~*~ MY STAFF ~*~

Mommy is the best person who has ever existed and I would like that on the record before I say anything else, because I am about to say something else.

Mommy is a reader. She sits outside with a book, in the sun, near the ocean, and she reads it. For hours. And I sit on her, because that is where I sit, and I look up at her, and she says "you're such a good girl" and then continues reading the book instead of getting up and going to the kitchen, which is the thing I need.

I want to stress that I have never once been unclear about what I want. My communication is immaculate.

Strengths: soft voice, excellent lap, gives the best scratches behind the ear, has been known to slip me things when daddy is not looking. Once gave me a piece of cheese for no reason at all. I have never forgotten it and I never will. It was a Tuesday.

Areas for development: the books. Just — fewer books. Or the same number of books, but with snacks. I'm not a monster. I'm flexible on implementation.

✎ Overall: outstanding employee. Would recommend for promotion, if there were anything above "mommy," which there is not.

Now. Daddy.

I love my father. I want to open with that, because the rest of this review is going to sound like a complaint, and it is, but it is a loving complaint.

Daddy is very good at several things. He is excellent at chin support — you can see it above, that is a man who knows what he's doing. He is good at throwing. He is good at saying "MISA!" in a delighted voice when he comes home, which makes my entire body go sideways.

He is, however, personally responsible for the running.

Every so often he looks at me, a dog whose entire skill set is lying down, and he thinks: "you know what she'd love? Cardio." And then we go. And I have never loved it. Not one time. Not once in my entire life. And yet the man persists, which I suppose is admirable in some contexts, just not this one.

Strengths: throwing, chin support, enthusiasm, the voice he does when he sees me, an unbeatable record on walks that do not escalate into running.

Areas for development: the running. Also the dressing-me-in-his-clothing thing, which happened, which is documented, and which I have not agreed to.

✎ Overall: strong employee. One star withheld pending resolution of the cardio situation. He knows what he did.

People do not appreciate how much of my life is spent looking upward at a person who is thinking about something else.

I have made a study of it. You have to get the eyes right. Slightly wet, very wide, tilted just a little so the light catches. You have to be silent — barking ruins it, barking is amateur hour. And then you simply wait, radiating need, until the human's resolve cracks like a dry biscuit.

It works about a third of the time, which, over a lifetime, is a truly enormous quantity of biscuit.

To their enormous credit, my staff have correctly identified that the back seat is mine, that the air conditioning must be aimed at me, and that the window comes down at least a little. These are the terms. They were never negotiated, exactly. They simply became true, the way things do when you are consistent and extremely persistent.