Cali has always been keen on herding “things”. “Things” being: Bagha, the servants in India, and any male stranger who appears to be “a worker”.
She also likes digging. She bites mouthfuls of earth out with her teeth. When I left India with Bagha, Aleika told me that Cali simply spent her time in the garden digging holes.
Yesterday evening, I was on the phone with my grandmother in the university grounds, while walking her. Of course, it’s hard to talk and walk at the same time, so at one point I just stopped where I was, in the middle of a patch of green.
By the time I had hung up, Cali had dug a hole big enough to contain her head and shoulders. I put the earth back in, but I don’t think it will fool anyone…
Her “new” thing now is trees. I’d always heard jokes about dogs and trees, and I’d already noticed Cali liked peering up trees when a cat or squirrel was around. She did that in India, already.
But the “tree mania” has got much more intense lately. She has her list of trees on our walk, and she’ll run from one to another and guard them, nose up high. It’s specially funny at the university, where she will do that with simply enormous trees which make her look like a miniature doggie.