A long time ago, in a ranch far, far away…actually, it was only last Christmas. But I’ve meaning to tell you about Derby the dachshund’s first interaction with the alpacas for a while now.

He's so sweet and innocent.

Derby-licious, aka Derbles, aka Dahbe, aka honey-lamb, aka sweetums, aka the little man, aka Teeny-Weenie, is my dog. He’s adorable, if I do say so myself. Now, we live by ourselves. It feels weird to admit that on the internet. So…we live by ourselves, with hulking, scary, gun wielding neighbors and a security system. Which is true (just ask the fire department, I accidentally called them with the security system last weekend).

Anyway, you might call the Derbs a bit possessive of my time. I live to serve him, in his opinion. When I spent so much of the Christmas holiday outside in the barn, he was understandably perturbed. So one morning I brought him out with us. The first thing he did was escape from the barn into the horse paddock, where he barked ferociously at the alpacas. The alpacas did not approve. Despite the presence of two fences between them and Derby, they were frankly convinced they were goners.

Threatening, right?

But Merlin wasn’t going down without a fight. While the others milled around wildly, he stood his ground, stomping and prancing around, trying to get a foot on Derby through the fence. This went on for about half an hour before we decided that was enough of that and Derby was deposited back in the house. For the rest of the day, all the alpacas gave me dirty looks. I don’t know how they knew I was associated with the little nuisance that had briefly threatened their very lives (ha), but they did. And Merlin went to sleep that night knowing that he had protected the herd from the greatest threat ever…