THE STRANGE CASE OF VELVET THE DOG

A dog sues her owners for not taking her for a walk in Hines’ winsome comic novel.

In an exaggerated version of California, where animals have most of the privileges—and jobs—that humans do, a golden retriever named Velvet files a lawsuit against her owners, Albert and Marietta Sweeney, of Pomona, California, and their kids, Billy and Becky, for denying her “life, liberty, and pursuing happiness” under the California Animal Humanities Act. She specifically complains that the family has failed to take her for a walk for 17 straight days while she languished in the fenced-in yard and developed joint pain. Velvet’s lawyer, a slick cat named Bogart, thinks her case will be a landmark decision for pets’ rights, and also greedily reckons that “he could get about ten million in the settlement of Velvet’s suit and persuade Velvet to take her million” (Bogart’s lawsuit is also a criminal prosecution—why not?—that could send Albert to jail for years). Albert’s attorney, a pig named Winston, thinks he has an equally solid defense: Albert says Billy and Becky faithfully walked Velvet a mile each day during the period in question, and he has the dog-walking logs to prove it. The stage is set for a courtroom showdown before judge Julius Fox and a jury of kangaroos and porcupines, replete with lawyerly histrionics: “Isn’t it true, Mr. Scott, that you are not only the president of the Save the Snail Foundation but also its only member...[a]nd that in Oklahoma, where you last lived, you had been the president and sole member of the Save the Snake Foundation, and that you are wanted in that state for receiving money without doing anything for it?” The tide starts to turn against Albert when a string of witnesses swear they didn’t see Velvet out for her walks during the 17 days, with the most damning testimony coming from the Sweeney’s sinister cat, Lothar.

While ostensibly about animals’ struggles against human neglect and abuse, Hines’ tale is equally an exploration of the many ways in which animals inconvenience, irritate, and endanger humans—especially Albert, who struggles to preserve his property and finances from destruction by Velvet’s dogged boisterousness. The author relates these depredations in droll, deadpan prose, both from the shell-shocked human viewpoint (“Tore right ankle on run with Velvet,” notes Billy in a typical dog-walking log entry. “She pulled me over stones in the ditch. Got nose scratched on wire fence. I just love these times”) and the ebullient canine perspective (“[T]he chewing was just great, and I had a great desire to chew: window sills, chair legs, shoes, and socks,” Velvet recalls of her time living in the Sweeney house before she was exiled to the back yard. “Yet for some reason the Sweeneys seemed to have an equally great desire that I not chew.” The spoof of legal jousting is breezy and sharp-witted. (“[N]ote that the kangaroos have such small heads there can’t be much in them,” observes Winston. “We have ended up with a very good jury indeed.”) Color photographs of the non-hominid species in the text will remind readers how funny animals can look; fauna skeptics can enjoy Hines’s saga as much as animal lovers do.

An entertaining send-up of the most annoying traits of animals and humans.