While I was still very young I was taken away from my mum and brothers and sisters and joined another pack. There were only humans in this pack, which is where I began to learn how different we are. Even though I was still only very young, my new pack looked to me to be their leader. They would provide food for me, play with me when I wanted to, give me affection when I asked for it. Even though I was still very young, I tried to be leader as best as I could.
They didn't make it easy as they would often leave our territory without me. They would just disappear and I did not know if they would ever come back. How could I protect them properly if they left our territory without me? The anxiety was often unbearable. When they returned, they were all apologetic, showering me with affection, showing their deference to my leadership. However they still kept leaving without me, and I would become more and more anxious each time they left. I would try and bark, to call them back, but to no avail. I found that carrying around things with their smell on them often helped. Chewing also helped me feel a little better. This is when I noticed that they would be very upset when the returned. They would often yell at me and even hit me. This was very confusing for me. Even though leaving made them upset, they still kept leaving our territory.
To make it even more difficult for me to protect them, they would spend most of their time inside the den, and left me outside to patrol. Yet again I did this job as best I could. Occasionally when I alerted them to danger they would come out of the den and join in with me in warning off the danger. I would bark and they would yell (as it seems that humans can't bark). Sometimes with all the alerting they would get very angry with me, though I didn't understand why. A leader must always alert his pack to danger of any sort, especially when the other packs that bordered our territory were nearby.
Come to think of it there is a lot of things about humans we dogs don't understand. And I will talk more about how strange humans are to us dogs in future posts.
However back to my story. My other pack seemed to grow increasingly distant from me, they rarely came out of the den to play with me or to give me attention, though they did still feed me. I didn't like being kept away from the rest of the pack. I tried many different ways to bring them outside, however they would often be very upset with me when I did so. Then one day they decided to leave the territory and took me with them. I thought it was very exciting to finally be included. However they took me to a place where there were many other dogs, each in their own individual den. They left me there, and I never saw them again.
I stayed at the place with all the other dogs for a while, how long I am not sure, because us dogs don't tend to understand time that well. It was OK there, they fed me and gave me some attention. There always seemed to be lots of dogs and lots of humans moving in and out of this strange place. Often humans would stop at my den and peer in at me, which was very scary. However most would move away again, which was always a relief.
Then one day my new pack arrived. First I saw the two humans, which I later got to know as Lisa and David. Unlike every other human that had come to my den. These two humans didn't stare in at me, they didn't put any pressure on me at all. This would be the first of many differences I would notice about the humans in my new pack. They seemed to know that it is very impolite to stare at someone you barely know. They seemed to understand dog manners.
Still I will talk about that more in my next post: Meeting my new pack.
