Little shiny things that make a jingly sound when my master shakes them—oh boy oh boy a trip! Car ride to big ship, then long airplane ride off big ship, then bumpy ride in car without roof! Now it’s hot with sand everywhere and a citizenry skeptical of our intentions and ability to fulfill them! Wag tail!
My masters teach me all these tricks like put your left paw up when you smell this thing that explodes and put your right paw up when you smell the bad guys huddling together underground beneath a trapdoor covered by an elaborately embroidered rug! Chicken!
My masters are wag-tail-making and play fetch and scratch my belly and when we are alone question the wisdom of forcing democracy upon a region historically accustomed to theocratic statehood and diametrically opposed to our cultural values!
Helicopter ride! My masters all put their fingers to their lips to tell me to not to bark because it will make the other dogs in the neighborhood bark and compromise the integrity of our security-level-twelve mission and this comes at a critical juncture both for our broader operations and our main master’s mandate back home, not that that’s why we’re doing it, but it doesn’t hurt!
Time to smell some things and put my paws up in different combinations to tell what they are! Left-right-left—black metal things holding smaller silver things! Right-right—small exploding thing buried under wire that trips you! Left-left-right-howl—chicken simmered in curry sauce with basmati rice 400 feet away! Left-left-right-howl!
The main master tells me to shut up and hits my mouth! I’ve been trained to sic anyone who hits my mouth! I wonder if I should sic him now! No, I’ll wait until after the trip when he’s sleeping in his bed covering the magazines with pictures of human females without clothing!
Oh boy oh boy! Right-right-right-left-left-right—very tall bad man in white wrapped hat who intermittently disseminates videos condemning capitalism and Western morality! Right-right-right-left-left-right! I still smell the chicken simmered in curry sauce with basmati rice!
Wag-tail-making! We got the very tall bad man in white wrapped hat who intermittently disseminates videos condemning capitalism and Western morality! Now we’re taking a picture of him sleeping!
Helicopter ride over water! I want to swim but they’re holding onto my collar and the main master is saying that they’re damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t because this will offend a sensitive population yet they can’t risk creating a shrine to a martyr! I don’t know what any of that means!
Now we’re home again and my main master is talking on the medium-sized thing with a screen to his main master back home in a blue suit and red tie! The main master’s main master is telling him he’s a good boy for serving justice to the very tall bad man and for restoring his mandate, which is just a nice ancillary benefit! I want a bone!
Another ride in car without roof and long airplane ride and car ride! My masters say some of the humans at home are already saying it didn’t really happen but even if we release the photo of him sleeping they’ll still think it was faked and you can never please these ungrateful paranoids!
Fancy house with hundreds of rooms on different floors and my masters are all de-furring their faces! Ride in a long black car to a big white house! Here’s the main master in his blue suit and red tie! He’s bending down to shake my right paw! He’s shaking it four times which is the signal for unarmed people who are not talking so we may be permitted after a nuanced legal interpretation to use enhanced interrogation techniques like putting a thing over my mouth and having me growl to make them talk! I wonder if I should do this now! My masters aren’t telling me! I guess I should start growling!
All the big guys in suits with wires over their ears are tackling me and calling me a threat to national security! They’re pulling me out while the guy in the blue suit and red tie says I must be smelling the Buffalo wings he had for lunch and everyone else laughs and looks at their small things with screens and tells him his approval ratings have already shot up three points due to his graceful handling of a potentially awkward encounter and demonstration of his common-man appetite for Buffalo wings!
I’m in a small thing with bars! They’re telling me I can play with my masters soon but I can never meet the main master again because I almost ruined a politically valuable photo op! I can’t wait to get out and do things like left-left-right-left to signal the presence of human females who may or may not have cutting things covered by their clothing!
The following things are wag-tail-making: Justice! Mandate! Buffalo wings!