Canter Bridge

Like the cheetah, the Rhodesian Ridgeback is capable of remarkable speeds in short bursts. It’s no accident that the sport of lure coursing is popular with owners of Ridgebacks rather than, say, Corgis.

Indianapolis’ marvelous Holliday Park, with its network of wooded trails and open spaces, provides just the spot for those of us fortunate enough to live on its margins to walk and run our dogs. The fast ones as well as the less accelerated varieties stretch their legs there with us as we loosen up our own ever-stiffening limbs. Strictly speaking, the Park is governed by an unbending leash law. Among the neighborhood’s responsible dog owners, a gentlemen’s pact seems to prevail: nice doggies can run free on the woods and tracks, then be properly leashed up when one emerges into the daylight where picnickers and roller bladers predominate and, in their wildest fears, get savagely bitten by our mutts.

I took blind Sammy on his first tour of Holliday Park last evening, at least his first under my tutelage. My wife had led him there a day earlier, duly instructing me afterwards on the itinerary that would legislate Sammy’s wanderings until he’s mastered its trails and steps and is ready to move on to more complex adventures.

Ridgebacks, it must be acknowledged, show a discernible bounce in their step when they get up to trotting speed. It’s a serious bounce, the kind you’d see in a great athlete’s lithe gait rather than in the antics of a clown. But it is a bounce, almost catlike in its restraint. One imagines the African progenitors of our Ridgebacks alertly patrolling the bush as their masters moved through it with just this kind of cadence to their step.

Sammy bounced a little as we headed down the driveway and across the street on a short leash to the Park. Once on the trail, he really let it flow, stoking unexpected pride in his master’s heart. The boy can strut his stuff.

After two loops around the prescribed trail, flavored with the evident joy of the road that Sammy experienced, we returned back to the house for Sammy to take his deserved rest while I changed into running clothes and leashed his throttled-up sister Rosie. It was one of my first runs in Holliday Park with Rosie since Dear Departed Tucker’s demise. Our Tucker used to thrash his way through the woods at reckless speeds, finding his joy in the ebb and flow of disappearance from view and then high-energy reunion farther down the trail. Tucker roamed far and wide, always conscious of the need to stay within range of his jogging master. Like an object affixed to the end of an enormous, invisible bungie chord, Tucker—you knew this about him—would always return to the course, tail thrashing, wood and trees awakened by the boundless joy that characterized the boy.

Rosie, on the other hand, needs always to be steered. One keeps Rosie close, not least because of the heart-attack-inducing potentialities that reside in a stranger meeting her muscular, toothy shape while rounding the bend in his stroll through this park-ish paradise. Leash laws exist for a reason. Walkers understandably have a bird-like appetite for canine surprises.

Last night, as Rosie and I made our rounds, the walkers had returned to their homes. My Ridgeback and I had the woods to ourselves. Unlike Sammy’s careful, modest explorations of a safe path, Rosie dashed like an arrow through the Park’s woods until prudence and proximity to the open areas returned the leash to her neck. She accepts the leash’s restraint without remorse, just as happy to run by my side as to dash ahead and then turn, alertly, to make sure my slower progress is still moving in her direction. Rosie is the quintessential good doggy, combining in her Ridgeback package ferocious speed and the heart of a kitten.

No two itineraries through Holliday Park could be more distinct. Sammy’s brand-new, well-charted, closely-leashed, trust-gathering circles on the one hand; Rosie’s athletic velocity on the other.

One thought presses itself on my hopeful heart as this two-Ridgeback day ends: one day Sammy will trot by an onlooker in Holliday Park, well leashed and obediently following my heel. That person will admire his fawn-colored, handsome beauty. He’ll never notice that Sammy is blind.