It's a Dog's Life (But Not Bad)

 

 

One reason we aren’t moving back to Arlington: Our dogs would never stand for it.

 

For years we spent only summers at our 400-acre home in Cluster Springs while living the rest of the year in a one-bedroom apartment in Arlington. When India, now 5, was a puppy, we would frantically rush to the elevator on the 10^th floor, hoping we could make it outside in time. A few times, we didn’t.

 

 Now that we have moved here permanently,  India and her 10-year-old brother Niko confront us every morning insisting on a walk. These standard poodles won’t go by themselves, and maybe that’s a good thing. We are forced to exercise, and they’ll stay away from the road.

 

Frankly, I have a love/hate relationship with dogs.  I was bitten by them first as a newspaper carrier and later as a bike rider. I never had them as a kid, but I married a dog lover (Pickett Craddock) and have a daughter, Sara, who is passionate about them. Many times she would take a stray dog home and as she teared up, I would make her give it up. Now she has four dogs in a house next door and even runs a very successful dog grooming salon there.

 

One of her dogs has caught my fancy, though. He is a big 5-year-old hound—named Ethos of all things—who won’t be bossed by anyone. He refuses to come in when called. If you let him out, he won’t come back until he is hungry. He roams the 400 acres all day and often all night, howling like the dog in Sherlock Holmes’ “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” I love it! When cooped up in apartments, he tore up a basement and enraged neighbors with his howls. But here he roams free, the way he was meant to.

 

 I don’t really have a dog. Niko and India are loyal to Pickett. Three of Sara’s dogs are beholden to her. But Ethos answers to nobody. He’s my kind of dog!