HanktheDog Blog

Oompah: HanktheDog is here and I've got to say that it's hard for me to speak with you because I'm feeling betrayed. More to the point, I suspect that you've misled your many tens of readers through your online misrepresentations. There's evidence from in-depth reporting carried out by MyPoorSmokingDogs.Com that you've "exaggerated" a number of events in your blog. For example, is it true that your packmate Molly really once transformed a snarling, belligerent brute into a dog of stone? I remember reading that and thinking, "Wow, that's astonishing, but it's this dog's blog so it must be true." But now all your readers are left wondering. So tell us, did it really happen the way you've described?

Hank: Well, not exactly, see it's a dog's pespective on....

Oomphah: I see. And how about the time you claimed to consume a leather-bound Shakespeare. Our research shows that William Shakespeare has been dead for, well, a pretty long time. Did you really consume him? We have our doubts. And it's not at all clear that this particular poet even bound himself in leather. So, we've got to question...

Hank: No, I meant a book of Shakespeare's writings. And, to be honest, I didn't really chew it up that much, though I did mangle some other great books pretty horribly. That Shakespeare volume had been pretty well pre-chewed by a family dachshund years before, but I thought....

Oompah: Hmm. So, instead of eating a famous playwright, you merely pulled down a pre-chewed volume of his works and claimed the deed as your own. I must say, Shame on you! Bad dog! Very very bad dog! You've so disillusioned me that I'm beginning to believe that there's no such thing as blogging dogs.

Hank: Um...

Oompah: Oh no... Don't tell me.

Hank: Well, see, there's something called a literary conceit, and...

Oompah: Do you even have a dog?

Hank: Of course, but...

Oopah: Do you have something against dogs? Perhaps all your bushes yellow and all your flowers beds are dug up. Pehaps you raise the hackles on a dog's back from 30 paces away. Perhaps you're even a blogging cat.

Hank: Look, Hank's a very real and exceptionally sweet Labrador. It's just that...

Oompah: So there is a real Hank. Yet you've assumed his identity? I imagine that will put in a lot of people's doghouses. I'd call it Labsploitation and a crude attempt to convince the world that dogs see the world in much the same way people do.

Hank: Actually, I do worry a little about that sometimes, because dogs aren't people and we shouldn't expect them to be, but I assume our readers know that. It's all in fun, after all.

Oompah: So it's all about the entertainment, is it? Let me tell you, HanktheDog, you've really saddened me today. The next thing you'll be telling me is that I too am a fictional character, that absolute truths are hard to come by, and that not all memoirs are 100% fact, even Memoirs of a Geisha.

Hank: Well, to tell you the truth...

Oompah: Oh, just stop your noise, you dumb dog!