We found Clover in the classifieds. Karen (then spouse, now ex) spotted the listing for mixed breed puppies, $50 each.

Clover’s mother, Cinnamon, a Chocolate Lab, was nursing a litter of 10 pups, the result of a romance with a Pointer down the road from her family’s farmhouse in Pepperell, Mass.

Clover was the runt. Her brothers and sisters had the blocky, barrel chest build of a Lab. Clover had her father’s more svelte physique, and a solid chestnut brown coat. Her birth family called her ‘Peanut.’ She was barely two weeks old when we picked her out, a squirmy thing no bigger than my boot. We took her home once she was weaned, several weeks later. Karen’s daughter Jaime dubbed her Clover.

Clover graduated through the usual house training, with the usual accidents and mistakes. She was content to gnaw chew toys while teething; I don’t recall losing any shoes, or any damaged furniture.

Clover liked to dig out in the yard, and no barrier or scolding could dissuade her. She made nests in the shade of bushes, scraping out a hollow where she could curl up and doze. When she was very young, she would try to dig under fences, but she let up in her middle age. Curiously, she never learned to push open a door left ajar.

When Clover was old enough, we took an obedience course, and learned to pay closer attention to each other. I’d say we were both solid ‘B’ students. She didn’t always do what she was told, but neither do I. She was willful, not stupid. She learned at least two- dozen words, in time.  In addition to her name, her vocabulary included: walk, run, stay, go, out, ball, stick, come, heel, sit, food, treat, biscuit, carrot, down, good, bad, no, drop it, jump and yay!

Some words had special meanings. At first, “Get the squirrel,” meant just that. She very nearly caught one, once, and hadn’t a clue what to do next. The fun was in trying. The phrase evolved to serve as a euphemism for a tour of the backyard, a chance to take care of business. We learned special commands, too, for bicycling with her on a leash, or skijoring.

Her own spoken vocabulary was limited, and she kept quiet most of the time. Her bark sounded great and terrible for anyone who came to our door, belying the sweet heart and wagging tail behind it.

Clover was 2 years old when our son Evan was born. On the advice of maternity nurses, I brought one of his tiny snap-on shirts home for Clover to smell before she met him. She was glad to see me – it had been a while – but indifferent to the cloth I kept waving in her face. When Evan came home, she sniffed him gently, and slept on the floor beside his crib every night.

Clover was a rover, and a natural athlete. Her enthusiasm for forest and field, mud puddle, stream or pond was boundless and contagious. We were a good match that way, she and I, though her speed and endurance far exceeded mine. When leashed, she would pull constantly, panting and gasping, straining to pick up the pace. She knew it annoyed me, and I suspect she did it purposely. If she could make the leash as bothersome to me as it was to her, I could sometimes be persuaded to take it off and let her run.

I indulged her instincts by taking Clover along while mountain biking or cross-country skiing. We would ride for hours through the woods off Grater Road in Merrimack, by Dunklee Pond in Hollis or elsewhere. I stuck to the trails, while she ran cross-country in wide circles around me, winding through the brush, leaping logs and stone walls, plunging through puddles and leaping into pools and streams. We’d end up back at the car, both splattered with mud, tired, hungry and infested with ticks. The pleasures of exertion, fresh air, blue skies and sunlight were all the sweeter for having shared them. Clover would curl up in the back of the car, and then, once home, eat like a lion and sleep like a stone.

The Lab side of Clover loved to swim, but the Pointer part wanted something to chase. She’d stand dripping wet and quivering with anticipation waiting for me to fling a stick. Last summer she pursued a canoe on Lake Contoocook.

Clover reveled in fresh snow, bounding through it like a porpoise. She seldom had any trouble with iced paws, though we learned to avoid salty streets. We settled on the Hollis Town Forest and Dunklee Pond trails for our usual ski outings. Clover would run all about, as usual, and twice she ran off completely. The first time, I found her back beside the car.

Another time, she wound up on someone’s doorstep somewhere in Hollis, asking nicely to come inside. They let her curl up by the woodstove, and phoned to track us down (she was always licensed and tagged). Meanwhile, I wandered the woods, desolate and hoarse from calling Clover, until Karen got the call, collected Clover and found me. Cell phones weren’t so common in those days.

That experience led me to the sport of skijor. I ordered for Clover a custom-sewn harness with neoprene padding, which slipped around her neck and across her chest, and hooked onto a line, with the other end clipped to a wide belt around my waist. We would ski together, as a team.

We started at the Nashua Country Club to get used to the new arrangement, then took it to the trails. Clover seemed to know instinctively to stick to the trail, so we had only to work out a series of commands. “Halt” meant we would slow down, or pause for a moment. “Hey!” meant that we were about to change course, and when repeated several times, signified a right turn. I found “right” too hard to enunciate when I was out of breath. “Left” meant “left,” and she already knew to run.

Once we got the hang of it, we often skijored at Beaver Brook. With Clover towing, I would crouch and just push with my poles as the first mile or two flew past. The few times I skied without her, I found myself frustrated by how much slower I skied alone.

The equipment came handy at other times, too. When Evan was old enough (and until he was too old), I jogged with him in a stroller and Clover on a leash, attached to the belt around my waist.

We cut back on skijoring a few years back when she was 10, and gave it up completely by the time she was 12. Her stride got stiff, and she began taking Glucosamine and anti-inflammatory medicine for arthritis in her hips, but Clover stayed active to the end. She still came along skiing, but I didn’t make her pull.

Her opportunities for exercise diminished further when arthritis in my hips and a herniated disc forced me to stop running. Still, she enjoyed getting out every chance she got, and didn’t seem to mind that I’d gotten even slower. We started taking more short walks to compensate. Clover liked to leave pee mail for other dogs, and sniff the messages they’d left.

In her older age, Clover was content to trot ahead and stay mainly on the trail, and she stayed in sight more often than not. She found joy in running, smelling the wild scents and rolling on the ground. She showed it with the burst of speed from the car, the wag of her tail, and the cant of her head when she’d stop to look back, as if to say, “Come on, hurry up! This is great!”

New Hampshire Fish and Game has launched a fundraising drive to support research into “White Nose Syndrome” a mysterious disease that is decimating the brown bat population in the northeastern United States. So far, scientists have identified the fungus that gives the disease its name, but they still know little about what is actually killing [...]

I would have mistaken these bugs for seeds, if I noticed them at all. My dear and observant friend Lisa spotted them during a leisurely ride along the Mason-Greenville rail trail last weekend.
 
 
 

 
She waved a hand gently in the air, as if brushing off invisible cobwebs, and coaxed one of the tiny critters to light [...]

A woman who writes of (among other things) swimming across rivers will be the keynote speaker at the Nashua River Watershed Association’s annual meeting next month. 
Akiko Busch lives along the Hudson River, herself, and she will speak about the themes she covered in her last book, “Nine Ways to Cross a River,” a collection of [...]

For what it’s worth, Off Track endorses Green Party candidates Cynthia McKinny and Rosa Clemente for President and VP of the United States. I believe the Greens best represent the values that I hold dear: that all life has value (not just the wealthiest humans), and that sensible social policies begin by considering [...]

The Vector Comp wheels that came with my road bike (a 2000 model Klein) served me well, so far as I can tell. They rolled round and stayed true for several years, without professional help.
Time conquers all, alas, and my wheels were no exception. The rear hub flange cracked last weekend, apparently due to [...]

What are you doing this weekend?
It’s supposed to be pretty nice out: cool and sunny, with the maple trees bursting red, gold and orange… a classic New England autumn, and perfect running weather.
My aulde acquaintance “Sherpa” John Lacroix and his pat Nate Sanel are going to run sideways across New Hampshire, from Chesterfield to Rye, [...]

Running is relative.
Casual joggers (not to mention those who don’t run at all) might think marathoners are nuts.
People accustomed to road running can occasionally be seen leaving trail races, muttering and shaking their heads. Runners who have completed a few marathons begin to look in awe and envy at ultra-runners, who pick off 50 or 100 [...]

This guy, Jean-Yves Blondeau, is bonkers in the very best way: he’s invented a new sport (OK, it’s been around a couple years but it’s new to me) and he’s apparently making a living at it. I can’t decide if I think his suit is cool, ridiculous or both… it definitely looks dangerous, and a lot of [...]

European Motorcycle Day at the Larz Anderson museum always draws an big crowd to wallow awe-struck in the chromium gleam, especially when the sun is shining. Here were a few of the trinkets that caught my eye:

This ‘48 Rapide was the sweetest of the Vincents