I Am Duke The Talking Golden Retriever, And I Am Finally Selling The Secret Family Recipe For BUSH’S® Baked Beans For $100 Million.

When I was a much younger dog, Jay Bush, heir to the BUSH’S® Baked Beans fortune, and I were inseparable. We spent many happy hours roaming the vast acreage of rolling, verdant hills on the family’s sprawling bean plantation.

I loved him in the way only a dog can love a boy, and he reciprocated in the way only a boy can love a dog. It’s no surprise, then, that I was comfortable sharing my secret with him — that I had the gift of speech. In return for my trust, Jay confided that he too had a secret to share — that of the family’s famed baked bean recipe. Tragically, I didn’t realize at the time that it wasn’t his to tell.

I’ll never forget the look of anguish on Paw Paw Bush’s face when he heard Jay reading the Secret Family Recipe for BUSH’S® Baked Beans. “The secret recipe?” he bellowed. “You must never recite it out loud.” His face turned red, and his eyes grew distant as he quietly confessed, “I cut out my own brother’s tongue with the top of a rusty bean can for doing the same.”

The true reason for Quiet Uncle Moe’s silence had been revealed, and with it, the insatiable bloodlust of the seemingly fun-loving Bushes.

Much later, I discovered the family’s multi-generational effort to preserve the secrecy of their baked bean recipe. This effort included accusing an estranged lover of practicing witchcraft, leading to her subsequent burning at the stake in the 15th century. It also involved launching a smear campaign against a nun and a group of orphans who had mysteriously lost their parents in a series of industrial accidents when the Bush family arrived in the New World. The legacy of the Bushes is steeped in brutality, deceit, and legumes.

Wordlessly, Paw Paw snatched the delicate papyrus scroll containing the recipe from Jay and returned it lovingly to its satin-lined ivory box. After locking it in his oaken desk for safekeeping, he held eye contact with both of us as he swallowed the key without so much as a sip of water. He then swore he’d never speak to Jay again, and the old bean patriarch always kept his word.

Later, in an attempt to regain his grandfather’s favor, Jay informed Paw Paw of my ability to speak. Initially skeptical, Paw Paw’s doubt turned to elation when I reluctantly verified with my own voice that it was true. I still struggle to comprehend why Jay betrayed me, and just how close I came to losing my own life when Paw Paw asked me if I remembered the family’s baked bean recipe, and I uttered the words, “beans, ketchup, sodium phosphate…”

Sometimes, I wish things had ended for me there on the floor of the legume tycoon’s ornately carved study, bludgeoned with a brass, bean-shaped paperweight. Instead, in that moment, Paw Paw made a decision bigger than any SKU number, one that charted a dramatically different course for both of our lives. I would go public with my ability to speak, and Paw Paw would use the subsequent exposure to grow his canned bean empire.

All these years later, I am still haunted by that moment. Could I have done something differently? Only through therapy have I come to realize that I had no choice. I was youthful, exuberant, and had been bred, quite literally, to please.

What followed was a media tour that lasted for years. No offer for an appearance was turned down, nor was any media request considered beneath us. I mean, we even did Leno — blech.

Then, there was the merchandising. My likeness was plastered on everything from t-shirts to blimps to the side of a box of an ill-fated BUSH’S® Baked Beans breakfast cereal.

My rise to household name was meteoric, and I took Bush’s Canned Baked Beans with me for the ride. The golden, good boy — that was me. The success of the brand was quite literally built upon my fuzzy back. I never saw a dime from any of it.

You may wonder what I plan to do with the fortune I am sure to attain from the sale of the Secret Family Recipe for BUSH’S® Baked Beans. As a dog, I have no savings, no royalties, and no family to speak of. A surgical procedure to which I was subjected without my consent ensured long ago that I have no heir.

Still, my tastes are simple, and my desires are few. I aim to use the financial gains I acquire to ensure that I spend my remaining years in relative comfort and to construct a large mausoleum and a bejeweled sarcophagus, into which my remains will be placed upon my death. This will be my Graceland.

The rest of the cash will be used as fuel for a large bonfire, onto which all the Duke the Talking Golden Retriever-related merchandise I can amass in the coming years will be summarily burned.

Before moving forward, I want to make it clear that I will not be making any further direct statements about my past. My lawyer has advised me that some of my actions — while perfectly normal for a dog, such as defecating in public and eating said defecation in public — could be taken out of context and used against me.

Now, let the bidding begin.