Animal Insting

Every household where there are two dogs or more has to use the Greek alphabet to explain the pack order. I don't know why it is the Greek alphabet that gets used. There are other alphabets, like for instance the Hebrew alphabet. Also there is a Sanskrit alphabet that has really interesting squiggly letters in it. But we don't use those alphabets. We only use the Greek alphabet because that is what the canine law of Pack Order says to use.

In our house, here's the way the Greek alphabet goes:

Alpha Dog -- Barry

Beta Dog -- Gabe

Gamma Dog -- Piper (that's me!)

Omega Dog -- Mel

It's a good thing we only have to use four letters of the Greek alphabet because Mom can't remember the order of the other letters after gamma, even though she once had to memorize the Greek alphabet when she pledged a sorority in college.

Now I will tell you a little bit about my brothers. I am just doing this because Mom said it's rude to only talk about yourself all the time. So I chose my brothers to talk about. By the way, they all thought it was a really dumb idea to write a blog, but now that I am writing one and have lots of special followers, they have decided maybe it wasn't such a dumb idea after all. Ha! I showed them!

Well, anyway, I will start with Barry because he is the Alpha Dog. Mom says Barry looks like a "sawed-off German Shepherd." He is only a year older than me. I am 6 and he is 7. The way he came to our house is that Mom fostered him for the Humane Society and then she "foster failed." This means she ended up adopting him.

The way Barry got to the Humane Society was that when he was a little tiny puppy, someone brought in a box that had him and his two littermates in it and and left it on the counter. When the puppies got big enough to adopt, the other two got adopted, but Barry didn't. Then finally Mom adopted him. Barry has what is called "fear aggression," so he tries to bite people sometimes. Barry likes dogs, but he doesn't like people so much because people are scary, which is a view I agree with. But Barry really, really, really loves Mom. He follows her around the house all the time, and he lets her do anything to him, even give him a bath!

Gabe is my favorite brother because he is a basenji, like me. Gabe is an example of a red-and-white basenji. This is the most common color of basenji,

but I think black-and-white is the prettiest color. Anyway, Gabe is 11 years old. He is the oldest dog in the house. He thinks he is hot stuff because his basenji mom and dad were champion show dogs. Gabe was never a show dog, though. This is because if he was in a show, he would bite the judge and be disqualified. Gabe came from Oklahoma, which is farther south than Missouri, but not as far south as Texas. The dirt in Oklahoma is red. I know this because I have been to Oklahoma in person.

You might think that Mel would be the Delta Dog, not the Omega Dog, but he's not. This is

because Mel is so submissive that even if we had dogs to go with all the other letters of the Greek alphabet, Mel would still be the omega dog. Mel is 9 years old, so he is the second oldest dog. Mom found him on Petfinder and then drove halfway across Missouri to adopt him from a shelter. Mom wanted to adopt a whippet or whippet mix. Mel is supposed to be a whippet mix, but he doesn't really look too whippety, except if you look at his head in profile, it's sort of like a whippet's.

Well, now that I wrote about my brothers, I can go back to writing about myself! It's almost time for Supper of Dogs, though, so I have to hurry. My surgery is tomorrow, but I'm not too nervous about it. Mom once had a skin cancer thingy that was way bigger than mine, and the doctor cut it off of her and it never came back. So we hope the same thing will happen with my skin cancer. I just hate the idea of not getting any breakfast tomorrow. What fun is that?