The Chautauqua Lecture 5

Take Me For a Run or I May Just Have to Kill You

When we moved to Ireland, Brenin had to go into quarantine for six months. This was back in the days before pet passports and the like, and the British and Irish governments apparently had not had time to catch up with the recent invention of a rabies vaccine by Louis Pasteur in 1885. When he was released, I vowed to make the second half of his life as good as it could possibly be, and so decided to get him a friend: one with more legs and a colder nose than I. The result was Nina, a German shepherd/malamute mix. Here she is in Knockduff Lodge – the tiny, drafty cottage in the middle of nowhere that we all shared. She's still quite a young dog (her muzzle went prematurely grey), and here she's in full on "take me for a run or I might just have to kill you" mode.