Chain Reaction

It’s not yet 5 a.m. I know what’s going to happen. As I begin to run up my driveway I first hear Yuri. The ever-affectionate and physically robust tan husky starts to yip and howl, and before I’ve made it up and out of the driveway most or all of the other 12 huskies have joined in one way or another.

By the time I’m on the road they are in full bloom and have set off the neighbor’s dog team. The overweight lab at the last house on the sub-division road runs at me as far as its dog-run will allow it, barking viciously. This sets off another neighbor’s dog team that begins to howl. As I turn onto the main road and begin running downhill, off in the distance I hear yet another dog team exercising their lungs. And that is the way it works. Through a chain reaction entire neighborhoods can alight in howls due to one factor.

At the bottom of the hill the black spruce temporarily retreats and in a clearing about 70 yards away a cow moose and her calf quietly and attentively watch me. I too quietly and attentively watch them as I run by, but am not too concerned: the baby is, after all, with her mama and not between us. On the return trip they are gone, and I carefully scrutinize the brush I am passing by. The last thing I want is to startle a huge animal that could stomp me.

The lab is also gone, so I am not again subjected to its ferocious - and completely bogus - barking threats. Sometimes the dog is on its tether and sometimes it is loose. It doesn’t matter. When she is loose she runs right along with me for a little ways past her driveway, barking the whole time. Sometimes I let her smell my hand as I keep pace, and sometimes she smells and barks at the same time. If I stopped I would be able to pet her vigorously up and down and she would excitedly wag her tail, but she could scare the pants off the unfamiliar.

My crew is quiet as I walk back down the driveway. They watch attentively as I go into their shed and begin soaking their food. 

So begins another day…