Notes

MASHA

While I’ve fished with a fair number of good dogs, Masha has been one of my most frequent and best companions.
“While I’ve fished with a fair number of good dogs, Masha has been one of my most frequent and best companions. I’ll remember her howls of impatience, her long ears popping above grasses on river egresses, and how gently curious she was while getting up close and personal with a landed fish. Here she’s helping to spot bass and swat mosquitos on an Eastern Washington still water.”
Words: Jason Rolfe. Photo: Copi Vojta

Masha is 6 months old when I meet her, black from nose to tip of tail, her big paws pressing my abdomen, her big ears sometimes flopping over but mostly standing straight up like a bat’s. People call her bat dog. She is loved. She plays with the kittens. She eats the litter. She eats chicken bones on the street and shit tickets off the trail. She eats a slice of chocolate cake from the front seat of the van, but the vet says there’s probably nothing to worry about since chocolate cake doesn’t actually have much chocolate in it.

Masha trails me on the river. She runs ahead and behind through chest-high fern and salal. She hunts field mice. She spooks a deer and disappears with it over a ridge at dusk, returns an hour later panting, starlight-reflecting joy in her eyes. She is living, she seems to say.

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