Kennel-up is one of the best suggestions a dog can take. Brandy arrived on our doorstep with that one instruction burned in. The rest of her instruction set was missing. I think when she demonstrated that she was more interested in field mice than pheasants, the Nimrod who owned her gave up on interaction. After she came to live with us, she took almost a year to be willing to look either of us in the eye. She was a troubled doggie. Kennel-up is still her best trick. We can be far afield and if I ask her to kennel-up she’ll turn her arthritic shuffle back to the barnyard and usually beat me to the chain link enclosure she calls home. She’ll stand just inside the kennel, tail wagging slowly, a droll look in her eye as if to suggest she could use a fresh bucket of water and she wouldn’t mind if I scooped up the poop. I’ll usually follow those suggestions.

Molly is 15 weeks old today and she’s a zoomer. We have thickets and hedges that she dodges and races through finding improbable entry points and speeding straight through like the roadrunner into a coyote-painted tunnel on the face of a cliff. Lesser beings would tangle and sprawl and bounce off the bushes. Molly zooms through, breaking the sound barrier at ground level. She’s a puppy speed racer gunning it through the brush… Go Speed Racer! She’ll pause to stalk the cat. Patient cat, ready to roll over and lick the pup after she’s been run down.

And when play time is over, and we have to rest, Molly knows to retire to her crate or her pen in the kitchen when I ask if she’d like to kennel-up.

Smart puppy.