Happy Valentine's Day to you, too.
In June I visited my brother Arch in Birmingham in order to get a painting of mine that I now have room to put up, although I haven't yet put it up. I returned not only with the painting but with a pretty big analog TV, a DVD player, my banjo, and a dog named Jessie. She's four and a half approximately.
I let her run free at the Bayou Bartholomew trail if nobody else is there, which is most of the time, and at the farm. She doesn't like the sound of the .22 rifle and wants to get back in the car if I get it out, so I go on separate outings at the farm, either with Jessie or with the gun.
She's learned to come back at just the time I'm getting to the end of the bayou trail (about a 30 minute walk), but also likes to run up from behind me and pass me several times while I'm on the trail, which makes me whoop and holler* and start running myself if I'm not already. The bayou trail is a good place for whooping and hollering, if nobody else is there, which is most ...yeh, I said that already, but sometimes of course people will arrive after me and I won't know they're on the trail, which is a one and three-fourths mile loop, so I've encountered people before who no doubt have heard me singing or at least making semi-musical-type noises. Jessie's goal is to find something to chase, and I saw her once trying to catch up with a deer in the woods (it's all woods along the trail). First I saw the deer, a medium-sized doe, running about 50 yards away from me, then turning my head from the direction she came, I saw Jessie following at top speed (not fast enough) looking a little like a deer herself, at least colorwise. *a sort of maniacal laughter
