The Dog

Now, M and our dog Canela have never professed being chummy. At least M has never said this. In fact, she thinks the dog is downright piz wat, or “good for nothing.”

There are the dogine nuisances, that’s for sure. As a pack animal, Canela learns from and imitates us, which means that she, too, picks and eats broccoli, blueberries, raspberries, cucumbers, and tomatoes from our garden. Before her shock collar gave her a clue about our property boundaries (and limited her jumping up on people or mauling the cat), it wasn’t uncommon to find a dead chicken (we believe local chicken house clean outs) on our porch; after the neighbor’s cow died, there were leg bones; a deer leg resides still under our shed. She chews up sticks and flip-flops and leaves them strewn about. Only only once has she barked at a stranger coming to our house.

But it’s not all bad, as far as I’m concerned. During the school year when I pedal out our driveway, Canela runs down to where our land borders the road to bark goodbye to me (okay, so I admit that she does the same when other bikers or joggers pass). She’s always happy to see me. She brings sticks for me to try to grab from her or for playing fetch. In fact, so closely is Canela tied to my heart that I’ve not quite trained myself to call new daughter by her name; often the dog’s slips out. It’s an easy mistake, I’ll say in my own defense: same number of syllables, same ending syllable sounds, similar familiarity with our back deck, where the dog watched H enter the outside:

But what’s topped off Canela’s value happened yesterday. Yup, that’s a groundhog she’s chewing on–we’ve got ourselves a groundhogger:

We’ll see about that piz wat.