Guess Who Turns 7 Today...

Hint: He's farting and snoring at the same time right now.

May 28, 2026

I gave Morris an extra treat this morning. Then another one. Then a third, because it’s his birthday and I have no self-control around him, and frankly, neither should you.

He turned seven today. In dog years, that makes him somewhere around 49, which means he’s older than me and handling his forties with considerably more grace. He gets up every morning with an alacrity I find personally offensive. He has never once complained about his knees.

I got him in 2019 - before the pandemic, before all of it. He has been present for the full unravelling and the slow, uncertain re-ravelling of my life in this city. I’ve done a book with him in it. He has met every single development with the same expression: ears up, tail going, ready for whatever comes next. He also sits and sceptically watches me work, keeping me honest…

A friend told me recently that once you know what it’s like to have a dog in the house, you can never go back. A house without one becomes a mausoleum, he said. He’s right. I’ve been in those houses. You can feel the absence of something warm and indiscriminate in them - something that tracks mud across the kitchen floor and sighs dramatically when dinner is thirty seconds late.

I won’t pretend I always deserved him. There were days during the worst of the pandemic when he was the only reason I left the apartment -and therefore the only reason I maintained any meaningful contact with the outside world and its complicated, often bewildering inhabitants. He made me walk. He made me stop. He reminded me, without ever saying a word (which dogs are extraordinarily good at), that the point of the day is mostly just to be in it.

Seven years of that. He’s got a few grey hairs on his chin now. I’ve got a few more on my temples.

To those of you who subscribe partly because of this dog: I see you. I know. And on his behalf, thank you. He is, in every meaningful sense, the better content creator in this operation. I just hold the pen.

Happy birthday, Morris. You absolute menace.
The Goodest of Boys.

‘til next time!
Your pal,