“We had a little trouble out of that one,” Larry Gantt tells me from his porch. 
     I don’t need to look to where he is pointing. I know who it is. I’ve been trying to catch her for twenty minutes. She broke free again. 
     “Silky!” I holler, and she ducks into the woods, ignoring me.  
     Larry lives behind us. It’s down the graveled road that leads to his house that we walk every evening. Our woods on the east, his on the west. They entwine above, a lush canopy. In the swag, a live creek cuts beneath the road and falls into a pool of stone and toppled trees. Every foot is a new adventure of smells, deer and possums and squirrels. 
     Larry is the type of man who goes to town for his mail, whose food comes primarily from the property that surrounds him, the woods and the land he has cleared. Silky had been chasing his chickens that roam free in the yard. She bursts from the woods and collapses in a panting heap at my feet. I apologize to Larry, explaining, as I clip on her lead, that Silky is still young, despite her grown-up size, and just wants to play. 
     Larry understands, he’s a kind enough man ... has had a dog or two himself. But this is a world of fair warnings and we’ve been given ours.