I am dog. I am not much; simply a quadruped wrapped in fur with an uncanny ability to demonstrate absolute loyalty and unconditional love. For years I have been slowly training myself to articulate thoughts beneath the underdeveloped noses of my humans. They’re good humans, and they mean well. But even they have failed to describe what I’m tediously typing without opposable thumbs: why does the sun keep going away?

The first time it happened, I was hecking bamboozled. I was doing all the dog things, smelling all the smells, playing all the fetch. The smaller humans were giving me pats on the head and I had never felt like more of a good boy.

Suddenly, the Great Unfetchable Ball in the Sky began to sink and it was doing me a frighten, though the humans seemed not to be bothered by it. I tried panting instead of panic. On the inside, though, I was as jittery as a caffeinated chihuahua, and I have no idea what caffeine is.

This happened again, and again, and again. Each time, it would stop my tail from doing a wagging and turn my bark into a whimper. I would wait for that weird, smaller sun to come out and then give a great, big howl with all the other dogs, mourning the loss of the much brighter ball.

“I don’t understand; we’re all good boys here,” a bulldog named Jimmy once whined from the yard next to mine. “Why does this keep happening to us?”

So I wrote this to you, humans. We need answers. Our tongues may flop, and we may happily roll around in a patch of grass for no apparent reason, but these are just ways we cope with the coming scary darkness. I’ve tried asking you in person several times, but I’m still working on my accent. We need to know why the sun is going away, and we need to know how to stop it.