Pip, February 2024
Well, yes. We were at the end of our first two-hour hike in a while, other things having intervened. And Pip is eight, going on nine, and so he spent the afternoon resting on one of my Navajo rugs, as individual as he is.
What the man passing didn’t know is that Pip is full of self-will—one of the reasons we get on so well—and likes to dictate as much of his life as he can. Same with me. So since we were on a trail we haven’t been on in some time, there were few dog scents for him to sniff, and few dogs passing for him to greet with tail held high and a tentative grin (and then the inevitable butt sniff). So this hike was not his choice but mine. His choice was on the other side of the parking lot, a short steep trail he knows so well he inevitably disappears about fifteen minutes from the end and I am left waiting, with considerable irritation, for him to show up—which is why I didn’t choose that trail.
So, maybe he was tired. It was a long, steep, rocky trail, too close to new houses for me, and spent in earshot of the loud thumpings of a well-drilling machine, making ready for another new house; but still there were, as always, the masses of dark green pinion, the high blue sky, the clear mountain air—all of which I deeply relish but probably mean little to Pip compared with getting his own way.
He’ll forgive me. In fact he already has, or at least he’s forgotten, having a dog’s blessedly short memory.
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