Brownie Dogue

Many sunlit days and moonful nights have gone by and my pack-family has been home for all of it. Never in my life with them have they all been home together for so long.

I especially like that the boy and the girl—who are kind of like littermates—often forget to close their nesting room doors and leave treats out for me to find. I harvested a turkey sandwich from the table where the boy does what alpha female calls “school.” It was yummy. When he returned to find his sandwich gone, he just looked at me, hands on his hips. I guess he knew it wasn’t my fault he left it out right there, calling my name. “Brownie! Brownie! Come to the boy’s nest room! Hurry!” Actually, it called my nose. I should have written it that way. Everyone knows sandwiches can’t talk. But they sure smell good.

I like to lay at the top of the stairs where I can keep track of everyone in the house, including the cats. I can observe the street outside from there, too. I can’t tell you how many dogs dare to stroll past my house like it’s their territory. A sky’s worth of stars amount of dogs. There are a few I know personally, all Labradors. I bark hello at them. I haven’t visited with them for as long as my whole pack-family has been home, sun after moon after sun. I wonder if one has to do with the other.

Another thing I’ve noticed is no one comes inside our house anymore. They come to our sundrenched deck where I like to watch birds, but they all stay strangely separated, even when eating. My pack-family clustered on one end, the others on the other end, like they’re scared of each other. Even when they’re eating they stay apart. I like it when they eat. A tall one with tan fur brought pork roast to share with me one time, and his mate, smiling brown-furred one, shared some chicken with me. Wait—for humans it’s not fur. It’s…hair. They call it hair.

The alpha female has been taking me, the boy, and the girl to the big woods and deep creek a lot. I love to run around the woods. It smells different than our back yard. Wild. No neighborhood dogs. Sometimes I smell bear but not often. Usually it’s deer, squirrel, rabbit, raccoon, all those kinds of animals that are fun to chase. Except raccoons. The grandfather says raccoons will drown a dog. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m not taking any chances.  I’d rather hang out with opossums. They have more teeth than any other North American land mammal, but are such scaredy cats! Humans misjudge opossums. How can you not like a creature with a prehensile tail? It makes me sad sometimes.

Uh-oh. I heard alpha female tell the alpha male that my toenails are too long. She means my claws. I don’t like having them cut. I can’t explain it. It doesn’t really hurt, but it gives me the heebie-jeebies. This big metal clippy thing coming at me, the air full of tension. I’m going to the backyard to bark at interloping dogs.