Facing a close deadline, I found myself working from home for a few days shortly after Skid came to live with us. With his recent injuries still sporting stitches and his tendency to stay close by, I let him roam at will between the yard and my desk behind the kitchen door. Deep into the intricacies of the network modeling software I was documenting, I paid only passing attention to him.
This is perhaps the earliest photo we have of Skid. He showed us right away that he was quite able to contribute to the well-being of his new pack.
The cats, all accustomed to cat-tolerant dogs, had sized him up and decided that Skid was no threat. He seemed to understand that we did not want him chasing them, although he occasionally could not resist dashing at one as it picked its way into his field of vision (and, so, into his space).
As I groped for the right words and modified screen shots, Skid wondered in and out, leaving the cats alone. I was finishing a particularly thorny instruction when he padded up beside my chair and gently laid something on the floor. He barked, once, and I looked down. It was a field rat, one of respectable size. A dead field rat.
Not wanting to discourage him from catching rats, I made some vague noise of approval and returned to my sentence, intending to pick up the carcass as soon as I'd finished.
When I looked down again, both dog and rat were gone. The dog came back when I called, without the rat.
I figured he had offered me his highest honor — the fruits of his hunt. >>
