I’ve been living in Washington D.C. a little over a year. I am also a little over a year old. And I’m smart! My Mom says I’m cute and sweet and smart! I think I’m probably the smartest dog in the whole world, or at least on my whole block. Same thing. I really like my canine neighbors especially Mosely the Doberman who lives two houses down. We have coffee on the deck together in the mornings and catch up most afternoons. He’s my bud and my bark is almost as deep as his! Since I moved in, he’s been schooling me and told me that it is our job to monitor things around here especially the non-canine critters.

We have these little gray things with bushy tails, big gray things with stripes that wear masks, these fat, greasy, white things with long pink noses and pink paws, and then there’s my nemesis, the JERK across the street that seems to be some combination of the other three.

Those little gray things with bushy tails run all through my tree, down the top of the fence and along the phone lines like it’s a highway system. Mom calls them Rocky. I don’t know what that means, but whatever. I don’t like those Rockys. If she even says the word, I bark. They run through my yard all day and even walk up on the front porch and dare me to stop them. When I was little, they would sit high up in the tree and talk about me.

“Look at what we’ve got living here now ya’ll. First it was that cat and now this thing. You think he will get big? What’s his name? Jack? Jaaaaaccckk!!! He can’t even see us up here! We’re good! Hey you little shit! We were here first so don’t think you’re going to take over. We run this spot. We’ve got a whole THANG going. A situation. So don’t get in here and mess it up little man or we will MESS you up!”

They would sit in the big tree in the mornings, especially on the weekends, laughing at me, talking loud and hanging off the tree limbs while they ate apples and peaches from the nearby trees. They were just sloppy, chattering and dropping apple cores and peach pits on the deck. Drove me nuts!! I’m a Virgo. I know ’cause I was born on August 29th and Mom says that makes me a Virgo and we are something called “anal” and we don’t like messy. My kennel where I was born is cleaner than most humans’ houses and my Mom is a clean freak. I mean she has puppy wipes for my paws, my face and my butt and they’re all different! It is embarrassing, but they do keep me fresh! So I’m not having those nasty Rockys up in my yard making a mess. I’ve got a plan to eliminate them which includes digging some deep holes (really graves, but not mass graves ’cause I don’t want Mom to end up on the news). Until then, I have to make sure they know it’s about to go down, and I’m not taking their crap anymore. This is MY yard and if anybody is going to be diggin’ up the Tulip bulbs out there is it me! And in fact I have, and I got sick, but that’s not the point.

There is also this thing Mom calls Roscoe. He wears a mask and runs across the roof at night while I am trying to sleep! I mean what kind of comic book world do I live in! I thought if you wore a mask you were a crime fighter like Spider-Man. Apparently not in Washington, D.C. and not Roscoe. It’s the other way. If you wear a mask here, you aren’t fighting crime you are committing crime! Roscoe and his pack used to sit on my deck all night in their masks drinking and playing cards, digging in the flower pots and eating out of the trash cans until the sun came up! I shut that down the minute I was old enough to go outside to poop and pee without Mom watching me. That’s a big deal if you didn’t know. Not shutting down the crime syndicate, but peeing without your Mom watching. That and the day I graduated from squatting and was able to lift my leg. Just saying. That stuff’s important in my world. Shows you’re developing properly. I met a girl over Christmas that peed like a boy. Talk about crossed wires.

Between the Rockys, Roscoe, and that fat white thing with the pink nose and paws, and long tail that Mom calls Peter Possum, I had to grow up fast ’cause this Washington, D.C. place is like the Wild Wild West compared to where I came from in Virginia. A less intelligent puppy could get killed! It was enough that I had to withstand all of their trash talking which has led me to pacing around the house talking to myself, barking at the tv machine and shaking my toys to death while I plot revenge.

As for that Peter Possum dude, he’s no big deal. Total wuss. When I saw him creeping through out back, I rolled out my I’m-a-big-boy-now deep growl and that ugly thing froze in its tracks and started drooling. Never been back. It’s that JERK across the street that makes me total cray cray. Mom says he’s a C-A-T. She always says it like that C-A-T. I think I hear him outside now so I gotta go stand my ground. More on him later.