Excerpt of Bedtime Stories For Dogs by Amy Neftzger

The Origin of the Universe

A Mythic Tail

In the beginning there was chaos. The universe appeared more as an abstract work of art with bits of everything floating around and getting all mixed up like a bowl of multi flavored kibble. Nothing was whole. Nothing was ordered. There were no entire bits of thought or matter. A dog named Alpha took control of the situation and began barking to move the fragments around. The faster and louder Alpha barked, the more quickly the pieces moved away from his barking. The pieces slammed into one another and assembled by force. A commanding voice has this type of power over anything.

Alpha ran intricate patterns to assemble the nothingness into wholeness and order. He first assembled all the breeds of dogs. The herding dogs jumped into action to help Alpha arrange the rest of the universe. The working dogs pulled the organized pieces into their proper places and set them into motion so that the planets rotated around the suns in the solar systems. The toy dogs decorated the universe and spread beauty while the hound group sniffed out the related pieces that belonged together. The retrievers located stray pieces of chaos and brought them back into alignment with their proper positions. The terriers dug out renegade chunks of thought and matter to provide purity within the new form of order. All dogs worked together, including the guard dogs who were constantly protecting the work of the others from some crazy feline named Primo with a bow and arrow.

It was a team effort on a magnificent scale. Dogs brought harmony, order, and cooperation to the universe. They also set an example for all of creation on the importance of working together collaboratively to build a better world. The reason dogs bark today is to maintain the order Alpha created. Without dogs chaos would take over again.