Zoe didn’t want to complete her walk Friday morning. She didn’t pull on her leash as she normally does. Instead, she kept close and circled around me. We had gone less than a quarter of the way to our regular turnaround when she turned around and wanted to go back home. A couple of times recently she has started out on one of her short, restroom walks and suddenly turned and started pulling back towards the house. It seems she has had an encounter with a horsefly.

My second doberman, Bella, was afraid of horseflies. She was fairly old when I got her. Her hips were bad, and she had apparently never done much walking in her previous life. That was back when I was doing some running. I didn’t want to take her with me, because she couldn’t run the whole distance. I would have to stop and walk with her back to the house.

When I tried to go for a run by myself, I left her on the deck, where she would howl and cry until I relented and let her come with me. Inevitably, I had to walk her back home. The one time I saw her run, and fast, was when a horsefly came buzzing around her. She wanted nothing to do with that. Apparently a horsefly bite is worse than arthritis in the hips. She knew exactly what she was running from. One time I managed to smack a horsefly that had lit on her back. When it fell to the pavement, Bella leaned down to it, bared her front incisors, and bit the damned thing to death.

I don’t blame Bella or Zoe for running from a horsefly. I have been bitten a few times, and it’s not a pleasant experience. I assume Zoe has been bitten at some time because she recognizes the buzzing sound as something to fear. Her original home was Oklahoma, which probably has horseflies. Maybe even more than their fair share.