NEW MEXICO ADVENTURES

What My Dog Sees

Walking Clooney

This is my dog, Clooney:

My dog Clooney on his new sofa

I have learned a lot of lessons from my dog, Clooney, but one recent (and very important) lesson, is that even when you are walking right next to someone you have known almost their entire lives, your personal experiences can be vastly different.

Case in point

We have recently moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and for both Clooney and me that means that there are new sights to be seen, sounds to be heard, and vistas to be explored.

Clooney and I have been going on twice daily walks together for seven-and-a-half years now. In North Carolina, we took most of our walks down the street where we lived to a private trail that was in a deciduous forest. Occasionally we would run into other neighborhood dogs, but for the most part our walks were unremarkable.

I suppose that some of this had to do with the fact that the landscape was the only landscape Clooney knew and was, therefore, familiar. We did take him to the beach a couple of times, but for the most part, he spent his life in North Raleigh, where he dealt with his three main enemies: cats, deer, and UPS trucks.

The house we lived in for the first six-and-a-half years of his life had numerous…