Report to the Agency: M3 and the Herding Instinct.

Report to the Agency: M3 and the Herding Instinct.

This report is addressed in part to Big Wag herself.

Dear Big Wag,

As much as I am enjoying my present assignment, I have run into an unexpected challenge: my pack has a very poor understanding of what it means to be a pack. At the Agency Puppy Academy we learned how important it is for the pack to stick together at all times. No matter what happened, it was important that all the members of the pack unit kept together to help each other out, or even just to keep one another company.

But this pack apparently knows very little about the importance of staying together. There are two cats and two humans in my pack, and teaching them all to stay together is like herding birds. One cat refuses to come out of the basement; the other comes and goes as he pleases, ignoring my every effort to organize his day in such a way as to take full advantage of the benefits of being in the pack.

And my humans! I hardly know where to begin! They take off at any point during the day without so much as filing a travel report or notice of absenteeism! Sometimes they leave together, sometimes separately. Sometimes one stays home, and other times the one comes home without having called me first, and then the other leaves without barely a goodbye! It’s exasperating!

And don’t get me started on the incredible inconsistency of their daily routines. There appears to be absolutely no advance planning whatsoever in their willy-nilly approach to regulating their lives. They eat at odd hours, clean the den whenever the mood strikes them, change furniture on a whim, and stop suddenly to sit down to read a book or write on their computers; how they have managed to survive all those years without me is a miracle.

I try my best, Big Wag, to teach them about the importance of family and the need to stay together and to communicate frequently about every new smell encountered and every possible new danger discerned. Because it’s my duty, I will try to keep teaching them how important family is. As the Puppy Academy constantly taught us, the pack digs the den under the snow; the pack keeps everybody warm; the pack finds and shares food, and the pack helps look after the sick and injured.

Why is that so hard for the humans to learn?

Yours,
In exasperation,
M3