Twice when I was out walking on the road, I looked in every direction around me and the dog was nowhere to be seen. The first time, she appeared out of the blue right beside me and I was flabbergasted. It is not a heavily wooded area, and I’d been standing in the middle of the gravel road. There was no place to hide.

The second time, she disappeared into the horse pasture and I got all the way home alone before my curiosity got the best of me and I went back onto the road and called her. After three calls and a weak whistle, I was about to give up when she came running onto the road from the haybale stack with something dark grey, furry, and thankfully dead, in her jaws.

So, Sara is not only an Australian cattle dog. She’s a ratter, too.

“Ugh!” I said, as she threw it up in the air, picked it up and shook it mercilessly, then dropped it on the snow and rolled on it. I mean, “Good dog! Now, don’t bring it into the yard.”

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I've been mostly sleeping, or trying to sleep, since the wee hours of Sunday morning. Have been popping a lot of pills to assuage migraine symptoms, and am not sure I'm out of the woods yet. But I see that the thermometer on the little shed outside is registering 10 degrees Celsius, and the dog is running around the yard, playing with a plastic pail. I think I need a walk.