Chet The Dog : nation within

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November 19th, 2020 Posted 7:38 am

And now back to reader questions from Saturday. Carole Merrille writes: ‘How, when, & where (if you remember) did you come up with the phrase “The Nation Within”? I absolutely love that phrase & think it should be common, so common that everyone in every language uses it & all know what it means.’

Answer: The nation within the nation is how Bernie (the human detective in the canine-narrated Chet and Bernie series) describes the dog population of our country. The idea first comes up in Dog On It (first in the series, although they can be read in any order) in chapter 12: “That was one of Bernie’s ideas – we were a nation inside of a nation.” The phrase “the nation within” first appears in chapter 5 of book 2, Thereby Hangs A Tail. And now, Carole, for the disappointing part – it just popped into my head as I was typing away. But I suppose the knowledge that the US dog population was between 70 and 80 million was in the background somewhere.