Dog's Best Friend

Charly Brown and her best canine friend, Teal.

Charly, our lab-terrier mix brown dog, has been sowing wild oats this fall. The cooler air and lack of action around the resort invigorates her and inspires mischief. She darts off into the woods after anything that moves, including clumps of leaves and grasshoppers. Willful as a dog can be, Charly will sometimes come back if you catch her attention before she’s fully engaged in the chase. Often, all too often, she will bound off anyway and show up an hour or two later, totally spent, with a guilty look on her face. She pays for her digression by having to listen to a lecture and then nap for a while under her tree at the end of the dog cable.

This fall, the cockleburs and goatheads are coming on strong. They are prickly and cling to your shoelaces and jeans hems, your fleece jacket and your dog’s footpads. And pulling at them only makes them dig in more. Ouch.

So yesterday, after Charly’s escapade in the woods, she came staggering up from the woods, all four feet loaded with burrs. Rob chided her for her vanishing act all the while he was bent double coaxing the sharp pricklies out from between her toes. She was grateful for the forced “time out” and watched me divide the lemongrass plants while she licked her sore paws.

Well, this morning Rob was on his hands and knees working on his remodeling project in Cottage Five. He could hear panting, and his first thought was that Charly must be panting really hard if he could hear her while he was inside and she was out. Then he realized that she was standing behind him. After a bit, she began nudging him with her shoulder. In a moment, she was leaning on him, sighing. On closer look, he saw that her paws were full of cockleburs again. She was asking him to get them out. So he did. Now he’s the hero! Again.
--Cindy

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