Animal Insting

Houston is a town in Texas. It is in the south, so the weather is hot there. In this way, Houston is sort of like Africa. Sometimes Mom calls me her yellow rose of Texas, but this is stupid because I am not yellow and I do not smell like a rose. I know this because I have, once or twice, stopped to smell the roses. But even though I do not smell like a rose, I will just say that I have a pleasant, musky, sort of girlish smell about me, and that is better than smelling like a rose anyway.

So like I was saying, I was born in Houston. Mom thinks I might have lived in a puppy mill or with a BYB, which stands for Back Yard Breeder. Personally, I think that BYB should mean "Bring Your Basenji," and it should be attached to all party invitations. Ha! Wouldn't that be fun? But the point is that any girl has to keep some things secrets, so I'm not going to divulge much about my early life. Mom thinks that I maybe came from a BYB because I was not well socialized. Of course, she is welcome to think this, if she wants to, but I maintain that my social skills are good enough for all practical purposes.

Anyway, what happened is that my sister and I (and by "sister" I mean my littermate sister, not any make-believe sister) escaped from wherever it was that we were living. I cannot reveal how we escaped because that is classified information. I will just mention in passing that I have been known to climb a fence or two in my day or to wiggle through some tight spaces.

So there we were, my sis and I, running free in the streets of Houston! It was fun for a while, but it was also scary because there were lots of big, noisy trucks and buses. Also it was hard to find stuff to eat. Then some people named Animal Control caught us and put us in cages. After that, a nice lady came and got us. The nice lady rescues basenjis and hounds. She took us to the veterinarian for some special female surgery, and it turned out that my sister and I were both pregnant. After the surgery, we weren't pregnant anymore, and we didn't have to worry about boy dogs hanging around and humping us and then having to nurse puppies and stuff like that.

My sister had heartworms, but I didn't, so she had to get some kind of treatment that's expensive and takes a long time. Also you can't run around and act goofy while you get the treatment because otherwise you might get wormy blood clots and die. After a couple of months, I got adopted by Mom, who lives all the way up north in Missouri. She wanted a cute black-and-white basenji girl like me, so it was a perfect match.

Another nice lady was going from Houston to Kansas City, so she took me in her car and drove all day long, and it rained a lot, and then it got dark, but we finally arrived at a McDonald's where Mom was waiting for me. Also Gabe was in the car, but my other two new brothers stayed home.

When we got to the house, I met the other dogs, and we all snarked at each other some, but then we decided maybe we could be friends. We went out in the yard, and Mom expected me to potty, but it had been raining all day, and there was all this water standing around in the yard, so I didn't want to potty there. The date that all this happened was February 12, 2005. It was a very important day in my life, so that's why I remember it. They said I was two years old then, which might or might not be true. A lady never reveals her age, after all. Anyway, if their guess was right, I am six now, and I will be seven in November.

The next morning after I went to my new home, Mom let all of us dogs out in the back yard to go potty. She went out with us to make sure that I pottied. I started exploring the yard and I found a nice gap by the gate. I started going through the gap because I thought maybe if I went out that way, I could get back to Houston and to where I used to live. Mom thought that gap was too little for a dog to go through, even a basenji, but she was wrong! When I was going through the gap, Mom grabbed me by the tail! Then she grabbed my back legs and pulled them back into the yard. Then I was stuck because she couldn't get me the rest of the way back in. She couldn't open the gate to unstick me because the gate was locked and the key was in the house. And she couldn't let go of me because I would run back to Houston. It seemed like we stayed there most of the day, but I guess it wasn't really that long. Finally, Mom pulled me back through the gap, but it hurt and I was not happy about it. In the end, I forgave her, but at first I thought she was a mean and terrible mom, especially since she blocked the nice gap by the gate.

Now I am used to living in Missouri. It's not such a bad place, if you like heat, humidity, snow, and ice. The best part is that they have very tasty cicadas here!