Feeling as if I were Lassie’s dad, trying to determine if this time Timmy had fallen down an abandoned well or was trapped inside a burning barn, I said, “What is it, girl? Show me what’s wrong.”

She hurried out of the room, and I followed her.

Our offices are in a separate wing of the house, isolated from the main living areas. Trixie trotted along the hallway where I shelve one copy each of about five thousand editions of my books in various languages. On a tough writing day, this collection encourages me: Having finished novels before, I will surely finish the current one.

The office hall connected to the main hall, where Trixie turned right. She picked up her pace, glancing back to see if I had wandered to a window to admire the red New Zealand impatiens in the courtyard. The short attention span of people can frustrate a dog on a mission.

I pursued her out of the hall. Halfway across the living room, I detected the faint acrid scent of something burning. Running now, Trixie barked one more time, to be sure that I would not stop at a sofa to rearrange the throw pillows.

In the kitchen, tentacles of thin gray smoke slithered out of the vent holes below an oven door. Each Thermador had a fan that sucked odors and fumes up a dedicated flue, dispersing them above the roof. The sooty octopoidal arms writhing into the room must mean the ventilation fan was overwhelmed by the volume of smoke inside the oven.

Not good.

Peering through the view window, I saw an object afire. For a moment, I couldn’t identify the thing through the obscuring smoke, and then I saw that it was a burning hand, standing on the stump of its wrist.

A burning hand!

Those who have never read my novels often think, incorrectly, that I write horror stories. If you are one of those, you might expect that we discover burning body parts in our oven with some regularity. I assure you we do not.

This was a new experience for me and so macabre that for an instant I half expected the burning hand to wave or to give me the okay sign, or to make a rude gesture-but then I realized that it was not a hand after all. An oven mitt had been left in the Thermador the previous evening.

I switched off the oven and watched through the window in the door as the flames subsided, having consumed the oxygen available to them. Gradually the ventilation fan drew the last of the smoke up the flue, and the air in the kitchen began to clear as well.

The charred mitt looked more threatening than when it had been ablaze. I decided that it wanted me to open the oven door, so I left the cleanup to someone else.

From a distance too great for the human nose to detect even the faintest scent of fire, Trixie smelled disaster pending. That night we gave her extra treats-but only on the condition that she would never mention this incident to Smokey the Bear.

XIV freedom of speech

IF A DOG gains a few pounds, it is not in the least concerned, because it lacks human vanity. Besides, a dog enjoys the perfect disguise for physical flaws: fur.

Were fur transplants to become available for human beings, I would be first in line, seeking a head-to-toe makeover, after which I would personally ensure the profitability of bakeries and ice cream shops throughout southern California.

A few pounds over our desired weight and determined to diet, Gerda and I made a pact to eat light meals for a week. At dinner on a restaurant patio with Trixie, we had salads without dressing and grilled chicken breasts with squash and carrots on the side. When we finished, we felt virtuous-but hungry. We didn’t want to abandon all discipline and stuff ourselves with dessert, but the thought of a second salad held no more appeal than eating our table napkins. In a pinch, I can with alarming swiftness reason myself into doing the unreasonable, and though I usually can’t get Gerda to abandon her characteristic prudence, she’s more vulnerable when she’s hungry. I made a case for finishing this diet dinner with an order of nachos, which I argued were suitable for anorexics if you just said, “Hold the sour cream.” Guacamole, cheese, corn chips, and black beans were what reed-thin supermodels survived on for years at a time, or so I had read in Wikipedia or somewhere equally reliable. Gerda was in a mood to be conned, and the nachos were brought to the table on a platter large enough to hold a roast pig.

We are generally so disciplined that we never before ordered nachos in the years Trixie had been with us. The symphony of aromas stirred previously unknown passions in her, and she rose from the patio to sit beside my chair, a look of desperate longing on her face.

I was a bad boy, offering her three or four corn chips with melted cheese and a touch of guacamole. “Want some nachos, Short Stuff?” I didn’t have to force them on her. She took them one by one, crunching them with great pleasure, but when I said, “No más,” she settled to the flagstones once more.

Once motivated people with strong willpower set themselves upon a sensible dietary regimen, they cannot easily be tempted to stray to the culinary dark side. The following night, Gerda and I had salads with chopped chicken and concluded dinner with another platter of nachos.

Again, I favored Trixie with a few cheese-slathered corn chips moistened with guacamole. “Want some nachos?” As before, she did not turn up her nose at them. She recognized a heart-friendly dish when she saw one. Heart-friendly and heart-healthy are different things, but it seems to me that anything that lifts the heart can’t be bad for it, though I acknowledge that I’m no cardiologist.

We broke the spiral of madness and didn’t have nachos again during the following three months. We lost the few pounds that we had set out to lose, without resorting either to liposuction or to amputation.

Fully twelve weeks after the two nacho binges, I was in Linda’s office, where Trixie was lying happily on her bed with her forelimbs draped over a giant plush-toy lobster. Linda, Elaine, and I got into a conversation about new restaurants. I had come all the way across the house to their office to see if they were actually working at their desks or whether their chairs were occupied by mannequins cleverly disguised to look like them. I also came for a contract file that I needed to review. I would, of course, eventually leave their office without the contract file, return to my office, and have to come all the way back through the house again, which would amuse them more than caring employees ought to be amused. In the meantime, as restaurant recommendations were flying, Linda said, “And, oh, if you go there, you have to order their fabulous nachos.”

The instant that the magic word was spoken, Trixie exploded off her bed, knocking aside the plush-toy lobster, and raced to Linda to gaze at her adoringly, waiting for cheese-slathered corn chips with a trace of guacamole, tail keeping time suitable to the latter bars of “Bolero,” drool dripping from her jowls. Perhaps she’d heard the word four times each night at the restaurant, eight times altogether, yet after three months, Trixie responded instantly upon hearing it once more.

After five years of French classes in high school and college, I can no longer speak a coherent sentence in that language. This seems to me to suggest that either French would be more profitably studied if one were rewarded daily with nachos for learning-or that with the proper incentives, dogs can learn French.

In either case, Trixie’s response to that delectable word puts the lie to some theories of dog intelligence and dog memory. It also suggests that dogs have a better grasp on the meaning of life than do a significant number of us.