XENA : WARRIOR PRINCESS DOG

By: Melissa Thrasher

Synopsis: Mary GoLightly- animal communicator, interviews Xena:Warrior Princess Dog. Xena talks about her arch rival Violet, life in Gooberville, and shares some insights into her clueless human, Melissa. Impressed with Xena’s wit and intelligence, Mary concocts a plan that just might make Xena: Warrior Princess Dog, the next action hero superstar.

Disclaimer: As we all know, Xena, Gabrielle, Ares, Alti, Joxer and Callisto are names belonging to Renaisance Productions, but Xena: Warrior Princess Dog is my own creation. She’s a real dog too. She belongs to me so keep your grubby hands off her.

Warnings: None

E-Mail: YES PLEASE! Even if you bite! I’d love to hear your comments. dogdiva@webtv.net

An interview with Xena:Warrior Princess Dog. Interview conducted by Mary GoLightly-animal communicator

MGL: Thank you for speaking with me, Xena.

XWPD: My pleasure, Mary! I don’t get much company, so I am very happy to see you. Mind if I sniff a bit: Don’t worry…I don’t ‘do’ crotches or butts like the other moron mutts who live here. Please sit down, Mary and help yourself to some pig ears. There is water in the bowl if you’re thirsty. I can’t guarantee it’s freshness, however. Geesh! It’s ninety frickin’ degrees out, and my human, Melissa, is SO busy writing now, she forgets to change it every couple of hours like I am accustomed to.

MGL: Thanks for the hospitality, Xena, but I think I will pass on the pig ears. Now tell me, Xena, What breed are you?

XWPD: I am an ancient Chinese breed known as the Chow. Technically, if you want to go all AKC on me, I am a Chow-Chow. Don’t know why. I guess the Chinese just have a fondness for redundancy.

MGL: Did your human, Melissa, buy you from a breeder or pet shop?

XWPD: (snorting now) Oh, that’s a laugh! Melissa pay for a dog! Ha Ha! No, she fancies herself a ‘dog rescuer’, but personally, I think she steals them. Oh she doesn’t know she steals them, but it’s stealing just the same. I hear the other dogs talking and some are quite distressed. They would like to be returned to their original homes. Melissa doesn’t notice though. She thinks they all worship her. She imagines she’s some kind of Saint or Savior.--God’s gift to dogdom! Great Zeus! She can be so clueless sometimes.

MGL: But how could that happen, Xena. How could Melissa not know?

XWPD: Well as you can see, we live in Gooberville, USA and people drop off dogs in the woods and fields around here all of the time. So there’s ‘clueless’ Melissa driving down the road and she spies some dog standing there looking bewildered and lost. Well, imagining that she has some special ‘dumped-dog-radar’, she stops and picks them up. But Hell’s bell’s , Mary, just check out Rueben, the big red dog over there. He ALWAYS

Looks bewildered and lost, so how would you know? Truth is, Rueben had a hot hard on and was looking for a lover when Melissa scooped him up. Rueben’s a big pain in the patoot, too. He’s always growling at the other dogs and he struts around like he is the emperor of Rome. Melissa thinks he acts like that ‘cause he’s a boy, but.I think he just wants to go home and of course, he wants his balls back. That’s another thing…Melissa’s on this big spay/neuter crusade and it’s ‘snip city’ if you wind up here. So if you ask me Melissa’s ‘special’ dumped-dog-radar system needs a tune-up. In fact, all of her radar systems are down. Like just the other day, this really fine looking babe came here to look at a dog and Melissa’s ‘gaydar’ didn’t even register. I mean, come on, it was as clear as the drool on Clara the coonhounds lip. Someone told Melissa later that her visitor was a lesbian and Melissa just broke down and sobbed. I thought she was sobbing in shame because she had lost a skill so vital and essential to her ‘people’, but it seems she is just really horny and lesbians only pass through this town once in a millennium.

MGL: So tell me, Xena, where did Melissa find you, and why did she name you Xena?

XWPD: OK, this is a really hard memory for me so I will try and keep it short. My brother, Zak, and I were in the woods, starving, eaten up by mange, worms…you name it. Zak heard Melissa’s car first and decided to walk out to the road. I guess walk is an exaggeration-he stumbled onto the road, is more like it. I couldn’t walk at all but I could whine. Melissa saw Zak and stopped the car. She picked him up, and just as she was getting ready to return to the car, she heard me whine. She placed us both in the back of the station wagon and headed straight for the vet. I remember she cried all the way there. We were really pathetic looking. You could barely see the puppies for the pus and we were just like babies too, 5 or 6 weeks old, tops. The vet had to sew our eyes open because the pus and decay had sealed them shut. We couldn’t be held much because our bodies were covered completely with open, oozing sores. My prognosis wasn’t good, but Zak was a little bigger and stronger so she knew he would probably make it. I guess she named me Xena to, you know, try and give me a little edge. She was hoping a strong name would help me recover. Funny thing is, she hadn’t EVEN watched the show yet! She didn’t start watching until the final season, but thank Gods for Oxygen re-runs. Oh, one time she caught about ten minutes of it. I think Xena was in one of those long, drag - out fight scenes with Callisto. Anyway, Gabrielle wasn’t in the scene the scene at all. If Gabby would have been in it, Melissa would have been hooked right then! As it was, Melissa just noticed that Xena was really strong and could kick ass! She wanted me to be strong and she wanted me to be able to hold my own in the pack, so she named me Xena. At the time she was naming all the dogs after flowers-Daisy, Violet, Ivy, Rose---things like that, so naming me Xena, was quite a departure for her. In hindsight, when I was fully recovered and my true warrior princess nature revealed itself, she wished she would have stuck to the flower theme and named me Pansy.

MGL: Xena, if it is not too painful, can you tell me what happened to Zak? I don’t see him here.

XWPD: Once we recovered our health, Zak grew in leaps and bounds, but I had been too stunted in the growth process to catch up. Zak went all ‘Ares’ on me and tried to kill me a couple of times. By now Melissa had figured out we were probably bred to be fighting dogs. They do that in our neck of the woods — cock fighting too. She had to choose — like Gabrielle had to choose with Hope. Don’t judge Melissa, please…she’s suffered enough. She sent him back to the DogDeva so his soul could be purified from the evil that man had done.

MGL: Uh, Xena, I understand why Melissa would have to put down a violent dog, but I can’t help but notice that you have a separate pen, away from the other dogs and….

XWPD: (interrupting) I know what you are going to say, Mary, but look at it this way — I am like the real Xena. Yes, I have a dark side, but there is light in me too! Zak was more like Ares or Alti — bad to the bone. Like the old expression, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Wow, that sure is a stupid expression, isn’t it? Why would you want to make a silk purse when a sows ear is so tasty. Anyway, Melissa gambled that I could be redeemed. Gods bless her, she is my Gabrielle. Zak wanted to kill everybody. I just wanted to kill Violet: oh, and Ivy, on occasion…and well...Rose when she gets snotty.

MGL: Why on earth would you want to kill Violet, Xena? She is such a tiny, innocent looking thing.

XWPD: Let me tell you, Mary, Violet’s a real Jekyll and Hyde type. She TOTALLY sucks up to Melissa with her shy ‘little shrinking Violet’ act, but if you are a dog, don’t turn your back on her. She will piss on your tail! She’s also got her ‘I’m the only puppy’ thing going on. You see Violet and her sister, Ivy, were only about six months older than Zak and I. Melissa would always call them her ‘puppies’ or her ‘precious puppies’ or her ‘whittle poopie oopie’ puppies, or some other nauseating names like that. Well, Violet slurped that up like slime in the toilet bowl. ‘Whittle’ Violet wanted her puppy status to last forever; but Hah! here comes me and Zak. Violet heard Melissa call us her ‘poor little angel puppies’ and she went ballistic. I could hear Violet screaming to Ivy ‘Oh my Gods–she called those disgusting, crusted creatures, ‘puppies’ . Well right after that, Violet started calling me ‘mange mouth’, ‘pus face’, and other nasty names. I couldn’t do anything about it at the time, but when I grew strong and I grew big, I remembered.

MGL: Uh, Xena, you seem to be getting a little agitated now, and I am feeling uncomfortable with your lips curled up and your teeth showing like that.

XWPD: Sorry, Mary, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that Violet is my Callisto–know what I mean? The sight of her or even the mere mention of her name, sends venom through my veins.

MGL: I understand, dear. Now lets change the subject, shall we? Tell me Xena, do you have any special skills?

XWPD: Oh yes! I have many skills. I do the pinch thing on the neck just like Xena, only Xena uses her fingers and I use my teeth. Like this one time I locked my jaws around that little pissant, Violet’s neck, and I lifted her up and shook her like a rag doll and blood was spurting everywhere, and just when I was about to hurl her in the lava pit…..

MGL: (interrupting) Please, Xena! I don’t think we should discuss Violet any further–you get too upset. Do you have any other skills that you would like to share with us?

XWPD: Oh, well, let’s see. Xena was the destroyer of nations, but I am the destroyer of wooden gates.

MGL: Could you elaborate on that please?

XWPD: After the Violet episode, Melissa built me my own special pen. The whole back yard is fenced, but she divided it up so I could have my own place. My section wrapped around the back porch which is raised about three feet off the ground. The porch had wood railings around it, so at first I couldn’t get up on the porch. Melissa felt bad that I couldn’t be in the house anymore, so she cut out a few railings and fenced off a section of the fence just for me. I can be up there- part of the action so to speak, but I am barred from the other dogs. Violet’s vet bills were really expensive after I put the pinch on her so Melissa decided to build the barrier fence and gate herself. In keeping with the wood motif of the porch, she bought a bunch of picket fence type boards. Bad choice on her part. Gods! They are only about a half an inch thick! I can get through one of those in a tenth of the time it takes me to destroy a pigs ear. I don’t bother the fence much. I am partial to the half-ass gates she builds. Oh sure you’ll see hinges and hardware; but she’s never built one that can actually open and shut. They lean, they drag–she has to climb over. She’s no carpenter I can assure you. Oh, and she keeps snagging the crotch of her pants on this one nail as she climbs over. By the Gods! Get a clue, buy a vowel, hold a hammer and whack that nail back in. She’s so slow sometimes. I think she has just given up. I am on my fourth gate now, so she’s lost the will for maintenance.

MGL: It sounds like a really nice gesture on Melissa’s part, wanting to include you with the rest of the "family" on the porch. Do you do anything special for her?

XWPD: Oh, of course! Like I know she has this major issue with the seat belt laws. She hates seat belts! So one day while she was shopping and I was waiting in the car, I chewed off all the seat belts in the station wagon! Cool huh! The best part was not long afterwards she got pulled over for not wearing a seat belt! She ACTUALLY got to look the officer in the eye, pull out the shredded seat belt and say " THE DOG ATE IT"!!!! Ha Ha Ha!- we still laugh about that! Oh Mary, thanks for reminding me of that story. I sure needed a good laugh>

MGL: Why, Xena ? What’s wrong ? Is everything ok here at home?

XWPD: Not exactly, Mary. See I can hear Melissa’s thoughts, so I know we are almost out of money. She wonders how she will be able to keep all of us. Did you know Melissa had a trust fund once?

MGL: Melissa had a trust fund and you live in a dump like this?

XWPD: Yea, sad, I know, but Melissa got sucked into that whole Y2K thing. She wanted her friends and of course all of us dogs to be safe if the world went haywire. So, she used the trust fund to build this huge underground shelter on the lower forty. Now see ‘lower’ would have been a buzz word for me, but Melissa’s clueless condition prevented her from seeing the obvious. You see, Mary, Ohio’s weather is totally unpredictable and the inevitable happened. The rains came, the mudslides began, it was just awful. Melissa was forced to contemplate the term ‘flood plain’ for the first time in her life. Anyway, there’s about a 1000 pounds of Eukanuba dog food rotting down there now. See, in those days she could afford to check the labels for protein content, by-products, etc. Now she clips a coupon, gathers the change she finds under the sofa cushions and buys us a fifty pound bag of ‘kibbled road kill’ You can see why I am concerned..

MGL: Oh, Xena, I am close to tears as we speak!! Perhaps it is time for me to reveal the true nature of my visit. I have figured out that you are so well informed on Xena episodes because you can hear them through the living room window over there. Did you happen to catch the final two episodes?

XWPD: Of course! Melissa had it turned up real loud. I could still hear it even though Melissa was ranting and cursing the whole time. Please don’t mention the finale to Melissa. She has the same reaction when she hears about it as I do when I think about Violet.

MGL: Well then, you know, Xena, that in the final scene Gabrielle is all alone on a ship headed for Egypt where they are looking for a girl with a chackrum. Ha! That last scene is screaming ‘spin-off’! Catch my drift, Xena? Well no one in the Xenaverse is going to accept Gabrielle with another HUMAN ‘best friend’. They would tar and feather anyone that tried to fill the flawless one’s shoes, but here’s the beautiful part! No one wants Gabrielle to be alone either! So [drum roll, please] enter ‘XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS DOG’!!!! I can see you and Renee in an episodic animated adventure series.The two of you could travel to the land of the Dobermans.You could throw Violet in the pit bull pit!The dynamic duo of Renee and XWPD could do battle with ticks, fleas, and rabid poodles.!! Oh, it’s so non-threatening to the original Goddess that was Xena and you could continue that whole unconditional relationship because you’re a dog and it comes naturally to you! What do you think,Xena? Would you be interested? I have connections.

XWPD: Hmm… would I be made into a plastic action figure and sold at Walmarts nationwide? Will I be immortalized on lunch boxes and back packs? Can Violet return from the dead every episode so I can do some dastardly deed to her every day?

MGL: I don’t see why not!!

XWPD: Wow, there’s big bucks in that! We might actually start seeing milkbones around here again! Will Melissa get to meet Renee? Man, she’s got the hots for her big time. Yea, I’ll do it, Mary! Let me handle all the contracts and financial considerations, though. When it comes to business deals, Melissa makes Joxer look like Donald Trump. She’s clueless, just pathetic, I tell you. Hey- do you think after working with me awhile,Renee will fall in love with me and want to adopt me? She is SO cute! Hell, I’ve seen anal glands cuter than Melissa, so it would be a nice change.

MGL: Well I can’t make any promises regarding Renee, Xena; but why would you want to leave Melissa? You are pretty hard on her Xena- don’t you love her?

XWPD: I am a Warrior Princess Dog, Mary, and I am not one to ooze mushy sentiments,but hell yes I love Melissa. My tail wags faster than a flag at a gay pride parade, when I see her. When she speaks to me my eyes light up brighter than a hundred harvest moons..She completes me. She feeds me. I can hear her thoughts and on a night when the other dogs are having a yap fest,,I know she thinks about just the two of us together. She imagines us living in a cozy cabin somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness. She sees me pulling the supply sled while she snowshoes home from the outpost; but then she remembers she chills easily. My favorite times are when she brings a blanket into my pen and we lay on the ground , snuggle up, and look at the stars together. We can actually imagine living on one of those stars someday. Hell those other hounds always have their noses to the ground. They only look up when they notice a squirrel about to poop on their heads. Melissa and I understand one another. Both of us longing to live wild as wolves. Both of us despising our domesticity. Both of us craving campfires, womb-like caves, and bathing in pristine lakes. We are the dreamers, she and I. We are soulmates. Eternal soulmates. Well I am starting to choke up a little, Mary, so I would like to end this interview.

MGL: Do you have any final words or thoughts Xena?

XWPD: No, just a request. When you write this up, please don’t add any subtext, Mary. People think Melissa is weird enough as it is. Just looking out for her reputation, you

know. I am Xena Warrior Princess Dog-I protect her. Yep, it’s what I do

If you would like to hear more from XWPD, Please e-mail us at dogdiva@webtv.net