Territorial Dispute

I have won a recent battle in the war over territory that I am waging against the Lady Who Dotes.

Don't get me wrong. I like the Lady Who Dotes. I get very excited whenever she comes home and feeds me. However, she has not yet learned that the back yard is mine.

You see, I am a free dog. Unlike Little Dog, who was purchased and is therefore a slave, I chose to live with the Guy Who Feeds me. I followed him home. I demanded to come inside the house and live with him. I sat on the sidewalk outside of the house and would not move. I made an eloquent and moving picture as I sat there with the snow falling on my head. I know how to use a door knob. If I want to go outside and you do not see that I am waiting patiently by the door to let me out, I'll just open the door myself. Despite the presence of a fence, I have, on occasion, felt the call of the wild, and have taken sabbaticals from the ease of urban living to light out to the territory ahead.

It used to be that I could mark my territory wherever I wanted in the back yard. But slowly, the Lady Who Dotes and the Guy Who Feeds me have replaced the sumac jungle back there with civilized, manicured plants. Now there are plants back there that I'm supposed to leave alone. But I won't. I have not yet met a plant that I don't want to mark. As a dog, I have a natural right to mark all plants. I think that John Locke said that. This right is married to my other natural rights, like life, liberty, and the ownership of property. And what God has joined together, let no Lady Who Dotes tear asunder.

So I wage a continuous revolution. My mark is deadly. I take out plants one by one. I have forced the Lady Who Dotes to retrench. Gradually, she has conceded territory. But she has also built a fence around "her" territory in an attempt to save her plants. I do not like barriers of any kind, be they doors or fences. I have written about my previous attacks on such fortresses.

After our last battle, the Lady Who Dotes conceded some territory. She moved the fence inward toward the smelly pile of food. For a while, I laid low. I pretended that I was happy with the truce that ceded me extra surface to mark.

But last week, I could not ignore the smelly pile of food any longer. It has been there for so long, tempting me. It is like the trash can, only bigger. I am continually frustrated with the policy that the Lady Who Dotes and the Guy Who Feeds me have instituted about the smelly pile of food. Instead of giving the leftovers to me, they give it to the worms. They call it composting. I call it Heaven Just Out of Reach.

Reader, I pushed down the fence. Then I tore open the front of the compost bin. Victorious, I shared my plunder with Little Dog. Later that night, she was sick all over the master bedroom.