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“Very few persons have successfully transcribed the comic talents of a poodle into prose, whether typed or conversational. Something vital and essential dies in the telling of a poodle story. It is like a dim recording of a bad W. C. Fields imitator. My poodle, I am glad to say, does not meet a gentleman caller at the door and take his hat and gloves, or play the piano for guests, or move chessmen about upon a board, or wear glasses and smoke a pipe, or lift the receiver off the phone, or spell out your name in alphabet blocks, or sing “Madelon,” or say “Franchot Tone,” of give guests their after-dinner coffee cups. She is as smart as any of her breed; indeed she has taken on a special wisdom in what some would estimate to be her seventy-fifth, others her one-hundred-and-fifth year, as human lives are measured, but she has never been trained to do card tricks, or go into dinner on a gentleman’s arm, or to say ‘‘Beowulf," or even "Ralph.” — James Thurber