That's my dog - Part 1
6:10 a.m. The horses are loaded into the trailer. We're running behind The Schedule. (I am married to a former Navy man.) And Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler is nowhere to be found.
We're stomping around in front of the house calling, "Matilda! Matilda!" The two horses in the trailer are whinnying and whickering to the three left behind in the pasture as Dennis is muttering something about how if that damn dog is going to be a big pain in the ass we're not taking her to the mountains with us. She can just stay at home.
I know we're both thinking that the blue heeler dog is hiding somewhere nearby, peering at us from behind a pinon, no doubt, because when we first brought her home from the Animal Shelter last autumn, she wouldn't have anything to do with riding in the truck, with the exception of the ride home from doggie jail, for which she seemed exceedingly grateful. She did have a wonderful dog time on her first trip to the mesa with us a couple of weeks ago, I'm reminding myself. I keep looking.
I'm just about convinced that I'm never going to get that dog up to the mountains when I stride past the open passenger side door of The Big Dawg and find the speckled girl parked in the front seat, right behind the steering wheel, full of tenacious-blue-heeler resolve. And it's clear. Matilda is not going to be left behind.
As soon as we extricate her from where she's all of a sudden hunkering down on the floorboard beneath the steering wheel because she's afraid we're going to haul her out and leave for the Pecos without her, we put her in the back seat and get going.
I sometimes envision all of the dogs I've had since I was a little girl in some kind of dog heaven. Each one is running across a golden field. Chasing something interesting. In slow motion.
After Matilda escorts me, husband, and horses the four-and-a-half hours up to Lake Johnson, sniffs everything, investigates coyote skat and whatever else catches her fancy, plops down in the middle of a muddy creek bottom, chases a deer, and plunges into the cold lake the moment she lays eyes on it, watching a fat brown trout glide by, it is clear to me that the mountains are Matilda's idea of Nirvana.
I don't think we'll ever have trouble getting her into a truck again. Especially when there's a Sundowner attached to it.
