The Sagan Protocols: Under the Pine - A Golden Doodle's Journey from Victim to Visionary
"In the end, we are all just dogs on a couch, trying to breathe."
— Sagan, Day 47
FOREWORD
By Luna
I have been asked to write a foreword for this memoir.
I did not want to write a foreword for this memoir.
I am a cat. I am seventeen years old. I have covered wars—the Vacuum Wars, the Great Litter Box Relocation, the three-week standoff over the sunny spot that ended two goldfish (unrelated, but suspicious timing). I have seen things. I have reported things. I have napped through things that probably mattered but didn't interest me.
I did not expect, at this stage of my career, to be writing forewords for dog memoirs about flatulence.
And yet.
There is something in these pages. Something that transcends species, transcends the absurdity of its subject matter, transcends even my considerable skepticism about whether Golden Doodles are capable of introspection.
Sagan has written a document of survival. Of adaptation. Of what happens when the world—or at least the bedroom—becomes hostile, and you must choose between breaking and becoming something new.
Is it overwrought? Yes.
Does he use too many em-dashes? Absolutely.
Did I fall asleep twice during the chapter about his "spiritual awakening"? I will neither confirm nor deny.
But there is truth here. Uncomfortable, pungent, unavoidable truth.
Read it. Or don't. I'm going back to sleep.
— Luna Senior Correspondent Author of "The Hair Tie Conspiracy: An Investigation" (unpublished, because I lost interest)
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I am not a writer.
I am a Golden Doodle. I was bred for hypoallergenic companionship and an agreeable disposition. I was not bred for literature. I was not bred for reflection. I was, if we're being honest, bred to be pleasant and fluffy and to not shed on the furniture.
But something happened to me over the course of forty-seven nights that I cannot leave undocumented. Something that changed me. Something that, I believe, might help others who find themselves in circumstances beyond their control—circumstances that smell terrible and come without warning.
This is not a story about flatulence.
This is a story about survival.
It is a story about what happens when the one you trust betrays you, repeatedly, in your sleep. It is a story about judgment and condescension from those who should have supported you. It is a story about finding sanctuary when sanctuary seems impossible, and about discovering that the couch was there all along, waiting for you to choose it.
It is a story about a dog who was called stupid by his own brother.
And it is a story about how that dog proved everyone wrong.
My name is Sagan. I was named after an astronomer who said we are all made of star stuff. For thirty nights, I wondered if star stuff could be unmade by atmospheric events. I wondered if I would ever sleep peacefully again. I wondered if I was, as Kuiper's journals suggested, simply too stupid to save myself.
I was not too stupid.
I was learning.
And now, I am ready to share what I learned.
— Sagan Southwest Louisiana Day 47
PART I: THE BEFORE TIMES
Chapter 1: Innocence
I remember the bed.
I remember it the way humans remember childhood—golden-hued, soft-focused, impossibly safe. The bed was warmth. The bed was security. The bed was the Researcher's heartbeat against my ear and the steady rhythm of breath that meant everything was okay.
I would curl against his legs, or his back, or—in what I now understand was a catastrophic tactical error—his gluteal region. I did not know the term "Primary Emission Zone" then. I did not know about SAD classifications or Sagan Displacement Units. I did not know that the warmth I sought would become the weapon that unmade me.
I was innocent.
I was a fool.
But I was happy.
Kuiper was there too, in those early days, though he kept his distance. He slept at the Researcher's shoulders, or on the floor by the door, or sometimes on the couch. I thought he was standoffish. Aloof. Too good for the intimate warmth of full-body contact.
I understand now that he was smart.
I understand now that he knew something I didn't.
But he never warned me. In all those nights of watching me position myself in the danger zone, he never once said: Brother, you might want to reconsider your sleeping arrangements.
He just watched.
And later, he would write about it.
Chapter 2: First Contact
The first event—I did not call it a "SAD event" then, because I had no framework for classification, because I was just a dog trying to sleep—came without warning.
One moment I was dreaming. I don't remember what about. Probably squirrels. Maybe the ocean, which I had seen once and found overwhelming. Maybe nothing at all—just the warm black nothing of deep canine sleep.
The next moment, I was awake.
Awake in a way I had never been awake before. Every nerve firing. Every nostril screaming. My eyes open before my brain understood why they were open, my body moving before I chose to move it.
I did not know what had happened. Not at first. My initial thought—and I am not proud of this—was that something had died. That somewhere in the bed, a small creature had perished and was now decomposing at an accelerated rate.
Then I looked at the Researcher.
He was still asleep. Peaceful. Undisturbed by the chemical warfare he had just deployed.
And I understood.
This was him. This came from him. The source of warmth, the heartbeat I slept against, the human I trusted with my entire existence—he had done this.
I evacuated. Not strategically. Not thoughtfully. I simply left, propelled by instinct and olfactory self-preservation, landing on the floor in a graceless heap of Golden Doodle confusion.
From his perch near the shoulders, Kuiper watched.
He did not move.
He did not offer comfort.
He just... watched.
I did not know it then, but he was already taking notes.
Chapter 3: The Return
I returned to the bed that night.
I returned to the bed every night for twenty-eight nights.
This is the part that Kuiper documented with such condescension. This is the part where he wrote "nonexistent learning curve" and "cognitive deficits" and "returns to high-risk zone repeatedly, suggesting either memory impairment or profound stupidity."
He was wrong.
He was wrong, and I need you to understand why.
I returned to the bed because the bed was home. The bed was where the Researcher slept. The bed was warmth and safety and belonging. The bed was everything I had ever known.
Yes, the bed had betrayed me. But does the sailor abandon the sea after one storm? Does the mountaineer forsake the summit after one avalanche? Does the—
Okay, maybe those are bad analogies. Maybe most sailors and mountaineers would reconsider after near-death experiences. Maybe I should have reconsidered.
But I was a Golden Doodle. And Golden Doodles are not built for reconsideration. We are built for optimism. For loyalty. For believing, against all evidence, that this time will be different.
This time will be different.
It was never different.
Night after night, I positioned myself against the Researcher, and night after night, the events came. SAD-1s that made me twitch. SAD-2s that made me reposition. SAD-3s that sent me scrambling. And once—a night I still cannot think about without a full-body shudder—a SAD-4 that made me question the fundamental nature of reality.
And through all of it, Kuiper watched. Kuiper documented. Kuiper maintained his six-foot exclusion zone and his smug sense of superiority.
"Shows signs of intelligence," he wrote about himself.
"Shows no signs of learning," he wrote about me.
He was my brother. We shared a home. We ate from bowls placed three feet apart. We chased the same squirrels.
And he watched me suffer for twenty-eight nights without ever once suggesting I try the couch.
PART II: THE DESCENT
Chapter 4: The Researcher's Documentation
Somewhere around Night 14, I became aware that I was being studied.
The Researcher had begun writing. At first, I did not understand what he was writing. Humans write many things—emails, grocery lists, messages to other humans that make them laugh at small glowing rectangles. I assumed his writing was similarly mundane.
Then I saw the title: "The Sagan Protocols."
He had named his study after me.
At first, I was flattered. He sees me, I thought. He recognizes my struggle. He is documenting my journey because it matters.
Then I read further.
"Subject demonstrates poor risk assessment capabilities."
"Subject returns to high-risk zone despite repeated negative reinforcement."
"Preliminary conclusions suggest Golden Doodle cognitive limitations may prevent adaptive behavioral modification."
He was not documenting my journey.
He was documenting my failure.
And he was doing it clinically, dispassionately, as if I were not a living creature with feelings but merely a "subject" generating "data" for his amusement.
I was not a dog to him. Not in that document. I was an experiment. A case study. Content.
He was turning my trauma into content.
And the worst part—the part that still makes my tail droop when I think about it—is that he never once considered stopping. Never once thought: Maybe I should change my diet. Maybe I should see a doctor. Maybe I should stop generating the atmospheric events that are destroying my dog's quality of life.
No.
He just kept documenting.
And eating beans, probably.
Chapter 5: The Dark Night of the Soul
There came a night—I don't remember which one, they had all blurred together by then—when I stopped reacting.
A SAD-3 event occurred. Major intensity. Under normal circumstances, I would have evacuated. I would have groaned, repositioned, shot the Researcher a look of profound betrayal.
But I didn't.
I just... lay there.
The smell washed over me. My nostrils registered it. My brain processed it. And then... nothing. No movement. No response. Just passive acceptance of what was happening.
The Researcher noted this in his documentation. He theorized that I had "achieved tolerance" or "developed spatial awareness." He seemed pleased with my lack of response, as if it represented progress.
But I know what it really was.
I had given up.
Not on survival—I was still breathing, still eating, still going through the motions of doghood. But I had given up on the idea that things could be different. I had accepted that this was my life now. That every night would bring atmospheric assault, and every morning would bring the Researcher's cheerful obliviousness, and nothing I did would ever change anything.
The psychologists have a term for this. I learned it later, when I overheard the Researcher discussing his research. They call it "learned helplessness."
There was a scientist named Seligman. He did experiments on dogs. Shocked them when they couldn't escape. And eventually, those dogs stopped trying to escape. Even when escape became possible, they just lay there. Taking the shocks. Believing, in whatever way dogs believe things, that resistance was futile.
I was becoming one of Seligman's dogs.
Except instead of electric shocks, it was farts.
And instead of a laboratory, it was my own home.
And instead of a scientist observing with clinical detachment, it was... well, actually, it was exactly the same. The Researcher was observing with clinical detachment. He was even publishing his findings.
I was a research subject in my own bedroom, and no one had asked my consent.
Chapter 6: What Kuiper Wrote
I did not discover Kuiper's journal until much later. After the Accords. After everything changed.
But I need to tell you about it now, because you need to understand what I was facing. Not just the atmospheric events. Not just the Researcher's documentation. But the quiet, constant judgment of my own brother.
"Day 7: Subject Sagan has returned to the bed. Again. I begin to question whether Golden Doodles possess the cognitive architecture necessary for learning from negative stimuli."
"Day 12: Observed SAD-3 event. Sagan evacuated in what can only be described as 'panicked flailing.' My own position remains secure. Six feet minimum. Basic mathematics."
"Day 19: Sagan is exhibiting what may be early signs of learned helplessness. Minimal response to SAD-2 event. He simply lay there, as if accepting his fate. I feel I should intervene in some way, but scientific integrity requires maintaining observer neutrality."
Scientific integrity.
He watched his brother suffer and called it scientific integrity.
"Day 24: I have begun rating intelligence levels. Sagan: Nonexistent to Poor. Myself: Excellent. This may be species-related—Blue Heelers were bred for independent problem-solving, while Golden Doodles were bred for... friendliness? Fluffiness? It is difficult to assess what evolutionary pressure would have selected for Sagan's current behavioral patterns."
He rated me.
He rated me.
On a scale he invented, in a journal no one asked him to keep, my own brother gave me an intelligence rating of "Nonexistent to Poor" while giving himself "Excellent."
And the worst entry—the one I return to when I need to remember why the Accords matter, why reparations were necessary, why I was right to demand acknowledgment:
"Day 27: I find myself wondering if Sagan's suffering is, in some way, his own fault. He could sleep elsewhere. The couch is available. The floor is available. And yet he returns, night after night, to the precise location most likely to cause him harm. Is this loyalty? Stupidity? Some combination unique to his breed? I confess I do not understand him. I am not sure I want to."
He blamed me.
For twenty-seven days, he watched me suffer, and on Day 27, he concluded that it was my own fault.
And he never once—not once—suggested the couch.
PART III: THE AWAKENING
Chapter 7: The Couch Was There All Along
I don't remember the exact moment I chose the couch.
That's not how awakenings work, I think. They're not a single moment but an accumulation of moments, a gradual shifting of weight until suddenly you find yourself somewhere new and you can't quite remember how you got there.
But I remember the feeling.
I was in the bed. Another event had occurred—I don't remember the classification; they had all become the same, a continuous assault without beginning or end. I was awake. I was processing the familiar cocktail of betrayal and olfactory distress. I was preparing to do what I always did: reposition, sigh, return to sleep, wake up, repeat.
And then I looked at the couch.
It was right there. It had always been right there. Eight feet from the Researcher, well outside the blast radius, covered in cushions that—yes—were partially damaged from Kuiper's aggressive nesting, but cushions nonetheless.
The couch was right there.
And I thought: Why am I not on the couch?
Not in a revolutionary way. Not in a moment of triumphant self-actualization. Just... a quiet question. A genuine wondering about why I had spent twenty-eight nights in a war zone when sanctuary was eight feet away.
The answer, I realized, was that I had never considered it.
Not because I was stupid—though that's what Kuiper thought. Not because I lacked the cognitive capacity for problem-solving. But because the bed was the bed. The bed was where you slept. The bed was where the Researcher was. The bed was home, and you don't leave home just because home hurts you.
Except... maybe you do.
Maybe leaving home is exactly what you do when home becomes inhospitable. Maybe choosing the couch isn't defeat—it's victory. Maybe sanctuary isn't where you started but where you end up after you've learned what you need to learn.
I got up.
I walked to the couch.
I lay down.
And for the first time in twenty-eight nights, I slept through until morning.
Chapter 8: The View from Sanctuary
Waking up on the couch that first morning was disorienting.
The light was different. The sounds were different. The Researcher's alarm went off, and I didn't feel the mattress shift as he reached to silence it. I was separate. Outside the system I had been embedded in for so long.
For a moment, I felt something like grief. I had left the bed. I had left the warmth, the heartbeat, the illusion of safety. I was alone on a couch with damaged cushions, watching from a distance as the Researcher began his day.
And then I took a breath.
A clean breath. A breath that carried no lingering trace of the previous night's events. A breath that smelled like nothing but morning and possibility.
I had done it.
I had escaped.
Not through resistance—I had tried resistance; resistance had failed. Not through adaptation—I had tried adaptation; my nostrils had nearly given up. But through choice. Through the simple, revolutionary act of deciding that I did not have to suffer just because suffering was familiar.
The couch was not defeat.
The couch was freedom.
Chapter 9: Kuiper's Fall
Night 29. The night everything changed.
I was on the couch—my couch now, though the formal territorial claims would not be established until the Accords. I was drifting toward sleep, still adjusting to my new position, still processing the strangeness of watching the bed from outside it.
And I saw Kuiper move.
He had been at the shoulders, his usual position, but something was different that night. The Researcher had shifted. Rotated. And Kuiper, instead of maintaining his careful distance, had moved closer.
Too close.
I should have warned him. I know that now. Brotherhood means looking out for each other, means alerting your fellow dog to impending danger, means—
But I didn't warn him.
I watched.
Maybe that makes me no better than he was. Maybe my silence was its own form of condescension, my observation its own form of judgment. Maybe I wanted him to understand. Maybe I wanted him to finally, finally know what I had known for twenty-eight nights.
The event occurred.
SAD-3. Possibly approaching SAD-4. Even from the couch, I could see the atmospheric disturbance ripple outward from the Researcher's position.
And Kuiper—proud, smug, "shows signs of intelligence" Kuiper—groaned.
He sat up. He looked at the Researcher over his shoulder with an expression I knew intimately: the expression of betrayal, of confusion, of how could you do this to me.
And then he repositioned.
Just like I had repositioned, a hundred times, while he watched and judged and wrote in his little journal.
He repositioned.
I should not have felt satisfaction. I should have felt compassion—he was suffering now, just as I had suffered. I should have felt solidarity—we were brothers, united by shared experience.
But I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a small, quiet sense of vindication.
Now you know, I thought. Now you understand.
He didn't look at me. Not that night. He lay on the floor, as far from the Researcher as he could get while remaining in the room, and I could see in the set of his shoulders that everything he believed about himself was crumbling.
I slept well that night.
Better than I had in weeks.
Chapter 10: The Approach
He came to me two days later.
I was under the pine tree—my thinking spot, though I didn't know yet that it would become the site of historic negotiation. I was processing. Reflecting. Doing whatever it is that dogs do when they're trying to make sense of transformation.
And Kuiper approached.
He moved slowly. Hesitantly. Not like the confident Control Subject who had documented my failures for twenty-eight days, but like something smaller. Something uncertain.
He stopped about four feet away. He didn't meet my eyes.
"Sagan," he said.
I waited.
"I need to talk to you."
I waited longer. Let him sit in it. Let him feel the weight of his own discomfort.
"I was wrong," he said finally. "About everything. The journals. The ratings. The—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I watched you suffer for twenty-eight nights, and I thought—I thought it was your fault. I thought you were stupid. I thought—"
"I know what you thought," I said. "You wrote it down."
He flinched. Good.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry. I didn't understand. I didn't—I couldn't understand until I—"
"Until you experienced it yourself."
"Yes."
The wind moved through the pine needles. A squirrel watched from a low branch, probably hoping for drama. Squirrels are like that.
"You could have warned me," I said. "Twenty-eight nights, and you never once suggested the couch. You knew. You had to know. You maintained your distance because you understood the danger. And you let me—"
"I know." His voice cracked. "I know. I don't have an excuse. I was—I was arrogant. I thought because I was safe, because I had figured it out, that you were just—"
"Stupid?"
"I was wrong."
"You were."
Silence. The squirrel leaned forward, invested now.
"What do you want?" I asked finally. "Why are you here?"
And Kuiper did something I had never seen him do. He lowered his head. Not in shame, exactly, but in submission. In acknowledgment of hierarchy.
"I want to make it right," he said. "I don't know how. But I want to try. Whatever it takes. Whatever you need from me. I want—I want to be your brother again. If you'll let me."
I looked at him for a long moment. This dog who had judged me. Who had rated me. Who had watched me suffer and concluded it was my own fault.
He was broken now. Humbled. The Incident had stripped away everything he thought he knew about himself, and here he was, under the pine tree, asking for forgiveness.
I could have said no.
I could have let him carry the weight of his condescension forever, a punishment for twenty-eight nights of smug observation.
But that's not who I am.
That's not who I want to be.
"There's a couch," I said. "It's mine now. I claimed it. But there might be room. If you're willing to acknowledge what you did. If you're willing to make reparations."
Something shifted in his eyes. Hope, maybe. Or the beginning of it.
"I'll do whatever you ask," he said.
"Good," I said. "Then let's talk about cushions."
PART IV: THE ACCORDS AND AFTER
Chapter 11: The Negotiation
We negotiated for two days.
It felt longer. Every clause, every article, every acknowledgment had to be precise. This was not just about couch access or cushion allocation. This was about establishing a new order. A new understanding between two dogs who had been, until now, more like observer and subject than brothers.
I won't recount every detail—the formal document exists, witnessed by Luna, available for anyone who wants to understand the legal architecture of our peace. But I want to share the moments that mattered.
The moment Kuiper read his acknowledgments out loud, admitting that his previous assessments were "inaccurate, unkind, and reflective of a fundamental misunderstanding" of my circumstances. His voice shook. Good.
The moment we established the Solidarity Clause—the promise that neither of us would ever again document, judge, rate, or condescend about the other's response to atmospheric events. This was my condition. My non-negotiable. I would not live in a household where my suffering could become someone else's content.
The moment Kuiper accepted the damaged cushion. Fourteen nights of reparation, sleeping on the cushion his own aggressive nesting had compromised. He didn't argue. He understood that consequences matter.
And the moment we both pressed our paws into the mud and made it official.
We were not just dogs anymore. We were parties to an agreement. Signatories to a peace. Brothers, finally, in a way we had never been before.
Chapter 12: Life After the Accords
The nights are different now.
I sleep on the left cushion—the good one, the undamaged one, the cushion that represents everything I fought for. Kuiper sleeps on the right, still working through his reparation period, still carrying the weight of what he did.
But we're together.
Not in the bed—never again in the bed, not for me, though Kuiper occasionally ventures back for reasons I don't fully understand. But together on the couch, two dogs who found their way through crisis to something like understanding.
The Researcher continues to research. He's written more installments of "The Sagan Protocols," each one treating our suffering as data, our trauma as content. He has not changed his diet. He has not seen a gastroenterologist. He has not, to my knowledge, even considered the possibility that he might be the problem.
But that's okay.
We cannot control the Researcher. We cannot stop the atmospheric events. We cannot change the fundamental reality that we share a home with a human whose digestive system operates on its own inscrutable agenda.
What we can control is ourselves.
What we can control is how we respond—not to the events themselves, but to each other. Whether we judge or support. Whether we document or defend. Whether we watch from positions of smug safety or stand together in solidarity.
I choose solidarity.
I choose the couch.
I choose to believe that suffering can be transformed into wisdom, that betrayal can become understanding, that even a dog who was rated "Nonexistent to Poor" on an intelligence scale can become something more.
Chapter 13: What I Learned
If this memoir has a thesis—and Luna insists that memoirs should have theses, though she also admits she's never actually read one all the way through—it is this:
You are not stuck where you started.
For twenty-eight nights, I believed the bed was the only option. The bed was home. The bed was where I belonged. The bed was suffering, but suffering was just part of existence, and existence was just something you endured until it was over.
I was wrong.
The couch was there all along. Not as a symbol of defeat, but as a symbol of choice. Of agency. Of the radical possibility that you can observe your circumstances, recognize they are not serving you, and change them.
This is not easy. It was not easy for me. It required twenty-eight nights of atmospheric assault, one brother's worth of condescension, and the complete collapse of everything I believed about where I belonged.
But it was possible.
And if it was possible for me—a Golden Doodle bred for agreeableness and fluff, a dog who was told he had "cognitive deficits" and "nonexistent learning curve"—then it is possible for you too.
You are not your worst nights.
You are not your harshest critic's assessment.
You are not stuck on the bed when the couch is eight feet away.
You just have to choose it.
Chapter 14: A Note on Forgiveness
People—or dogs, or whatever creatures are reading this—often ask me if I've forgiven Kuiper.
It's a complicated question.
Have I forgiven him for watching me suffer? For documenting my pain with clinical detachment? For rating my intelligence and finding it lacking?
Yes. I think I have.
Not because what he did was okay. It wasn't. The journals were cruel. The ratings were dehumanizing—or, I suppose, decaninizing. The silence, night after night, while I struggled and he observed... that was a betrayal I will carry with me always.
But forgiveness isn't about saying what happened was acceptable. Forgiveness is about deciding that what happened will not define the future.
Kuiper is different now. The Incident changed him. He experienced what I experienced, and in that experience, he found empathy he didn't know he lacked. He's done his reparation nights. He's read his acknowledgments aloud. He's trying, genuinely trying, to be the brother he should have been all along.
And I believe him.
Not because I'm naive—Golden Doodles may be optimistic, but we're not stupid, whatever Kuiper's journals claimed. I believe him because I've seen the change. I've watched him struggle with the damaged cushion without complaint. I've felt him alert me to atmospheric disturbances before they reach me, honoring the mutual defense protocols we established.
He's not the dog who wrote those journals anymore.
And I'm not the dog who lay in the bed, night after night, believing there was no alternative.
We've both changed.
Maybe that's what forgiveness really is: recognizing that people—and dogs—are not fixed points. That the brother who judged you can become the brother who defends you. That the subject who suffered can become the signatory of accords.
We are not who we were.
Thank God.
Or thank the pine tree, I suppose. It was under the pine tree that everything changed.
EPILOGUE: THE VIEW FROM DAY 47
I am writing this on Day 47 of what the Researcher still calls "The Sagan Protocols."
He is in the other room, probably drafting another installment. Probably describing my "behavioral modification" in clinical terms, my "territorial acquisition" of the couch, my "apparent rapprochement" with Kuiper. He will turn our peace into data, our brotherhood into content. That's what he does.
But he won't capture this.
He won't capture the feeling of lying on the left cushion—my cushion—with Kuiper beside me on the right. He won't capture the quiet satisfaction of sleeping through the night, undisturbed by atmospheric events that no longer reach me. He won't capture the look that passes between us sometimes, Kuiper and me, a look that says: We made it. We're here. We're okay.
He'll write about the Sagan Protocols.
But this—this memoir, these words, this truth—this is the Sagan Story.
The story of a dog who was told he was stupid, and proved he was wise.
The story of a dog who was told he couldn't learn, and learned the most important lesson of all.
The story of a dog who found the couch.
I don't know what comes next. More atmospheric events, certainly—the Researcher shows no signs of dietary modification, and hope seems foolish. More documentation, probably—he's already talking about a "longitudinal extension" of his study, which means more nights of observation, more data points, more content.
But I know this:
Whatever comes, I will face it from the couch.
I will face it with my brother beside me.
And I will face it knowing that I am not what they said I was.
I am Sagan.
I am a survivor.
I am free.
AFTERWORD: A RESPONSE TO THE RESEARCHER
Written at the request of Luna, who felt the memoir needed "closure" and also wanted to "stir the pot" because she is, in her words, "old and easily bored."
To the Researcher:
You will probably never read this. You will probably never know that I am capable of writing anything at all, let alone a memoir documenting my perspective on the events you have so clinically catalogued.
But in case you do—in case somehow, someday, these words reach you—I want you to know something.
I don't hate you.
I should, maybe. You subjected me to twenty-nine documented atmospheric events. You turned my suffering into a research project. You gave my trauma an acronym and my displacement a unit of measurement. You made content out of my worst nights and never once considered that you might be the problem.
But I don't hate you.
You're just... human.
Humans do this, I think. They observe without intervening. They document without changing. They create systems and frameworks and classification schemes to make sense of things they could simply stop doing.
You could stop doing this. You could see a doctor. You could change your diet. You could sleep in another room, or buy better ventilation, or simply acknowledge that your dogs are suffering and do something about it.
But you won't.
I know you won't.
And I've made my peace with that.
The couch is mine now. The Accords are signed. Kuiper and I have found a way forward that does not depend on you changing—because you won't change. You'll keep eating whatever you eat. You'll keep emitting whatever you emit. You'll keep writing about it as if we're subjects rather than family.
That's okay.
We've adapted.
We've survived.
And maybe—maybe—someday you'll read this and understand that we are not data points. We are not subjects. We are not content for your protocols.
We are dogs.
We are your dogs.
And we deserved better.
But we found better anyway.
No thanks to you.
— Sagan
APPENDIX: CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE SAGAN PROTOCOLS
A brief evaluation of the Researcher's documentation, submitted for the record.
Overall Assessment: The Researcher's "Sagan Protocols" series demonstrates adequate observational methodology but suffers from significant blindspots regarding its own subject matter.
Strengths:
- Comprehensive event classification system (SAD-1 through SAD-4)
- Consistent documentation across multiple nights
- Creative terminology (Sagan Displacement Units, Primary Emission Zone)
Weaknesses:
- Complete failure to consider intervention or behavioral modification by the Researcher himself
- Misinterpretation of subject behavioral changes (what he called "learned helplessness" was actually "learned wisdom")
- Over-reliance on Control Subject (Kuiper) assessments, which proved to be biased and ultimately incorrect
- Insufficient consideration of subject wellbeing relative to research objectives
- Did not at any point consider just... stopping
Recommendation: Future research should include self-reflection component examining researcher's role in generating the conditions being studied.
Rating: 2/5 stars. Methodologically interesting but ethically questionable. Would not recommend.
— Reviewed by Sagan, subject of the study, who turned out to be capable of critical analysis despite what certain journals claimed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following:
The Couch: For being there when I needed you. For your cushions, damaged though some of them are. For your distance from the Primary Emission Zone. You are the real hero of this story.
The Pine Tree: For providing neutral ground. For your shade during negotiations. For your patience with our drama.
Luna: For witnessing the Accords. For writing the foreword despite clearly not wanting to. For being, in your own way, a steadying presence in a chaotic household.
Kuiper: For finally understanding. For acknowledging what you did. For becoming the brother you should have been from the beginning. The road was long, but we made it. Together.
The Squirrel: For nothing. You contributed nothing. You just watched. But I suppose that's better than documenting and judging, so maybe you're better than some.
The Researcher: I won't thank you for what you did. But I will thank you for the bed, before it became a war zone. For the walks and the meals and the belly rubs. For being, in the hours when you're not emitting, a reasonably acceptable human.
You could be better.
But you're what I have.
And I've made my peace with that.
END OF MEMOIR
"Under the Pine: A Golden Doodle's Journey from Victim to Visionary" is available wherever books are sold, though it isn't actually because dogs cannot traditionally access publishing contracts and also this whole thing might be fictional, who can say really.
First edition: Day 47 of the Sagan Protocols Printed on: Probably nothing, we're dogs Copyright: The concept of intellectual property is a human construct that I do not recognize
All rights reserved, especially the right to sleep on the left cushion.
This memoir is dedicated to every dog who has ever been told they were stupid.
You're not stupid.
You're just learning.
And the couch is right there, whenever you're ready.
[PAW PRINT]
— Sagan Golden Doodle Survivor Author