I love this photo of Izzy and Rose, taken a little over a year ago, in summer. Rose seemed especially radiant. I was thinking of the impact it has when a dog changes your life, even saves it.

I recall the night when I fell dragging water to one of the barns, and I slipped and went backwards onto my head and was knocked unconscious. It was bitter cold and windy, well below zero, and I don’t know how long I lay on the ground, but I was awakened by the sensation of something nipping at my ear – painfully – and barking, and it was Rose, making me wake up and get up, which I did. From the feeling of my hands and feet then, I don’t know how long I might have lasted. She did this more than once.

I remember the night when a dozen or so wild pigs – having escaped earlier from a farm – came charging out of the woods, startling me, and I underestimated pigs and their teeth, and Rose charged at them, circling them, nipping at them, eventually frightening and confusing them and driving them off.

And I remember the afternoon when a ram I’d purchased for breeding came up behind me and rammed me into a fencepost, knocking me into it and breaking my glasses and opening a wound in my forehead that spewed blood, and I couldn’t see or move well and the sheep and donkeys were panicking and stampeding and Rose, still a puppy, came over or under the kennel fence and grabbed the ram by the testicles until he shrieked and ran off, and she rounded up the sheep and chased the donkeys into the barn. There were other things, other nights. There was much drama in my life, in the farm, in my work, then. She contained it, managed it, took as much of it off of me as she could.

Having Rose around always made me feel safe on the farm, even when I should have known better. Rose is all business, still, waiting for work and accomplishing it. Always near me, always watching out for me. This is her work, her life. Every now and then,  I owe her the memory of that.