NaturallyResilient

About

It’s animal Wednesday!

Since most of my animal stories are about cats, you may think I never had a dog. Not so. We had a dog when I was growing up. My brother thought Max was his but he was really my dog. Max was part border collie and had the protective herding instinct.

Next door lived a family that had an almost 4 year old. One day the little girl was out back playing. This was during a time when no one had fences between the yards and dogs ran free. Max was keeping an eye on Suzanne. Behind Suzanne’s house was a large overgrown vacant area where us older kids would sometimes go and play, hiding in the tall grass. This day, Suzanne was attracted to the vacant lot but every time she tried to go over there, Max would get between her and the vacant lot and nudge he back to her yard.

My mom watched the incident out her kitchen window. Max had incredible patience and Suzanne had incredible persistence but finally Max won and Suzanne gave up.
Max knew that she should not go back there by her self. Suzanne had gone back there with us older kids occasionally but somehow Max knew it was a bad idea for her to go back there by her self. I think that takes some in depth reasoning.

I love dogs and hope to have one again someday. It is just that our current lifestyle is not conducive to keeping a dog.