Penny by Hal; Borland

there. She had made her final rush, with a flurry of yips and growls and squeals and a snapping of teeth, just as I rounded the last clump of bushes. There she was, shaking the dead woodchuck.
    I praised her, thinking maybe we had another Pat—he was a famous woodchuck hunter. She wagged her tail at the praise but didn’t trust me. She carried her kill down to the edge of the pasture, rolled on it, grabbed it and hauled it away when I tried to take it from her. But after two more rolls she let me put the leash on her and went home with me without any fuss, though she did want to go back to the dead ’chuck a couple of times. A huntress, that’s what she was, by blood and inheritance. And she’d had no chance to get it out of her system.
    She was in the house only half an hour when she wanted out again. We let her go, remembering that she had to assert her independence That time she went down on the riverbank and found a fine place to wade, a very special place. She came back ten minutes later smeared with sticky black river muck. So I got a pail of water and gave her a bath. She didn’t appreciate the bath, wouldn’t even let me dry her off with an old towel. She rolled in the grass and dried herself to her own satisfaction. Then she lay on the front steps for a time.
    I didn’t miss her until I heard her up on the mountainside again about five-thirty. This time it was her trail bark, not the “treed” or “cornered” bark. She barked from time to time for an hour or so, then was silent. I made no move to go and get her, decided that she would come back when she felt like it or not come back at all. Or maybe stay out all night and come home in time for breakfast. She was silent for a long half hour, then barked the trail bark again. Apparently she had put up another rabbit. Then silence once more. And finally, about a quarter to eight, she came back, tired and filthy again—evidently she had found and wallowed in every seep spring and mudhole on the whole mountainside. I wiped her off and brushed her a bit, and we let her in, fed her two more dishfuls of dog food. Then she lay down under her bench and slept the sleep of the utterly weary. About eight-thirty I took her out to Pat’s old place, the little brooder house, and put her to bed on a fresh pallet of straw. It was obvious that she didn’t appreciate it. I don’t know what she wanted, maybe wall-to-wall shag rug, with a special pad for a mattress. Anyway, she let me know, even before I closed and latched the door, that she didn’t think this was much of a place to quarter a dog of her standing. I didn’t agree. I came back to the house. And I was barely inside when she began to bark, an impatient bark, then an imperious bark, then a defiant bark and finally a most piteous bark. Barbara looked at me, and I looked at her, and we both shook our heads. And about nine o’clock Penny settled down and shut up.
    We were sleeping soundly when a car woke me up about half past twelve. Some idiot came up the road with his car radio on full blast. It was bad enough to wake people, but it was inexcusable to wake sleeping dogs. Penny came to with a roar of indignation and warning. It sounded as though she would tear down walls to get at this intruder. Not only tear down walls but stop the car and haul the driver out and dismember him, maybe disembowel him. I never heard a more peremptory challenge. It was a performance that would make lions quail.
    But by then even the echo of the radio-loud car had died, and soon Penny’s performance subsided to ordinary barking. That eased to spasmodic barking, the spasms just far enough apart that one could almost doze off between them. Almost, but not quite. This went on for twenty minutes, by the clock—it seemed two hours—and I was tempted several times to get up and go out and tell her to stop it before she got a case of hiccups or something. But each time,