Matt the Mutt

At the end of her first year of uni, my sister brought home a terrible dog named Matt the Mutt, who’d been raised in her dormitory. She handed him over to my parents—he’s yours!—and headed west. Just like that, the reign of Matt the Mutt began.

For the next eight years, the dog bounced around the house, lifting his leg pretty much wherever he pleased, knocking people over, barking incessantly. Anyone coming through the door—including my tired father with his briefcase and his newspaper— would be instantly assailed by the bouncing, howling creature.

Matt the Mutt was a love machine, a regular Pepé Le Pew. He would copulate with pretty much anything: furniture, the postbox, even the nowgeriatric Sausage. Above all, he lived to

86