The next morning, John woke on this planet. He said, “Richard came by.” My uncle Richard had died of lung cancer years before. “He wants me to take his medicine for him.”
“I’ll fetch it for you,” my mother said.
Delaney video-phoned me through Skype. “Idiopathic vestibular disorder!” She had searched the Internet for Casey’s symptoms and made her diagnosis. “It’s a bout of dizziness that comes on suddenly and then clears up fast. It’s this harmless thing that happens to old dogs.”
“You’re talking about vertigo, which, I’ll have you know, your aunt Laura and I get–did you just call us ‘old bitches?’”
“Yes. Yes, I did. Casey’s already better. I mean, she’s so off-balance she can hardly walk, but she insists on following me around. She stood at her bowl to eat her dinner. She goes out to pee. She climbs the stairs.”
“She’s my hero,” I said, which was what I always said about Casey.
“When I grow up,” Delaney said, “I want to be just like Casey.”
Delaney gazed into my shoebox diorama.
To peer at me in her laptop screen, Delaney leaned forward and down, like a person looking into a shoebox diorama. I felt like a tiny toy, a Llego person.
“You want to see her?” Delaney made some rustling sounds, and I seemed to float and whirl, weightless. I teetered around the coffee table, then settled on the carpet, below Casey’s eye level. Casey’s nose examined the keyboard in front of me and found something edible. Her tongue licked twice, then her face turned aside. Her eyes canted right, right, right.
From somewhere high above me Delaney’s voice said, “She’s better, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” I guessed so. Her head wasn’t tilting. The movement of the eyes might have slowed. I peered at the grainy ghost of my dog on the screen. It seemed marvelous that I could see and hear her in real time, but it was terrifying that couldn’t reach over and thump her shoulder. Was this how it was on the International Space Station? I might as well have left the planet altogether. My mother and I had rocketed off with John to his satellite way station. Life on Earth went on without us. Soon, his spaceship would dock. It would carry him away, and my mother and I would parachute back to Earth.
“Casey,” I said, and she glanced toward the screen, then away with narrowed eyes. Dogs like her don’t fall for figments.
My view soared upward, Casey’s face dropped away, and my throat clenched. Some part of me protested, probably the part that, when I was a baby, howled when something I loved disappeared.
“Rick and I are taking her to the vet in an hour, but she’ll be better. Vestibular disorder doesn’t last long.” Delaney gazed into my shoebox diorama, filling my screen with her round face, button nose, and doe eyes. The corners of her mouth twitched; she was trying not to gloat. “In the words of Dr. Gregory House, it’s ‘idiopathic,’ Latin for ‘we’re idiots for not figuring it out.’” She laughed, and I envied her sharp memory and wit. “Later today you’ll pay the vet to tell you what I just told you. If she says anything more, it’s just so you feel you got your money’s worth.”
“It’s always worth a hundred bucks to hear you say you told me so.”
“I’m value-added,” she quipped, having picked up the jargon-of-the-week from my job in the public school system. Her eyes were fixed on a corner of the screen, where she could see a small, inset box of herself as I saw her. She was enjoying the view, as well she should.
“You’re in a good mood,” I said.
“Casey’s okay. I’m sure of it.”
I was sure of it too. In fact, I was sure I’d known all along that nothing serious was wrong with Casey. I congratulated myself for not running up flight-change penalties and throwing everyone into a tizzy.
Delaney’s brow knit. She said, “How’s . . .” and swallowed.
“He says he’s going to another planet soon.” I nodded. “He talks about circles. There’s a circle he has to complete. He tries to explain but it doesn’t make any sense, and he gets frustrated. He just knows that when he completes the circle, he can go to his new planet.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“Oh! You’ll like this, when he’s asleep, his mother comes to him. He says their old cats come for him, too, Amber, Crystal, and Karma.”
She tucked a lock of her looping dark curls behind her ear and admired the effect. I remembered doing the same at her age. She said, “Wow.”
Her dainty face joined mine in the tiny Skype box
Suddenly my words tumbled, “He introduced me to the hospice nurse as his daughter. Not his stepdaughter. He told her that everything was fine now that his beautiful daughter was here.” I let myself cry.
Delaney’s gaze turned to the image of me on her screen. “Oh, Mom!”
Dry-eyed, my mother came over and squeezed my shoulder. She leaned forward to peer into the screen, and the image of her dainty face joined mine in the tiny Skype box. “He talked to my brother,” she said. I could tell by her tone of voice she knew it was cool that we were living in a satellite way station between the living and the dead. “John has to take his medicine for him. He also has to take Ted Kennedy’s.” Ted Kennedy was dying of brain cancer.
Through the laptops we three looked straight at each other, but because the lentil-sized camera lens is situated in the top of the laptop screen, we only saw each other looking down. With Skype, it’s impossible to look into each other’s eyes. I wished we could implant the little lentil cameras in them.
Later that day, I paid a good deal of money to the vet, who told me Casey had had an innocuous attack of idiopathic vestibular disorder. In just a couple of weeks, Casey and I would be together again.
Casey and I would be together again.
(l-r) Brianna, Tulley, Echo, and Terri
I enjoy relaxing with Tulley and Echo while sipping on delicious cup of joe and blogging my heart’s content at a nearby swanky dog-friendly establishment, Cocoon Coffee House. The owners of this charming, historical building, Grant and Jeanne Genzlinger, have done a remarkable job in the preservation, respectfully preserving the integrity and character of the 1893 structure. It’s a fascinating place. Originally, the building housed silk cocoons used for the production of silk, hence the name, ‘The Cocoon.’
Historical establishments serve as reminders of the past. I believe that preserving our past gives us more understanding and hope for the future. The best thing about Cocoon, however, is the staff, who make Tulley and Echo feel like honored guests.
Do you have a favorite place that you and your dog like to frequent, and why? Comment below, or email us a full review with photos!
Terri with Tulley (l) and Echo (r)
Posted in Your Stories
Tagged border collies, coffee shops, dog stories, dog-friendly, dog-friendly restaurants, dogs, family, pictures
I’m not leaving.
“I’m not leaving.” I grabbed my daughter Delaney’s hand. I felt a wave of relief. We’d have our last three weeks together after all. For three more weeks, we’d share the same roof, walls, and floors, the same briny wind through our windows, the same pot of coffee, the same mailbox.
Now, I had only one challenge: how to tell my mother she’d bear her unbearable burden alone after all?
A horn blew in the front drive, and we jumped to our feet. My old Border Collie Casey stood up with us, clattered sideways, then steadied.
“You should go,” Delaney said. “Rose or Rick can help me take her to the vet in the morning.”
If Casey’d had a stroke, what could I do anyway? “She doesn’t seem too bad,” I said. I frowned, otherwise I might weep all my eye makeup off.
Again, the horn blew.
“It’s okay, Mom.” She hugged me good-bye. “I got this.”
As if there was no threat to any loved one anywhere.
Then an airport shuttle swept me away and noodled me around neighborhoods, idly collecting more passengers as if there was no reason to hurry, no threat to any loved one anywhere in the world. Eddying along, shoulder-to-shoulder, the others made small talk, but I was curt. “My dog is sick.” They stopped talking to me. Could they tell I’d thought about hijacking the car? Did they condemn me for abandoning my dog and daughter? Or did they secretly sneer at me for worrying over a mere animal? I glared out the window.
At the airport, I texted Delaney for news. My colleague, Rick, had promised a ride to the vet the next morning. Casey was the same. I tried to shake it off, but the broken way she moved and the unnatural tilting of her head reminded me of my first Border Collie. Epilepsy had killed her in a manner that still chilled the pit of my stomach.
Did blood ties trump the bond with my dog?
How could I put three thousand miles between my responsibility and myself? Was I letting my mother’s needs override my own? Or did blood ties trump the bond with my dog? Perhaps I’d just banked on the characters who’d live—the dog and the man were checking out, so I was just going where I was needed most. Delaney had our friends to help her, but my mother had been tending her husband and his cancer for two cruel years. She was at the end of her emotional resources.
As we merged onto the highway toward the airport, the panic subsided; my chest petrified. I boarded the plane and allowed my stony self to hurtle westward, Tampa to Atlanta, Atlanta to San Francisco, eight hours of mental cement. On the ground in San Francisco, I texted Delaney, “You still up?” No answer.
I looked back, southeastward.
I was buckled into another shuttle. It was well after midnight, and the driver shut off the interior lights in the bus. When we crossed the Golden Gate toward Sausalito, we exited the bank of fog straight into the Milky Way. I looked back, southeastward, the way I always did, to lose myself in the lights floating on the invisible hillsides, suspended in the sky, and winking in the bay.
I knew then why I had left. My dog was dying. My daughter was leaving. I was unmoored.
My mother picked me up at the shuttle depot and carried me in her car. I checked my cell phone—still no word from Delaney. When we arrived at the house, the hour was after two in the morning. The sprinkler system sizzled through the night garden, sputtering with the scent of wet soil and grass.
The security system beeped as we opened the door and rolled my suitcase rumbling and bumping over the stone tiles. Golden lamps cast soft, mustard-colored shadows on oil paintings of Italian landscapes and glinted on plates glazed with painted-fruit patterns. A glistening ceramic rooster lorded over the great room, silently crowing while a television flickered and mumbled.
There, my stepfather sat waiting up for us. He rose from his recliner to greet me and stepped into my arms. It surprised me how small he was, this man who had been kinder to me than any other man I had ever known.
“I’m still here,” he said, his voice unnaturally soft and hoarse. “I keep thinking, ‘This is it’ . . . then I wake up, and I’m still here.” He sounded disappointed, like a man eager to take out his new sailboat, but every day it rained.
I’d never met anybody who wanted, so candidly, to die. Following his tone, I might have said, “Oh, I’m sure it’ll happen any day now.” I could have elbowed him and quipped, “Isn’t there something you can take for that?” I might have puffed on my Groucho air-cigar and said, “The suspense must be killing you.”
Instead I said, “John, you must feel awful.”
“That’s right, Lisa. I do.” He eased into his recliner. “I do.” He rested a moment, catching his breath. Then, more softly, he said, “There are circles, and if I . . .” He frowned around the effort of making himself clear. “All the circles . . . come to the center, and I have to find . . .” He cocked his head and looked up at me. “You know what I’m saying?”
I didn’t know. I nodded.
John and my mother.
My mother brought two glasses of Sangiovese, John’s favorite wine. “The blood of Jove,” my mother said as she handed it to me. I looked around for John’s glass. The last time I visited, we three tipped many a glass of Jove’s blood together. This time, John couldn’t swallow—he had esophageal cancer and was starving to death. My mother sank beside me into the white leather sofa and caught me looking for the third glass. We clinked our glasses together and didn’t cry.
For a few minutes, we sipped our wine and watched John drift in and out of sleep in his reclining chair. My mother said, “You want to go to bed?”
“I’m still wound up.”
“Me too. I haven’t slept in years.”
She led me out on the patio without turning on the light. We sat on the swing together. My mother tends to be aloof, not physically demonstrative, so the intimacy of sitting together on the swing made me alert and oddly happy. We rocked for an awkward moment, and then she said, brightly, “John says he’s going to another planet.”
“Cool.” I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “Kind of a wormhole thing?”
“I guess.”
Swinging in the dark, I could barely make out the brushed white cement of the patio floor under our feet, the sunshade over our heads, or the wine sliding in our glasses, but I could feel everything.
As my eyes adjusted, I could see the shadows of John’s work
She said, “John poured this concrete.” The property adjoined a nature preserve, and we heard frogs in the stream and bats on the wind. “He designed the sunshade. He raised and bolted the lumber himself.”
I knew all that. She wasn’t informing me, she was inviting me into her twilight, a state of gauzy marveling over the seam between what is and what will never be again. I felt the existential injustice—what stays and what vanishes isn’t fair. Scrap the sunshade. Let us keep the man. We rocked in the dark on the swing and shared the teetering terror between forgetting and remembering.
As my eyes adjusted, I could see the shadows of John’s work. We were facing south. Sitting there, in the dark, something pulled me southeast, as if my left hand might reach out and lay itself on my daughter’s head. Then I remembered how far away I was and felt a kicking panic, adrift in a sea of space.
Would I ever lay my hand on my old dog’s head again?
All the circles.
Posted in Mick of Borderland
Tagged border collies, dog stories, dogs, family, pictures, sheepdogs
The California Clan and I
For twenty years, I meant to head west. When we got to California, we could live the way human animals were meant to live. Blood relatives would belly up to our Thanksgiving table, wink, and joke that they didn’t feed my dog underneath. Women with my eyes, cheeks, curls, and hips would push grocery carts alongside mine. When my daughter walked on stage for a school recital, she’d look down into the eyes of kin looking up. They would single her out and smile–because she was theirs.
Even though I suffered the absence of kin as a kind of chronic illness, I had turned my two-human, three-species household into the happiest life I’d ever lived. I had about three weeks of it left when my mother called and asked me to come to California. She needed help taking care of her husband while he died.
She’d never asked me for anything before, so I said okay.
That meant my daughter and I scrapped our big plans for the last weeks of our last summer together before she left for college. Instead she’d spend that time at home alone with no one for company but our ill-tempered cat and our creaky old Border Collie, Casey. It hurt. Delaney and I were tight, the way some single moms are when they have just the one kid. Now our intrepid duo was coming to an accelerated end that I couldn’t picture for myself. I could picture it for Delaney—she’d order cheap pizza with her college roommate, pull all-nighters, plan flash-mobs on campus, lug clothes and quarters down to the laundry, screen zombie movie marathons in the common room. I’d made sure she had all the pencils, pajamas, and posters she’d need. As for me, after I helped her move into the dorm, I had nothing on my calendar.
The most beguiling ratios.
After six o-clock on a Friday evening, Delaney scooted aside so I could lug my suitcase past her. Casey, who used to rocket out ahead of me, lumbered behind me down the stairs. Delaney’s laptop lit up her face with the bright gray light of a hurricane sky. At eighteen, she was beautiful in the way of great beauties—her face had the most beguiling ratios of cheek-to-chin, eye-to-nose, and brow-to-lip, the kind that not only made people stare, but made them blurt out, “I’m sorry, but I can’t stop staring.” She looked nothing like me.
“We’ll Skype,” I said. “We can text while I’m at the airport.” I rolled my suitcase to the door. Casey came with me.
Casey’s pedigree said she was my dog, and so did she. For fourteen years I fed her, I trained her, I threw her Frisbee, millions upon millions of times. Casey was mine. If we ever did battle for custody of Casey, Delaney could’ve introduced into evidence a home video: four-year-old Delaney stands holding a puppy in her arms, whom the record will show was Casey at eight weeks. In it, you can hear my mommy-voice utter the incriminating line: “How do you like your new puppy?”
I gave Casey to Delaney because I wanted a daughter who wanted a cool dog like Casey as much as I did. That’s because when I was a little kid, even as young as four years old, I would’ve done anything to live side-by-side with a dog like Casey. But maybe Delaney was too young, or maybe Casey came too easily, or maybe Delaney’s brain was wired for feline. To her the dog was more conflict and competition than companion. A dog like Casey was in her way. A dog like Casey was my way.
Inter-species sibling rivals.
And Casey knew it. While Delaney was growing up, Casey chased her and her friends through the backyard, staggered around the house wearing a princess gown, and let herself be tucked into My Little Pony bed sheets because I willed her to do it. Casey “keeked,” a term Donald McCaig picked up in Scotland from a shepherdess named Viv Billingham, “Tell me, does he turn his head back to you, looking for instructions? Keeking, we call it.” Casey keeked not to Delaney but to me, as if to ask, “You want me to wear this tiara? Oh, okay. I’d rather not wear a tiara while running a lawn-chair obstacle course with the kids, but if you want me to do what the kids want, okay.” If I’d beckoned, she’d have bolted to my side.
Every night when Delaney was still little, I pointed to the end of her bed, and Casey pointed at the door. She glanced back at me, not keeking but negotiating for a promotion—bedding down in my room. Resigned, she curled on the end of my daughter’s bed, always slightly panicked to see a door close between us. She’d lift her head one last time and then lower it, as if to say, “You sure? Okay, one more night.”
Finally Delaney grew into a teenager. “Casey bugs me jumping on and off the bed while I’m trying to sleep.” And so Casey got her bedtime upgrade.
A family counselor would say the three of us—mother, daughter, dog—were “enmeshed.” Casey was the closest thing to a sibling my only child ever had. I had a lifelong case of dog-aholism, and the three of us were deeply co-dependent—or is that “co-reliant?” Not a competitive sort, I didn’t see Border Collies as tickets to big sheep-trial purses, agility trophies, or rescue-network sainthood (even though I secretly craved and liked to think myself capable of all three). Nor was Casey the object of my otherwise unspent maternal excess—she was just my dog, which for most of us should be enough of a mighty thing.
Mental fusion.
If neuroscientists ever studied Casey’s brain and mine, they would find mental fusion, mirrored neurological roots and branches twining and grafting. My brain had a caniculus or a “little dog” of Casey like the homunculus or “little man,” the neural map of my own body. After fourteen years of bonding with that dog, the Casey-region of my brain was especially large—never mind the Delaney-region. That was probably an entire continent.
In the foyer by the front door, I tried to slide a couple keys off my key ring without breaking a fingernail or bursting into tears. I said, “I can’t believe I’m leaving my girls.”
“The last three weeks of my last summer at home too,” Delaney deadpanned, without lifting her eyes from her laptop.
“Thanks, kid. That helps.”
According to my flight itinerary, I’d be taking the red-eye alone to California and returning in three weeks. The oncologists had given my stepfather two.
“Here’s the car key,” I said, even though Delaney didn’t have her license yet. “Just in case. The little one’s the mailbox key.”
“I know.”
The Border-Collie Mindmeld–“Throw It.”
Casey wagged her tail and with her eyes tried to bore through my brow the command, “You’re taking me with you.” She couldn’t read the tickets through her cataracts, and even if she weren’t deaf she wouldn’t have listened to my rationalizations. Suitcases triggered rapid-cycling manic-depression in her—maybe adventure awaited! Maybe abandonment. Her tail popped up, ears forward, toes tippy-tapping, then her tail tucked down, her ears flattened back, her feet rooted in front of the door. She blocked my path in an unspoken demand that I could feel in my bones. The Casey region of my brain busied itself trying to figure out how to take her with me after all. I opened the door, knowing she’d shoulder it shut—
But this time she clattered sideways and fell over. When she tried to sit up, her head seemed to swing loose on her neck. I thought, “She’s having a stroke!” I was so scared, I could’ve picked up and thrown the whole house.
I dropped on my knees. “Casey!”
At the bottom of the stairs, Delaney hunched over the keyboard engaged in a battle of wit with an invisible someone, someone she’d probably never seen, someone unrelated to us. She machine-gunned whole sentences and smirked.
“Laney! Something’s wrong with Casey!”
“Oh, my God,” she said. She kept typing.
Head dipped to the right, Casey’s eyes shifted back and forth, faster in one direction, as if watching someone swing a cat. “I’m serious, Lane. Something’s wrong with the dog.”
Delaney put down her computer and came to see for herself. Her eyes widened. “Are you still going to go?”
The longer I’m a mother, the more I love my mother.
My mind scrambled over the grown-up calculations we hesitate to share with our children: how much would it cost to reschedule my flight? How much would it cost to see the vet on a Saturday? How much do you invest in saving the life of a fourteen-year-old dog? How sick can she be when two months ago the vet said she was healthy enough to live to be twenty? How often do vets lie to pet owners to let them enjoy happier last days?
My Casey-dog was dying, just as my father had died, just as my stepfather, John, was dying. Should stay with my daughter while our dog dies? Should I keep my promise to my mother and help her shepherd her husband to his death? What good would I do here? What good would I do there? How should I decide?
My shuttle was late.
Posted in Mick of Borderland
Tagged border collies, dog stories, dogs, family, herding dogs, sheepdogs, stockdogs
August 30, 2013 in Pictures and Posters
Tagged border collies, children, dogs, family, humor, pictures, sheepdogs, stockdogs
I must admit I felt a connection with Wyatt. He’d look at me with those big, round, dark brown eyes as if he saw and loved my very soul. I had tried not to give him too much of myself, knowing he couldn’t stay. After all, now that Tulley had joined our family, I knew too well that six dogs were our limit.
Wyatt with Karen and Morgan
At this juncture neither Karen nor I were convinced that Wyatt would make a suitable companion for their family. We all went back inside together and discuss Wyatt’s training and feeding and sleeping schedule. While we decided his fate, he trotted through the house, following Morgan and inspecting her every move. Morgan talked to him, “C’mon, Wyatt. This is a stuffed-animal tea party, and you can be our guest.” Wyatt hung on her every word, which pleased the little girl mightily.
As we talked, occasionally Jim knelt and called to him. Wyatt dashed over and wiggled as Jim ruffled his fur all over. Finally, Jim turned to Karen, “I say let’s give him a try.”
Lost in her play-pretend, Morgan had seemed oblivious to the adult conversation, but right on cue she piped up, “Oh! Can we keep him, Daddy?”
Jim and Karen blurted, “Yes!” Then Karen added, “If Wyatt is happy, we would love for him to stay.”
“Wonderful!” I said, but my enthusiasm sounded a bit forced. Puzzled, I looked at Wyatt anew—could it be this was good-bye? What in the world had I expected?
Knowing how intuitive he was, I tried to conceal my sorrow. “Do you have that crate we talked about?”
“Yes,” Karen said.
“Put him in the crate and don’t let him out until after I’m gone.” I managed to hold back my tears. “I don’t want him to see me leave.” Just then, Wyatt walked over and slid his head onto my lap. I cupped his face. “You’re a good boy. . . . I’ll always be with you.” Everyone began to sniffle.
Ed stood up. “Okay, let’s go, honey.” I let him guide me to my feet and put his arm around me.
Karen escorted Wyatt to another room and the crate. At the door, Karen embraced me—no words, just strength, trust, and love.
Merry Christmas, Wyatt
Karen emailed me often. Morgan loved Wyatt from the start. He joined in many a tea party, fashion show, and Disney-movie reenactment. At first, he didn’t know what to do with himself, which was saying a lot, because Wyatt had a big personality. With so much attention from a family so happy to have him, he acted like a kid in a candy store. Overcome with glee, he’d race through the house and leap from couch to chair to chair. They realized quickly how right I was about his need for training, and they diligently obliged.
Wyatt was a counter-surfer, and for this, Karen asked my advice. I replied, “Don’t leave things on the counter to tempt him, and he may forget to surf.” That cured it, but one St. Patrick’s Day, Wyatt had a little lapse. Karen had made corned beef and cabbage and left it to cool on the counter. A half hour later she returned to find the entire meal had vanished. Wyatt had sprawled himself out on the kitchen floor, lounging with a look of self-satisfaction. He practically shrugged at her, as if to say, “Hey, you obviously didn’t want it. What’s the problem?”
Morgan and Wyatt
At first, Wyatt was haunted by old fears and anxieties. Whenever he rode in the car with Karen and she stopped at the supermarket or strip mall, he’d panic and try to keep her from getting out, as if remembering the day his first owner gave him up in a parking lot. Eventually, he learned to love car rides, but it took time and a lot of reassurance. Summer storms frightened him; sometimes they’d find him hiding in the clothes dryer. When left alone for long periods, Wyatt scratched up the furniture, the floor, the doors. Karen used Rescue Remedy or Anxiety Relief drops, and Wyatt learned when he felt his fears coming on to go to her and sit obediently, as if to say, “Please, please, please may I have a few drops of the stuff?” He’d lift his lip and wait for her to squeeze the medicine into his mouth. Over time, he learned he was well-cared-for, and his fears subsided.
Morgan, Jim, and Wyatt
Last fall, while Morgan was asleep in bed and Jim was outside spotting deer, Karen decided to make a cup of tea before bed. Her heel slipped off the top step, and she went skidding down the wooden stairs on her tailbone. There she sat at the bottom with a dislocated shoulder, a concussion, and a likely broken coccyx, so painful that Karen heard herself wailing in a way she never had before. Wyatt dashed over and ran his eyes and nose all over her. Then he rocketed up on the couch in front of the picture window and barked and barked and barked. Jim was was spotting deer about thirty yards away and heard Wyatt’s bark. Afraid Wyatt would wake up Morgan, he came running to scold him, but instead found Karen injured and badly dazed.
You’re safe, and you’re loved.
Wyatt and Karen had grown very close, in part thanks to the three-and-a-half-mile runs. At one particular point halfway up a hill, Wyatt would stop dead in his tracks and sit right in front of the “SPEED LIMIT 25 When Horse Rider Is Present” sign. He refused to budge. Karen spoke firmly and tired to get him to heel, but nothing worked. Karen stood there thinking, “Seriously? Just move your tush up the hill. This is not hard!” She usually had to get back home to get Morgan on the bus and Jim off to work. Finally one day, as Wyatt sat by the sign like a cement statue, she leaned down, patted his head, and said in his ear, “Everything’s okay. It’s all fine. You’re safe, and you’re loved.” He relaxed, he wriggled all over, and then zipped up that hill like an Olympic athlete.
Wyatt still oversees all the movement in the house, off to work and school, over to the barn, out to bound in fresh snow, and up to bed, when he listens attentively to bedtime stories and often stays to sleep in Morgan’s room. Whatever’s going on, Wyatt is happiest when the family is all together.
Karen works from from home, and every afternoon like clockwork, Wyatt comes to her and whines. Engrossed in her work, she tells him to hush and lie down. He settles for a moment before fussing again—right around the time Karen looks up to see the school bus coming down the road. The house sits almost 800 feet from the road, and he starts to whine and pace about five minutes before she even sees the bus. Karen still can’t figure out how he knows Morgan is on the bus and it’s time to go get her.
Morgan and Wyatt in the snow
Karen emailed me the other day, “I just said to Jim tonight that we’ve had Wyatt longer than we’ve had any dog. Hard to believe he’ll be ten years old in a few months.”
So many things had happened since their dear Raine had died. The whole world had changed for the mean dog who had become our own dear, old Tulley.
Karen wondered, “Where does the time go?”
I believe that there is an explanation for everything, so, yes, I believe in miracles. ~Robert Brault
Posted in Mean Dog
Tagged adopting a dog, Aggression Issues, Behavior/Training, border collies, children, choosing a dog, dog aggression, dog behavior, dog bite, dog growl, dog training, dogs, dogs leadership, family, fear dogs, fearful dogs, growl, herding dogs, inspiration, philosophy, pictures, rescue, sheepdogs, stockdogs, temperament
People are always saying Border Collies are such clever dogs that, left to amuse themselves, they’ll only make trouble. Sometimes they do, but they also invent perfectly harmless games to play alone–or to lure us into playing with them.
When he was tiny Mick used to jump on the chair and drop his ball over the back of it. Then he’d leap after it and repeat. When he got bigger, he’d take it to the top of the stairs and let it bounce down–then roar after it.
Now that he’s older, wiser, and wilier, he’ll drop the ball at my feet, then race around to hide behind the armchair. A moment later, my little ambush predator’s head peeks up over the arm to see if the oblivious ball is coming. It’s so cute, I laugh and throw it for him, of course.
What games do your dogs invent? Here’s one of a corgi playing fetch with himself and the help of a stream. There’s nothing more charming than a clever dog at play!
Posted in Your Stories
Tagged border collies, dogs, family, herding dogs, humor, pictures, sheepdogs, stockdogs
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The Border Collie Inquisitor 