March 2025 – Contributed by a Community Volunteer

Daily Dog Note: The Measure of a Dog

In the quiet morning drizzle yesterday, under the high canopy of elm trees, I found myself at the business end of a leash again. Wrangling a lovely shelter dog over a swatch of perfectly green grass.

Some might say “watching the dogs again.”

Not from the front, as most do, but from behind. It started as a joke, really—a fleeting thought after too many mornings evaluating dogs by the same tired script: size, symmetry, eye contact, ear formation. Pretty faces get attention. Obedient ones get praise. But none of it ever felt like the whole story.

I began to wonder: what if we’re looking at it all wrong?

The front of a dog is a performance—it’s the part they learn to offer us. Sit pretty, wag politely, tilt your head just so. But the rear… the rear is honest.

Take the Husky or the Malamute—faces carved from myth, eyes like shattered ice. From behind, though, it’s a different tale. That high, curling plume of a tail, waving like a banner of independence. Soft blonde hair flutters as they move, more fox than friend. You get the sense they’d vanish into the wind without a second thought.

Then there’s the Pit Bull. From the front: blocky, alert, ready to work, whatever that might be for this maligned breed. But from the rear? It’s all muscle, directness, no pretense. The tail doesn’t curl or plume—it points, or it doesn’t. The hips don’t sway; they drive. There’s no artifice in that business end.

It’s funny, but I started to trust what I saw from behind more than what was presented head-on. The way a dog holds its tail, the rhythm of its gait, the weight it carries in its haunches—these things whisper secrets.

You can know a lot about a dog by how it walks away from you. And maybe, if you’re paying attention, that’s the truest measure of all.