Woodsish

Barley, a dog, trots past some tall trees in a pleasantly park-like environment.

When Barley lived in Florida, there were the thickets of swamp shrubbery that, thanks to the climate, had a great deal more jungle caché than the more coniferous flora in her current home. Within days of first discovering them, she had worked out which parts of the wall of leaves would offer no resistance, and had mapped out for herself a handful of shortcuts through that underbrush. When she got zoomies and would tear around the yard, she’d charge headlong into the thicket at a handful of spots and emerge on the other side a second later having lost none of her momentum. These paths were too low and too narrow for even a child to crawl through comfortably, so I had no chance of being able to accompany her on one of those tunnel runs.

I say all this because it occurs to me that this sort of slightly woodsy park is probably the closest she and I will ever get to sharing a trot off the path and through the underbrush. Given that I can’t really trust her off leash, especially if she’s happy to go where I can’t follow, I’m left to wonder about the evergreen speederbike chases she might get up to if I wasn’t there to keep her out of trouble.