(This month’s Networking Times editorial:)

We have a dog named Ben, although I sometimes think of him as Agent Smith because he so closely resembles a Secret Service agent in the way he shadows my wife, Ana. From room to room, household chore to teleconference, day or night—whatever task Ana is involved in, you will find Ben on the job, blending into the background, standing guard with unflagging vigilance.

Know how to spell devotion? D-o-g.

Wouldn’t dogs make great downlines? Once a dog has identified you as his leader, he’ll do anything you say. Got a new group volume target? Easy. Fetch, you say—and the whole downline dashes off across the field in dogged search of the stick you threw. Give a little acknowledgment, a little praise, a scratch behind the ears, and they’ll follow you anywhere.

Cats … not so much.

I grew up with a cat. She was devoted, too: would sleep on my bed, even lick my hair while I slept so that I would wake up spiky-haired, as if I’d time-traveled in my sleep and had precognitive 1961 visions of punk-rock hair styles. In this, she was somewhat doglike. But you could push her only so far.

Care for a cat and she will follow you, but only in the way of cats, which is to say, at a distance and on her own terms.

The truth of people is that they are neither dogs nor cats, but people. Still, Jung said we each embody both animus and anima. My observation: we also contain aniwoof and animeow.

Which brings us to leadership. . . .

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