Today is National Pet Day, and it occurred to me dogs play a really important role in our communities.  Namely if it wasn’t for us, our humans wouldn’t know their neighbors!  Take for example our neighbor Charlie.  He was so excited when he moved into the neighborhood that he couldn’t wait to introduce himself.  We were just pulling in the driveway when he came bounding across our front lawn and jumped right in the car when Dad opened the door.  Since we were all in the car, I tried to convince my parents to take us on another ride.  But they were too busy greeting Charlie’s owner who also came bounding across the yard in hot pursuit.

In fact, before Trouble and Odie’s house was finished being built, Trouble came over to greet us too.  That’s how our parents met.  As for Odie, he doesn’t have one ounce of wanderlust in him, but if he’s sunbathing in his yard it’s always nice to stop by on our walks to say hello so our humans can chat.  Remember dogs, it’s your responsibility to socialize your parents.

Then there was our neighbor Ben.  I have to hand it to the little guy, he exerted a lot of effort to introduce our parents.  He would boldly walk through the slats of our fence and carry off Lemmy’s toys into his yard.  It was on one of Mom’s trips over to recover the lost toys that she struck up a friendship with Ben’s Mom.  Sadly, Ben and his parents moved out of the neighborhood long before I could meet him.  He sounded quite clever.

Speaking of clever, everyone knows our neighbor Milo, the Most Interesting Dog in the Neighborhood!  Milo prides himself on keeping a watchful eye on the neighborhood kids so they don’t get into trouble.  He, on the other paw, has been known to get into mischief.  Our Dads still laugh about the time my Dad mistook Milo for Lemmy and let him into our house.  That Milo is such a jokester!

Further up the street is my best buddy, Inky!  It was his big brother, Smudge, that introduced our families.  Smudge was the BEST guard dog!  No one could come or go in our neighborhood without Smudge alerting his parents.  This often led Smudge’s Mom to come out and chat with us on our afternoon walks.  Come to think of it, even neighbors without dogs come out to talk while we are on our walks.

The neighbors always greet Asa and myself by name.  In fact, I’m not even sure if my parents and the neighbors know each other’s names!  So it all goes to show that our humans owe us dogs a great deal of gratitude, because if it wasn’t for us they would never know each other!  No need to thank us though, it is all just part of being a dog.