I live in a building that houses, at last count, around 565 dogs, give or take a dog or two. At least half of these dogs are Labrador retrievers.

The reason I'm mentioning this is that the dogs - and the building - are so quiet, and I'm not sure why this is. I'm not used to a quiet life with a Lab. I suppose it's because back home in Atlanta, I had the unique experience of living with a Samoyed and a black Lab under the same roof.

We like to call it "The Great Bosco-Frosty War."

Bosco was something of a genius, even for a Lab. Frosty, on the other hand - well, Frosty had a brain about the size of a pea. A split pea.

It didn't matter that we had Frosty first, or that he was older and bigger. Pack mentality had nothing to do with it. Bosco decided just as soon as he came to live with us that the rest of his life would be devoted to Getting Rid of That White Dog.

Rescuing Frosty from Bosco's great escape plots became a daily occurrence for a while. The first inkling we had of the Machiavellian lengths a Lab will go to came one day when I was in the house, and I heard my brother Kevin frantically calling me. I ran outside, where Bosco had dug a huge hole, large enough to bury a Samoyed in, underneath our redwood fence.

Only he wasn't burying him. He had shoved him into the hole and, with his forehead firmly against Frosty's butt, was pushing with all his might. He was trying to get one very large dog through one medium-size hole. It wasn't working, but it was a valiant effort.

I recall another almost-successful attempt when Bosco contrived to open our complicated iron gate. By the time we got out there, Bosco had succeeded in pulling Frosty by his collar through the gate and was now head-butting him off to freedom, represented by Peachtree Creek across the street.

When Bosco realized that we were deliberately foiling his attempts to get rid of White Dog, he came up with the idea that, just maybe, if we got mad enough at Frosty, we'd get rid of him ourselves.

With this in mind, he began a career of sabotage unparalleled in Labrador history.

One memorable day, Bosco came running to get my mother, doing a pretty good imitation of Lassie when Timmy fell into the well. My mother followed him into the kitchen where she found Frosty ensconced in his usual place near the kitchen door, surrounded by all the cushions from our good sofa. As Bosco barked in righteous indignation, my mother scolded Frosty and put the sofa cushions back.

The next day, she heard a noise in the den and went to investigate. There she found Bosco, his mouth full of sofa cushions, dragging them off to the kitchen and artfully arranging them around a puzzled, innocent Samoyed.

When Bosco got tired of Frosty's presence altogether, he would trap him under the kitchen table with the dinette chairs. Frosty would stay gloomily imprisoned (the chairs were on wheels) until one of us came out to release him.

As I said before, he wasn't all that smart.

Bosco outlived Frosty by several years. I'd like to say that he missed White Dog after he was gone, but he didn't. In fact, I strongly suspect he considered himself to be the ultimate victor after Frosty's eventual demise due to old age.

But for the rest of us survivors of the Great Bosco-Frosty War, not a day goes by when we don't miss the both of them.