One thing I never thought I'd have to do in the country was walk my dog.
When we lived in the suburbs, we went for long walks in the MetroParks, took adventure trips and our dog accompanied us to soccer games. When we purchased our three acres in the middle of some of God's most beautiful handiwork, surrounded by fields and acres and miles of Amish farmland, I was relieved that our dog would no longer need to depend on us for exercise. Install a couple of dog doors, provide a crate in the garage, daily food and water, and you have a virtually maintenance-free companion.
Why, just a couple of days ago, as my husband Bo and I took a walk around our property, we were extoling the virtues of country life for a dog. Lewis, our young black lab and Jack, our jack russell/toy fox terrier, team up together and go exploring for hours, chasing rabbits and opossums, romping through the high meadow grasses, returning soaking wet from a dip in a nearby pond or creek. Ah, that's the good life. That's the life of a healthy dog.
Until we got the phone call that our healthy dogs have been bad, bad dogs. Sheep chasers. Words like, "angry Amishman," and "high-powered rifle" sent me into a sulk, and eventually sent me over to the neighbor's house to get details.
"Yer little dog and Kenny's Rottweiler have been chasin' sheep and calves," Neighbor Joe told me. It wasn't Joe's calves, or his sheep for that matter. He was just doing the right thing and telling me about it, instead of calling the pound or taking a twelve-gauge to my dog's head. "Well, Daniel P.'s wife had 'em cornered in a barn stall with a b.b. gun. I'm surprised that Rott didn't turn on her. And yer black dog and that little one, why, one a'the neighbors said they spotted 'em over by the schoolhouse."
The schoolhouse! That's...that's miles away! And on a very, very busy road! Apparently three acres aren't enough. You need five acres, fifty acres, five HUNDRED acres, dotted with ponds and void of sheep.
I came home and locked all of my dogs in the garage, except for the beefy old black lab who doesn't move much beyond the front porch. What else could I do?
"What's the plan, then?" Bo asked.
"I guess we keep the offending criminals in the garage at night, in the house during the day, and keep those celebrated dog doors closed," I sighed. Lewis in the house. Jack is one thing. He's small, obedient, and doesn't chew the heads off of Sweetheart's Barbie dolls (though I wouldn't mind if he did). But Lewis. He's practically a bear with the energy of a five-year-old boy.
"So what about the crap?"
"Good Lord, Bo. What do you want me to do? Make up a crap cleanup schedule? Assign each person a day to clean up the crap? No one's going to abide by it, anyway."
"I mean, what about letting them out to go to the bathroom? What do we dp about that? How do you plan to let them out without them running off and getting their heads blown off?"
I thought about it for a second, held the words in my throat, waiting for a miracle to ebb forth before I had to actually say them. No miracle came.
"We walk them, I guess."
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I was up too late last night. Blame it on familial relationships, too much caffeine, an overactive fantasy life or the brain-children of a writer with too little time to write combined with any or all of the above. Whatever the case, morning came very early. As I drifted in and out of pre-dawn sleep, I thought about the dogs in the garage, about the crap-cleanup duty, and about the fact that there must be something wrong with me, because my blood pressure's not high enough for the stuff I'm worrying about. I didn't want to get out of bed. Truly, I didn't. Let them crap in the garage. We'll call it, oh, I don't know, excrement study, and I'll have one of the kids take care of it. I'll log it as "natural science" time.
But I knew that was just my sleep-deprivation talking, and what I really needed was to get my tuckus out of bed and walk the dog.
The one that'll run on me is Lewis, the hyperactive black lab we acquired through FreeCycle. I know he's really the guilty party, too, because our other dogs never roamed wild until Lewis came along. He's not fixed yet, though he will be soon, so his hormones are in control. The other three dogs are all settled with their fate. Decreased amounts of estrogen and testoterone run through their veins. There's really no need to stray far from home.
But Lewis still has that wanderlust, and he has no problem taking little Jack along for the ride on his doggie deliquent misadventures. Jack, with his natural high-energy and insatiable curiosity, is the perfect match for the adolescent Lewis. If I have Lewis under control, all else falls into order fairly nicely.
So, I clipped the leash to Lewis' collar and stepped out into the too-bright sun of daybreak.
He was grateful for my company, this big black baby of mine. That's nothing new. Our dogs always have company: a kid to follow down to the pond, a mom out pulling weeds, a dad who can't resist a good wrastlin', a child asleep in his bed. People often ask us how we have such great dogs and I really think the key is constant companionship. Our dogs, like our homelearning children, are very well socialized. Some people like that. Some people can't handle it.
We walked together, Lewis and I. Jack and our only female (kind of, since she's spayed) Snoopy, a basset hound with a tiny bit of beagle in there somewhere, tagged along behind us. The dew gathered around my ankles, collected on my pajama pants, and awoke my heels, which were exposed in my boiled-wool mules.
I checked each of our bluebird houses for illegal residents, finding a squatter's egg in one of the boxes. With persistence, we can protect the bluebirds from being overtaken by the non-native House Sparrows. I evacuated the gathering of sticks and the lone brown-speckled egg from the nest, holding its warmth in my hand. It will go on one of the kids' nature shelves.
I peeked in on the House Wren home that's nestled in my mound of Lemon Balm, five eggs clustered together and a nervous mother chittering nearby.
I examined our prolific plum tree, thrilled to see it bearing its first season of fruit since we planted it four years ago.
We walked through our small forest of maples, Lewis and I, noticing how much they've grown since we came to this place, wondering how many maple trees we'd have to tap to get a gallon of syrup. "I have a book somewhere," I told Lewis. "I'll look it up. Maybe we can do that next year. "
We stepped close to the spreading blackberry patch, Lewis sniffing for a fallen bird or a timid rabbit, me promising myself that this will be the year I defeat the poison ivy and claim my harvest for summer's fresh blackberry cobbler.
And I longed for a good film camera--and the smarts to use it--as Snoopy and Jack disappeared into the tall meadow grasses, tiny clouds of particles floating into the air just above the purple-tinted heads of timothy grass. It was some of the most beautiful cinematography I've ever seen.
There were sleeping children back at home, so Lewis and I made our way up the lane and through the garage, where I opened the door to the house and started inside. Lewis paused at its entrance.
"Come on in," I told him, never minding about fleas and chewed Barbie heads.
"You shared your world with me. Now I'll share with you mine."
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