It is a truth universally acknowledged that a dog who joins this family must enjoy camping.
M'haile went on her first big road trip this past weekend, a five-hour drive to a camping area just outside Devil's Postpile National Monument near Mammoth Lakes. Virtually any puppy loves the out-of-doors, with its rich semiotics of sights, sounds, and especially smells. The Mammoth area has it in spades: wildflowers, waterfalls, rushing streams and triumphant peaks that, even in early August, still bear patches of snow. M'haile took it all in, processed it and re-issued it as a fury of barks and yelps. Well, OK, I believe she was actually processing the large number of people and dogs in close proximity and the constant comings and goings, sensory overload for any puppy, especially a terrier, with that breed's highly developed sense of spacial propriety.
The barking--and her tendency to annoy Ginger, our friends' senior-citizen dog, who most decidedly did not want to play--were M'haile's only faults on the trip, and both behaviors had moderated somewhat by the end of camp on Sunday afternoon. On the credit side, she hiked marvelously, splashed exuberantly in the water--stopping just short of actually swimming--and slept quietly in her crate, which we set up next to our mattress in the tent. In fact, the very closeness of the camping experience, I think, served to strengthen the bond between M'haile and her human pack. An ordinary weekend at home would have provided her with some togetherness, but also a good bit of alone time in her puppy yard, while Michele and I went about our errands and chores. On a camping trip, she was with us constantly, which was good for both affectionate bonding and discipline. It helped that our friends, Billy, Suzie and Jessica are all dog lovers.
We all came home dusty and happy. M'haile will have many other experiences in California's beautiful wild places.
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