An Aussie, a Shiba Inu, and a Great Dane

Today is a good day. Having spent the morning waiting for my elder brother to show up, we gave up and went for a walk at one-fifteen. We started on our usual trail through the Heller estate, pausing at the head of the creek to discover water striders and tadpoles in the pools of the rocks. I'm going to investigate those tadpoles more: they had external gills, and were patterned. Anyway, at the meeting of the trails I took the most direct one into the houses, a house actually being visible from the rock under the tree. Shortly after getting onto the sidewalk in that well-off cul-de-sac, Lark stopped and stared into a yard. I looked, and there was a big merle Aussie dozing in the shade under a bush. We waited a moment, and the dog lifted his head and looked round. Seeing Lark, he decided that we required attention, and came over. He was much bigger than she is, between a Lab and a Golden, and very fluffy too. His fur stuck out like the winter fur of a Katahdin lamb. It was blue merle, a sort of light gray with patches almost black, and he had copper and white points, just like Lark. They greeted one another, Lark wary and the stranger interested, and he paused to sniff at me a moment before returning to investigating this pretty young thing on his sidewalk. In the end he darted away, in an oddly playful movement, before giving up and returning to his contemplation of slow death by fluff in the heat. We moved on. I was relieved to find, almost immediately, a familiar-looking main road. Determined to remember names, I checked the street sign: Rockhurst Boulevard. Right. We headed uphill. A strange music began to tease me: clearly aimed at children, it seemed about to settle into one tune after another, without ever doing so. The source came into sight. It was an ice cream truck. It struck me, unfamiliar, like a horse and carriage downtown: those still exist? I quickly went on to merely regretting that I didn't bring money to walk the dog, and resolving to do so in future. Five bucks, say. We pursued our parallel courses in opposite directions, however, and we proceeded without incident, past various familiar points, until we were a block away from the turn to the downhill road. A couple of people were chatting in a driveway across the street, and there was a little brown dog with black highlights (looked rather like this) barking at us. I didn't pay much attention to this, but I was watching them, and so I saw when a beautiful gray Dane moved cautiously out of hiding behind a shrub. The man told them to stay, and reassured me. "Yes, but can I come over there?" He said this was fine, and I did. The little dog--a Shiba Inu named, appropriately, Wolfie--followed protocols, sniffing tails, et cetera. It was when this was finished, and the beautiful gray-and-white Dane was still standing cautiously at the corner of the garage, that things got interesting. The Shiba started snarling at Lark. Her first coherent thought--and this took a few seconds--was to scramble into my arms. I think this was when the man's grown daughters--two, probably in their thirties--appeared, looking rather like backup in the way they stood by the Dane, but speaking as such not at all. They joined the man in calling Wolfie a dip, and laughingly remarking on Lark's taking refuge in my arms. We talked, more or less, for a bit, while the dogs settled down, and then I put Lark down again, crouching around her to cover her back. The little dog circled us interestedly, and I kept a hand at his shoulder to ward him off. He disliked this, turning his head back to my hand, his lip beginning to curl. I didn't stop to think, grabbing and twisting his collar, lifting his forequarters as he tried to reach my hand. One of his people came and got him, and I stood up and reached for Lark, who had scrambled on my back and was rather tangled with my backpack. I think it was at this point that the Great Dane, Gabby, got up the courage to come examine Lark, as I juggled her, trying to avoid too many claws in my arms, with little success. While the other people discussed Cesar Milan dictates and explained Wolfie's history as a stray and tendency to hunt small animals, Lark tried to climb my shoulder and I talked, as I could, to Gabby. She was really a beautiful dog. I don't know what a show judge would have said--possibly not much--but she was lovely. I tore myself away eventually--still carrying Lark--and headed down the block. It was cooling down, and clouds were coming up. I still didn't want to go down Stanton. Having reached the dorm parking lot via the slope from the road, I decided to cut across country to the road/driveway belonging to the really big house with the expensive dog runs and the German Shepherds. This was not, at that precise moment, an attraction, because I was cutting along the shoulder of the hill in what was, possibly, in one sense or another, their backyard. I ended up chickening out and following the line of barbed-wire fence, literally run into the ground in spots, up the slope. My legs protested. I compromised by going sideways before the grade got bad, dodging through some scrub oak with a minimal attempt at stealth which Lark completely ignored. I ended up joining the road at precisely the point we usually leave it. We went inside through the greenhouse, though I could still see the Vic from the backyard. Phil was on the couch with his laptop.

I was at the computer typing when the phone rang. It was a lady from church, Bev Kettelson, asking if we needed any food. She had been making beef stew for the disabled son of the neighbor lady who'd had a stroke, and Grandma had occurred to her. It was wonderful, the way she talked--not, as in Lee's case, any New York accent or similar, but her conversational style. I collected fragments about her eight grandchildren, the neighbors' nine homeschooled kids, her three semi-vegetarian daughters, and her husband. To give her credit, this was all connected to something she'd asked me, but.....actually, she doesn't need credit. She was great, and when her husband (also very nice, although making an impression more with certain sailing terminology) appeared, it was with three fair-sized containers of beef stew designed for the freezer, semolina bread (from the bakery), whole wheat spice bars, and two kinds of pound cake. Nobody exaggerated when they told me this lady likes cooking.

After dinner Philip went off to find a public television showing the Nuggets game and I settled down with A Civil Campaign. The ending's good as a Heyer, if.....different. Heh. There was a minor disturbance when Lark objected to a couple of loose dogs--a husky and what may have been a young viszla, something in that type--wandering around outside the house. They eventually went away, but by that time she had fully discovered the benefits of the balcony, something I've been intermittently attempting to introduce to her.