DISCLAIMER -- Nathalie's my progeny. Rest assured, however, that our shared DNA is not a contributing factor to the blatant self-serving overuse of superlatives below. Nathalie was born into a household menagerie. For the first thirty months of her life, she had 15 nannies (i.e. cats). Then in 2000 we moved from the Hollywood Hills to Santa Rosa Valley (to raise her and her sisters in a thinner veneer of insincerity), and in rapid succession added horses, fish, turtles, chickens, wild ducks, and , most relevant to this account, six dogs. For the past 19 years, while our family canine population has experienced natural, and in one particularly tragic case, unnatural attrition, it has been the dogs that have been the epicenter of her world. She has exhibited from the beginning a preternatural ability to communicate with them (we currently have four), and they with her. I can say without an iota of reservation that any dog would benefit from making Nathalie's acquaintance.