Summer mornings I stretched lazily in bed to the lusty crow of a Rhode Island Red rooster and breathed deeply of cool country air as it drifted through the windows filling my whole being with scents of honeysuckle, wild grasses and freshly plowed earth. Mouth-watering eggs with deep orange yolks, provided by our free-roaming hens, waited for me in the kitchen, along with a big glass of rich Jersey milk willingly shared from Dolly's ample supply. Dolly, too, free roamed and ate a variety of grasses and weeds. On rare occasions her milk tasted of a certain bitter weed that grew in the pasture, but I always preferred her rich, creamy milk to the store-bought liquid with only 4% fat. Thick yellow cream rose to the top of Dolly's milk, constituting at least 10% of its volume, some of which we skimmed off to churn into butter.
An only child, I befriended all the animals, but my closest companion was a red and white Collie who came into my life as a puppy on my second birthday. I couldn't remember life without Lassie. She was my very best friend. That beautiful dog was the shining star of my childhood whose glow continues to warm my heart through all these years. Looking back, I can only hope that she got as much from me as I got from her.
Lassie followed me everywhere, watched over me, and waited patiently under the big oak trees I climbed in. Sometimes a squirrel would engage her in one of her favorite games. She loved to bark at the little nervous critters as they scampered from limb to limb, scolding her from overhead. On days when I didn't feel like leaving the yard, she would race off without me and, shortly, I'd hear her excited barks coming from the pasture, enticing me to come see the squirrel. When I had some devastating problem, as children do from time to time, she nuzzled her long collie nose against my neck and moaned consolation, while I cried into her fur. When I needed spanking, if I could outrun my mom to the yard, Lassie would growl and grab her skirt and I could delay my punishment. Of course I always had to go back inside eventually.
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