Good as Gold

Sled Dog

The woman stopped for a moment to catch her breath in the frosty air, envying the laughing golden dog who bounced around in the drifts. Cheerful and energetic, Hobby genuinely enjoyed the winter weather, but she was just cold, and tired from sledding firewood up the steep hill. The firewood guy’s four-wheel-drive pickup had been unable to get all the way up to the cabin because the deep ruts frozen into the driveway fitted an antique Jeep and nothing else.

She grinned. Well, on the up side, she didn’t get any Jehova’s Witnesses. She shifted her grip on the sled rope and continued on, patting the Jeep as she dragged her burden past it.

The next day, Hobby stood carefully still (except for his gently waving tail) as Mom fitted a heavy black harness on him, and tied long lines to either side of it. He was glad of the attention, and it was much more comfortable here outside in the snow than it was in the seventy-five-degree house; Hobby always crept behind Mom’s chair to get as far from the woodstove as possible and still stay within five feet of her.

Finally Mom set the sled behind him, and tied the traces to it. Then she called him to heel, and said, "Hobby. Mush. Heel." Expecting something new and complicated, Hobby was surprised at the familiar, simple command; he paced alongside her eagerly, turning once to glance at the empty sled which inexplicably followed him; since it wasn’t in his way, he dismissed it as unimportant. Mom was laughing and telling him he was excellent, and that was all he was interested in. He had apparently just done something clever, and he wanted to know how to do it again.

After a few yards, Mom told him to stay, backed several feet away from him and stood. "Hobby. Mush."

This was obviously just a new word for come! Hobby threw himself at Mom excitedly.

Next Mom told him to stay, and put a piece of firewood in the sled; then she called him again, from further away.

Instantly Hobby hurled himself toward her, the piece of firewood remaining in the sled only by sheer good fortune.

She added more firewood, perhaps forty pounds of it. Hobby, who was ninety pounds of rock-hard muscle in the prime of his life, took no more notice of the sled when it was full than he had when it was empty. Blissfully he soaked up the praise and petting Mom lavished on him for this absurdly easy trick.

Mom narrowed her eyes at him thoughtfully, and told him to stay, then settled herself in the flat plastic sled. "Hobby. Mush."

Hobby whirled and thrust his nose into her face, pleased with himself for having figured out the new command; but Mom didn’t praise him this time, which meant he had done it wrong.

She straightened the long black lines that were twisted around his feet, then pointed at the trees across the yard. "Hobby, Mush."

Maybe he hadn’t gotten close enough to her before? This time Hobby leaped right onto her lap in the sled, prepared to be praised.

Oh no! Mom held up her hands, which meant he had done something really wrong—she was withholding petting, which to Hobby was worse than if she’d hit him. Hobby sat and waited for her to explain what she wanted.

Mom got out of the sled and stood up, told him to stand, and untangled the traces again. Hobby stood like a statue; at least he could do that right.

Time and again, she called him to her, or had him walk at heel, using the word mush. Then she would sit again in the sled, and tell him to mush. Hobby failed the test every time, making a mess of the traces when he came to her.

The woman decided to give up, before Hobby got too frustrated or she lost her patience. Why couldn’t he understand that mush meant go forward? Millions of huskies and malemutes grasped the concept, and their combined IQ was not a tenth of her beloved Hobby’s.

"Of course," she told Hobby as she undid the harness, "they’re taught with a whip, and I refuse to even own one. It’s okay if you don’t pull me; but hey, I bet you’d pull Sandy’s kids, if I stood across their yard and called you. They’d get a kick out of that."

A few weeks later, Hobby sprinted gleefully across the snowy field: chest low, feet flying, and two young girls shrieking with sheer delight in the sled behind him. Again and again they raced over the drifts, until the woman was freezing and exhausted from walking back and forth across the yard to get far enough away from Hobby to give Caitie and Holly an exhilarating ride.

It was certainly much more fun than the day that previous summer, when the woman had facetiously told Hobby to bring her the girls’ soccer ball, smugly expecting to watch him get all frustrated. (Sometimes she had a strange sense of humor.)

POP! Hobby proudly brought the punctured soccer ball to her, wagging hard with satisfaction at having overcome a challenge. She couldn’t very well yell at him for doing as she had told him. Snorting sharply in self-reproach for having so seriously underestimated Hobby, she accepted the pathetic thing. Five minutes previously it had been a nearly-new leather soccer ball, and now she reassured Sandy and her children that she would replace it the next day, dismally wondering how much it was going to cost.

The woman knelt and petted Hobby. "You’re a good puppy, you did exactly as I told you. You always do what I tell you, as well as you can. This is what I get for being mean to you."

She never again asked him to retrieve anything even remotely breakable; but she did win a five-dollar bet that he would try to retrieve a picnic table, complete with attached benches. Hobby only managed to shift it about a foot, but the fact that he tried was the point. Too bad five dollars didn’t even come close to the price of a new leather soccer ball.