Dogtrot and Hera’s Rebuke

…that easy travelling gait, which is the best for man and beast, [is] vulgarly called a " dog-trot. " Some very fine and fanciful people insist upon calling it a " jog-trot. " We beg leave, in this place, to set them right. Every trot is a jog, and so, for that matter, is every canter. A dog-trot takes its name from the even motion of the smaller quadruped, when it is seized with no particular mania, and is yet disposed to go stubbornly forward. It is in more classical dialect, the festina lente motion. It is regularly forward, and therefore fast -- it never puts the animal out of breath, and is therefore slow.
                            --W. J. Widdleton. Charlemont: Or the Pride of the Village. A Tale of Kentucky (1856)

“[The Beagle] was a pleasure to hunt. He could jump rabbits, run full-speed all day, and he never wore out.” –Owner of Big Meadows Beagles.

ἤϋσε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη Στέντορι εἰσαμένη μεγαλήτορι χαλκεοφώνῳ, ὃς τόσον        αὐδήσασχ᾽ ὅσον ἄλλοι πεντήκοντα: αἰδὼς Ἀργεῖοι κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχεα εἶδος ἀγητοί. --Iliad

On a weekend long run, I had passed the country church I attend at mile 4, the horse barn at mile 5, and the ¼-acre cemetery of leaning slabs and eroded transcriptions on mile 6. I picked up two handfuls of stones in case the dogs at the house around the bend came out at me. The yard was still and silent in the morning sun. But something was coming up from behind. I whirled around, raising a hand ready to throw the stones.
 
A beagle calmly continued its approach, looking at me with deep black eyes, its nails clicking on the pavement. I pointed toward the three houses built on pasture land in the past year: “Go back home.”   But I could hear its nails clicking behind me as I completed the rise into the hilly mix of pastures and woods. 
 
Past the grey barn crowding the road at mile 7, up and down two small hills, and onto Big Springs Road, it stayed a stride behind me.  I paused during the hike up the steepest part of Mile Hill to check its collar: no tag. It used the walking time to sniff through the grass along the edge of the berm. A couple spots drew some extra sniffs but rather than leave the road to follow the scent, the beagle stayed close, more interested in staying attached to the sole person whom it had seen this morning or at least who had accepted its approach. It easily matched my extended strides down the other side. I had told my wife I was going out for a run, but could I call it a run when this short-legged creature could keep up with me so easily? A dogtrot. That’s what I was doing: a beagle trot.  
 
I was regularly drinking from the water bottles in my running vest and taking a gel packet each hour to replenish electrolytes and some carbs. How long could this little creature keep going without quick energy food or water? We climbed the steep hill on the edge of Burke Hollow and ran down into it. From the first farm house, a trio of yippers came sprinting out. The beagle calmly waited with pointer stance for the lead dog to slow then touch noses. As the trio returned to the porch, I thought the beagle might go to the brook curving near the road, but it just came back to follow me. And it did not go to the spring where I would refill my water bottles on our way back.
 
I picked up a solid stick for the pack of dogs that would usually come snarling and growling down from the dark house on the hill facing the steepest climb of the route.  They did indeed as we rounded the bend. The beagle hung back while I slashed the stick at the leaders and yelled at them until someone came onto the porch and called them back. All was silent, calm again as we climbed past Hippie Hill—a refuge of camping-trailers, tents and tree-houses for the otherwise homeless—and on up the dirt road to the radio tower and then Robinson Cemetery, our turn-around point.
 
The dog seemed to nonchalantly accept that we were now heading back the direction we had come and stayed close. When we turned off Burke Hollow road for the spring, I thought it might sprint the thirty yards to the lower pools and thirstily lap up water. But it stayed with me and did not drink at all while I refilled my bottles. It did, however, readily take the chunk of the peanut butter, honey & salt sandwich that I offered it and then two more chunks. As we started out again, it seemed likely that we would finish today’s run together and it would become my dog.
 
Back on Big Springs Road, I heard a car slowing down behind us even though I was on the edge of the other side and there was no oncoming traffic. I looked back and saw that the beagle was near the center of the road. I called it over. Another couple hundred yards and a car slowed, then stopped, the beagle meandering in front of it. The dog seemed disoriented, like a fatigued runner in the late stage of the ultra. It again came when I called and followed me.
 
Ahead, someone was standing on our side of the road, outlined in the sun. Someone with long hair. A young woman in jeans and work shirt. Apart from some hunters a couple years ago, I had never seen someone out on this stretch of road. She was smiling, like a friendly host about to receive a guest.  She greeted me with “That’s a nice dog you have!”
                “Yes it is. It’s been with me for 15 miles!”
                “I know that dog!” she exclaimed as we were about to pass her. “Jake!” Jake had belonged to one of her teachers, who had then given him to someone else. While she was petting him and explaining this, I watched her mother offload bales of hay from their pick-up, parked fifty yards into the pasture on our side of the road. Her checkered grey and white flannel shirt tightened over muscular shoulders and broad back as she bent down to grab a bale then throw it effortlessly, fluidly into the feed area.
                “Wanna keep it?” I asked.
                “Might as well,” the girl replied.
                “Enjoy him. He’s a great dog!” I said as I turned to begin the climb out of the valley.
                “Hey, Mom! Look who I have!”
                Visually, the mother had been part of a separate scene but now her voice sounded clearly: “We don’t need another dog!”
                “It’s Jake!”
                “We don’t need another dog!” The voice was even louder.
                I did not hear the girl’s voice again but a third time her mother’s voice filled the valley “like Stentor whose thunderous voice equals that of fifty men.” As white-armed Hera used his voice to disparage those who “appear admirable, disguising disgraceful wrongs,” so the mother seemed to be rebuking me for encouraging her daughter to take the beagle, as If it was mine to generously give.
                I kept running. Fatigue and focus on finishing soon replaced misgivings. But in the weeks since that outing, I often think of Jake’s dark eyes and steady companionship and of Hera’s voice.