced walls of unbreakableness and isn’t a satisfying replacement for the soft mothering nuzzles of the puppy farm sex slave that whelped her.

So no. J isn’t going to hold onto it until September. And you can’t try it. But you know what you can try? Barking off.

*Note: Will trade crate for treats. Any treats.

Listen. I get it. You want to make sure you never get too far away from me. I wouldn’t want to be far away from me, either. But you have to try to understand where I’m coming from.

When you tie your sick hairless paw to my neck, I can’t hunt tree rats with any respectable amount of success, I can’t properly scavenge discarded pizza crusts, I can’t dash blindly into traffic when a glimpse of tree rat or crust enlivens my eyes… this blue bond, this unshakable rope, this taut stretch of anti-treat? It’s not keeping us together, J. It’s driving us apart.

It’s especially galling because this shit works for me! I wear the two-layer tangle like a European-cut shirt. You think Justin Bieber’s owner is trying to mess with his comb-forward vibe? You think Robert Pattinson’s trainer is trying to pick the burrs from his matted head-coat?

Even if there was something that could be done about my scene, I’ve been on adult kibble for over a year now – shouldn’t I be able to make my own doggy style choices?

J says it’s important we get up at 7AM each day for the next month to watch every single game of the World Cup. Which in this Lionel’s opinion is wayyy too early. And for what? To watch a bunch of DBs lope around after a ball that’s far too big to hold in your mouth? Forget it.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at all interested, because in this particular World Cup there’s a player – a superb player – on the Argentinian side who is such a big fan of my furry perfection that he’s gone and named himself after me.

Argentinian Lionel and I share many of the same attributes. We both stand under 4 feet tall, we both have quick/unstoppable footspeed, and we both have unruly tufts of head fur that occasionally obscures our eyes.

So I guess I don’t have a problem waking up early to watch this particular player not carry a ball in his mouth. In a way, I feel like he’s my son, and I should support him, and I should be rewarded for this support with my new favourite thing: early morning treats.

Running into the wiliest of my old foes, and having his unnatural albino fur slip through my paws yet again.

When J and I first starting voyaging to the T-Bell, I was very clear about the purpose of our sorties: To hunt down and kill the Great White Tree Rat.

It’s a simple goal. One you’d think would merit a bit of an alley-oop from the thumbsiest member of the pack. But no. In fact, instead of aiding me in this quest, J actively restrains me, by way of this incredibly complicated neck-binding system that he wields from his sickly hairless paws. It’s some future shit.

Anyway, after today’s failed lunge, I turned to J and stared at him, letting him know exactly how much of a disappointment he is to me, and how I expect the pack to cooperate like Stalin’s peasant soldiers in the pursuit of Getting Things That I See And I Want.

J looked back into my eyes with the intensity of an Alpha.

“You’ve been chasing him for so long, Lionel. What would you do if you ever caught him?”

That’s easy.

I’d feast. And then wear the Tree Rat’s skin as a cape, or scarf.

A cape or scarf of pride.

I had kibble.