Carolita Johnson

New York City

The doodle girl's position immediately brought back the memory of the day, on an island in Spain, that my dog, who hated getting wet, was rolling herself dry every time we walked on grass as we climbed up a cliff from the beach (I had thrown her into the water to cool her off). At one point I said, "Stop that, you're going to roll off the cliff." She just looked at me defiantly and continued rolling. She was only a year or so old. Exasperated, I kept walking, and when we got to the very top of the cliff, I turned to see where she was, but all I saw was the tips of her little feet as they went over the edge. I stood paralyzed, listening for a thud or a crash or a cry, but heard nothing. So I got down on my hands and knees, and crawled to the edge of the cliff and peered over the edge, thoroughly expecting to see nothing but tragedy and heartbreak, but there, sitting on a tiny tuft of grass set into the side of the cliff, like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon, was my dog, Carmen. She let out a long whine of distress as she looked up at me. I gasped, then commanded (trying to look like I had everything under control so she wouldn't panic), "SIT!" while I tried to think what to do. There was no way to get to her, and we were far from everything. I told her, "I love you but you're a dog, and you're going to have to take your chances and jump, and I'll wish you luck, and if you don't make it, promise to come back to me in another dog." (We had a very special relationship. Two very independent beings.) Luckily, I had trained her to jump and land in all sorts of situations and heights. So, I took a deep breath and said, "Okay. One, two, three.... JUMP!" and she did. She jumped off the tuft, and began rolling and bouncing off the side of the cliff (it was awful to see), as I screamed to her, "GOOD LUCK! GOOD LUCK! GOOD LUCK! GOOD LUCK!" again and again as if her life depended on it, till she landed on a second, lower cliff and rolled almost to the edge, then stopped. One more roll, and she'd have kept going and plummeted into the rocks and waves below. She just got up and shook herself off.
I screamed, "SIT!!!"
Then I went down to that cliff, which was accessible, and picked her up, and carried her home, simultaneously in tears and laughing. She never questioned my authority again, I might add.
She was a wonderful little dog, through thick and thin.