The Starlight Barking

Spoiler alert you dummies! Don’t spoil it for yourselves – but since so few people read this book, let it be a guilty pleasure.

This world is entirely different from the first book. Only dogs are awake (other than the two cats and Tommy). Perhaps this is the world that some dogs dream of at night and in their thoughts, a world where humans are non-existing, where dogs are the almighty. Here, dogs have human abilities and even more such as “metaphysical” powers. This term was applied by Cadpig and used by Missus who though may not be good with directions is quite capable of understanding more abstract concepts, in which Pongo is not so good – of course, he has his areas of expertise as well! In this special world, dogs can open doors just by thinking about doing so, they do not need to bark out loud, but instead, all they need to do is send thoughts by thought waves which can travel to different continents. Dogs can swoosh (going incredibly fast and barely touching the ground) and reach places in a couple of hours where normally it could’ve taken days. On this day, dogs can feel like a racehorse galloping across the pasture, even like cars! But this isn’t the dream world for most dogs, Pongo and Missus included.

They feel too strongly a pull to their beloved humans to leave earth and go off to a far away star with Siruis who will give them a life similar to the one these dogs have experienced for a day. And perhaps, this one unique day of metaphysical powers was a good thing. It helped dogs such as Pongo satisfy their lure to adventure such as the one he experienced at Hell Hall years ago, without leaving their pets forever. In the beginning of the book, Pongo’s desire to have adventure and the way he feels guilty about it as well is shown. How could he think of leaving his humans? Yet, his emotions couldn’t be helped. As it said in Starlight Barking, “Surely he had everything he wanted? Why, then, was he sometimes just a little bit discontented?” And then you will see Pongo admitting to himself that he had been a bit wistful as he watched dogs leave Heaven Hall to their new owners/pets, where new and exciting adventures would occur. So, one could look at this special day with the Dog Star as a good event that would be beneficial for both us and dogs. We should be thankful that though our owners needed a special day for themselves, they are not yet ready to leave us forever and hopefully they never will, for us humans treasure our owners/pets and hopefully they treasure us too.