I’m sitting outside on our deck in beautiful fall weather–clear skies, low humidity, seventy degrees. Our dog Remy is out here with me, on a lead. He likes to run away. Trust me, he needs that lead.

He’s smart enough to test the doors, having opened three separate doors on different occasions if they are not fully shut, or, in the case of the door to this deck, locked. 

Fortunately we live in the woods, a few hundred feet from the nearest road. Usually when Remy runs he heads to the woods to chase deer. Our woods has shrunk from development and with that the deer population has a smaller area to inhabit. So they have shown up more often in our woods. It’s lovely, until you open the door and Remy takes off like a bullet.

Remy and I have an agreement of sorts. If I see him run off, and I yell at him to stop, he will stop. He’s a good boy. Except it takes several yells and a certain tone of voice to stop him. I sound like a drill sergeant, I’m afraid, at least the kind you see in movies, the only kind I really know.

Remy came to us from my niece Charlotte who got him as a pup when she was studying in Montana back in 2018. Remy turned out to be a handful. At one point he jumped out of a car window while the car was moving slowly and took off. 

Charlotte’s mom Cara, my sister, passed in December 2019 from colon cancer. At that point minding Remy while Charlotte was living at home with Cara and Tom’s three other dogs was too much. So Wendy and I agreed to foster him for Charlotte, keeping him in the family and giving her the chance to visit him any time she wants.

He has calmed down a lot, through our attention and Zen Dog Den, a local group that helps families and dogs get along better. It’s almost therapy, really, and we needed the training as much as Remy ever did.

With our two other dogs, Fairlee and Louie, we have a full house. The other two dogs are both mini golden-doodles, cute little dogs that we still call pups. Remy is a rottweiler/cattle dog mix and twice their size. He has about four times their energy, and mine if you get right down to it.

One of the reasons we brought in Zen Dog Den was because Louie’s space was invaded and  he has never gotten over it. We have given Louie his own room which Remy is not allowed in, but he continues to mark the living room of our house, to the point that I have put plastic over the spots on the furniture that he pees on. 

This went on a while before we realized and we had to get a professional cleaner out to remove the markings. Although expensive, this was helpful because it worked for all of one day before he began to mark again. Thus, the plastic.

To tell if he’s marked I use a UV flashlight and clean the marks up right away with an enzymatic cleaning solution. The system works well, but Louie, who took prozac for a while to help with his anxiety, just isn’t going to get over Remy’s invasion of his world.

So we give them all the love we can and do our best. They are my little buddies throughout the days in the fall and spring when it is just Wendy and I in the house. We are outside a lot playing frisbee, Remy and Louie’s favorite, though I think Louie only loves it because he can take Remy’s frisbees and hide them in the woods. There must be ten discs out there, at least.

Remy just stuck his nose under the deck and is sniffing deeply, surely smelling whatever critter lives under here. I know at least chipmunks frequent the spots, as I’ve seen them running in and out. 

The nest that sits outside of our bathroom window in the front of our house has the fifth mourning dove of the season. It is fun to watch the chicks hatch and grow quickly to almost the mother’s size. Maybe it is the same bird, but five times for the summer is a record. 

Life in the woods is lovely. 

That’s twenty.