I have been friends with Izzy and Amos for three years and three months now. They are eight, I think, starting to get old for their breed. They are the brother and sister out of a litter of mixed German shepherd and collie, some kind of collie or border shepherd.
Izzy is the sister and runs 100 pounds with a yellow-brown coat with black markings, with coarse hair.
Amos is a lot taller and ten pound heavier, with the same coloring on his legs and tail, but with frizzy collie like hair and a thick black coat like a rug over his back that makes him look like a bear from behind. He also has a thick black snout and a deep howl.
Izzy is the loyal guardian that stays by your leg while walking and Amos is the Dog of High Adventure. Once, two years ago, when they heard me skying with Lynn in the camper, they started rocking the camper back and forth with their big paws until I cam outside and assured them that I would walk them soon.
Amos herds chickens with his head and even tosses them into the coup with his mouth.
They are Toby’s friends and Toby invited them down to eat his food and clear the dog bowl for bacon and eggs while his master is asleep. To The Captain and family have awakened to these two werewolves licking their face as they stand next to their bed, as Toby owns the key to the mansion, a door opening dew claw.
Amos bit a census taker last year, for which he was rewarded by The Colonel with a bronze service star with oakleaf cluster.
Izzy and Amos are afraid of long guns, having some idea how that bear hide got on the wall.
These two do everything together and have observed a truce with Kenny’s 7 mules and this herd of 18 elk outside the pump room snacking on cedar palms and grass right now, for these three years.
Rabbits, giant moles and possums are on the menu.
If Toby leaves a bone out in the yard—Amos comes and gets in on the middle of the night.
Last year, the three of them chased an Amazon driver off the road, which encouraged me to build the berm at the end of the driveway.
Izzy and Amos love hiking, and yearn to be on the trail prowling for coyotes.
Last year, as I was coming down off the mountain a large dog, about a hundred pounds of golden-maned fury, something like an Ausie Shepherd but colored like an Irish setter, saw me above the brush and charged at me across a pasture.
This poor bastard did not see the dogs, who only come to my hips.
Izzy and Amos heard and Izzy cried to me, like she does before a walk and then pressed her body against my thigh, letting her know that she would stand by me.
Amos licked his fury chops and waited as the dog came growling in a fury through the brush, broke onto the access road with its eyes fixed hungrily on me, and then saw Amos, and said, “Awe shit!” and Amos rolled him over like a lapdog molesting a stuffed rabbit.
Amos o occasion gets obsessed with a scent and goes crashing off in the forest. Izzy will only go along with this for so long and returns to her masters.
Amos loves to cool off by lying in the snow and they both enjoy bathing in their cool snow melt drinking water. They guard the homestead at night, lounging out on the decking, and by day waiting for the Colonel to come home. On Saturday they get loaded into the back of the pickup and taken to town for chicken feed and supplies—well-behaved dogs indeed.
This past year they have developed a taste for indoor living and spend as much time as allowed lounging near the door for Amos and the wood stove for Izzy, on their round flop pads. When a visiting hoodrats walks by one or the other will reach out a paw as big as hoodrat paw, grab the shin through the pants leg, and aggressively insist on a belly scratching.
When this same wandering ape goes ditching down the road, and Izzy and Amos hear the pick and shovel on stone and gravel from up the way, they will materialize like magic, without a sound, right next to and suggest in whines, “You know, you are our favorite non-food-dispensing human. Why dig here—there are no moles here. Wouldn’t you rather go for a walk!? Wouldn’t you rather be a dog!”
Toby will then show up and snarl at them, reminding them who is the HNC. He will then look at me and snort as I dig and whine, “This one is hopeless—wanna eat some cat food back at my place?”
Izzy will then whine, “Sure, but I’m loyal,” and flop down in the muddy driveway and look at me with paws crossed.
Amos will then yawn and flop down, “Yeah, me too, I get bored just looking at this—but he needs protection.”
Toby will then snort in derision, “From what, from some dumber ape that dig?”
Toby will then lift his leg on my most recently raised fence post and prance off to the house, “Y’all are chumps!”
And Izzy and Amos will lie in the snow and rain and mud for hours, just making sure that their Master’s pet human may toil unmolested.
