My name is Stumps, and my mistress is rather a nice little girl; but she has her faults, like most people. I myself, as it happens, am wonderfully free from faults. Among my mistress's faults is what I may call a lack of dignity, joined to a desire to make other people undignified too.

You will hardly believe that, before I had belonged to her a month, she had made me learn to dance and to jump. I am a very respectable dachshund, of cobby build, and jumping is the very last exercise I should have taken to of my own accord. But when Miss Daisy said, "Now jump, Stumps; there's a darling!" and held out her little arms, I could not well refuse. For, after all, the child is my mistress.

I never could understand why the cat was not taught to dance . . .

That's the start to "Tinker," Nesbit's first Doggy Tale. Included in this tome of pets -- "Too Clever by Half," "The White Persian," "A Powerful Friend," "A Silly Question," "The Selfish Pussy," "Meddlesome Pussy," and "Nine Lives." Besides "Tinker," there are only five other tales about dogs, "Rats!," "The Tables Turned," "A Noble Dog," "The Dyer's Dog," and "The Vain Setter." No fair! We're dog people, ourselves. Less cats! More dogs!