Animal Insting

So here goes. This is the true story of my life. I was born as a puppy someplace not too far from Jefferson City, which is the capital of the whole state of Missouri. Maybe this means I am special somehow, but probably not.

I don't really remember my mother, and I never met my father. One or the other of them must have had some whippet genes, though, because people say I look a little bit like a whippet. Also maybe I have some German shepherd blood, and also some terrier. I know that's not much of a pedigree, but it's the most I can tell you, given the circumstances of my birth. A few people have been kind enough to say that I have a nice face. It has some brindle markings, which swirl around in sort of an interesting way. I also have brindle legs. The rest of me is pretty much a boring black color.

On my back, I have this scar that starts at my neck and goes about 3/4 of the way down to my tail. I got the scar when I was very young, and I can't remember much about how I got it. All I remember for sure is that it hurt a lot. After I got injured, I ended up in the city pound, where they would have probably put me to sleep. But then I got rescued by some nice ladies from a shelter called Calloway Hills. It wasn't a fancy place, but they took care of me there, and I eventually got all healed up. Oh, and I forgot to mention that my tail got broken, so it has a funny kink in it.

One of the nice ladies at Calloway Hills thought I was an especially pathetic-looking pup, so she wanted to give me a heroic name. She named me "Mel" because there was this actor named Mel Gibson who was in a movie called "Braveheart." In this movie, he played the part of a very brave Scottish leader who wore a skirt called a kilt. Thankfully, I have never been asked to wear a kilt, not even as a Halloween costume!

At the time I got injured and then rescued from the pound, I was maybe 5 months old. My rescuers thought I had been hit by a car, which might be what happened. Like I said, I can't really remember. Another theory is that I got burned somehow or that someone put some kind of flea killer stuff on me and it hurt my skin. Once the hair grew back, you couldn't really see the scar too much, except in a few places. Mom likes to tell people that we use the "comb-over effect" to hide it.

Well, I hope I'm not boring you too much so far. I will try to tell the rest of the story pretty quickly, so that you can go on and do more important things!

What happened at the Calloway Hills shelter was that I got adopted by a nice family with some children. It was fun playing with the children, and I used to play-bite them, just like I used to play-bite my littermates when we were playing. I was only a puppy, so I didn't know then that people don't like it when a dog gets all mouthy like that. The fact is that humans have very sensitive skin, without enough hair to protect it properly. So that's why dogs have to be careful with their teeth around people. But as I said, I didn't know this at the time.

My mom -- the one I had back then -- told the kids that whenever I started getting nippy, they should give me treats to distract me from chewing on them. Well, I really liked that! It seemed to me that I was getting a nice reward for my behavior, and I started doing it more often so that I could get more treats. But this made my people unhappy, and they ended up taking me back to the shelter.

So there I was at Calloway Hills again, and I lived there for more than a year before Mom -- the mom I have now -- found me on Petfinder and decided to adopt me. The reason Mom found me was that she was looking for a whippet or whippet mix to adopt. She thought a whippet would be a nice, mellow dog who would get along with her two basenjis, Gabe and Trixie. I was a whippet mix named Mel, and what could be mellower than that?

When I first got adopted, I was very thin. I only weighed 24 pounds at that time, although I weigh 30 pounds now. The reason I was so thin was that I was afraid to eat. At the shelter, I shared my run with two other dogs, and although our food was always available, I was afraid that one of the other dogs might attack me if I tried to eat it. I didn't want to have to fight for my food because I hate dog fights, and I will avoid them in any way I can. The nice ladies at the shelter sometimes took me in the office and gave me canned food to try to make me fatter, so that helped a little.

Anyway, when I first came home with Mom and Gabe and Trixie, I would just eat a mouthful or two of food, and then I would run away from my dish. So Mom started feeding me in another room with the door closed so that nobody could bother me. Then I got brave enough to eat all the food in my dish. Mom kept the name Mel for me because she thought it was a cute name, even though she doesn't think much of Mel Gibson. She said that Mel could just be my own personal name and not one I got from somebody else. I liked that idea!

Well, that's the dull story of my early life and how I came to live here with Mom. If you haven't got bored and are still reading, then I would like to say that you are a very kind person. Writing this blog entry was actually more fun than I thought it would be, so maybe Piper will let me do it again sometime.