It didn’t take long to discover that the poor excuse for a fence around our yard was not going to keep Lobo at home. We weren’t sure all our neighbors were as enthusiastic about his presence as we were. Judi, who lives next door, gently pointed out that her husband Rick was not a dog lover. Lobo was turning up at the kitchen door, golden eyes hopeful. And, they had a wildlife pond where they liked to watch…wildlife. Which probably wouldn’t come to the pond if it was constantly guarded by a huge, hungry puppy.
We bought an invisible fence. You put up one wire, which is electrified, and train the dog (again, hopefully with just a few shocks) to stay away from the fence. Great theory, and I’ve seen it work.
But, passion can withstand pain, as Lobo taught us quickly. It didn’t take long for him to learn that jumping over the fence wasn’t that hard (it was only four ft. high at the highest) and didn’t hurt all that much, or for very long. The advantages of Judi’s occasional bits of chicken outweighed the disadvantages. Before long, Lobo’s leap looked like a deer’s, and a path was worn to his favorite spot for clearing the fence.
Bit by bit, rumor by rumor, we discovered that Lobo was becoming the “Mayor of Sutherland Valley.” His constituents included the Gibsons uphill from us; Richard and Peggy two doors away, Rick the gardener at the end of our road, and even Bradley and Triests a half-mile away.
This discovery solved the mystery of how our young dog was gaining not only a lot of height, but too much tummy. I sent out an email imploring our friends not to feed him. “But he looks at me with those golden eyes, they would say…”
The Sonoran Desert is a region whose boundaries are free of political borders; part of the ecological territory is in the U.S. and part in Mexico. Animals who want to pass through that heavily walled and guarded border must be confused about the frustrating obstacles they meet. Likewise, the territory that Lobo came to call his own was independent of our annoying fence, or any of our neighbors’ fences. His range was bounded by his own instincts, and that’s the range he would roam until he couldn’t any more. And that was only at the end, where it wasn’t us who stopped him, but only the limits of his body.
Fortunately for us, he converted Rick, along with any other neighbors who had been reluctant. Even though he would bark at Rick when he came out into his back forty to practice shooting a bow and arrow, Rick came to understand that the problem was only that Lobo hadn’t granted him permission to use it in his territory.
As for us, we eventually just gave up. Over the years, when his leaps were compromised, he dented the fence in places to make the breach easier. In the end, I suspect Jon helped him by lowering the bar even further, to keep his pride intact.
We came to understand that as a working dog, Lobo considered this large territory to be his responsibility. He had many sub-tasks under the heading of this formidable career. There were the rabbits and squirrels, which needed to be kept under control. In later years a resident Cooper’s Hawk would roost near the bird feeder, hoping for an easy meal. This Lobo must have considered cheating, because he would bark and chase the hawk away. He had to keep track of the supply of bones he buried under various trees. Evidently he had to check on various neighbors, and so he made his rounds. Then there was the guarding of the property and the waiting for his people when they went out. Fortunately, he was well equipped with the tools for his work orders. He had a good nose, great ears, keen eyesight, speed, paws that could wound with one strike. Of course he also had courage. And there wasn’t a fence on the market that could contain these qualities.
Tags: dogs as teachers, grief, Pamela Hale, Through A Different Lens
