Flying

I remember the first time we let her off her leash. She was 7 months old and had come from a shelter in the city. They had no background information on her so we had no idea how she would behave off-leash but there was only one way to find out. We spent lots of time with her in the house off-leash and outdoors on-leash to see how she behaved. Her attention stayed on us as if asking us what we wanted her to do. She definitely wasn't a wanderer, explorer, or independent spirit and she wasn't skittish or jumpy. She stuck to us like glue so we decided it was safe to try it out.

We brought her out to the middle of the pasture, far from the road and other distractions.  It took her a few seconds to realize she didn't have a leash on and that it was actually OK to run. After a little bit of encouragement she started to run in big looping circles, sort of slow at first, then testing her speed. "I bet she's never run like this before," Mark said, and he was probably right. Even if she had been in a home prior to the shelter what are the chances she had ever had the opportunity to run all-out, completely free? "It must feel like flying to her, to run like that," he said and you could see in her face that he was right.