In the dawn half-light, I am taking our dog out to take in a taste of the world. She’s only four months old, a puppy. She’s woken me before first light, wildly excited to feel my hands lift her from the soft nylon ‘crate’ in which she sleeps.
A heavy mist over the farm. The long, late summer grass is bent over with moisture. Not cold, but saturated air. In the dark, I must have clipped the lead to her name-tag ring, not the collar, because the first wallaby she sees, she bursts off the lead and goes careening up the track. When the wallaby disappears off the steep creek-bank, she is comically bewildered and comes flying back when she locates me, compromising freedom for comfort.
The track is a grassed-over farm-road, not much used. The Rivulet gurgles below. Lapwings call their loud, croaky alarms. The puppy sniffs furiously at the track as she goes, finds a rabbit carcass, eats a few wallaby droppings, stares at the birds, the movements in the brush. She pulls impolitely when she wants to go, refuses to move when something interests her, gets under my feet, bites the lead.
I am only just absorbing the first coffee of the day, but I watch her closely. A puppy reminds you of several important things. That the world is amazing, kind of huge and scary, endless in detail. That kindness and patience are a slow investment, for which there’s a sacrifice of control, perhaps even self-determination.
Coming out of the trees and brush, we emerge into a larger landscape, rundown fields with no stock or crops, and an upslope boundary of eucalypt forest, dark and wet. The puppy sniffs the air and surveys the country, clearly alive with the newness of it all. We turn and make our way down again.
My daughter is asleep in the house. A few yellow lights from its windows. If she wakes, she’ll wonder where we are. I remember that for her, nine years old, an old farm cottage at dawn is still something of an intense experience, even if it is a home. And a dawn like this, folded in layers of mist and the calls of ravens, redolent air, and occasional snorts of horses, even more so.
The puppy trots at my side and we return up the gravel drive. A black Labrador, with some Kelpie mixed in, she is a dark and glossy expression of health and life. She is my daughter’s dog, and they live mainly with her mother in a nearby suburban cul-de-sac, coming to the farm weekly. Inquisitive, restless and disobedient, with her sore gums and short attention span, she makes a mess of my middle-age routines.
Of course, I am coming to adore the annoying creature. I feel the hugeness of this moist and alarming world in my own way—I sometimes wish I had no sense of what the future likely holds. A little knowledge can be overwhelming, terrifying, and she is a delicate, insistent comfort.
Image by Cerys Lowe
