She is the only one, of all the dogs, that comes down with me to the lake.
I lie on the dock, listening to the sound of her splashing with the stick. She pushes it down with her paws and looks at it under the surface. She puts her face underwater. She breaks it up with her teeth, and then has to choose between all the broken pieces. Or she goes looking for another one on the shore and finds a giant rotten log that she yanks out from underneath its forest covering. She never bothers me. She entertains herself. Sometimes I lean over the dock and she nudges the stick to me. Then I throw it across the water and she swims out for it. She’s like a black seal, Selkie from the Otherworld.
She is transience. She smells of compost and animal dung. She is made for cold and snow.
Feather on snow
There is an element of sadness in her. I think of how dogs attach themselves to people, and how they sometimes lose their people and wander on.
