Manuel, did you know that people are hard to understand? (You’ve been trying to tell me that for some time, now!) Why, I was looking at that webby thingy just yesterday and saw the party planning page of the BC SPCA Biscuit Fund website. Do you know what I saw? People were holding up masks that look like you and me, so that their friends wouldn’t be able to figure out who they were. Isn’t that silly?

Well, you must understand that I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I mean, the reason they were hiding behind our faces was to raise money to help us out. They called it a “masquerade” party. Well, the “mask” part is certainly right, for sure! (When you think about it, having someone try to look just like me is quite honoring!)

Well, that wasn’t all I found on that webby thingy and masquerade page. Did you know that they want to put pictures of us in storefront windows and on bulletin boards? Yup. The idea is to encourage people to be responsible givers, not takers, in the community. Why, they encourage folks to contribute to our medical and surgical expenses. If that’s what they want to do with our pictures, it’s all right with me!

Another thing they do is put postcards with our pictures on bulletin boards or walls and ask folks to give a gift and put their names on one of our picture postcards. That way, others will also see that they’ve given to our cause and will be moved to do the same. What a great idea!

People are hard to understand in other ways, too. Everybody knows that the only real window to the world is the nose, and sometimes, the ears. Nobody in their right mind would expect a dog to sense anything except through the nose. Why, that’s the only way to communicate with one another – by leaving a memento behind that others will pick up and understand. Well, that’s not true with our caretakers. Do you know that they “sniff” around using their fingers and looking with their eyes? That’s right. It must be that when people got put together, their olfactory nerve endings got crossed with their visual cortex. (Got their eyes connected where their nose should be!)

Often while they’re looking at that webby thingy, they also pop up another thingy on the screen that they call, “email.” It must be like their nose, because whenever my caretaker does that email thingy, he says, “Oh, Michael says ‘Hi’ to the family,” or “Janet just visited her mother-in-law. Poor girl!” or something like that from someone else he knows. It’s just simply amazing. How they can do it without their noses is just beyond me!

Well, the folks at BC SPCA Biscuit Fund have this other great idea - that they can use the email thingy to help us. What they do is tell their friends at work (that’s when my caretaker leaves home for hours at a time) that they’re going to have an email bingo game to raise money for us. What they do is have every one who wants to participate pay upfront for the privilege to play. When they do, they receive five bingo cards and some markers. Then, throughout the day, a new bingo number is sent over email to all players. The first one to email back the word, “BINGO!” wins half of all the collection. The rest goes to pay our doctor bills. I’ve been told they have a lot of fun, it helps to keep the workers at their workstations and it helps a good cause. Sometimes, they even send a picture of one of us (with our name below the picture) with the bingo number. There are other variations to this same, silly human game, too!

They do a lot more stuff with their eyes, too! Why, some have even put pictures of us on drinking cups, party favors and other things while they show a movie (usually “Milo and Otis” or some other historical documentary of animal exploration.) The proceeds they get from these movie nights help us with some of our painful conditions.

Manuel, I have to tell you that I have evidence that at least some of their nerve endings are in the right place. It seems that our caretakers have an expression about the male of the species. It goes like this: “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Well, I am relieved with this expression, because it means that their stomach wiring is right. You know what it’s like to have your meal interrupted by a human. It’s like World War III when that happens! They’re the same way! They even spend a lot of money to make sure that their stomach wiring remains satisfied!

Well, BC SPCA Biscuit Fund has an idea to use lunch money to help pay for our care. What they do is encourage workers (there’s that word again!) to “brown bag” a lunch and use the money they would normally spend on lunch to help us out. When you get a whole bunch of folks doing the “brown bag” thing, it collects a lot of money and helps us out a lot. (The brown bag is needed because nobody wants to start World War III!)

You know, Manuel, the BC SPCA Biscuit Fund folks have a lot of other good ideas for helping us out. They can look at the ideas at http://www.spca.bc.ca/biscuit/eventideas.shtml. I really think that some of them ought to look to surgery, though, to take care of that cross-connect between their eyes and nose. That sure would make people a lot easier to understand!

/Signed/ Biscuit