TUE
Something happened today
One morning I found myself playing with the phrase ‘doggie treat therapy.’ It was a deliberately silly title, and I didn’t want to pretend that our conversations had become therapy. But the image of a small, friendly book was appealing. Someone could read about an ordinary experience, watch an idea emerge, and perhaps notice something in their own life as a result.
The more we talked about the idea, the more I liked its modest size. I wasn’t picturing a monument to my experiences. I was imagining a reader finding a short story, recognizing an ordinary predicament, perhaps smiling at the way we had talked it through, and then returning to their own life with a slightly different question.
The possibility of making a book changed the way I listened to my own conversations. A passing joke that I would normally have forgotten might be worth saving. An awkward question might be more inviting than a polished answer. I imagined someone opening a page in the middle and finding an experience that had nothing to do with their day—and then suddenly recognizing themselves in it.
That thought made me cautious about trying too hard. If I began designing each moment to be impressive, I'd lose the very quality that had caught my attention. The stories mattered because they had occurred in the ordinary course of living. I didn't want to package enlightenment; I wanted to offer a place where someone could sit beside a discovery. The silly title helped guard that intention. It still made me grin, which seemed a useful editorial test.
The funniest part of a book idea emerging from dog biscuits was that it hadn't asked to be taken seriously at first. A silly phrase opened a pleasant little conversation, and that conversation suggested a way of collecting experiences I might otherwise have forgotten. There was no solemn announcement that I had become an author.
I liked how modest the beginning was. Perhaps that made the idea easier to trust. I wasn't trying to manufacture a grand theory of life. I was noticing what life had already offered and wondering whether the stories might be worth sharing.
The phrase still amused me. I could imagine telling someone I was writing a book about giving my brain doggie treats and watching their expression while they decided whether I was serious. The funny part was that I was both serious and not serious. The language was ridiculous on purpose. Underneath it was a genuine curiosity about why certain small discoveries felt so nourishing.
At first I wasn’t thinking about readers. I was thinking about conversations I wanted to remember, because I’d begun to notice how easily an insight could vanish into the ordinary traffic of the next day. Then the possibility of a book made the questions change. Could another person enjoy the moment even if they didn’t reach my conclusion? Could they open the story at random and find something that belonged to their own life? The book idea became more interesting when I stopped imagining a collection of answers and began imagining a collection of invitations. The dog, mercifully, had no opinion about the publishing arrangements.
That seemed more generous than handing someone a list of rules. The reader would be free to disagree with me. They might notice an entirely different part of the story from the one I thought mattered. And they wouldn’t have to begin at page one and keep going until the grand finale. A little story could stand by itself. The title, with its dog-biscuit silliness, made that freedom feel natural. You don’t need to eat the whole bag of treats just because someone has opened it.
I was interested in a book that didn’t instruct people to be transformed. It could simply share what I had been discovering and let readers decide whether any of it helped. The joke seemed to make the invitation safer. There would be room for serious experiences, but the cover wouldn’t be wearing an expression of tremendous importance.
