Hailey Died Yesterday

I spent most of the day yesterday back at the house, Jack and Sherry's. The other pets got word to me that Hailey was dying.

I am one of those rare weredogs who has a natural and strange affection for cats. Domestic house cats. I have no desire to get cozy with a tiger or lion, or even to mess with a cougar. But I always get tight with the cats with whom I share abodes. And Hailey was one special cat.

I let myself in and spent most of the day with Hailey. I knew the moment I smelled her that she was nearly done. She was down to 3 pounds, form her healthy weight of 10 pounds. She could barely move, had found a spot to die in the boys bathroom, on the floor, curled up on the damp towel dropped there that morning after a shower.

I sat by her most of the day, petting and touching her lightly. The other pets were nearby. Canines do this because for millions of years pack members kept guard for older or sick dying pack members, to keep predators at bay, so that they could die at their leisure, with some comfort and dignity.

 I put my nose to her and sniffed her a lot, knowing that after that I would never smell her again. I have a vast memory of smells from other my years, of those loved and less loved. Their faces always fade from my memory long before their scents.

I slipped out the back just as the boys were getting home from football practice. It would have been awkward for them to find me there. But part of me wanted that to happen.

I am thinking of going back, to live with Jack and Sherry and the boys. Stranger things have happened. They would just pass it off as another of those amazing dogs who travel amazing distances, or disappear and reappear, to regain their families.

Most of those dogs, by the way, are weredogs. Go figure.

Dogs and Bones

I got into the old argument the other night about whether dogs have suffered from civilizations, some say, "domestication." I got into it with a werewolf at a military reunion last week. Yes, werewolves do get into the military from time to time. Werewolves love the military in a combat AO. But they hate the military when in garrison. They are the worst peace-time and garrison troopers ever, always getting into trouble.

I told this guy that dogs are not wolves, that for one thing the diversity of dogs far out-spans that of wolves, in terms of size and color and numerous differences. Shepherds and huskies ad closer to the wolf archetype than the dachshund or chihuahua. But the difference between a chihuahua and a wolf is about the same as between Richard Simmons and a Special Forces operator.

This guy claimed that dogs cannot chew bones like a wolf. I told him that I have seen weredogs, in dog, were and human form, strip a bone and then make it disappear as if on-stage.

Vets say not to give dogs linear bones, like rib bones. One has to know the dog on that count, whether the dog is a fast eater, tends to eat too fast, and then is more likely to choke on bone fragments or to perforate some intestine. Flecka tended to eat too fast. Bella ate slow and methodical.

It's the same with people. Seems to me there are more poodle-people, chihuahua-people, and cocker-people these days. What would a cocker-spaniel do if you gave him or her an elk thigh bone? What would it do if let loose in the wild?

Dont get me wrong. I aint got a bone to chew here. But after spending last week with a bunch of old and young Special Forces guys, my perceptions of people is a little askew.

I told this werewolf that the real question is not who is softer from civilization, but "Who can fight?" He said, "How about arm wrestle?" I said OK.

In no time there was a crowd around our table. I'd drank about five beers. I hoped he'd had at least as many. He was about my size.

I beat him 2 out of 3. The wolves all howled in lament. Wolves howl over everything. They would have never stopped had there not been only 5 of them in there.

Later, as we all were leaving, that same werewolf leaned into me and said, with a grin, "I'll be wanting a rematch." I said, "You need to trim your claws. I know a good vet for that."

Stonehenge and Missing Links

During my recent travels I went through Britain, stayed with some weredogs I know there, have not seen in some time. Had some great beer and learned some things.

Weredogs and werewolves made Stonehenge and all the other megaliths. It's true. They all were constructed during a time when all weres were trying to come together. According to recent findings by werescientists this was at a time so long ago that the missing link weres were involved in the building.

We still do not know when dogs and weredogs split, or if it was earlier canines and weres that split, some earlier species of canine that split into weres and non-weres. That is why werescientists have been searching, for many years, for the missing link, that common ancestor that would tell us when dogs and weredogs, wolves and werewolves, first diverged, and if it was canines or werecanines who came first.

Gotta go. Patrol tonight.

Lona - New Pack Member

Caitlyn has a new friend and mentor - Lona. I am both glad of this and worried.

Lona joined the pack while I was gone, shortly before I returned. She is burned out from her time spent in doing covert and overt puppy mill rescues. She says she lost count how many she got out. The covert operations were easier, sneak in under cover of darkness, grab usually one, sometimes two, puppies and slip back out. Then do it again the next week. But the overt operations, involving the SPCA, law enforcement, sometimes the FDA, was usually a total mess.

She is in dog phase now, living with an old lady in Olathe.

Lona is one of the growing numbers of weredogs who are giving up the old rules and faiths and saying that we need to save man from himself, if that is even possible. For traditionalists, talk like that is treasonous, and very dangerous.

At the same time, more and more werewolves are adopting the ways of man, feeding their robust appetites and predatory natures within the cities and excesses of man.

But not all. Some werewolves still cleave to their old ways, to the werelore, to the belief that wild living is the best living, that wilderness feeds the soul and civilization corrupts it.

The only thing we all agree on is that the neos must be stopped, or they will destroy everything. If they are the next homo and canis manifestations, then we all, and the entire world, is doomed.

Lona, however, has good howl, as well as excellent rhetorical and hunting skills. I like her, in spite of the fact that she is giving Caitlyn a problematic education.