On the Bike Path, with Lori and Clover

This is an essay written about 2 years ago. Unfortunately for all of us, Lori & I don't have time currently for walks with Clover.

One of the best parts about living in Granville is the bike path. My house is about a quarter mile from the community park that lies beside the path. My dog, Clover, and I drive there 3 or 4 times a week (in a good week) to meet my friend Lori and we walk for exercise, enjoyment of nature and companionship. Clover loves Lori. Just the sight of her car can send her into a frantic, manic tizzy in which she is bouncing in circles, desperately trying to form words out of her whines, all the while turning back to look at me to be sure I have seen her too.

Regulated by the minimal amount of gray matter in her dog brain, Clover will bound recklessly toward Lori’s car in an enthusiastic and premature effort to welcome Lori to the park. She seems to believe that Lori’s car is an extension of Lori herself, and is therefore nothing to fear. I hold onto her collar, until the car is safely situated in a parking space, then let Clover run up to the driver’s side door, ready to greet our friend with leaps of joy and slobbery doggie kisses. Yuck. The business of greeting is perfunctory, though. There is a bike path waiting and we must be off.

For Clover, a walk is more than a chance for exercise. There is dog-work to be done. There are smells to be smelled, squirrels to chase, ground hogs to flush out and intriguing holes to explore. If she catches a scent, but hasn’t located its source, she sniffs at the air, and comes to attention. Her ears, which normally fold in the middle like a collie’s, stand straight up and she resembles a half-sized German shepherd.

On a good day, we walk 2 ½ miles out and back for a total of 5 miles. On a tightly scheduled day, we turn back after only ½ mile. It’s better than nothing, but leaves all of us, especially Clover, feeling a bit unsatisfied. When I call her back to turn around early, she looks at me quizzically, as if to say, “You’ve got to be kidding!” Then, in typical dog fashion, she bounds back toward me and Lori and hurries to regain her rightful place about 10 feet ahead of us. When she is bounding down the path in her happy mood, her tail wags as she bounces and it appears to be spiraling around like a corkscrew. In her typical walk pace, her tail and butt alternate swing direction and the long, long fur on the tail whips at the air like the last child in a long line of crack-the-whip.

I have heard that you can tell the difference between a sheep-herding dog and a cattle-herding dog by how they walk with you when left to follow their natural instincts. A cattle dog will stay behind you, keeping their eyes on you, making sure you don’t stray. If you veer too far off course, the dog will put itself between you and “the great beyond” and encourage you to return to the familiar trail. A sheep dog will walk ahead of you, scouting out potential dangers and pitfalls, proving to you that the way is safe. The sheep dog assumes that you will follow. After all, that is what sheep do. Clover, though of indeterminate parentage, is definitely descended from dogs of sheep farmers. If a jogger or power-walker overtakes Lori and me, Clover will quicken her pace to match that of the newcomer. She is always willing to add another human to her herd and happy to accommodate a faster pace.

For being a good-old used dog from the pound, Clover is a very attractive dog. She is medium build with a silhouette that is vaguely collie-shaped. Her fur is short and trim around her face, longer on her back and chest, feathery on her legs, and elegantly long on her tail. Her face is tan with a slightly crooked white blaze between her eyes running down the length of her nose. Her eyes are ringed in black that points up and out on the sides like the makeup on an Egyptian princess. Her back is black and gray with a feathery tan mark in the middle that is in the shape of a dog-bone. Her leg feathers are tan and her toes are white. Her tail is black on top, white on the bottom with an elegant white tip. The white fur on her belly and hind haunches is curly and fluffy and billows out from beneath the coarse black fur of her back. It makes her look a little bit like a can-can dancer dressed in a black skirt on top of layers and layers of white petticoats.

Today’s walk is short and we’re back at our cars before we’d like to be, but Clover has the attention span of a dog and has already forgotten that we turned back too soon. She stands between my car and Lori’s, as though contemplating who might offer the more enticing treat at home. Once I have opened the back door of my car and she sees her familiar blanket on the seat, her decision is made and she hops in, eager to get to the house where her water dish and the pantry full of treats are.

Her enthusiastic attitude toward all the joys of life is enviable. She experiences disappointments in her everyday life, but she gives them no more time than they deserve. She mourns for a moment when the kids head off to school, but immediately turns her attention to the next adventure of the day. Surely, I have made her angry or hurt her feelings at some point. Maybe when I left the house (in my tennis shoes!) without her or when I made her go to the groomer, but she has never held a grudge or withheld her forgiveness. The next time she sees me, she welcomes me home with an enthusiasm and joy that a poor human can only dream of. Her goals and dreams are simple: to smell more stuff, to eat more treats, to spend more time on the bike path with Lori and me.