A romp with other dogs means trouble with the canines at home

She adores her own pooches, but she can't help giving other dogs a good scratch when she meets them.

from the September 26, 2007 edition

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They are not so understanding – and know exactly whom I've been seeing – when I arrive home from Dennis and Joan's, just down the road, where I occasionally stop to visit a new filly.

The resident Jack Russell terriers leap so frantically about me as I walk to the stables that one sniff of my ankles, redolent of those particular rivals, turns my pair on their heels when I arrive home again. My black Lab seems particularly dismissive, having occasionally looked down upon the little animals' antics from her car seat. If her stance were translated to words, it would be something like, "Well if you want to spend your time with those little nitwits, far be it from me to protest."

As it happened, she and Oscar bore horrified witness to my fully engaged romp with Ollie, a truly luscious golden retriever, the other day.

Both dogs had accompanied me on a trip to town to see a friend, who turned out not to be home. What happened after I knocked on Doug's door took place so quickly and spontaneously that I put my judgmental and jealous witnesses completely out of mind, if not sight.

At my rap, Ollie bounded out through a pet portal into the fenced yard, greeting me almost formally by gazing upward solemnly and taking my hand in cloud-gentle jaws. To say I experienced meltdown is to underestimate my susceptibility to such overtures. I was down on my knees before I knew it.

Sensing his advantage, Ollie darted back inside, emerging moments later with a favored knotted rag that begged for a tug of war. We tugged and we warred, spinning about the little yard until the hot sizzle of double condemning gazes from my car hit home.

It has taken awhile, but both of my dogs have let this, too, pass. Perhaps they've come to accept that I must stray now and then, and it's all right so long as they are assured of their places in my heart and on either side of my small desk here.

In any case, neither seems to know or care that I am writing about other dogs at the moment. I welcome every bit of leeway.

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