- I'm always amazed at how much like humans the animals
here at Cloud Creek are.
-
- Like Emmy the Bold and her brood. The two younger dogs,
Decker the Giant Hearted and Belle the Wary, are the children of Emmy
and the Big Red Chow Dude.
-
- From the first moment the Dude sauntered onto our mountain,
Emmy behaved as though he was her one and only. "Let me out! That's
my twin flame!" she shouted, doing her best to throw herself through
the front window and land in the Dude's um "arms."
-
- The Dude fathered 12 pups and stayed around to watch
those we kept grow up. He protected them from forest dangers, even searched
for and brought back Belle when she was lost. But he never played with
his kids. Wouldn't let them touch him. Sometimes they quivered in fear
just because he was around.
-
- Which was less and less as Decker, especially, got bigger
and bigger, and both he and Belle stopped giving ground to Daddy.
-
- I could see that the Dude's attitude was a source of
friction between him and Emmy. He'd growl at the kids, and she'd be all
over him, berating him with barking that sent him packing into the woods.
-
- And, yes, it reminded me just a little of myself. "Do
the kids have to go with us everywhere?" I used to say about my five.
"Isn't Amber a little old to still be cuddling with you while we're
watching TV?" and the ever-popular, "No, I can't go see the
life- sized monster truck you built out of Legos. I'm working!"
-
- Emmy's relationship with the Dude has cooled over the
years. After months of being gone, he visited for a couple of days around
Christmas, but we haven't seen him since.
-
- I didn't think of this blowing out of the flames as being
"child- related" until the other day as I watched Emmy play with
her friend the Australian shepherd. The Aussie is a young dog. In fact,
he's probably younger than the two kids as well as Emmy. He lives just
across the road and has been coming over just about every day or night
since the Dude's last visit.
-
- Emmy always reacts to his arrival joyfully, the two of
them doing a little circle dance and then running off together with the
kind of yapping that tells a dog lover all's right with the world.
-
- Decker and Belle like him, too, but they show their reactions
in different ways.
-
- Decker's cool about it. I think it's a guy thing because
he and the Aussie exchange sniffs and do a little licking and that's that.
(Which is a far cry from how Decker reacts to other dogs that try to
come around. They get the kind of growl that raises the hair on the back
of your neck. You know the sound guaranteed to send bears, or maybe Big
Red Chow Dudes, back into the woods.)
-
- Belle, on the other hand, loses her usual shyness whenever
the Aussie is around and bounds to him like a gleeful young woman. He
bounds back, and they run and wrestle and run some more, then roll around
wrestling again until exhaustion ends the game.
-
- And you know what Emmy does while this is going on?
-
- Emmy watches.
-
- With a motherly smile.
-
- The look on her face is an amazing combination of excitement,
contentment and love.
-
- When Emmy caught me looking at her the other day she
barked out a laugh. "Look at them," she said. "Isn't it
wonderful how the kids love him so much? And how he loves the kids?"
-
- "He's a good one," I said. "Even if he
won't let me get close enough to pet him."
-
- "Another sign of how good he is," Emmy said.
"He's smart. He knows the risks of dealing with humans in these hills."
-
- Belle yelped as the Aussie grabbed her too hard. Quickly,
he let go and she grabbed him in return. Emmy raised her head the way
a human would raise her shoulders to shrug.
-
- "He's no Dude," I said to her.
-
- "He's a family man," Emmy said. And then she
plunged into the play. The dogs raced into the corral, zigging and zagging,
then beyond it, through the trees.
-
- A wave of regret swept over me. I went into the house.
Picked up the phone. Started calling my kids.
-
- "Family man."
-
- It's late, but maybe I've still got time.
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