The Dog Soldier Trilogy is a collection of two books.

The first one was written second. The second book was written first. There will be a third book written about what gets done with the money made from the sale of the first two books. That, of course, means that folks will have to buy the first two books in order for the third one to ever come about.

The Dog Soldier Trilogy is about many things, but is presented as the story of a single human being. It would also be reasonable to say that it’s about all human beings. Most of us could easily relate to the main character. Many of the mistakes made by humanity as a species have been made, one at a time, by our individual hero.

He’s been busy.

If blunders were feathers our boy would have wings. He seems to constantly bounce between extremes of disaster and bliss that rarely rest in stability.

It is also true, to give credit where credit is due, that our protagonist occasionally embodies bits of what makes human beings worth the trouble it often is to deal with them.

These books read very much like novels. Many folks who have read them think that they are fiction or fantasy. They are not. Most of what you will read is entirely true. Folks who were my hosts on the road related some of the stories to me. I’m a pretty good judge of bullshit by now. If a person’s story appears at all within these pages, it means that I’d bet money on it being fact.

Some of the facts within these books may be jumbled. Very few bits have been made up altogether. Many particular details have been recalled by a memory that is suspect. It will take only a few more pages of your reading to understand why the author’s memory is suspect.

Most of what happens in real life doesn’t leave documented proof in its wake. These books are real life.

A few names have been changed to protect the privacy of my friends. Some more have been changed for my own protection, legal and otherwise. Very few names have been changed to protect the innocent. Very few people are actually innocent, especially in this first book.

The second book will be a different story. It is also a factual account, but involves more folks who could truthfully be called innocent. Our protagonist, who wasn’t studying Buddhism (certainly not in any traditional sense), drafted most of Book 2 while residing in an Asian Temple.

The experiences described in The Dog Soldier Trilogy can be considered very creative nonfiction, but they are nonfiction nonetheless. I know this to be true because I am the main character.

* * *

Fearless Puppy on American Road is Book 1 of the trilogy. It is about a teenage drug dealer in Brooklyn, New York who runs away from home to hitchhike around America for 35 years or so. The reasons for my never learning to drive a car are well stated in the Foreword (I’ll Tell You Why). Whether never learning to drive was a brilliant life decision or illogical stupidity is debatable. That some very interesting things happened because of that decision is not.

The second book is titled Temple Dog Soldier. It is about my rescue and adoption by a Temple full of Monks and Nuns in Thailand. I stayed there for almost half a year. This happened after suffering, let’s say, a near fatal incident. Most of the book relays the experience of living in a high level atmosphere where no verbal communication is possible. I couldn’t speak the Thai language and no one there spoke English. Some very interesting things happen in this book as well.

The third book will be about what gets done with the money made from selling Books 1 and 2. That will be called Sharing the Bones or God/Dog/Kibble or something just as ridiculous.

Writing is fun for me. I hope this writing will also be fun for you to read—but The Dog Soldier Trilogy has a purpose to it besides recreation and entertainment.

Here it is.

* * *

There doesn’t seem to be any efficient political solution to the world’s problems. We can elect as many different Chief Bozos as we want to. We’ll still be living in a circus of suffering. As long as the thoughts, conversations, and media of humanity are focused on war, greed, drama, and problems instead of happiness, peace, and solutions, we will always be, as we say in Brooklyn, “in a world of shit.” The images of life on Earth presented to us by the media, which we unconsciously live by, keep most of us worried that we’re teetering on a planet that is dangerously out of control.

Actual horrors notwithstanding, life on Earth is actually a lot friendlier than we have been led to believe, and can be made friendlier still. Many of us regular folks have realized this and chosen to do something about it. We have assigned ourselves to the presentation of positive, truthful information to refute the overdose of negative information we’ve been depressed by, and also to repair its result. The idea is that if people are presented with consistently constructive and positive options, ideas, and attitudes, we’ll all become more consistently constructive and positive people.

Most folks have some very positive (albeit warped at times by stress and misinformation) tendencies. These tendencies need to be exercised more by each and every member of the general population.

We need as much reinforcement and support in doing this as we can get. We need more people who are professionals at this happy-and-helpful kind of thing—especially the ones who are so serious about it that they choose to completely dedicate their lives to making it happen.

In present day America we are blessed to have many such folks, and they are pretty blessed themselves. Many of our professionals-of-the-positive are doing well. Deepak Chopra’s sold a lot of books. Bernie Seigel, Iyanla van Zandt, Marianne Williamson, and many of our other brightest minds live in comfortable circumstances. Oprah seems to have a few bucks left over, even after the expense of all the wonderful activity that she performs. That’s great. These people deserve any prosperity that comes to them and more.

My point is that many of their equals in America, and more pronouncedly in other parts of the world, are not doing so well. There are a great deal of Native American, African, Asian, Australian, European, and other assorted wisdoms that are endangered. Those who are preserving these wisdoms within their small local cultures often don’t even have the resources for decent survival, much less the wherewithal to make what they know available to us. I’ve met some of these folks. Some live in very average American towns. Some live on the other side of the world. A lot of what they know could prove essential to all of us.

Asia provides a clear example. Over there, much of the positive counterpart to greed, brutality, and ignorance arrives through the compassion and loving kindness of a school of thought (it doesn’t require a religious interpretation, folks) known as Buddhism. It is the route most folks over there (and there are a lot of them) use to get back to their more humane side. When life gets harsh, if people get lost and foul, the Monks and Nuns are well equipped to direct those people to the road that leads them back to a sane manner of living. They have the training, dedication, and patience to help everyday folks find their individual peace, and thereby help the society at large to stay manageable, friendly, and happy. The Monks and Nuns are the professionals who remind people of the human decency within and their obligation to exercise it.

Many of these professionals of positive thought throughout Asia are lacking many of life’s basic necessities—including food, clothing, and shelter.

The resources and facilities do not exist for their numbers to expand in conjunction with modern humanity’s need for these people.

As a rule, Monks and Nuns don’t have paying jobs. Their survival is dependent upon the generosity and gratitude of a general population that isn’t much better off (if at all) than they are. The life of a Buddhist Monk or Nun is austere, even in the best of material circumstances. The training is very rigorous. They do without most of the things that you and I consider essential parts of daily life. They are involved in the singular most difficult effort on earth—deep meditation. This isn’t some la-la brained, half-assed, 1960s flashback type of effort. The type of meditation done by Monks and Nuns requires full time mental focus. Facilitating the elimination of suffering from all living creatures and developing the skillful means to do so is the goal of that focus.

Starvation and frostbite can break anyone’s concentration. Although the spiritual rewards of their training are thought to be unparalleled, the trials can seem too overbearing to endure. For some prospective beginners, they may seem too overbearing to attempt.

* * *

I’ve been lucky enough to see, first hand, the powerful effect that professionals-of-the-positive can have on individual lives. I’ve seen it in America, Asia, Mexico—actually, everywhere I’ve ever been.

Let’s crunch some numbers. (Again—Asia is just an example. The cost of preserving North/South American, African, Australian, European, and other assorted humans and wisdom may be slightly higher, but is certainly manageable.)

It takes one dollar a day to sponsor a Nun or Monk (food/clothing/shelter) in northern India, Mongolia, Nepal, etc. For that dollar, on any given day a Monk or Nun—by virtue of their extensive training, compassion, and dedication—may have an influence on anywhere from one to several million people. They do go on TV and make videos sometimes.

They might influence a child to do better in school. This could result in the benefit of that child, the child’s family, community, and possibly all of humanity as well. That child could grow up to invent the cure for cancer, or who knows what.

Stranger things have certainly happened.

A Monk or Nun could catch an adolescent girl at a crossroads in her life. They could influence her to become more like Mother Teresa and less like the crack whore down the street.

You may call investing a dollar a day to this process charitable. You may take (what is probably) a more realistic approach and call it functional or practical.

Whatever angle you take, most of us would agree that this is a well invested dollar.

These professionals-of-the-positive provide the general population an available daily dose of kindness and emotional intelligence. This dose counteracts the effects of whatever bullshit has pissed the members of that general population off that day, and often reaches further to assist with long-term problems. Irate people are reminded that they can be patient, compassionate, tolerant people. People on the edge remember that the world can be a friendly place, and that stepping on others in order to feel in control of their own circumstance may not be the best idea.

If people in any part of the world feel more happy than hostile, then people in every part of the world are safer and more comfortable. This pumps up the odds for a decrease of hostility and an increase in the amount of peaceful co-existence by humanity as a whole.

It seems that the information offered by these teachers of sanity spurs us everyday folks on to a state of mind more conducive to (what could be called) spiritual growth. Everyone benefits from having another good teacher around, especially when the subject of study is how to be a happier, healthier, and less hostile human being. Again—this spiritual growth is not some surface level, bullshit do-gooder, bumper sticker type figure of speech. The type of individual spiritual growth referred to here may well be the deciding factor in facilitating our survival as a species.

So, Book 3 will be about how we’re setting up perpetual funding operations to help support those who sacrifice everything to their motivation to help the rest of us. The base funding for this effort will be the money you and your friends spend buying Books 1 and 2. (I’ve been homeless with disabling arthritis and living on food stamps for five years. A very small percentage of the proceeds will go toward my personal survival. By now I’ve learned to live on very little, and to drop some “needs.”)

* * *

If you find Fearless Puppy on American Road enjoyable, please tell others about it. Maybe they’ll buy a book too. The funding from book sales will hopefully go a long way toward increasing the number of calming, helpful, enlightened, and sanity-oriented people professionals we have available to us.

I love and respect my fellow humans, but in at least one regard we’ve screwed up to an embarrassing proportion. We’re very late in providing support and sponsorship for emotional and spiritual intelligence.

For whatever reasons, we have historically put faith in the need for destructive-type knowledge. This misplaced faith has backfired, and our destructive-type knowledge is running us over.

Priorities need adjusting.

If more of the folks who are willing to dedicate their lives to the increase of such things as functional, practical happiness and general sanity get the opportunity to do so, it may be our best chance to jack up the level of the circus before the bozos blow it up.

It is, after all, our circus. For all we know, the Far Eastern theory of reincarnation notwithstanding, this may be the only circus we’ll ever get to attend. Doesn’t it make sense to support more competent ringmasters and management?

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