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Show 4 s s^ v cyfc°0' ^H-"/ ^---•••••0Lucy-1 ^ LUCY IN THE SKY Francis on Faithful, me on True (or was it the other way around?), there we were, galloping full tilt into the wide open Utah desert. Francis didn't fool around with sedate warm-up canters- it was full charge ahead, hunker down, and hang on. Our little Arabs flung up their heads and tore into their ancestral element with something like joy. I, on the other hand, was accustomed to decorous show-ring paces and had to fight the urge to resist this ecstasy of sudden speed. Then I remembered to breathe, and I let myself surrender to the blur of sagebrush, the flying sand, the rhythmic snorts of the horses, and chanced a look backward. Lucy was right behind us, her coyote tail streaming, tongue lolling, smiling, as if she'd been bom to this. We slowed before too long to let her cool off under a clump of juniper, ambled around the stunning Best Friends landscape awhile, enjoyed a few more breath-stealing gallops. Unlike some dogs I'd met on horseback, Lucy did not dart out to spook the horses or nip at their heels, but kept an attentive and respectful distance. She was turning out to be a dog with an uncanny sense of occasion. It was the summer of 1990 on my second visit to Best Friends. I was fortunate enough to be there as a guest, visit the horses with Francis Battista, feed, some cats, scoop some poop, bask in the enchantment of a place dedicated entirely to animals. Throughout childhood I was forever bringing home stray dogs, begging to keep them, never allowed. I later took in a series of stray cats, and the yearning for a dog had, I thought, gone for good. Now, sprung from a marriage I'd fought to keep, I'd been |