The crate was not a stump

The bull has a crate. He stands on it to announce. The dogs call it a stump, because that is kinder, and because a crate that has been in a paddock long enough starts to think it is wood.

It is not wood. It is a crate. Manila stood just the other side of it anyway, as if a crate were a fence. Manila is the neighbour. The other side is her whole job.

Spike saw a cow on the wrong side of something and ran. Faster is his whole idea of a plan. He put on the stare. He went around the crate. He went the other way around the crate. Manila moved with him, always the other side, which is how a neighbour stays a neighbour.

The bull announced that the crate was a stump, a historic stump, the finest stump, nobody had ever seen a stump like it. He climbed up. The crate wobbled. Manila did not. Manila does not wobble for announcements.

Beijing pondered the crate from the wire. Tokyo darted under it, which is a gap if you are small and in a hurry. Canberra kept a line that went around the crate, because a line that goes through a crate is not a line, it is a mess.

Suzy did not move the crate. Suzy sat at the real gap in the real fence, the one Manila could use if she ever decided the other side was the same paddock. She waited. That is the long way. The long way is how you get a neighbour through.

Manila looked at Spike, who was still circling a box. She looked at the bull, who was still announcing a stump. She looked at Suzy, who was sitting in a hole in a fence that had always been there.

She walked through the gap. Not far. Just to this side, which is still a side. Spike escorted the last step as if he had invented fences. The bull said the crate had moved her, which it had not. The crate sat there, being a crate.

Spike shook crate-dust out of his ears, very pleased with how many times he had gone around. Suzy sat in the gap a moment longer, because that is where the next other-side would be, and it would still be Manila.

Eight months old. Still puppies in the head. Working dogs in the legs.

Some fences are fences. Some fences are crates the bull is standing on.