Please make sure your seat belts are fastened and be sure to keep all hands, arms, and feet inside the computer chair at all times. Are we ready to proceed? Okay, good.

Now, just a little warning, this article's going to be extremely long, but if you're seriously interested in the topic I'd recommend reading the whole thing. If not, feel free to quit now. But what is the topic, you're probably thinking. If you haven't figured it out by the title, I'll be discussing the rises and falls of various armies, particularly the ones ran by the Whyville dogs.

I was inspired to write this by the article "The History of Whyville Dogs" (ID #6301), which was written by my good buddy and fellow Dog War Veteran, Kurama5. I liked it a lot, and it did cover the basics, but I couldn't help but feel that there were too many key details left out.

I'm afraid the beginning of my story won't be completely accurate, however. I joined Whyville in the year 2004, and according to what I've read, 2002 was when it all started. Apparently that was the year the dog heads, (made by googles, DivaSis, and joe999), first became popular. If you've never seen such dog heads before, here are some pictures for you:

Cute, aren't they? Unfortunately I was unable to get a picture of the one googles made, which was orange, because I currently don't own it and it was sold out in Akbar's at the time I was typing this, so I had nowhere to copy and paste it from.

Anyway, so those little fellas got popular around 2002. They were known to roam around places like the Sportplatz and Playground. But then, for reasons I'm not really certain of, they decided to move to the Why House. Because it was under Club Why, (bearing in mind that the Newbie Center wasn't in existence yet and the Why House hadn't been added to the destinations menu), the Why House was almost invisible, and completely deserted.

Now I can finally come into the picture (I never heard of anything significant happening to them in 2003). When I was a newbie, I was attracted to the dog heads the moment I saw them, since I was such a huge dog lover in real life. Once I had acquired one (the nicest person gave me a purple one for free!) I put it on immediately.

One day I was in Whyville Square and another dog came up to me. "Come to the Why House", he said. "Or as we call it, the Dog House." I had never heard of such a place, so I asked him to show me the way, and he did. When I walked in, my jaw dropped. Dogs! Everywhere! The room was positively crawling with them!

I'd love to sit here and talk about all the friends I've made in there and how it's become like my home in Whyville, but this article's already getting long and I need to talk about the armies.

So, fast forwarding a little bit -- humans found it. Pretty soon, the trend of keeping pets started. Just as you see folks in Whyville making friends, dating, or getting pretend virtual families, they also had dogs.

I for one saw it a bit like a joke. Most of the dogs' owners were just another one of their friends. However, there was still the few who liked to treat their dogs as slaves or bodyguards. This got us upset because we enjoyed being dogs -- the face parts were cool looking, we could "growl" when we got angry or "wag" our "tails" when we were happy, and no matter if you were prep or goth all the dogs generally got along with eachother, like one big family -- but we all knew we were humans in real life.

We had fun acting like real dogs amongst ourselves (although we didn't overdo it, I mean we chatted in English instead of typing "woof woof"), but we wanted to keep our dignity.

This is where the armies come in. A dog by the username of Damdas100 came up with an idea of an army for rebel dogs -- dogs who weren't going to give up their sanity on a website. This army became commonly known as the DA, short for Dog Army. I was asked if I would like to join by Damdas himself. I refused at first, but quickly changed my mind.

Despite Damdas's impressive leadership skills, the DA began to spell trouble right away. The main problem was that he didn't keep a list of recruits. He knew the highest ranking soldiers by heart, but the rest was a mystery.

Dogs took advantage of this. The DA got extremely popular, since the dogs heads were so popular. Too many of them were ignorant of what the DA was for. Most of them were under the impression that it was just some club for dogs, or an organization designed for the dogs to take over Whyville. Most of them didn't even know who the commander was!

Because of this, the time soon came where nobody knew who was really in the DA and who wasn't. A lot of dogs recruited themselves into it instead of asking Damdas if they could join. There were also the ones who thought they were a member of it just because they were wearing a DA face part. And of course, the biggest problem of all: Dogs attacking any random humans they pleased instead of just the ones at fault.

Now, there's a lot more history between this period, but most of it is more of my personal experiences instead of experiences directly relevant to the army itself. We made friends and enemies. People joined and people quit. Some even betrayed us. A "Prep Army" was made to bring us down, but was incredibly unsuccessful. I won't even attempt to list the names of the ones who went through all this by my side, because I know I'll forgot someone and then feel terrible. Nowadays, those folks are known as the Dog Veterans, or Dog Elders.

The Why House went through shifts as well. The dogs always had a somewhat stable control over it, but other "species" inhabited it off and on.

First came the Ziggy Cabbits, made by Takashie:

Then came the babies, made by Stewie. Like the orange dog, I was unable to locate an appropriate picture of them, but you might have seen them before.

Neither of these disrupted us very much. The babies might have whined and cried a little to often, but they respected our space.

During this time, Damdas100 had mysteriously disappeared. There was a rumor that he'd gotten hacked, and then got his account back, but either way no one ever saw him. While this was happening, the popularity of the dogs was slowly declining.

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but little by little the true DA members, the ones loyal to Damdas, started calling themselves the RDA, for Rebel Dog Army. The DA and RDA were the same thing at that point, but it still helped a little to see who was a true recruit.

Then, on that fateful day in the year 2005, I got a Y-mail from Damdas100. He informed me that he was getting "too old" for Whyville, and was going to quit. He gave me full command of his army. I can't possibly tell you how ecstatic I was.

It wasn't all wonderful though. By then a fellow named Bonedaddy had started a HA (Human Army), made only to destroy us. I'll get back to them later.

A few days later in the Dog House (nobody called it the Why House anymore) someone called Alig2444 appeared in the room and began to make a speech. I don't remember all of it, but someone had apparently declared her the new commander of the DA.

We got into an unpleasant argument at first, but then I decided to change my strategy. Instead of starting a huge fight over who was the true commander, we made it so the DA and RDA were separate armies. This worked out splendidly, because both of us were able to keep track of our recruits, and we had become friends and allies. Together, the HA didn't stand a chance!

A few months later, Alig came to me with a proposition. Our armies were nearly the same, and a lot of people actually got confused over which was which (I remember people Y-mailing me asking to join the DA, and I'm sure Alig probably got some Y-mails asking to join the RDA). She suggested we combine our armies and become the UDA, a.k.a. United Dog Army.

I wasn't crazy about the idea, but eventually I warmed up to it. I'm sorry to say that the UDA lasted only for a matter of weeks until I stepped away from it. Alig was my friend, and I tried to tell her it wasn't personal. Organization and cooperation was extremely difficult with more than one commander. That reason and that reason alone was why I left it.

By this time the dogs were almost extinct. People started calling it the Why House instead of the Dog House again. The HA was building up little by little.

If you want my opinion, I'm going to guess that the dogs seriously started diminishing when Mistuy started designing the cat heads. Here's a few pictures, but nowhere near all of them:

Because of their fluffy, adorable, anime styled appearance, they became nearly as popular as Elmo or Dirty Little Secret hair. As much as I loved the way they looked, I must admit their clans annoy me.

What are the clans, you ask? Well, eventually the cat heads invaded the Why House the same way the dogs had several years ago, and started to form these clans. I'm not really certain how many clans there are, but there seems to be one for every element: Thunder, River, Wind, Heart, Shadow, Trinity, Star -- you get the point.

Since I'm not in a clan, I can't give too much info on them. I can say that they're a bit like mini-armies, they like to give eachother nicknames like FireHeart, OneStar, LeafPaw, DawnPelt, etc., and most (but not all) of them are anti-dog.

Back to the UDA -- after I left it I was preparing to restart the RDA, when and idea began to dawn on me.

Why should I limit it to dogs? What about all the cats that weren't in clans, or any of the other animals in Whyville? That idea was how my current army came to be. I called it WOURPA (pronounced "wur-puh"), which stands for Whyville's Official United Rebel Pet's Army. I'm hoping that I'll actually be able to keep this one together, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

This is Kimker, first in command/founder of WOURPA and one of the many Dog War Veterans, signing off.

Author's Note:This article was not meant to insult anyone or put anyone down. The opinions stated above were mine and mine alone. All the facts presented were based on my own memories, except for the events which happened before my membership of Whyville. I am not responsible for all who have received hunched backs, sore necks, or bloodshot eyes as a result of reading the entire contents of my longer than average article.

Alternate sources among the Whyville Times: "Why House: Gone to the Dogs!" by Skaterjab (ID #4035) and "Dogs Galore!" by Lolkidd (ID #3975) discuss the dogs taking over the Why House. "More Dogs Than Humans?" by Whybmad (ID #4059) talks about the dogs increasing popularity.