We Have a Camping Dog

Chapter 5 of my work-in-progress camping memoir

Our dog Sierra happily lying in the dirt while camping

I started working on a camping memoir five years ago but abandoned it after a year of detailed work because the time just wasn’t right. Now I am ready to get back to the work I started and turn it into a true memoir of the first 21 years of marriage and parenting. If you want to get regular updates on this project, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

---

Sierra was a camping natural.

Because our first house didn’t have a backyard, Sierra spent the first two years of her life becoming accustomed to a tie out and a leash when she needed potty breaks or when we took her on much needed walks. I remember one night in particular, immediately following a growth spurt, when I pulled on the line and discovered that her busted collar was still attached to the line, but she was not. She panicked as she realized that she was collarless and without the security of a line that kept her close to our house, chasing down her collar as I pulled on the line and waiting until she once again had her collar around her neck. We quickly discovered that she was too strong for plastic clasps and we needed to find a new kind of collar for our growing girl.

In many ways, Sierra was the anti-husky. Our research before bringing her home informed us that Siberian Huskies are notorious escape artists. They find any and every way to get out of a penned-up situation and they constantly look for a way towards freedom. But our Sierra never tried to escape. When we moved to Indianapolis and finally had a fenced in yard, she never once attempted to leap over the three-foot fence, even though her jumps to greet every visitor who came to our home made it perfectly clear that she could have easily run away from us if she wanted to.