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Show Lucy-5 areas, even if no fence circumscribed the boundary. She'd lie at the edge, head on paws, watching as if our lives depended on it. She would not, however, suffer boundaries she deemed unfair. I once left her with friends in Illinois to go to an out of state conference, and when I returned, her host had this story: "We keep our dogs in the kitchen behind a baby gate at night, but in the morning, Lucy was fast asleep on the living room sofa. She'd somehow figured out the gate mechanism, so the next night, we jammed a pencil through the metal loops. Next morning, there was Lucy on the sofa; the pencil lay next to the gate bearing tiny teeth marks. So we duct-taped the gate shut. Same story. She simply jumped the whole thing." Clearly, Lucy felt entitled to sleep on something softer and warmer than a tile floor. She also felt it her due to be with me at all times, which meant she would dig under the fence and follow my trail to the university campus, She once escaped a yard where she was boarding and headed to a farmer's market we often frequented, and another time crossed a four-lane highway to sit at the door of a convention hotel where I was presenting my work. This alarming devotion called for increasing precautions. It was interesting, conversely, that, aside from greeting-rituals, she did not like to be cuddled or kissed and would not sleep on my bed, though she'd lie there just before X * bedtime. I wondered if her reserve was a coyote trait, perhaps a need for decorum ij\.\ toward the pack leader more keenly felt in wild canines. We shared more adventures on horseback. On one trail ride in Illinois she spotted two pronking deer and joyfully began to imitate their pogo stick- like leaps. As a precaution against her becoming a deer-chaser, I issued a stem "No!" She squinted up at ^ ^ |
