Freddie Is Gifted!

Poor, poor Freddie. Poor, pitiful Freddie. He has been wandering around the backyard all afternoon, looking, looking, looking.



In the far corners of the hostile, distant outback, he seeks, yet he does not find.


In the closer corners, and in the friendly nooks of the patio, he searches. He sports a handsome new collar round his manly young throat, but there is no joy in that.

He has lost his signature, his identity, his own particular fragrance, and he must find it or fall into a funk.

Freddie has had a bath.



O! Hear young Freddie's sorrow, muffled though it is through his new toy, purchased in hopes that it might somehow recompense the lad for his suffering at the hands of an insensitive masseuse. The memory of the latherings, the horror of the bubbles!


Why, no mere stuffy could take the place of one's own hard-won stanque. Who can replace the olfactory memory of numberless puddles stamped in, the dead things rolled on, the fine and rare blending of the rains of spring with winter's accumulated oils and dander, the tiny microbes and the bacterial busy-ness that blend and dance and waft together in a secret sachet? Note the yearning, the desperation, the raw desire to be a DOG again with a doggy's rankness.

Fie upon the cursed ways of women who will wash a dog's own wallowings and whiffiness down the drain! Fie, fie! O, who would fardels bear?

Young Freddie, we know you are not the kind of canine to be put off with mere distractions,
no matter how fashionable, squishy, or toothsome they may be. Even a treat of nutritious and delicious Sam's Yams is not likely to make you forget the indignity and loss of pong you have suffered.

But it's a good start, right? winks
The Frog Princess