Lucy in the sky

One of my pleasures most mornings when I am in Germany is to take the little .... "Girly-hair-friend" for a walk, usually around the nearby forest.
It starts with us going through the drama of putting a chest harness on her in the house. We say she is acting like she is "going to the slaughterhouse" as she crawls towards us as though in submission of things to come. Once the harness is on, she races impatiently towards the door.
Over the last few months we have started to understand her more, and we are now interacting and treating her as a dog rather than as a young anthropomorph. This has created an exciting and rewarding period of understanding as to why she does certain things like barking. Now we don't tell her to keep quite, but quietly tell her "good girl". Before the barking used to carry on for longer and with greater intensity, now we have a few seconds of communication then it's back to rummaging around for smells and things to eat. All this down to reading a book by Sean Ellis - The man who lives with wolves (2009) and talking to my colleague Saul who has attended a number of his courses.
We still have to watch the little "so-and-so", as she still gets into trouble if we aren't concentrating on her.