Ok, let’s say you’re in the woods grooming an unfamiliar trail and you get your snowmobile stuck, so you have to walk back home. It’s gonna be a long walk.

Pepé’s with you. She keeps going off into the trees, then looking back at you.

Do you leave the trail to follow her?

If you voted no, that is the correct answer!

If you voted yes, that is what I did.

(Safety disclaimer: I may not have known the specifics of the trail, but I do know the dimensions of these particular woods; also, we have previously established that Pepé is a much better leader than I am.) https://twitter.com/blairbraverman/status/1262417115736399874

Pepé led me over a big hill, and then around a bog. We came to another trail, which she went straight across, and then another with a fork. She sniffed both sides and turned left at the fork.

I followed.

Pepé was far ahead of me. She leapt over boulders I had to go around. She balanced on logs I didn’t dare step on.

I trudged after her as fast as I could. After all, I was representing humans here—I couldn’t let us down.

At every turn, Pepé waited impatiently.

We were pretty deep in the woods at this point.

I was starting to get worried, to be honest. Not that we’d be lost forever, but that if this was just some wild jaunt, it was gonna be a loooong walk retracing our steps.

Just when I was wondering if we should turn around—

I followed Pepé up one more hill, and when I looked down she was on a road. The road home!

She knew which way to go, of course. We started walking, and she went off ahead.

This is about how far ahead of me Pepé likes to be: close enough that I can see her, but far enough that I know she’s doing me a favor by waiting.

So we’re walking along, and it’s getting toward dusk, and I’m thinking how lucky I am to get to love and work with these dogs.

And then I hear something behind me. Someone is running toward me, coming fast.

Before I get a chance to turn around, something runs smack into the backs of my legs.

Y’all, we were MILES out.

Jenga must have decided I’d been gone too long, followed the snowmobile tracks, found the machine sitting on the trail, and then tracked us all the way through the woods to here—every single twist and turn we’d taken along the way.

I wonder if she’d had doubts along the way, like I had, or if she simply knew she’d find us.

We walked the rest of the way home together.

The end.