"I Know What Those Are..."

When James first saw Leia as a puppy, he met her mother, a purebred beagle, and was told her father was a cocker spaniel. She was a charmingly sweet dog all her life, "so laid back she was falling over," as in the filksong, an amiable lady who was content to simply rest at James' feet or lie next to his craft room as he was working, but if there was cocker spaniel in her anywhere, it was submerged under more powerful genes. I believe her mom had an active social life at that time. ☺ Leia's huge lopped-down ears that gave her her name (because they looked like the doggie equivalent of Princess Leia's earmuffs) turned into equally enormous stand-up ears (with whimsical voices we used to ask her if she could get the BBC) and she ended up resembling a half-size German Shepherd, with the black saddle upon brown.

One Christmas Eve I had some errands to do, but Leia was acting particularly droopy. We were going to leave her alone the next day, and I took pity on her. It was a nice cool day, unlike at least one Christmas when I flew home to Rhode Island and it was 70°F when the plane took off, so I had no qualms spreading a towel over the back seat and having her lie there as I drove around doing my errands. She loved car rides. I remember dropping off some gifts at the Elder house and getting gasoline, with Leia happily lying on the seat of "Shadow," my Dodge Omni, lolling her tongue and occasionally sitting up when I came to a stop so she could peer out the window.

I had one final errand somewhere, and I'm not sure where, but I was going there by way of Windy Hill Road. As you near Cobb Parkway, there's a spot where a QuikTrip gas station stands now, but back then it was an empty field that fronted the Sleepy Hollow Kennel, a boarding and training facility. Traffic was backed up at the traffic light and I had the leisure to note with interest that on this grassy landscape someone had erected a living Nativity. There was a wooden stable set up, and, although the people playing the Biblical characters were not yet there, the livestock was already situated. A donkey was tethered near the stable, near a sign advertising the Living Nativity later that evening, and in front of it were several sheep, cropping at hay bales that had been left out for them.

I heard Leia's claws scrabble on the door and since traffic was stopped dead I could look back at her, and when I did, I burst out laughing. There she was, staring at those sheep with an intensity that nearly burned through the glass. Her mouth was parted a little, but she wasn't doggy "smiling," it was almost if she looked astonished. This was the dog who as a half-grown youngling already brought up with a litter of kittens went to "Auntie Anne" to narc on Buttercup for moving her latest litter. And who, as she got older, tried to herd the kittens. And now she was giving the sheep the one over with a sort of half-dawning recognition in her eye. You could almost see thought balloons coming from her, as if she were a character from "the funnies.": "I know what those are! They're...they're...I know what those are! I'm supposed to do something with them, but I can't remember what. But I do know what those are..."

Then the light changed and the car moved and she went back to being laid-back Leia again, but I still remember that Christmas Eve when all her little buried sheepdog instincts came through.