PETUK AND ALLIE: COME ON, FOLKS, ARE YOU NUTS?

Time to remind you that Petuk and Allie are still looking for a home.

I've mentioned them before. I'm absolutely astonished that no one has adopted them yet.

What's wrong with you? Are you allergic to happiness? Do you like being lonely?

Do I really need to explain what's so special about these dogs?

I suppose I do.

In one sense, there's nothing unusual about them. They're just ordinary mutts. I can't say that they speak fluent French, or that they have some remarkable aptitude for composing lyric poetry or forecasting the stock market.

But in another sense, you would have to have no sense of wonder in the world at all to be unable to see that they're miraculous.

Consider a world in which dogs were scarce -- a world, say, with only ten dogs in it. If you'd never heard much about dogs before, you'd be awed.

These dogs -- Petuk and Allie -- have a sense of smell so acute that they can detect certain organic compounds at one millionth of the concentration you'd need to discern them. It's one of the great scientific wonders of the world.

Petuk and Allie have astonishing healing abilities: Children with autism are known to respond to dogs even when they can't or won't speak to humans. Patients with advanced Alzheimer's disease will recognize dogs even when they can no longer recognize their human relatives.

Petuk and Allie are probably able to detect cancer more accurately than any laboratory test. (You'd have to train them a bit, but I'm sure they'd be willing.)

Just touching Petuk and Allie -- I am quite serious -- will raise the level of mood-elevating chemicals in your brain by statistically significant levels. If any drug company announced such solid support for an antidepressant medication in trials, its stock would soar.

Being around Petuk and Allie will lower your cholesterol, your blood pressure, and your risk of having a heart attack.

If you adopt Petuk and Allie, you will be 30 percent less likely to have a reason to visit a doctor. (This study was done in Japan, but I assume it would apply to you wherever you are.)

Petuk and Allie have seemingly telepathic aptitudes that thus far defy any conventional scientific explanation. Skeptics: Read those studies carefully, they seem to anticipate all obvious objections. I'm not saying there's no more prosaic explanation for what those dogs are doing; I'm just saying we sure don't know what it is yet.

Petuk and Allie might very well save you from poisonous snakes, drowning, an overturned car, the rubble of a collapsed building, or a rapist. Dogs save people from these things all the time.

If you get lost in the woods, Petuk and Allie would probably be able to find you. What's more, they'd probably want to.

If you'd had no previous acquaintance with dogs, and if I told you that such creatures really existed and were not merely the product of my perfervid futuristic fantasies, would you even believe me?

If I added that these creatures were genetically programmed to adore you, no matter how basically repulsive a human being you are, would you not want to possess them more than anything else in the world?

Would you not assume that only the world's wealthiest and most privileged people could ever hope to be so lucky as to live with these dogs?

And were I to note that in addition to this, Petuk and Allie descend from Neolithic dogs, and Byzantine dogs, and Ottoman dogs, wouldn't you go mad with desire to see them for yourself? I mean, it's entirely possible that their ancestors' ears were scratched by the Emperor Justinian.

Doesn't it seem insane to you that these two astonishing creatures are sitting in a cage, and that no one wants to adopt them?

I really can't understand it.

Click here to adopt Petuk and Allie. I'd hurry, because now that I've explained this, I'm sure everyone in the world will be trying to get their hands on them. I'm fully expecting a savage bidding war.