He drapes his carcass on the backs of recliners and chairs and the couch for no good reason, as if anything else he does has a reason. Rudy is not a good cat imitator. Look at his face up there. You can tell his heart is just not in this thing. Yet he does it every day.

For nine years, he has chased cats and barked at them and run over at least one, hitting the scrapper like Brian Urlacher. Yet every time I turn around there is Rudy on the top of my old red recliner, almost purring.

Knowing Rudy’s personality and proclivities and snarly disposition towards any other animal with four legs, this strikes me as behavior three levels above odd, even for a dog who believes he can fly, climb trees, and make phone calls. Even the word ‘cat’ disturbs him. I once wrote C A T on a piece of paper and put it on the ground next to his water bowl and he growled at it for five minutes. I am not saying Rudy can read, but to punctuate his displeasure, he heisted a leg to it. Later, as a test, I wrote dog on a piece of paper and he walked over, sniffed it, then sat on it.

You hear me, Rudy? I am talking about you over here. Guess it is hard to hear much of anything when you’re all catted-up and licking your paws like Garfield on Valium.

“Could be he is just getting old.” says my wife.

Not likely. I found him practicing a meow the other day in front of the mirror. I swear. That is what it sounded like, a pathetic little lip-synced meeeeowww.

Rudy is smarter than a Congressman and twice as devious. He is trying to gain the cat’s trust. He has some plan in mind, I am sure. Since the cat looks in the window at least once a day, if not to torture Rudy, at least to flaunt his roaming-the-neighborhood freedom. Dogs have leash laws. Cats? Zip. They have full run of place. This injustice has always bothered Rudy.

Rudy is pretty sure the cat will buy this new act. In the past all the cat sees is Rudy’s tonsils flailing as Purina breath slams against the glass door. Now, what the cat sees is Rudy, leisurely perched on the back of a chair, bored and calm – like a cat. It is pathetic.

Right now, the cat is out there looking confused. Perhaps it is cynicism? Could be trust, but I doubt it. False hope is a sad thing to see, and it is hard to tell whose hope will be false first, Rudy or the cat. In the meantime, Rudy is snoring on the chair, with one eye open, waiting, grunting a wannabe purr under his breath: “Here, kitty, kitty.”

Recently it has come to my attention that one of Big River’s fellow tenants called us “circus people.” Granted, this comment was heard by one of our “circus” people while sitting in a restroom stall playing games on an iPhone, but that is usually where the truth comes out. Circus people. Really?

To be honest, our office does not look like a regular business; I will give them that concession. We have a surplus of glass and steel and concrete and rough-hewn timber and chairs made of leather and bark and giant stumps for table bases and a big boat hanging from the ceiling and more food than a Montana survival cult. There is probably beer in an ice chest over in the corner and several VCU Brand Center students hanging out and a few motorcycle parts greasing up the floor. Those Star Wars Light Sabers and all those left-wing-counter-culture-square-pegs-in-the-round-holes Apple devices do not help our misfit notoriety, to be sure, especially if you are a Microsoft drone who spends all day whacking your Dell. Nor does the open door policy to anyone looking to think differently or strangely or not at all debunk our circus train stature.

Fred is on the couch sometimes in the main conference room (we circus people call it “The Lodge”) with his shoes off, possibly sleeping, possibly solving a problem, possibly watching a basketball game. So what? Scott plays his guitar when the mood hits him. It is not like he is swinging on a trapeze from the ductwork. My wall does sort of look like the closet of a serial killer, and there is Noel’s homemade, cardboard periscope and Geoff’s huge fruit fly genus poster and Marcel’s severed Spock ear and Jimmy’s Phish paraphernalia and Dee’s bourbon-of-the-month stash and Kim’s Playboy magazines (those are for a client, I swear) and Margaret wearing sunglasses all day. Jeff has been known to remotely control people’s computers and Jan, while small, is not circus small by any means. We talk loudly sometimes. Okay, it could be considered screaming if you were out in the hall near our front door, but still, circus? I saw Water For Elephants. We’re not even close.

I walked down and looked at their offices the other day, the offices of the people who called us circus people. Standard equipment. Compared to their space and the untrained eye, perhaps ours looks a little like the circus, especially to a person sitting in a cube farm crunching numbers.

To give the devil his due, it could be the way we dress that has given us this P.T. Barnum-ish moniker. I don’t know about you, but I get up every morning, stand in my closet gazing at the stacks of sweatshirts and denim and wonder, “What would Bozo do?”

Seriously, I have never seen anyone at Big River wear giant polka dots. Well, there was that one time, but who am I to question what women wear when they leave home in a hurry? Normally we wear jeans, t-shirts, athletic shoes and, okay, maybe my checked bedroom slippers are a bit circusy, but there are a lot of clowns in business wearing suits too. Then there is Noel’s hat up there in that pic. I cannot defend that.

I think our circus rep probably happened in the elevator. We have done some strange things in there, all of them legal, however. We did not leave that big wad of gum in there no matter how many times we were accused.

The aforementioned restroom may have also sullied our honor, although the guys from the other company could compete with any pack of elephants or chimps in there. One guy left a half-eaten banana next to a toilet. One dumped his drink in the stall and tossed a few squares of paper into the massive puddle and ran. One laid his Subway sandwich on the sink while he was otherwise occupied. I found a spreadsheet in there on the floor next to a cookie with one bite taken out of it. These are just a few of the printable observations. Let us just say that in the restroom, the circus is losing this game 100-17. Yeah, I admit we scored 17. We have adhered some interesting verbiage to the walls in there. But usually it is just mildly offensive or insulting or juvenile. Look, we do ideas for a living. No company would ever want us to balance their books.

American business talks about innovation constantly – until it runs into creative people in a restroom or elevator. Then it scares them. If you go to any of those tech startups we all read about in the Wall Street Journal or Wired or Mashable or in the New York Times, you will see people wearing shorts and sandals and sleeping on the couch next to their dog. I used to bring my dog, Rudy, to work. Then one day he pooped right in the middle of the front door. I guess his business manners fall on the circus side of the corporate divide.

Sounds like Rudy may be visiting the office soon.

Social media is constantly changing and adding new sites. If you have an extra 3 minutes in your day, social media will find a way to use 4 of them. Now there is a way to measure your influence across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It is called Klout. Get it? Klout is as addictive as all the other digital places you can rub your fingers across. After all, it is all about your score. It’s social media as sports. I know people competiting with each other over Klout scores.

Rudy, our Jack Russell, has a Twitter page (@rudythejack) and a Facebook page (he does not give out info on this one). Klout has him pegged at 47, otherwise known as a “Specialist.” You can be a Thought Leader, Feeder, Socializer, Networker, etc. The moniker depends on the focus of your conversations. The highest number is 100. Rudy has a ways to go.

Rudy, being a dog, has no idea he even has a score with Klout or the credit bureaus or anyone else. I think he may know he is chasing Guy Kawasaki up there near the top, however. You would have to get IM’s from President Obama or pics from Congressman Weiner or retweets from Ashton Kutcher to hit the big numbers. Rudy just talks about dog stuff mostly.

Klout breaks it down for you. Being a specialist means: “You may not be a celebrity, but within your area of expertise your opinion is second to none.”

I’ve been on the receiving end of Rudy’s opinion. It is, indeed, second to none.

Klout goes on to say: “Your content is likely focused around a specific topic or industry with a focused, highly engaged audience.”

Truth.

Rudy’s focused audience of highly engaged dogs, cats, birds, horses and a turtle named Louie stay in touch with him constantly. I’ve seen the conversations. They are deep and involve all kinds of butt-sniffing, furniture-soiling, carpet-dumping, poop-eating, squirrel-chasing conversations. Rudy is a specialist in all of those areas – hence his title. It gets better.

Klout analyses Rudy’s engagement and influence with charts, graphs and probabilities. They are as cool as any PowerPoint presentations I have ever sat through, and better than most, to be honest. You would have to splurge for the paid LinkedIn to get info this solid.

One chart describes how Rudy’s “high-velocity content” will be acted on. Another indicates his ability to capture influencers, and yet another measures his true reach. It is safe to say the chipmunk in our backyard can attest to Rudy’s true reach without using a chart. He has Jack Russell teeth marks on his furry, little Alvin-ish ass.

Rudy’s current top 10 topics are (in order of influence):

1. Dogs  (makes sense)
2. #RVA   (where he lives, so that seems reasonable)
3. Blogging   (he seldom blogs, so this one is a bit hard to grasp)
4. Puppies   (yup, got it)
5. Cats   (Rudy hardly qualifies as a cat expert, but he does know a lot of cats, especially in the UK)
6. #UK   (see above)
7. Pets   (duh)
8. Furniture   (perhaps there are things I do not want to know about this one)
9. Television   (absolutely, he loves TV)
10. Investing  (see below)

Investing? What the hell? If Investing made Rudy’s top topics of influence, this may explain the economic crisis.

This story is just one of thousands in the lives of sick people every day. Beyond the pain, fear takes a deeper toll on people struggling with illness. And few drugs can treat such fear in patients with cancer or heart disease or other brand name medical conditions. But there is a cure – with four legs, a wagging tail and a wet nose.

In 2010 the Dogs on Call program visited more than 500 patients and staff at VCU’s massive medical center in downtown Richmond, Virginia. The dog therapy program provides something many humans cannot: total, absolute love. And that is a powerful thing to kids with cancer and adults suffering from diseases most of us hope we never have to deal with. Dogs regularly go into hospitals, nursing homes and retirement facilities across America to visit patients in dire situations. Truth is, they do a lot more than that.

From an article in the Richmond Times Dispatch: ”We can’t meet the demand,” said Sandy Barker, director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction. Ms Barker goes on to say: “One of the center’s missions is studying the relationships between humans and animals, and research has shown that dogs provide physiological and psychological benefits to patients. In short, they can help reduce a patient’s stress.”

One of the earliest stories of therapy dogs happened in World War II. During a combat mission in New Guinea, Corporal William Wynne found an abandoned Yorkshire Terrier he named Smoky. Smoky was adopted by the troops and even played parts in several dangerous missions for the Signal Corps. When Corporal Wynne went down with jungle disease, his buddies brought Smoky to the hospital to cheer up the sick soldier. Smoky cheered up the entire hospital. This miraculous cure did not go unnoticed by the commander, a Charles Mayo. Yes, that Mayo. By the 1970’s, Elaine Smith, a registered nurse, organized a formal therapy dog program after noticing the same thing Dr. Mayo saw: dogs helped people get well, cope and even overcome extreme disease

People who were afraid to face chemo and other treatments somehow find the strength and will to do it when a dog is by their side. Like many of you, I have some experience with canine therapy. His name is Rudy. I have written dozens of stories about our big-hearted little Jack Russell. When it comes to surgically removing stress and filling that wound with love, he is quite the skilled physician.

Religion and science teaches that humans are the most advanced life form on earth. I beg to differ.

Anyone with a deep knowledge of arcane and worthless information knows that David Hassellhoff was a big star in Germany in the late 1980’s. If you didn’t know that, then you probably have a life and don’t own a TV.

Why would Germans have a fondness for Mr. Hasselhoff? His looks? His acting? As hard as this may be to believe, it was his singing. This is why the Germans lost the big war.

I asked a friend of mine who moved here from Germany in the mid 1980’s to please try to explain such a thing to me. She put it in perspective in one sentence.

“The late ‘80’s: Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl, Challenger explosion, AIDS, Ice-T, Geraldo Rivera, Donky Kong – and The Hoff.”

I pondered her response as I looked at the numbers on my screen. My dog, Rudy – a Jack Russell with a Twitter page – has over 400 followers. An extraordinary number of them are from England. Why would that be? Is Rudy like the British Invasion in reverse? I mulled it over for a few minutes. My wife says he’s just a cool dog. But why is he so cool in England?

I called him over. He just stared at me. Did not move. I said, “treat,” and he trotted up, arched an eyebrow and grinned. Was that a little John Cleese I saw in his expression, Mick Jagger, perhaps, Margaret Thatcher, Prince William, Joe Cocker? All of the above?

Sitting on the floor, I examined Rudy, looking into his eyes, feeling his head, rubbing his ears; he seemed pretty American, even his mouth. He has great teeth. There is no British accent in his bark.

I read over some of his tweets. No sign of why a carpenter in Hastings or a woman in Keswick or a bulldog in Wolverhampton would follow a Jack Russell in Virginia. Then I did something I have not done in eight years, I dug out his papers. There on the page, I saw the beginnings of an explanation. Rudy’s father was a Jack named Sir Winston Churchill. I’ll be damn. The old boy has deeper ties to the old country than most people.

I did some browsing. Rudy’s heart pumps the blood of the extinct English White terrier. To Jack Russell people, this is well-trod ground, but if you’re considering befriending one, you may want to understand what you’re getting into.

About 1819, in his last year at Exeter College, Oxford, England, Parson John Russell began the process that would eventually create a Jack Russell. He was looking for specific qualities and genetically nailed them all and then some.

As the story goes, Parson Russell bought a small, white female terrier he named Trump from a milkman in Elsfield. He then began the arduous process of turning the “animal of his dreams” into a beast that would become a nightmare for generations who thought they were getting a normal dog. Jacks are renowned for their abilities to balance extreme intelligence and fearless, goofball aggressiveness with loyalty that borders on obsession.

In that respect, Rudy is the perfect vision of his founder back in jolly old England. And perhaps this is why so many Brits communicate with him every day as if he is a long lost cousin. He is.

Right now, he is sitting at our table watching the creamy foam of a Newcastle roil into a perfect head in a pub glass shipped to him by a man in Moss Side, Manchester. Come to think of it, sometimes, when he smiles, he looks a little like Ricky Gervais.

Rudy will never be invited to the Golden Globes.

Rudy, our Jack Russell, had a rough week. He spent a few days and nights in the I.C.U of the animal hospital. He went down hard while chasing squirrels, falling fifteen feet, smacking a big rock, catching him right in the gut. After much care and many dollars, he is slowly on the mend. We thought we would lose our best friend. He moped around the house. We moped with him. Then the bird showed up.

An injured Jack is a hard thing to witness, especially our Rudy. His bulletproof confidence got dented. Vets shaved his tummy and paws, he was subjected to humiliations beyond his ability to imagine, and just when he was down, animals tried to take over his joint. The bird was not the only one.

Squirrels, the very scum he took a fall chasing, covered the deck, cavalierly scrambling, chewing the house again, looking in the windows as if mocking Rudy while he was prostrate on the floor a hand sized purple splotch across his belly holding him down. It got worse.

The cat walked back and forth in front of the window, whisking his tail, taunting his old nemesis. Rudy watched, moaning now and then less from pain than disgust, from his nasty, pink chair (long story). But the bird was the cruelest insult of all.

Wings fluttered through the back door and up the stairs and into the bathroom. Rudy struggled to make it up the stairs in pursuit, grunting on each step. Exhausted at the top, he could hear the bird having its way with the curtains above the tub – the same tub he hates from eight years of baths.

Standing in abject defeat, watching the bird dip and weave, Rudy dropped his head and slipped under the bed, his face torn into a rictus of despair. In is mind, he knew he could fly and catch that bird. He knew it. But he had flown last week, far and hard enough to kill a lesser animal. And now he bore the wounds to discourage it. But he had survived through the skill of canine medicine and the love of his peeps. Now under the bed, Rudy listened as the bird was caught and the humiliation was complete.

The next day, Rudy stumbled onto the deck from which he had fallen only a week before and gathered himself into a ball of bruised pain and Jack Russell determination and uncorked a bark into the sky that was clear and easily interpreted by cat, dog, human, bird or squirrel.

“I will be back!”

It’s a rare thing. Of course it should be. Drinking something that fell out of a cat’s butt would be rare beyond ever happening at my house. When something has passes through an animal’s digestive tract it needs to be called fertilize, not caffe latte.

Why just the civet’s droppings? Why not a Doberman’s droppings? Load that bad boy up on some green coffee beans and wait for the cash to start dropping. How different can a civet’s colon be than a Golden Reteriver? Or a Bobcat? Hell, I could quit my job if I could convince Rudy to scarf down a pound of so a day of beanery. I would be happy to follow him around with a plastic glove for $227 a pound.

Even better, I have a cousin who weighs about 400 pounds. This guy could easily put down ten pounds of beans a day, no prob. He would be a one-man gourmet coffee crap factory. Just set up ESPN on a nice screen, a recliner and bring on the beans. He’d take care of the manufacturing process while you wait. It’s a win win.

People all over the world are beginning to buy civets and do this full time. When you go to a nice restaurant and say, “This coffee tastes like crap,” there’s probably a good reason for it.

Rudy, our Jack Russell, has had to become the Bodie Miller of dogs just to make it down. It takes practice and talent to navigate the frozen treachery, even on four legs. Rudy has mastered 4/5ths of it.

A few minutes ago he skated out the back door across the deck and perched at the top of the steps. He squatted in preparation before launching himself down the bumpy incline. He grunted on each 90º drop as step after step thudded under his 18-pounds.

If dogs have knees, Rudy’s are shock absorbers. At the bottom of the stairs, he leaned into the hard snow, downhill racer-style, stretching his four legs far to his right as his head and body curved left into the white, slanted yard. He moon-walked in a canine crouch, the pads of his paws gliding over custard frost in a diagonal until he was at the bottom of the backyard fence. Rudy’s grace and athletic ability ended in a skidding, violent, flailing stop. He has hit the fence or caromed off the trunk of a tree several times this winter, ass upturned, legs akimbo, gripping desperately at air and bark with teeth and toenails.

Once at his destination, he moved methodically and sniffed the area before dropping a steaming poopcicle. As it landed, he ran from it as if an alien has escaped from his puckering rear. More slipping and sliding followed. It was tricky. There are previous frozen brown deposits around and he slalomed an ugly course to avoid his previous meals that are splayed like shotgun shells across the corner that he considers his toilet.

The long climb back up to the steps pained him, his snout grooved into a rictus of determination. John Krakauer could write a novel about Rudy’s 6-minute journey. To a dog, this is Everest.

At the bottom of the steps, he clawed his way up the slickest surface I have seen since Apolo Ohno beat those two Koreans the other night in speed skating. He also knows how the Koreans felt because four minutes earlier he had hit the fence like they had hit the wall in Vancouver. Finally on the deck, his ordeal ended and he struggled through the door, collapsing on the carpet next to the fireplace, licking his paw pads.

To reward him, I filled his bowl with food. He ignored me. He knew if he ate it, the horrid decent to Poo Corner would happen sooner than later. He closed his eyes. I think he is dreaming of July sun.

If we approach a particularly tacky yard filled with, not just lights, but mobile deer and inflatable scenes, he got all jazzed to the point of hyperventilating. Rudy loves inflatable yard decorations like he loves Newman’s Own gourmet doggy treats. And he can eat those until his little Jack Russell tummy imitated an exploding episode of Myth Busters.

The problem with Rudy’s ride through our neighborhood is, he never makes it through the entire trip without having to stop – and add his own decoration to the arrangements. This pattern of gift-dropping makes me wonder if it is the lights he loves, or his own contributions to the festivities. We have started carrying a pooper bagger thing with us on these jaunts.

There is no more foolish feeling in the world than standing in a man’s lit-up yard, waiting for your dog to fertilize a blow-up snow globe while other cars filled with families drive by with faces pinched in horror.

Rudy could care less. He’s on a mission to drop off the brown family and pee on as many decorations has his bladder can muster. Last night, it happened on a corner lot in the middle of a winter wonderland of bobbing reindeer and waving Santas.

A woman honked her horn at us. Kids toked up on hot chocolate laughed. People gave me dirty looks. Rudy calmly sniffed his way into the middle of a plastic navivity scene, peed on a wise man and pooped next to baby Jesus. This is a new low, even for him.

Hurriedly I scooped up the evidence and followed Rudy, trotting across tangles of extention cords in the yard. He jumped through the open car door like Bonnie and Clyde after looting a bank. I caught my foot in a bloom of plugs the size of a large crab and began to stumble. But I did not fall. I did, however, let go of the little bag. I am not sure where it went. I just jumped into the car and peeled shameful rubber.

On my way to work this morning, I had to drive by the house in the truth of daylight. The decorations were naked and disturbing in their unlit blatentness. The most disturbing thing was the little bag of poo hanging on the outstretched hand of a wireframed caroler. We won’t be passing that house again during the holidays.

Now Rudy can hardly go into the backyard and eat rabbit poo without inquiring canine minds wanting to know. He can’t even travel to the Deep South without dogs down there standing in the yard and watching his every move. How these dogs and cats have come to admire Rudy was a mystery to me – until I clicked on the history on my browser.

Several years ago, I wrote in these pages about him calling me on my cell. He’s become a social media hound since then. Rudy set up a LinkedIn page where he has a resume and brags about his triumphs and has garnered almost a hundred recommendations. He has a Facebook fan page with 12,908 fans. He Twitters his adventures. So far: 34,652 followers. He’s doing Posterous and Ning and Delicious and Flickr. It is the strangest thing. I didn’t even know he could type. Not only can he type, he texts and has jacked up a ridiculous bill.

This is what he has been doing in my office while we were asleep. He has been building his social network. Guy Kawasaki and Steve Rubel may be giving him advice for all I know.

When animals get loose on the Internet, it will be – well, actually, it will probably be a better place.