I am slowly getting better, but haven’t gotten to take Tierce out lately. Thank Dog for obliging boyfriends!
Mischa took this photo a couple of days ago as Tierce raced around… and around… and around in the snow. It was snowing pretty hard and the camera was only a 3.0 megapixel.
I still kind of like it. It’s rather evocative of the experience the Shiba owner has when an orangish or blackish streak announces to their disbelieving eyes that their Shiba has somehow gotten past the armed sentries and barbed wire fence to bounce ecstatically around the neighborhood.
During Shassi’s puppyhood, there was a subtle tension in the household every time someone opened a door… or a window less than 6 feet off the ground. Shassi had a talent for finding a human’s blind spot and tracking it, so the only sign of her defection was an orange streak booking it down the stairs and across the street.
The problem was that we had gotten used to dumb dogs or at least dogs that used their intelligence for good rather than for evil. Collie-types, you know. The kind of dogs that only utilize their brain power to figure out how to come back faster and to sit with more snappy precision.
It’s become a happy fantasy of mine to one day open a door without automatically stick my foot in first and waving it around to forestall a Shiba from zipping out into the wild blue yonder.
I still like the photo, though.
