I must take a break from enraging both political fringes who, by their responses to my recent columns, only help prove my point. It is a point I will keep trying to make in later columns, no doubt. But today there is one thing and one thing only on my mind, and that is my dog Mugsy and his most recent brush with death. I say most recent because he has had many such brushes. Grace calculated the other day that he is on his ninth life, like a cat who has come to the end of its luck. The comparison would deeply offend his sensibilities, and I am certain he will need more lives than nine, if history is any indication of the future.

Mugsy is the cutest dog on Earth--approximately 20 pounds of heavenly joy, as Howlin' Wolf would put it. A Boston terrier with the body of an English Bulldog. If he were a car, he would be a Ford Mustang Boss.

His coat is like a black satin tuxedo, with the starched collar of a white shirt, and a blaze of white that covers half of his face. A phantom of the opera's mask. His nose is snuffed up so that the little velvety spot just under his eyes seems gathered in folds and tacked there. His lower jaw juts out. When he smiles, a slurpy pink tongue curves like a ribbon over tiny bottom teeth that could use braces. They point every which way like a rickety white picket fence. And his bulging eyes earn him the comparison to a frog, another of the world's most beautiful animals. His eyes, once shiny sparkling brown, still dance, but from behind a veil of scar tissue now. One was punctured by another dog in a fight, and the other, we assume, was scratched by a cat he was trying to eat. The cat objected.

Several days ago, Mugsy and all the other dogs in the........

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