The Pecking Order

Cara, Annabella, Misty. You will note in the given order of those three names the pecking order of the three junior members of our pack. This order has been established in true Benedictine fashion according to the time of arrival of each in our family, and reinforced by the order in which we feed them or give them treats. I pass out the dog biscuits saying, “Cara first, Annabella second, and Misty third.”

Annabella, a seven month old English Cream Golden Retriever puppy, already over fifty pounds and growing, is the most undisciplined and aggressive. Given a chance she would seize the treats of all three dogs and voraciously consume them. Now she patiently and politely awaits her turn. Cara first, Annabella second, Misty third. Each dog has its own history, its own story.

Cara, a red-gold Golden Retriever, is the oldest; but in order to understand her it is necessary to look at her past. For seven years she was the number two dog, and Ananda, an older Golden was the reigning queen. When Ananda died a year ago, poor Cara was quite evidently out of sorts, grieving for her lost companion, her alpha dog. To this day she won’t even lie in the favourite places where Ananda would lie. Now a year later she barely steps up into position to be number one, but she is now the oldest, faithful, and loved; she arrived before Annabella and Misty; and we always maintain the order, Cara first, Annabella second, and Misty third. Cara is now quiet, sedate, and peaceful, but when she was younger she was delightfully wild and irrepressible.

Now Annabella fills that role racing like a mad thing in circles in the back yard and digging, apparently for pleasure if not for treasure, in the dirt along the garden’s edge. For a white dog she surely loves mud; somehow its value as a canine beauty treatment has lit little sparks of pleasure in her mind. Her other favourite hobby is chewing, chewing, chewing on anything within reach. She lays flat out on the floor chewing a rawhide bone, with another rawhide bone that she has seized from Misty tucked under on her front paws. Cara has taken her rawhide bone into a safe corner where Annabella can’t get at it. Annabella, chewing, chewing, chewing, on toys, carpet, corners of the baseboard or the outside accessible edge at the corner of a wall, chewing on Misty’s collar and even on the fur ruffle at Misty’s neck.

Misty is not a Golden Retriever. She’s a mutt, a jet black mutt only slightly smaller than Annabella. Her eyes are set a little too far apart giving her an appearance of mild retardation. She’s a sweet girl who was rescued by my son. He found her abandoned, hungry, and frightened, wandering in his apartment complex, and he adopted her. After a year the apartment managers claimed she was too big for an apartment and she has temporarily joined our menagerie until our son moves. She arrived at our home just in time to rescue Guinness the cat from becoming Annabella’s favourite chew toy. No matter what pack Misty was in she would be at the bottom of the pecking order.

The pecking order is revealed at the regular morning “accidental” blueberry spill that happens when I’m making breakfast. The berries go tumbling onto the floor. Cara with the benefit of age and experience gets her fair share. Annabella flits around frantically snapping at the berries rolling on away on the floor. Misty hangs back and need’s to be given permission to get into the fray; not that she won’t steal your sandwich off your plate if you leave too close to the edge of a counter while you get yourself a cup of tea.

Cara, Annabella, Misty. There is a school of thought that says “Let the dogs find their own level in the pack,” as though the vestiges of savage behaviour were somehow acceptable in a Christian household. I don’t agree. We domesticate our dogs to make them acceptable members of our household. That is why Annabella is learning the meaning of, “Off!” “No!” “Sit!” and “Stay!” Learning to live with us enters our dogs into a whole realm of pleasure, comfort, and health, they would never find in the wild. In our family they find the basics, food, shelter, safety from predators, medical care, the mysterious magic of tennis balls, and a companionship with us, a relationship of love that ennobles them and raises them up to levels of understanding and joy that only come with the grace of learned obedience.

We too have to learn in similar fashion that there is a true joy of obedience in the dwelling of the Lord of the Manor. We are also in the pecking order and there is One, “Who although He be God and Man, yet he is not two, but one Christ; one, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by the taking of the Manhood into God.” That is the very nature of our salvation as we are trained, “Off!” “No!” “Sit!” and “Stay!” and made fit to dwell, with the One who loves us, in eternal habitations. All of us in our proper order, all of us animals, and even the cat (albeit somewhat unwilling), all of us, not just as individuals, as household, as the extended family of God, are even now being drawn up into our Father’s household where there are many mansions; as we are drawn up we are changed into the image of Christ, transformed and made fit to live in heaven’s elysian fields.

On a simple level, it is morning at the breakfast table. I save three pieces of English Muffin with butter and wild honey; one piece for each dog, Cara first, Annabella second, Misty third. Cara accepts her allotment with dignity. She is gradually living into her position as the number one dog. Annabella waits her turn and receives her share with joy. Misty hesitantly sniffs the offering and gently accepts it, her wide eyes saying, “Goodness has occurred, and I tasted it.”