The Grace of Dogs

We adopted Coraline when there was a foot of snow on the ground, and she was sick, and as soon as she was well we whisked her off for her hysterectomy. So for weeks we mostly saw her around the house. We joked about how clumsy she was, because playing around in the house she seems clumsy -- slipping on the floor, banging her head on everything in sight.

But she is not clumsy. Our house is just the wrong scale to appreciate her grace. Now that the snow is gone and she is healthy, we can take her to open spaces and see what she can really do. Like any athletic dog, in her own element she is superhuman. No man can run like she runs, or stop, or turn. Her feet fly over the ground, and in a single stride she can change direction or turn her forward motion into a leap straight into the air. In the messy woods at the end of our neighborhood she runs nearly as fast as on the open; she has no fear of rocks, trees, logs, trash, or any other kind of obstacle, confident that she can dodge or leap them all. We took her up a slope so steep that I used my hands, but she hardly changed her stride. In these movements she shows the beauty and power of her body. In the open, on the run, she has a grace that astounds.