She Wants It Wilder

Barley, a dog, surveys the odors among the wet fallen leaves along a wooded trail.

I’ve had a few opportunities to let Barley run loose on larger properties with a robust fenced perimeter, and one thing I know for sure is that she’s plunging into that underbrush at the first opportunity. Even if the plants seem a bit scratchy or brambly, she’s surprisingly adept at making her way through what, to my human eyes, appear to be impassable walls of underbrush. My second biggest anxiety about Barley being off leash, after her running into traffic, is her disappearing through barriers of vegetation in pursuit of prey. When we’re on a walk, she mostly intuits that the path before us is our intended road, but when things are as woodsy as they appear here, I usually need to keep her on a shorter leash to curb her forestwalk.