Loyalty

There is no other quality that I appreciate more in a friend than loyalty.  Honestly, being able to trust that someone has my back (even when I'm not there) means a lot to me.

Cherry is Glo's dog.  We have five dogs, and Glo loves them all, but Cherry is her dog.  Cherry is a funny little thing.  We got her when Dodge died, and she is actually Dodge's half sister.  Although she's the smallest of our dogs at 35 pounds, she is the fiercest when it comes to working.  She's also the smartest.  Like Glo, she suffers from stage fright, and refuses to perform in any training class.  Glo loves Cher-Cher.

Glo throws the ball for Cherry, rubs her belly with her feet when Cherry naps under Glo's chair at the kitchen table, and Glo always takes Cherry on her runs with her (even though she's not the best on a leash).

We have a running track that runs up to our land, runs parallel to it for 500 feet, and then turns away.  For the past two months, Glo has been training for a Zombie Run by running three miles on that track.  Like I said, she always takes Cherry with her.

On Friday night, Glo went babysitting at a neighbor's house that is down the track and over the hill.  Glo took off on her bike at the top of our property.

Five minutes later, I looked out the window and saw this:

The dog on the right is Cherry.  She is sitting motionless at the bottom of our land.

She is waiting for Glo.

She knows from past experience that once Glo starts out at the top of the land, she circles around and comes back around at the bottom.

She sat there for twenty minutes!  She didn't move a muscle except to turn her head to look back up to the top.

Finally, she moved.  To the top.

She sat there for another five minutes, waiting for Glo to come back.  All of the other dogs had long forgotten about Glo and were running around the yard, but not Cherry.

I finally had to call her in.  I couldn't stand seeing her, sitting there, knowing that Glo wasn't returning for hours.

The best thing?  As soon as Glo got home, she headed out to play with Cherry.

Now that's loyalty.