Over Christmas I hung out with Penny, a red/golden retriever who my Dad walks in Lantzville on Vancouver Island. Penny lives behind my parents and, because my Mother (you know, women really do rule the roost) doesn't want a dog, my dog-loving Dad doesn't have one. Enter Penny: a fabulous wild (yet obedient) dog who my Dad can walk whenever he wants and my Mom doesn't have to have anything to do with.
Whenever I go to the Island to see my folks, my Dad and I walk Penny together ... and this 'walk' is not just for her, it is for us as well and is certainly not a typical urban instance of going out to walk the dog. Dog and Human are completely equal on these walks that in all reality are really hikes. My parents live on the edge of a mountain and this is the wonderland where we 'walk the dog.'
Before unleashed into the forest that teams with smells and textures and adventure, Penny must be escorted across the road (where maybe a car goes by every 5 minutes maximum) on a leash. She knows the routine and does her best to quell her trembling anticipation and heel up. (An aside: the last time Penny and I went for a walk, she had already been for two walks that day! And the fact that she should have been tired or maybe even want to loll about on some furry matt made no difference at all to the intensity of her excitement at the fact that she was going to the forest ... again).
Penny is led across the road and a little ways up the trail and then told to sit, which she does on command because, even though she runs wild through the undergrowth, she is disciplined. Perhaps paradoxically, this 'discipline' is what gives her freedom. If she did not sit when told to, heel up, and come when she is called, she would not have the joys and freedom of being off leash. She would be out of control and would, therefore, always have to be (attempted) to be controlled on a leash, tugging and straining and dragging the irked 'owner.'
After Penny sits, she is given a treat, pat excessively, the leash unhooked and then: "Off you Go!" And off she goes, bursting with so much pure alive bliss that puts a smile on any onlooker's face. Penny doesn't believe in trails. It is as though the trail is just come across every now and then, something to bound over and then back, zig-zagging where ever her nose leads. A dog-dog uses their millions of olfactory senses to the maximum and, when you photograph a dog-dog and compare its nose (magnified 100%) to a dog, the nose is almost abject in the excess and development of its 220 million olfactory receptors. In contrast, non-dog-dogs noses are much more clean and contained, their olfactory receptors having the look of an aesthetic texture rather than a teaming organ.
Sometimes Penny's wild forages willy-nilly through the bush lead her quite far from her human companions. We call her and call her and she always comes, thrashing out of some dense BC undergrowth, branches stuck to her fluffy tail, drool gooping from her mouth and nose that just devoured the forest, and the world, raw.
Penny is, indeed, a dog-dog. And dog-dogs don't have to be big; but they are always best photographed outdoors.
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