THE MAIL, by Barry

First of all, I'd like to say that TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!  I am 8 years old today!  My exact birth date, like Piper's, is kind of a guess, but since I was only about five weeks old when I arrived at the Humane Society, my estimated birthday is probably only a few days off, at the most.  Piper's estimated birth date, on the other hand, could be several months off.  So I guess I'm lucky to know pretty much when I was born.

Anyway, one of the ways I'm celebrating is by writing in Piper's blog.  She graciously invited me to do this and she said I could write about anything I wanted to.  So I am going to write about mail carriers and the mail, which are among my very favorite topics.

The mail comes to our house every day except for Sundays and holidays.  The way it gets to us is that a man -- well, usually it is a man -- parks a white mail truck at the end of our block.  Then he goes from door to door down the other side of the street, and after that he comes on our side of the street.

When the mailman comes to our door, I have to be very brave and protect the house by barking a lot and jumping at the window.  A couple of times, I broke out a pane of the window while I was doing this, so Mom had to put plexiglass on the inside of the window to keep me from breaking any more panes.

The mailman scares me because he comes right up to the door, which I consider to be a brazen invasion of my territory.  I am afraid that he will come in the house and kill us all, so I have to bark viciously until he goes away, which so far he has always done.  Mom says the mail carrier is a perfectly nice person who would not hurt us, but I can't be sure that she is right about this.  That's why I have to be a good guard dog and protect us all.

And by the way, Mel usually helps me scare the mailman away.  Mel is a good barker, so he can be really useful to me sometimes in guarding the house.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of scary people invading my territory, I will also mention the UPS Man.  Mel and I recognize the sound of the UPS truck, and if it stops anywhere near our house, we run to the front window and start barking.  Sometimes the UPS Man goes to other people's houses, but sometimes he comes to our house!  And when he comes here, he rings the doorbell, which makes us bark even louder!  It's pretty easy to scare the UPS Man away, though, just like it's easy to scare the mailman away.

After the mail is put in our mailbox, Mom goes out the front door and gets it.  Then she takes it to the dining room table.  I get very excited when Mom starts opening the mail because if it is junk mail, she gives some of it to me to eat.  Luckily, Mom gets a lot of junk mail, so I almost always end up with a page or two to devour.  Gabe and Piper also like to tear up paper, so Mom gives them some of the junk mail, too.  Gabe and Piper don't always eat their junk mail, though.  They just shred it, and then I steal the pieces that are left over and eat them, too.

Mom says I am her 4-legged shredder.  Of course, Mom has a real shredder that she uses when she has a lot of paper with Sensitive Data to get rid of.  But if she just has one or two pieces, she lets me deal with them.  No identity thief will ever get hold of Mom's private info after it has gone through my system, believe me!

Well, I guess that's all I need to tell you about the mail.  I think it's time to go see what Mom is up to and hit her up for some special attention since it's my birthday.