I once described Jupie, our dog, as one part canine and two parts magic. She certainly had the power to bewitch and enchant us with her sweetness, her gentle spirit, her sometimes human capacity to understand our utterances, and her uncanny ability to convey remarkably human expressions on her countenance.
On arriving with a U-Haul truck to our one acre, wooded property up in northern California some years back, she jumped out of the car and froze, looking at me with the same expression a prisoner on death-row may exhibit; half fear, half hope that the stay-of-execution will arrive late or never from the governor’s mansion. When I told her, that yes indeed, this was our new home, she unfroze, and bounded joyfully around the front lawn like a thousand seventh-graders leaving behind the front doors of their school at the end of the first week in June.
