Foreign Dispatch #3: Little Bear meets the local fauna

My host rises early and I’m dealing with insomnia without my usual crutches, so this morning LB and I were out the door at well before sunrise. He, reasoning that if I’m on vacation he bloody well should be as well, has been stealing Dharma’s food in alarming quantities and the fact is reflected in the level of his, er, fecal output. Therefore the morning walkie has been moved up to “ASAP.”

Fortunately I came equipped – I may have neglected to possess a respectable-looking pair of britches but I did remember the long lead and of course an excellent flashlight – and the weather, while surprisingly frosty, is still no match for Joel’s winter gear so whatever, let’s go for a walkie at five in the morning, right?

Turns out we were far from the only ones. Once away from the house we were practically surrounded by bobbing flashlights and … um, embarrassingly well-behaved dogs.

Now, LB mostly knows how to deal with a strange dog. If not precisely relaxed, he’s neither frightened nor obnoxiously aggressive around them. But he’s known all the people he meets in a normal year since he was a puppy. He very rarely meets a strange human and never quite knows how to behave. He’s vaguely aware that biting won’t be considered acceptable, but never assumes a stranger wants to be a friend*. So he defaults to baying a warning and then hiding behind me.

I, god help us both, am in charge of social interaction with members of my own species. So you can imagine how well that normally goes.

Fortunately all the people we met this morning were pretty much of my own age and class: Old pharts with big dogs who are there because what the hell? Can’t sleep. One wanted to talk about meteors, the others just said hi and kept moving. It was frankly too dark to compare dogs, so the usual “what’s his breed?” clichés went unspoken.

My BLF flashlight is serving me well but rather more extensively than originally planned. I’m glad I recharged it before embarking on this expedition, but am beginning to wish I’d packed the charger.

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*Afterthought addendum: I truly fear for the life of anyone who tried to enter the Lair while I’m not home. One very windy afternoon LB was sleeping soundly indoors alone and didn’t hear or smell me approach the door. He came awake very abruptly, teleported across the cabin to the farthest corner and then, cornered, turned into the Frickin’ Hound of the Frickin’ Baskervilles. Do you know how BIG that dog is, when every hair is standing on end? Took him a few seconds to pull it together and recognize just who he was threatening with gory death. Little Bear really doesn’t do strangers well.