Alpha Dog

Puppy is the alpha dog now. We pretend his name is Django, but he doesn't know it and we don't call him that. We call him Puppy, because this is a household of four fairly bright, fairly creative, extremely verbal types. . . who call their puppy Puppy. I realized that he had become the alpha dog today, when Theo stood back gloomily and let Puppy have his pick of the doggy dinners. For a while there, Theo was in charge of which dog ate out of which bowl; this was a time in which Theo grew fat. Now, though, Theo hangs his head and lets Puppy have the first go at both bowls.

My first emotion was to feel sad for Theo, but then I realized: Theo doesn't want to be the alpha dog. I empathize strongly with that, because I'm not alpha either. I know I'm not alpha because I went to one of those PR meet n' greet thingies this afternoon with some of the WNC tourism movers and shakers. I used to dread these thingies and not take them seriously but nowadays I have decided that my ass depends on networking like a motherfucker. So I am networking, which isn't really too hard, because at this point I've actually known most of these people for years (and by know I mean seen at a bunch of cardboard chicken luncheons and smiled and exchanged business cards with) and they're all really pretty nice and so what the hell? I'm going to get a new boss sometime soon and if s/he isn't to my liking, I'll be back out there with the resumes. This is how I know I'm not an alpha: I am not applying to be my own boss, and several people I saw this afternoon who hadn't seen me since my year's hiatus from the tourism scene said, on hearing about my place of employment, "Oh, did you take the director's job?"

No. No, I didn't, and I don't want it, and frankly I don't want to be in charge of anything at all, really. If I was in charge at a real job I couldn't fiddle around with photoshop or do elaborate Excel to Word mail merge letters, which, take it from me, is the absolute best thing to do when you're hopelessly hungover at the office, which might have happened to you the day after Halloween. I know that this state often happens to people the day after Halloween, because some people are incapable of staying quietly home on Halloween and instead must go off to the bars to see the costumed masses and in the process drink entirely too much beer and stay up until quarter to two in the morning, which is a really bad idea on a Tuesday night.

That is why some people are not out at Drinking Liberally but instead are quietly at home on this Thursday night, like the actual dedicated and good employees and homebodies and mothers and carer for alpha Springer Spaniel puppies that they, in fact, are, despite their occasional resemblance to wild drunken revelers. But you see, if you are an alpha dog, you can't ever shed those responsible moments and act like a wild drunken reveler but instead must be sober and responsible at all times: among other, more pressing reasons, you'll be the first one called when the alarm goes off for no apparent reason at 2 in the morning, and if you'd been revelling, that could get ugly. So fuck being alpha. I can take being second at the food bowl if it also means that I get to be second or third when the shit hits the fan.