On werewolves and packs

Photo by Harlequeen, used under Creative Commons Licence

I find the concept of werewolves very interesting, although I read my fill of them some time back and they are more likely to make me put a book back on the shelf these days. I certainly don't plan to write a werewolf story to join the hundreds out there, but they still exercise my imagination when it comes down to social organisation. How much werewolf social structure would come from the animal, the pack and how much from human society with its complicated, messy dynamics?

It interests me because for quite a long time I had a three dog one bitch dog pack at home, not including us humans. We are down to two dogs now. I have seen three pack leaders, and for the sake of argument I am going to exclude the people. Yes I know The Old Git is technically alpha dog and I am alpha bitch, but I want to look at the relationships between them with as little of that human misunderstanding as possible. Looking at canine behaviour in a household gives me a picture of what it means to be pack leader.

One of my dogs was what I would describe as a true alpha. He was a mild-tempered border collie, lovely to live with, but the other dogs didn't cross him on food and you didn't threaten his family. I remember once we had a new arrival, a very traumatised young border collie, and out for a walk one day someone else's dog decided to go in on him. I never saw our alpha move, but as this dog came steaming in on the youngest, suddenly the alpha was there. The aggressor bounced off him and changed his mind about the attack and headed off in the other direction. Likewise, any rough and tumble at home and this dog was there, interfering and making it difficult to carry on.

And yet, I never saw that dog fight. He maintained everything through sheer presence. The others automatically deferred to him.

His two successors are what I would call wannabe alphas. They got the job because no better candidate was available. Huge difference, which showed as aggression. They wanted the job and they worried about keeping it. They exercised control over the lower dogs with an iron fist; they were bullies.

Did the pack benefit from it? No. The pack was more uptight and more likely to misbehave. There were frequent spats, and when one matured and became stronger than the other, the pack balanced on a knife edge until the older dog died because he would not relinquish control.

I also have a natural omega dog. You can see he doesn't want the responsibility of a high position, but that doesn't mean he will be bullied. When he arrived, the wannabe alpha of the time rushed in to bully him and omega dog saw him off with a full display of the pearly whites, and settled down to being just that. Nobody's whipping boy, just not the boss.

Back to werewolves, where the human factor comes into play. I have spent some time looking at the men in my office, and how they fit into their roles at the office (the women are much trickier, possibly because I am looking from the inside). I can see the natural alphas, the wannabe alphas, the oh-crap-how-did-I-end-up-alphas and the natural omegas.

That being the case, where the boys are concerned at least, I see a werewolf pack working much the same as a dog pack. A strong pack would be characterised by a mild natural alpha showing little overt control. Omegas in that pack would not necessarily be weak, more horrified at the prospect of taking responsibility. Where a pack didn't have a natural alpha, they would be more aggressive to each other and show more dysfunction in their ranks.

The girls, now that's a whole 'nother story.

Paw down time

A couple of weeks ago our dog numbers doubled overnight to four as we looked after some of our friend's dogs while they went to the States for a funeral. They were beautifully behaved, but I had forgotten the wading motion you use in the kitchen when you have four dogs milling around your feet. Not going back to four dogs again, no sirree.

What tickled me was the way that our two boys sat back and let the girl visitors take over their beds and special spots, such as next to my bed while I use my laptop. Youngest girl visitor welded herself to my side and my dog, Buzzy, just let her get on with it.

For a while.

After the first week, the boys decided that clearly the girls were permanent additions to the household, and things had to change. Suddenly, Buzzy was in the spot next to my bed even if he had to sit on youngest girl visitor to get there, and he reclaimed his bed. Youngest girl visitor whinged all night, but had to find somewhere else to sleep. The Old Git's dog, Buddy, decided he had to sleep in the bedroom when he's normally happy downstairs. The paw was put down. Hard.

The girls just went home. The boys are celebrating.

A year in Rosieland

There were high points and low points in Rosieland this year. Pictures feel like the way to go:

 


Goodnight Ted. We miss you.

Proud mother is proud.

Who says you can't make great friends on the internet?

13m drop + 41 year old mother = audible abject terror.

It snowed, and it snowed, and it snowed some more.

And finally, there was the labour of love and horror that morphed from a flash piece to a novel under the gentle whip hand of Hurricane Cathy. I didn't enter it in the competition in the end. Too many words in too short a time, and I wanted the time to polish it and make it as good as it can possibly be.      

58000 / 80000 words. 73% done!

2011 is the Year of Finish the Damn Book.

Gambling

... when the dog wants to play fetch with the water balloon bomb toy you're trying out for the first time.

Say it how it is

From The Boy this morning, after The Old Git left with our youngest dog surgically attached to him as usual:

"If Daddy went to heaven, Buddy would be flying after him shouting, 'Wait for me!'"

The end of winter

Picture from freefoto.com

It's spring. We have snowdrops and crocuses, and afternoon sunshine.

It seems strangely fitting that Teddy spent the coldest winter for decades sleeping on my bed and dining on pate, fresh liver and any other delicacies I could think of for him, then went to sleep on the first day of spring, after a gentle walk in the first true sunshine of the year and one more tub of ardennes pate.

He was my Winter King, and he left spring in his wake.

Goodnight Ted

Sleep well.

In a nutshell

Some moments sum up the family dogs in a nutshell.

It is morning. I go downstairs, open the stairgate and let the dogs out. As they come back in they assume their positions.

Teddy goes upstairs, greets The Boy and takes up his position on the stairs to guard the family.

Buddy goes upstairs and surgically attaches himself to The Old Git.

Buzz stays downstairs on his own to keep an eye on the breakfast toast crusts.

Reasons to be cheerful, 1-2-3

1. I'm going to America this June to meet some of my dearest friends, whom I happen to have never met before.
2. I just got paid for a story for the first time.
3. Best of all, I still have my dog. He's a fighter. Always has been, and he's not quitting now. Happy New Year, Teddy. Keep fighting.

A short hiatus

I have a very sick dog right now so I'm taking a bit of a break. Normal service will be resumed... sometime.

There's too much of him

The Boy and I are currently on our second re-read of the Winnie the Pooh stories by AA Milne. This works for me; it makes the bedtime story a laught a minute, and he's quite happy to carry on reading on his own until he feels sleepy.

Last night I read him the beginning of 'In which Tigger is unbounced' from The House at Pooh Corner.

One day, Rabbit and Piglet were sitting outside Pooh's front door listening to Rabbit, and Pooh was sitting with them. It was a drowsy summer afternoon, and the forest was full of gentle sounds, which all seemed to be saying to Pooh, "Don't listen to Rabbit, listen to me." So he got into a comfortable position for not listening to Rabbit, and from time to time he opened his eyes to say "Ah!" and then closed them again to say "True," and from time to time Rabbit said, "You see what I mean Piglet," very earnestly, and Piglet nodded earnestly t show that he did.


"In fact," said Rabbit, coming to the end of it at last, "Tigger's getting so Bouncy nowadays that it's time we taught him a lesson. Don't you thing so, Piglet?"


Piglet said that Tigger was very Bouncy, and that if they could think of a way of unbouncing him, it would be a Very Good Idea.


"Just what I feel," said Rabbit. "What do you say, Pooh?"


Pooh opened his eyes with a jerk and said, "Extremely."


"Extremely what?" asked Rabbit.


"What you were saying," said Pooh. "Undoubtably."


Piglet gave Pooh a stiffening sort of nudge, and Pooh, who felt more and more that he was somewhere else, got up slowly and began to look for himself.


"But how shall we do it?" asked Piglet. "What sort of a lesson Rabbit?"


"That's the point," said Rabbit.


The word 'lesson' came back to Pooh as one he had heard somewhere before.


"There's a thing called Twy-stymes;" he said. "Christopher Robin tried to teach it to me once, but it didn't."


"What didn't?" said Rabbit.


"Didn't what?" said Piglet.


Pooh shook his head.


"I don't know," he said. "It just didn't. What are we talking about?"


"Pooh," said Piglet reproachfully, "haven't you been listening to what Rabbit was saying?"


"I listened, but I had a small piece of fluff in my ear. Could you say it again, please, Rabbit?"


Rabbit never minded saying things again, so he asked where he should begin from; and why Pooh had said from the moment when the fluff got into his year, and Rabbit had asked when that was, and Pooh had said he didn't know because he hadn't heard properly. Piglet settled it all by saying that what they were trying to do was, they were just trying to think of a way to get the bounces out of Tigger, because however much you liked him, you couldn't deny it, he did bounce.


"Oh, I see," said Pooh.


"There's too much of him," said Rabbit, "that's what it comes to."


Pooh tried to think, and all he could think of was something which didn't help at all. So he hummed it very quietly to himself.


If Rabbit
Was bigger
And, fatter
And stronger,
Or bigger
Than Tigger,
If Tigger was smaller,
Then Tigger's bad habit
Of bouncing at Rabbit
Would matter
No longer,
If Rabbit was taller.

We read this part together and it suddenly hit me: This is our youngest dog in every way. Who knew? We actually have a Tigger under our roof, and his name is Buddy. I think the original Tigger must have been an unusually marked short-coat border collie. We rescued Buddy's original owners so we don't know anything about his family tree, but I'm willing to be that if you go back far enough there would be at least one ancestor with orange and black stripes.

You'll note that I say we rescued Buddy's owners. I don't consider our sweet bonehead of a Buddy to be a typical rescue dog like the others we have. When we went to see him, he was a good-natured, happy-go-lucky young dog without a scrap of trauma. No, it was his loving owners that had that 'bunny-in-headlights' look that accompanies the working dog trying and failing to be a pet.

I'd like to say that doing agility and going to work every day with The Old Git has helped, but in all honesty it has just honed his working instinct to a point like a laser. That is not the same as saying that he's had any success in agility competition. But he's trying.

Very trying.

We persevere.

Anyway, Winnie the Pooh. Every time I read the Winnie the Pooh stories I am saddened that they got the Disney treatment and were sanitised and babyfied. There is hardly a baby product out there that hasn't been merchandised with that familiar red jumper (which, incidentally, he doesn't wear in the original illustrations) and Winnie the Pooh is now seen by many children as something for babies, something they are too old for.

Having enjoyed the stories, we got on the Disney train and watched the cartoons, and they were too babyish and moralising to hold The Boy's attention.

But when we read the books, the sly humour of the stories comes out, and it's humour that a very young child wouldn't understand. The characters are occasionally pompous, and not above telling a lie to avoid looking bad. The jokes are dry. They are a delight, and at seven, The Boy is only just capable of getting them on his own. At six we had to point them out to him.

I am so glad we read the books before the cartoons had a chance to put The Boy off them. Winnie the Pooh is wasted on babies.

That time again

Photograph from freefoto.com
Tonight heralded the start of the fireworks season. I know this because I heard a bang and suddenly I had two terrified dogs jockeying for position on my lap while the laptop teetered on the edge. Now starts at least three weeks of random, unpredictable pops, bangs and screams. Unpredictable is the key word here. Fireworks that can be predicted can be pre-empted by tranquillisers or escape to firework free locations.

I can't keep a dog tranquillised every night for three weeks.

I suppose it could be worse. I now have only one dog with firework terror instead of two (the second is just visiting this weekend) and where I live now is a hundred times better than Harrow where I used to live. Back then I used to send one of my dogs away to stay with a friend in central London for the whole of firework season. I was scared that he would have a heart attack if he stayed, and because I was scared, he was even more scared.

I hate fireworks since I became a dog owner. When I ran a dog warden service, we regularly got calls at this time of year asking us to watch out for pets that had panicked and run and were still missing a day later. A friend's son losing an eye to a stray firework was the icing on the cake as far as I was concerned.

I think we should have a day for Diwali, a day for Guy Fawkes, a day for New Years Eve, and they should be organised displays with proper safety precautions. The rest of the year we should ban the bloody lot of them.

Oooh, shiny

So many new toys, so few computing skills.

This is my new home since I've decided that I've seen as much of those irresponsible 'magic bullet' diet ads as I can stomach on my livejournal. Time to take my flowery ramblings and literal shaggy dog stories to a place that doesn't promise dangerously fast weight loss and the miraculous return of lost youth. I plan to play with the features for a while before posting in earnest.

No doubt there will be random, nauseating changes in colour and continual tinkering with profiles, paragraphs and pictures until I get the hang of it.

And here I will stop, since the middle dog is giving me pleading looks that speak of starvation and neglect. It's all of four hours since he last ate, the poor waif.