Saturday 16 July 2005
10:10 a.m.

The little hound gets chasing her tail so fast that she ends up rolling around on her back like a ball. It makes me laugh out loud.

Sadly, the family here has decided to adopt the practice of the puppy's human birth family, which keeps its puppies on a chain for their first year of life. This is apparently so that the pup will be accustomed to staying in the farmyard and will not wander and end up hit by a car, lost, or eaten by coyotes. (Never mind what a pup's teeth will do to things it finds in the yard).

I find it very difficult to accept, doing this to a puppy -- first of all, when you live on a farm and she should have all the freedom in the world, but especially to a pup with as much energy as this one. She runs everywhere she goes, at top speed. She is clumsy still, and heedless of flowers, so she has created some havoc in the flowerbeds. That is a hard pill to swallow when you are the keeper of the flowers, but is to be expected when you have a puppy in the yard. I just try to suck it up, disappointing as it is to see a poppy, just bloomed, broken in half.

I go take her off the chain at least once a day and take her along for a walk. Usually when we get back to the yard she won't let me catch her to chain her up again. I don't try very hard, either, but only halfheartedly. I just can't bring myself to follow "the rule" with a clear conscience. There has been enough chained-up dog in this yard to do me for a lifetime, and I can't cooperate with doing the same disservice to this one, even for one year, even if it is ostensibly for the pup's own safety. But I know I should do what is requested, as this is not my decision to make.

Hm; my first act of civil disobedience in my adopted "country."