You stood on the border between the front yard and the wilderness stretching out into the shifting hills of sunset. You were an inky shape against the land gazing back at me with dark, gleaming eyes. Wild eyes, born to this place, filled with primal truth. I was only a child, but I knew you were going somewhere I could not follow.
We lived in West Virginia when I was kid, and the house we got came with a puppy who had been born there. She was my first dog, an all-black lab mix, and she was smart and sweet, but had a wild streak, and needed to roam. When we moved out of the country and into town because of Dad's work, and she couldn't roam anymore, she started getting sick and eventually died of cancer. I think leaving the land she loved drained her of the will to fight. She would always stop and look back at me before she went out roaming, and that is how I remember her.