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Category Archives: Back in my Day…

Major the Elder Statesman tells stories of his life and adventures.

Paw Prince of Profissey

avatarPosted on November 27 by MajorOctober 12, 2012  

Boredom, up here on the hill in my cosy little grave, was relieved today by a visit from Cranberry the Bear.

“I miss you, Wolfydog,” he grunted amiably. “Not one single wolf on the whole dang mountain to converse with any more!”

“Shouldn’t you be turning in for a long winter’s nap soon?”

Cranberry didn’t seem happy. “The berries were the pits this year. The human beat me to the pears and plums—and she’s stopped eating meat since you’re gone! She has the world’s lousiest compost heap! What’s a skinny bear to do?”

“Skinny was never your middle name,” I informed him. “And don’t insult my adorable human.”

“Yeah, well, one night she apparently convinced a visitor to leave a cooler full of salmon and crab outside. That was kind. I told my missus to take the kids down there for a picnic. ’Course, the kids had terrible tummy-aches from that see-through stuff humans wrap their food in. I must’ve told their mom a hundred times to teach the kids patience—take that poisonous junk off the meat first. Does she listen to me? Me, the old survivor?”

I had to laugh. “Didn’t you get your share of fresh salmon this year? I heard everybody got stuffed—bears, dogs, cats, humans…. Sorry to miss the fun!”

Damn! When I think about salmon, I sure miss being alive!

“Yeah, salmon was good—for once. A fluke. Everybody knows it. Just as that grizz said, the one who went through here the other day—I can still smell her mark. Whew! Sure am glad I’m a black bear—our girls smell good!”

“What did Her Ladyship say?” I am curious about Grizzly Philosophy.

“Too many humans! Too many tree-eaters! Too many stream-skruckers!’ She claimed to be starving—that they’re all starving. She did look pretty slim—a size 8, say. She said the weather’s different; the snow’s different; dens are flooding, and they’re going to bed for the winter with half-empty tummies.”

A sibilant snarl broke into Cranberry’s story: “Just try bringing up kittens nowadays!” Clarissa! Ms. Schwarzekitty, ubersexy in ways I could never quite appreciate. The merest whiff of that pungent cat scent was enough to turn me around on a pinecone in the path, bang into my human’s legs and absolutely insist on trotting home a.s.a.p.—the hell with pride or elegance. This bitch always means business and I didn’t want me or mine to become part of it!

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Posted in Back in my Day... | Tagged animals, bears, cougars, Gaia, humanity, wolf-dogs, wolves, writing | Leave a reply

Doggisattva of Compassion

avatarPosted on August 2 by MajorOctober 12, 2012 1

If you are a perceptive human, you may have twigged to the fact that the fur persons in your life have come to you for a reason. Companionship. Service. Training (yours and ours). Love. Entertainment. Cats often take this principle a little too far, treating their humans like staff. Many of my smaller K9 buddies focus on love and companionship; some of them get so good at their winsome ways they become TV stars, traveling around in purses held by their humans, even on Car-car in the Sky. Such lifestyles of the Bitch So Famous, however, are not the usual lot of German Shepherds, which is half of me. Sheps live to serve and protect their humans. If, along the way, they get to learn every trick in the book and have their own TV show, that’s fine but it’s still just part of service to humankind.

I want to tell you what my wilder half was sent to humans for. Why does Silva, Goddess of the True Woods, send humans great big K9 galoots like me—a wolf hybrid?

From the start, my four siblings and I were not like other pups. Our mother, a beauteous but romantic young Shepherd bitch, had fallen in love with a wolf, a big black guy, who used to leave offerings of freshly killed rabbits, mice, and, unfortunately, chickens, just outside the puppy pen, for our nurture and edification. I say unfortunately because, not only do chicken feathers make puppies sneeze and choke, but my mother’s human would do a tarnation dance, a shotgun brandished in both front paws, every time a chicken was left for breakfast.

What was his complaint, really? He ate most of the chickens, and rabbits, too. The mice he left for us.

As you may imagine, Daddy made himself scarce during daylight.

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Posted in Back in my Day... | Tagged animals, compassion, family, wolf-dogs, wolves | 1 Reply

Cleanliness is next to Doggliness

avatarPosted on April 28 by MajorOctober 12, 2012  

Several heartbeats before Pack Leader realised it, I knew Computer had quit.

My big furry semaphore ears, damaged as they are by a life spent with humanity, had detected the loss of one thread of sound, one tiny voice, well before Pack Leader exploded.

“Huh? Son-of-a-Gottverkaltes-eine-kleine-SCHEIZE-geschicten-POTverdomma-maldita-seas!”

Credit where credit is due: humans curse more colorfully than any animals I know, except ravens.

Your mouse is dead, I yawned at Pack Leader. It has stopped squeaking. You need batteries.

In wolfish terms, it’s all rather amusing, isn’t it? Humans thinking a piece of plastic with chemical batteries in its tummy is anywhere near as interesting as a real, live rodent?

Pack Leader shook the mouse in my face. “Hear that?” she snarled in her best imitation of Alpha Wolf. “See that? Blue light! I may have lousy ears compared to yours but I assure you, Mr. Big Bad Wolf, this mouse squeaketh just fine!”

I shrugged. Okay, the keyboard, then. Somewhere, the batteries stopped singing.

Pack Leader stopped yelling at cantankerous old Computer and returned to her Chair of Pain and Pleasure. She picked up the keyboard, turned it upside down and shook it, while yelling at it: “You lousy piece of….” You get the idea.

The keyboard must have been scared enough to loosen its sphincter muscles, because it dropped the equivalent of 59 gourmet mouse meals on the desk.

“Holy—!” said Pack Leader.

Nope. I moved close to inspect. Not holy—just nasty. Let the mice have it, because if there’s one talent real mice have, it’s turning nasty old bits of cuisine into fast food on four feet.

“Maybe I should take this opportunity to clean the keyboard,” said Pack Leader. “Since I must wait until tomorrow to buy new batteries. It does look a little…gross.”

Ya think? I commented, turning around three times on my cushion. There would clearly be a delay before our Salute to the Stars, a.k.a. evening w-a-l-k-i-e-s.

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Posted in Back in my Day... | Tagged animals, computer troubles, strange ape habits, wolf-dogs, wolves | Leave a reply

Garbage Day

avatarPosted on February 8 by MajorOctober 12, 2012  

The whole neighbourhood, street or forest, knows Garbage Day has switched to the second morning after the Weekend. Every Fur Person, whether in the Woods or in Town, knows when the Weekend is over, because that’s when the little apes toddle off to their school again.

We had just come off a huge Weekend, when the baby apes stayed in their dens and played with their parents and one another for more sunsets than I have paws to count with. If memory serves, they do this after every winter solstice. I’ve noticed that after any longish Weekend, Garbage Day changes—a habit that hasn’t escaped the notice of our Woods neighbors, either.

My den’s Garbage Gift is pitiably small—just one bag. But this particular bag was special. Pack Leader had packed some turkey bits in there, along with only slightly moldy cheese rinds and some sweets she said were Bad for Dogs and People, whatever that means. It seemed a shame, but Pack Leader feeds me so gloriously twice a day that I don’t ever quarrel with the offerings she sets on the curb on Garbage Day.

I guess she was still in a festive, generous mood from the big solstice Weekend, because she set our bag out on the curb just before we went to bed, offering our woodsy neighbors a chance to paw it over, as it were, before the Truck arrived in the morning to end the feast. She set it down; I blessed it with a bit of peemail as we ended the Evening Walk, and we went to bed.

Our snooze didn’t last long. Caterwauling, screeching, and a series of annoyed grunts woke us up in a hurry. Pack Leader hustled herself into some semblance of proper pelts and threw open the bedroom window, as I clambered stiffly onto the window seat. What a sight!

My furry friend Cranberry, who weighs about four of me, was grunting and weaving like a drunk, waving at our Garbage Gift with paws the size of my dinner dish. “I can’t sleep!” he complained. “All this noise! All this light! I need a midnight snack!”

“You think you’ve got problems!” snarled Princess Pusscat. (I tell you, if you haven’t heard a snarl from a cougar, you haven’t lived!) “I’ve got kittens to feed!”

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Posted in Back in my Day... | Tagged animals, bear, city, cougar, food, garbage day, Silva, wolf-dog, wolves | Leave a reply

…and Not a Lick to Lap

avatarPosted on November 20 by MajorOctober 12, 2012  

I nearly thirsted to death in Nanaimo. That gave me paws. Panting, I considered humans’ strange relationship with water. Imagine wearing a thick black fur coat like mine in the summer sun, with nothing but your long, sweaty tongue to cool down sixty kilos of wolf body! That was me at the end of a … Continue reading →

Posted in Back in my Day..., The 7 Habits of Successful Wolf-Dogs | Tagged animals, Nanaimo, nature, summer, travel, vacation, water, wolf-dogs, wolves | Leave a reply

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