Hello! says the Voicebox of Nature

On Monday I was walking into a meeting and I heard a dog say my name. I suppose that because my name is Russ this is the sort of thing that should have happened to me previously, but I can say with certainty that I have never, until this time, cognitively believed that I was being addressed directly by a dog. There was a looseness in the dog's bark that came out at the end and made me think I was hearing the S sound. How convinced was I (really) that the dog meant to call me? Well, convinced enough that I turned my head in the expectant way I do when a human calls my name, and not merely the sort of nonspecific looking-about that I typically do when I hear a dog barking and care to discover where the barking originates.

After the dog said "Russ!" it went back to ordinary dogspeak. It was locked in a pickup truck cap, and I couldn't get a good look at it without going right up to the rear window. I was late and I went inside the building.

I tried to brush it off as mishearing or an active imagination, but even after a few moments the strangeness didn't subside, so I became open to the idea that I didn't mishear or imagine it. Indeed, after giving it a moment's thought, I revised my response entirely, and now I believe that man's best friend was delivering to me a message from the bough of the natural world. It got my attention and gave me a message on behalf of the remainder of the Great Chain of Being. "Keep your chin up, Russ," the assembled creation says. "Don't let the frauds get you down or make a dent in you. We know the score."

I only wish I had known the dog's name so I could have thanked it in kind.