If dogs run free
There is something lovely and dignified about a dog roaming free, trotting after its nose and mysterious whims, often in the collegial company of fellow canines. That was how it was when I was a kid growing up in a small city where the dogs would wander loose and easy around the neighborhood, picking up treats and warnings to get off the lawn.
And we rambled, too. “Come back when the streetlights turn on,” my mother would say, “in time for dinner.” And when I got home, and she asked where I had been, what I had done, I’d satisfy her with something like, “went to the park, rode my bike.” In fact, I might have been hanging onto the back bumper of a car on a snowy hill to catch a thrilling ride, or stealing fruit off trees, or taking dares to climb high trees and jump off low roofs.
Today, most dogs live constrained by underground electric fences and short leashes. And kids have their own invisible restraints, including warnings of terrible, imminent dangers as unlikely as a lightning strike.
Bonus pic: another lone black dog rules a street, by Peter Hujar
I remember the freedom of childhood- taking off on my bike along a country road, swimming at a swimming hole with other kids with no adult supervision, climbing in a metal (!) jungle gym at school...
One dog is in an a really dry setting, the other in wet. Both are beautiful
Well, it was 30+ years ago, so we learned. AND I was never inside a minute except in school. In NM, it was "change out of your school clothes and go outside." Post-war moms at home all had open doors and we kids roamed the alley and surroundings from the time we were preschoolers (no preschool in those days). That was the good news. And then there was the bad: no movies or swimming pools allowed because of polio, etc.