She is a great, glossy mass, stretched out in the sunlight, feeling clean and perfect from her recent warm and lavender bath. Silas and Willmare and rolling and grappling with one another about the lawn, ladybugs and grasshoppers fly out of their way in lazy panic.
Collette's eyes close; she feels the strong wind and smells the pollen, she hears the songs of summer. The splashes of the master's children in the sun-twinkling backyard pool, the flutter and gasps of the busy nesting birds and child rearing grass mice.
The rich hound watches her offspring race and tackle, hide with her as their obstacle, and she swells with content. If they keep this up, they will be strong enough to take care of themselves when their time to leave comes.
"Mother! Mother!" Silas calls to her, the words chopped with laughter and gasps for breathe. "Make him stop!" Collette in no such mood to do so; she is drowsy with content and lazy with pleasure. Her fur is being stroked by not only the wind of this day, but also the wind of her days.
The sun soaked days of full bellies and innocent eyes.
Silas batters his brother off and runs towards his mother, slamming into her side and giggling from the safety of the enveloping, protecting presence. Willmare follows, but instead of attacking Silas he changes target and goes for his mother's long ear.
"Play with us Mother!" He pleads through his muffled mouth. With the breath knocked out of her and left ear caught in painful little teeth, she is very much in the revenge seeking mood.
"Rawr!" Collette yells as she rises, slow and intimidating as she can possibly muster with pink bows hanging around her ears. They squeal and run, and she is delighted to discover that, for the first time, she can't actually catch them.
So strong so fast, so handsome and fit! She is every inch the bragging mother you dread to meet.
They roll and squeal and generally pant and play as dogs were born to do. The masters have gracefully climbed out of the pool dripping, towelled themselves dry and disappeared inside for some of their lemonade.
The sun-twinkling pool is left unguarded with gate forgetfully open. As one, their eyes reflect the shine of the surface.
"Swimming lessons!" The mother shouts with glee, racing forwards and coming to the side of the pool. The pups reappear at her side, suddenly unsure and uncertain. This is new and this is different.
She will not allow her children to be dragged out into the world unprepared. She knows her offspring well enough to understand exactly how to get them into the pool under their own will.
"Have I told you boys the story of how the Great Tramp escaped some metal chariots?" They look into her scheming eyes with curiosity, shaking their heads furiously.
"Well, he was racing along the river bed, faster than any horse. But the dog catchers were closing in on their... metal chariots." There were gasps. "Yes, children, as you well know, you cannot out run the metal chariots, you cannot out manoeuvre and you cannot out hide." She looked into their eyes, her face snarling as she bent low to the round. "There is only one way." This was new, she had never mentioned ways to defeat the seemingly invincible metal chariots. "And the Tramp knew what that one weakness was. The metal chariots sink."
"Of course," Willmar whispers under his breath, marvelling at the simplicity of the answer to the unanswerable question.
"Tramp suddenly turned and started to run for the river that he had been running alongside all this time, smirking to himself at how smart he was to have figured the machines weakness out. He dived into the water and swam for the opposite shore. The dog catchers were stuck on the other side, looking like fools. The Great Tramp is too smart to be taken today."
With that she straightened up, swapped back into her regal presence and raised her eyebrow expectantly. The pups looked for her to the water, and with one last glance at one another, they jumped.
A dog can swim naturally, but to be a strong swimmer and a good swimmer, practice is needed. She stayed by, watching them learn and eventually become so confident as to play, she swelled again, still every inch the immodest mother.
Eventually, she called them over as they tired and started to slow, pulling them out of the water by their scruffs, she licked them with pride.
"Well done." They were tired and exhausted, but their mother's approval mattered more than the Sun. She was a distant and haunted dog, it was not often she took the time to play with and compliment them.
"Let's go and hide around the back until you dry, the master doesn't like dogs in his pool."
They wined to her as they sulked away amongst the lemon and orange trees down the far corners of the master's land.
"I'm tired, I don't want to walk this way!"
"Walk or get a hiding from the master, which one do you prefer?" She hushed them as they weaved through the orchid grass.
Willmare grumbled under his breath, forever the one with a sour word to say.
Underneath a berry bush and backs against the neighbour's fence, they slept their exhaustion away. Them, the exhaustion of swimming, and her, the exhausting of child rearing. Amongst the overgrown, unattended grass of the back corner, they felt like a hutch of small rabbits in a jungle of soft green.
Her state of resting, half-consciousness was cut short by the sound of pattering paws. The dog next door was on his afternoon run. It was just a habit, every hound had their own, her nameless neighbour which she had never been allowed to meet had the tendency to run right around his fence line just as the sun goes down.
She looked through the sooty leaves of old berry bush and was greeted, sure enough, with the colours of the sunset. Her heart started beating as the running, energetic dog pounded closer, streaming so fast that she never sees a shape when she watches the dog some days, only a pasting shadow and the dust he leaves behind.
With her fur pressed tight against the fence, possibly tuffs sticking out the other side, she wonders if the dog will notice her. Will they be friendly or aggressive? She wonders which type of pure breed snob they will be.
Collette has made no friends upon arrival, only stiffly called "acquaintances".
They run past, and she sighs. Then they stop, and turn, and start coming back. She holds her breathe and hopes her deep sleeping pups don't stir or bark in their dreams.
Steadily the black shadow, concealed from view by the planks of the fence, comes closer. She can hear them breathing, she can hear them smelling, she can smell them.
It is a male, strong and healthy, two years older than her and fed on a diet of mince and rice. She can smell the power of this dog, now that he is so close, and her heart thunders into overdrive as his shadow looms over her and her fragile pups. She can smell the thousands of hands and dogs whose oils linger in the pooches pelt. A show dog? A service dog?
He starts to scratch at the fence and she attentively lets a hello into the thick tension. The male capable of anything response,
"Well hello there! I have been wanted to meet you for a while now." Every fear drops away with a gush.
This is the first time she meets Juno, a fast friend, and, in two weeks' time, she would realise, her best friend. It really was breath taking how quickly they grew on each other.
He saves her from the ghosts.