They ride off and leave me

This morning when the people debarked on their bicycles I climbed the stairs from the yard to the landing on the 2nd floor, a vantage that enabled me to survey the street below and, in due course, the people's labored return. Long minutes passed before they discovered my lookout. They stared at me. I stared back.

MB and I have a game of longstanding in which her role is to wheedle and coax to get me to try the downward climb on my own. My role is to tremble and look frightened, flatten my ears and wiggle my tail. Then she comes up, gathers me in her arms, kisses me and carries me down.

I don't know what went wrong this time. I guess she didn't explain to her boyfriend (I'll call him "Clem"), who took it upon himself to come up the stairs for me.

Clem ruined everything. I gave him a look and trotted downstairs on my own.

On the Internet, everyone knows I'm a dog.

On July 5, 1993, a cartoon by Peter Steiner published in the New Yorker portrayed a hound at the keyboard of a computer confiding to a pack-mate that "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."