Durant Diary: Entry #3

Durant is very strong. And very agile.

For example, he can leap out of a truck and over another dog on the ground so effortlessly that he seems to have wings. In the morning, when he hears me turn the key in the porch door, he barges forward, slamming the door open and taking flight down the porch stairs into the yard.

A few days ago, we were visiting an old friend in Michigan. We’d just gotten there, greeted my friend and her husband, and then I went to slide open the door of our camper van to get the dogs out. We’ve worked on “Stay!” and “Wait!” quite a bit and, for at least a dozen exits, Durant and Tempest both stood waiting for me to grab their leashes and then say “Okay!”

Not this time. Durant leapt over me and Tempest, realized he was loose, and took off trotting. We were probably a quarter mile from a busy country road but on property with a lot of fields, a large pond, and a stand of woods. We started calling to him. He looked back but didn’t stop trotting. My friend, Carolyn, told me to head him off on the other side of the barn and so I walked that way and then realized that chasing him would never work.

I sat down on the grass.

He came around the side of the barn, and I called his name as gently as I could. He slowed to a walk, came closer and closer, and then bowed into a crawl. He looked chagrined. And also relieved. He had been scared. I could see that. He didn’t know where he was or where he should go, but when I quit chasing him, he came back.

I told him he was a good boy, the most wonderful boy, a great dog, and I hugged him the way he likes where he puts his head in the crook of my arm and I put my head on his neck.

I can’t make him come back if he runs off. He is too strong and too agile and, actually, too fast and smooth a trotter, for anyone to catch.

He’ll only comes back if he trusts me. And he did, in that moment.

Thank goodness.